shoes off and shook them to show that there was nothing concealed there
either.
Don Juan was laughing with total abandon. Genaro moved his hands up and
down. The movement created an immediate fixation in me. I sensed that the
three of us suddenly got up and walked away from the square, the two of them
flanking me.
As we continued walking, I lost my peripheral vision. I did not
distinguish any more houses or streets. I did not notice any mountains or
any vegetation either. At one moment I realized that I had lost sight of don
Juan and Genaro; instead I saw two luminous bundles moving up and down
beside me.
I felt an instantaneous panic, which I immediately controlled. I had
the unusual but well-known sensation that I was myself and yet I was not. I
was aware, however, of everything around me by means of a strange and at the
same time most familiar capacity. The sight of the world came to me all at
once. All of me saw; the entirety of what I in my normal consciousness call
my body was capable of sensing as if it were an enormous eye that detected
everything. What I first detected, after seeing the two blobs of light, was
a sharp violet-purple world made out of something that looked like colored
panels and canopies. Flat, screenlike panels of irregular concentric circles
were everywhere.
I felt a great pressure all over me, and then I heard a voice in my
ear. I was seeing. The voice said that the pressure was due to the act of
moving. I was moving together with don Juan and Genaro. I felt a faint jolt,
as if I had broken a paper barrier, and I found myself facing a luminescent
world. Light radiated from everyplace, but without being glaring. It was as
if the sun were about to erupt from behind some white diaphanous clouds. I
was looking down into the source of light. It was a beautiful sight. There
were no landmasses, just fluffy white clouds and light. And we were walking
on the clouds.
Then something imprisoned me again. I moved at the same pace as the two
blobs of light by my sides. Gradually they began to lose their brilliance,
then became opaque, and finally they were don Juan and Genaro. We were
walking on a deserted side street away from the main square. Then we turned
back.
"Genaro just helped you to align your emanations with those emanations
at large that belong to another band," don Juan said to me. "Alignment has
to be a very peaceful, unnoticeable act. No flying away, no great fuss."
He said that the sobriety needed to let the assemblage point assemble
other worlds is something that cannot be improvised. Sobriety has to mature
and become a force in itself before warriors can break the barrier of
perception with impunity.
We were coming closer to the main square. Genaro had not said a word.
He walked in silence, as if absorbed in thought. Just before we came into
the square, don Juan said that Genaro wanted to show me one more thing: that
the position of the assemblage point is everything, and that the world it
makes us perceive is so real that it does not leave room for anything except
realness.
"Genaro will let his assemblage point assemble another world just for
your benefit," don Juan said to me. "And then you'll realize that as he
perceives it, the force of his perception will leave room for nothing else."
Genaro walked ahead of us, and don Juan ordered me to roll my eyes in a
counterclockwise direction while I looked at Genaro, to avoid being dragged
with him. I obeyed him. Genaro was five or six feet away from me. Suddenly
his shape became diffuse and in one instant he was gone like a puff of air.
I thought of the science fiction movies I had seen and wondered whether
we are subliminally aware of our possibilities.
"Genaro is separated from us at this moment by the force of
perception," don Juan said quietly. "When the assemblage point assembles a
world, that world is total. This is the marvel that the old seers stumbled
upon and never realized what it was: the awareness of the earth can give us
a boost to align other great bands of emanations, and the force of that new
alignment makes the world vanish.
"Every time the old seers made a new alignment they believed they had
descended to the depths' or ascended to the heavens above. They never knew
that the world disappears like a puff of air when a new total alignment
makes us perceive another total world."
14 The Rolling Force
Don Juan was about to start his explanation of the mastery of
awareness, but he changed his mind and stood up. We had been sitting in the
big room, observing a moment of quiet.
"I want you to try seeing the Eagle's emanations," he said. "For that
you must first move your assemblage point until you see the cocoon of man."
We walked from the house to the center of town. We sat down on art
empty, worn park bench in front of the church, it was early afternoon; a
sunny, windy day with lots of people milling around.
He repeated, as if he were trying to drill it into me, that alignment
is a unique force because it either helps the assemblage point shift, or it
keeps it glued to its customary position. The aspect of alignment that keeps
the point stationary, he said, is will; and the aspect that makes it shift
is intent. He remarked that one of the most haunting mysteries is how will,
the impersonal force of alignment, changes into intent, the personalized
force, which is at the service of each individual.
"The strangest part of this mystery is that the change is so easy to
accomplish," he went on. "But what is not so easy is to convince ourselves
that it is possible. There, right there, is our safety catch. We have to be
convinced. And none of us wants to be."
He told me then that I was in my keenest state of awareness, and that
it was possible for me to infend my assemblage point to shift deeper into my
left side, to a dreaming position. He said that warriors should never
attempt seeing unless they are aided by dreaming. I argued that to fall
asleep in public was not one of my fortes. He clarified his statement,
saying that to move the assemblage point away from its natural setting and
to keep it fixed at a new location is to be asleep; with practice, seers
learn to be asleep and yet behave as if nothing is happening to them.
After a moment's pause he added that for purposes of seeing the cocoon
of man, one has to gaze at people from behind, as they walk away. It is
useless to gaze at people face to face, because the front of the egglike
cocoon of man has a protective shield, which seers call the front plate, it
is an almost impregnable, unyielding shield that protects us throughout our
lives against the onslaught of a peculiar force that stems from the
emanations themselves.
He also told me not to be surprised if my body was stiff, as though it
were frozen; he said that I was going to feel very much like someone
standing in the middle of a room looking at the street through a window, and
that speed was of the essence, as people were going to move extremely fast
by my seeing window. He told me then to relax my muscles, shut off my
internal dialogue, and let my assemblage point drift away under the spell of
inner silence. He urged me to smack myself gently but firmly on my right
side, between my hipbone and my ribcage.
I did that three times and I was sound asleep. It was a most peculiar
state of sleep. My body was dormant, but I was perfectly aware of everything
that was taking place. I could hear don Juan talking to me and I could
follow every one of his statements as if I were awake, yet I could not move
my body at all.
Don Juan said that a man was going to walk by my seeing window and that
I should try to see him. I unsuccessfully attempted to move my head and then
a shiny egglike shape appeared, it was resplendent. I was awed by the sight
and before I could recover from my surprise, it was gone. It floated away,
bobbing up and down.
Everything had been so sudden and fast that it made me feel frustrated
and impatient. I felt that I was beginning to wake up. Don Juan talked to me
again and urged me to relax. He said that I had no right and no time to be
impatient. Suddenly, another luminous being appeared and moved away. It
seemed to be made of a white fluorescent shag.
Don Juan whispered in my ear that if I wanted to, my eyes were capable
of slowing down everything they focused on. Then he warned me that another
man was coming. I realized at that instant that there were two voices. The
one I had just heard was the same one that had admonished me to be patient.
That was don Juan's. The other, the one that told me to use my eyes to slow
down movement, was the voice of seeing.
That afternoon, I saw ten luminous beings in slow motion. The voice of
seeing guided me to witness in them everything don Juan had told me about
the glow of awareness. There was a vertical band with a stronger amber glow
on the right side of those egglike luminous creatures, perhaps one-tenth of
the total volume of the cocoon. The voice said that that was man's band of
awareness. The voice pointed out a dot on man's band, a dot with an intense
shine; it was high on the oblong shapes, almost on the crest of them, on the
surface of the cocoon; the voice said that it was the assemblage point.
When I saw each luminous creature in profile, from the point of view of
its body, its egglike shape was like a gigantic asymmetrical yoyo that was
standing edgewise, or like an almost round pot that was resting on its side
with its lid on. The part that looked like a lid was the front plate; it was
perhaps one-fifth the thickness of the total cocoon.
I would have gone on seeing those creatures, but don Juan said that I
should now gaze at people face to face and sustain my gaze until I had
broken the barrier and I was seeing the emanations.
I followed his command. Almost instantaneously, I saw a most brilliant
array of live, compelling fibers of light. It was a dazzling sight that
immediately shattered my balance. I fell down on the cement walk on my side.
From there, I saw the compelling fibers of light multiply themselves. They
burst open and myriads of other fibers came out of them. But the fibers,
compelling as they were, somehow did not interfere with my ordinary view.
There were scores of people going into church. I was no longer seeing them.
There were quite a few women and men just around the bench. I wanted to
focus my eyes on them, but instead I noticed how one of those fibers of
light bulged suddenly. It became like a ball of fire that was perhaps seven
feet in diameter, it rolled on me. My first impulse was to roll out of its
way. Before I could even move a muscle the ball had hit me. I felt it as
clearly as if someone had punched me gently in the stomach. An instant later
another ball of fire hit me, this time with considerably more strength, and
then don Juan whacked me really hard on the cheek with his open hand. I
jumped up involuntarily and lost sight of the fibers of light and the
balloons that were hitting me.
Don Juan said that I had successfully endured my first brief encounter
with the Eagle's emanations, but that a couple of shoves from the tumbler
had dangerously opened up my gap. He added that the balls that had hit me
were called the rolling force, or the tumbler.
We had returned to his house, although I did not remember how or when.
! had spent hours in a sort of semisleeping state. Don Juan and the other
seers of his group had given me large amounts of water to drink. They had
also submerged me in an ice-cold tub of water for short periods of time.
"Were those fibers I saw the Eagle's emanations?" I asked don Juan.
"Yes. But you didn't really see them," he replied. "No sooner had you
begun to see than the tumbler stopped you. If you had remained a moment
longer it would have blasted you."
"What exactly is the tumbler?" I asked.
"It is a force from the Eagle's emanations," he said. "A ceaseless
force that strikes us every instant of our lives, it is lethal when seen,
but otherwise we are oblivious to it, in our ordinary lives, because we have
protective shields. We have consuming interests that engage all our
awareness. We are permanently worried about our station, our possessions.
These shields, however, do not keep the tumbler away, they simply keep us
from seeing it directly, protecting us in this way from getting hurt by the
fright of seeing the balls of fire hitting us. Shields are a great help and
a great hindrance to us. They pacify us and at the same time fool us. They
give us a false sense of security."
He warned me that a moment would come in my life when I would be
without any shields, uninterruptedly at the mercy of the tumbler. He said
that it is an obligatory stage in the life of a warrior, known as losing the
human form.
I asked him to explain to me once and for all what the human form is
and what it means to lose it.
He replied that seers describe the human form as the compelling force
of alignment of the emanations lit by the glow of awareness on the precise
spot on which normally man's assemblage point is fixated. It is the force
that makes us into persons. Thus, to be a person is to be compelled to
affiliate with that force of alignment and consequently to be affiliated
with the precise spot where it originates.
By reason of their activities, at a given moment the assemblage points
of warriors drift toward the left. It is a permanent move, which results in
an uncommon sense of aloofness, or control, or even abandon. That drift of
the assemblage point entails a new alignment of emanations. It is the
beginning of a series of greater shifts. Seers very aptly called this
initial shift losing the human form, because it marks an inexorable movement
of the assemblage point away from its original setting, resulting in the
irreversible loss of our affiliation to the force that makes us persons.
He asked me then to describe all the details I could remember about the
balls of fire. I told him that I had seen them so briefly I was not sure I
could describe them in detail.
He pointed out that seeing is a euphemism for moving the assemblage
point, and that if I moved mine a fraction more to the left I would have a
clear picture of the balls of fire, a picture which I could interpret then
as having remembered them.
I tried to have a clear picture, but I couldn't, so I described what I
remembered.
He listened attentively and then urged me to recall if they were balls
or circles of fire. I told him I didn't remember.
He explained that those balls of fire are of crucial importance to
human beings because they are the expression of a force that pertains to all
details of life and death, something that the new seers call the rolling
force.
I asked him to clarify what he meant by all the details of life and
death.
"The rolling force is the means through which the Eagle distributes
life and awareness for safekeeping," he said. "But it also is the force
that, let's say, collects the rent. It makes all living beings die. What you
saw today was called by the ancient seers the tumbler."
He said that seers describe it as an eternal line of iridescent rings,
or balls of fire, that roll onto living beings ceaselessly. Luminous organic
beings meet the rolling force head on, until the day when the force proves
to be too much for them and the creatures finally collapse. The old seers
were mesmerized by seeing how the tumbler then tumbles them into the beak of
the Eagle to be devoured. That was the reason they called it the tumbler.
"You said that it is a mesmerizing sight. Have you yourself seen it
rolling human beings?" I asked.
"Certainly I've seen it," he replied, and after a pause he added, "You
and I saw it only a short while ago in Mexico City."
His assertion was so farfetched that I felt obliged to tell him that
this time he was wrong. He laughed and reminded me that on that occasion,
while both of us were sitting on a bench in the Alameda Park in Mexico City,
we had witnessed the death of a man. He said that I had recorded the event
in my everyday-life memory as well as in my left-side emanations.
As don Juan spoke to me I had the sensation of something inside me
becoming lucid by degrees, and I could visualize with uncanny clarity the
whole scene in the park. The man was lying on the grass with three policemen
standing by him to keep onlookers away. I distinctly remembered don Juan
hitting me on my back to make me change levels of awareness. And then I saw.
My seeing was imperfect. I was unable to shake off the sight of the world of
everyday life. What I ended up with was a composite of filaments of the most
gorgeous colors superimposed on the buildings and the traffic. The filaments
were actually lines of colored light that came from above. They had inner
life; they were bright and bursting with energy.
When I looked at the dying man, I saw what don Juan was talking about;
something that was at once like circles of fire, or iridescent tumbleweeds,
was rolling everywhere I focused my eyes. The circles were rolling on
people, on don Juan, on me. I felt them in my stomach and became ill.
Don Juan told me to focus my eyes on the dying man. I saw him at one
moment curling up, just as a sowbug curls itself up upon being touched. The
incandescent circles pushed him away, as if they were casting him aside, out
of their majestic, inalterable path.
I had not liked the feeling. The circles of fire had not scared me;
they were not awesome, or sinister. I did not feel morbid or somber. The
circles rather had nauseated me. I'd felt them in the pit of my stomach. It
was a revulsion that I'd felt that day.
Remembering them conjured up again the total feeling of discomfort I
had experienced on that occasion. As I got ill, don Juan laughed until he
was out of breath.
"You're such an exaggerated fellow." he said. "The rolling force is not
that bad. It's lovely, in fact. The new seers recommend that we open
ourselves to it. The old seers also opened themselves to it, but for reasons
and purposes guided mostly by self-importance and obsession.
"The new seers, on the other hand, make friends with it. They become
familiar with that force by handling it without any self-importance. The
result is staggering in its consequences."
He said that a shift of the assemblage point is all that is needed to
open oneself to the rolling force. He added that if the force is seen in a
deliberate manner, there is minimal danger. A situation that is extremely
dangerous, however, is an involuntary shift of the assemblage point owing,
perhaps, to physical fatigue, emotional exhaustion, disease, or simply a
minor emotional or physical crisis, such as being frightened or being drunk.
"When the assemblage point shifts involuntarily, the rolling force
cracks the cocoon," he went on. "I've talked many times about a gap that man
has below his navel. It's not really below the navel itself, but in the
cocoon, at the height of the navel. The gap is more like a dent, a natural
flaw in the otherwise smooth cocoon. It is there where the tumbler hits us
ceaselessly and where the cocoon cracks."
He went on to explain that if it is a minor shift of the assemblage
point, the crack is very small, the cocoon quickly repairs itself, and
people experience what everybody has at one time or another: blotches of
color and contorted shapes, which remain even if the eyes are closed.
If the shift is considerable, the crack also is extensive and it takes
time for the cocoon to repair itself, as in the case of warriors who
purposely use power plants to elicit that shift or people who take drugs and
unwittingly do the same. In these cases men feel numb and cold; they have
difficulty talking or even thinking; it is as if they have been frozen from
inside.
Don Juan said that in cases in which the assemblage point shifts
drastically because of the effects of trauma or of a mortal disease, the
rolling force produces a crack the length of the cocoon; the cocoon
collapses and curls in on itself, and the individual dies.
"Can a voluntary shift also produce a gap of that nature?" I asked.
"Sometimes," he replied. "We're really frail. As the tumbler hits us
over and over, death comes to us through the gap. Death is the rolling
force. When it finds weakness in the gap of a luminous being it
automatically cracks it open and makes it collapse."
"Does every living being have a gap?" I asked.
"Of course," he replied. "If it didn't have one it wouldn't die. The
gaps are different, however, in size and configuration. Man's gap is a
bowl-like depression the size of a fist, a very frail vulnerable
configuration. The gaps of other organic creatures are very much like man's;
some are stronger than ours and others are weaker. But the gap of inorganic
beings is really different. It's more like a long thread, a hair of
luminosity; consequently, inorganic beings are infinitely more durable than
we are.
"There is something hauntingly appealing about the long life of those
creatures, and the old seers could not resist being carried away by that
appeal."
He said that the same force can produce two effects that are
diametrically opposed. The old seers were imprisoned by the rolling force,
and the new seers are rewarded for their toils with the gift of freedom. By
becoming familiar with the rolling force through the mastery of intent, the
new seers, at a given moment, open their own cocoons and the force floods
them rather than rolling them up like a curled-up sowbug. The final result
is their total and instantaneous disintegration.
I asked him a lot of questions about the survival of awareness after
the luminous being is consumed by the fire from within. He did not answer.
He simply chuckled, shrugged his shoulders, and went on to say that the old
seers' obsession with the tumbler blinded them to the other side of that
force. The new seers, with their usual thoroughness in refusing tradition,
went to the other extreme. They were at first totally averse to focusing
their seeing on the tumbler; they argued that they needed to understand the
force of the emanations at large in its aspect of life-giver and enhancer of
awareness.
"They realized that it is infinitely easier to destroy something," don
Juan went on, "than it is to build it and maintain it. To roll life away is
nothing compared to giving it and nourishing it. Of course, the new seers
were wrong on this count, but in due course they corrected their mistake."
"How were they wrong, don Juan?"
"It's an error to isolate anything for seeing. At the beginning, the
new seers did exactly the opposite from what their predecessors did. They
focused with equal attention on the other side of the tumbler. What happened
to them was as terrible as, if not worse than, what happened to the old
seers. They died stupid deaths, just as the average man does. They didn't
have the mystery or the malignancy of the ancient seers, nor had they the
quest for freedom of the seers of today.
"Those first new seers served everybody. Because they were focusing
their seeing on the life-giving side of the emanations, they were filled
with love and kindness. But that didn't keep them from being tumbled. They
were vulnerable, just as were the old seers who were filled with morbidity."
He said that for the modern-day new seers, to be left stranded after a
life of discipline and toil, just like men who have never had a purposeful
moment in their lives, was intolerable.
Don Juan said that these new seers realized, after they had readopted
their tradition, that the old seers' knowledge of the rolling force had been
complete; at one point the old seers had concluded that there were, in
effect, two different aspects of the same force. The tumbling aspect relates
exclusively to destruction and death. The circular aspect, on the other
hand, is what maintains life and awareness, fulfillment and purpose. They
had chosen, however, to deal exclusively with the tumbling aspect.
"Gazing in teams, the new seers were able to see the separation between
the tumbling and the circular aspects," he explained. "They saw that both
forces are fused, but are not the same. The circular force comes to us just
before the tumbling force; they are so close to each other that they seem
the same.
"The reason it's called the circular force is that it comes in rings,
threadlike hoops of iridescence-- a very delicate affair indeed. And just
like the tumbling force, it strikes all living beings ceaselessly, but for a
different purpose. It strikes them to give them strength, direction,
awareness; to give them life.
"What the new seers discovered is that the balance of the two forces in
every living being is a very delicate one," he continued, "if at any given
time an individual feels that the tumbling force strikes harder than the
circular one, that means the balance is upset; the tumbling force strikes
harder and harder from then on, until it cracks the living being's gap and
makes it die."
He added that out of what I had called balls of fire comes an
iridescent hoop exactly the size of living beings, whether men, trees,
microbes, or allies.
"Are there different-size circles?" I asked.
"Don't take me so literally," he protested. "There are no circles to
speak of, just a circular force that gives seers, who are dreaming it, the
feeling of rings. And there are no different sizes either. It's one
indivisible force that fits all living beings, organic and inorganic."
"Why did the old seers focus on the tumbling aspect?" I asked.
"Because they believed that their lives depended on seeing it," he
replied. "They were sure that their seeing was going to give them answers to
age-old questions. You see, they figured that if they unraveled the secrets
of the rolling force they would be invulnerable and immortal. The sad part
is that in one way or another, they did unravel the secrets and yet they
were neither invulnerable nor immortal.
"The new seers changed it all by realizing that there is no way to
aspire to immortality as long as man has a cocoon."
Don Juan explained that the old seers apparently never realized that
the human cocoon is a receptacle and cannot sustain the onslaught of the
rolling force forever. In spite of all the knowledge that they had
accumulated, they were in the end certainly no better, and perhaps much
worse, off than the average man.
"In what way were they left worse off than the average man?" I asked.
"Their tremendous knowledge forced them to take it for granted that
their choices were infallible," he said. "So they chose to live at any
cost."
Don Juan looked at me and smiled. With his theatrical pause he was
telling me something I could not fathom.
"They chose to live," he repeated. "Just as they chose to become trees
in order to assemble worlds with those nearly unreachable great bands."
"What do you mean by that, don Juan?"
"I mean that they used the rolling force to shift their assemblage
points to unimaginable dreaming positions, instead of letting it roll them
to the beak of the Eagle to be devoured."
15 The Death Defiers
I arrived at Genaro's house around 2: 00 p. m. Don Juan and I became
involved in conversation, and then don Juan made me shift into heightened
awareness.
"Here we are again, the three of us, just as we were the day we went to
that flat rock," don Juan said. "And tonight we're going to make another
trip to that area.
"You have enough knowledge now to draw very serious conclusions about
that place and its effects on awareness."
"What is it with that place, don Juan?"
"Tonight you're going to find out some gruesome facts that the old
seers collected about the rolling force; and you're going to see what I
meant when I told you that the old seers chose to live at any cost."
Don Juan turned to Genaro, who was about to fall asleep. He nudged him.
"Wouldn't you say, Genaro, that the old seers-were dreadful men?" don
Juan asked.
"Absolutely," Genaro said in a crisp tone and then seemed to succumb to
fatigue.
He began to nod noticeably. In an instant he was sound asleep, his head
resting on his chest with his chin tucked in. He snored.
I wanted to laugh out loud. But then I noticed that Genaro was staring
at me, as if he were sleeping with his eyes open.
"They were such dreadful men that they even defied death," Genaro added
between snores.
"Aren't you curious to know how those gruesome men defied death?" don
Juan asked me.
He seemed to be urging me to ask for an example of their gruesomeness.
He paused and looked at me with what I thought was a glint of expectation in
his eyes.
"You're waiting for me to ask for an example, aren't you?" I said.
"This is a great moment," he said, patting me on the back and laughing.
"My benefactor had me on the edge of my seat at this point. I asked him to
give me an example, and he did; now i'm going to give you one whether you
ask for it or not."
"What are you going to do?" I asked, so frightened that my stomach was
tied in knots and my voice cracked.
It took quite a while for don Juan to stop laughing. Every time he
started to speak, he'd get an attack of coughing laughter.
"As Genaro told you, the old seers were dreadful men," he said, rubbing
his eyes. "There was something they tried to avoid at all costs: they didn't
want to die. You may say that the average man doesn't want to die either,
but the advantage that the old seers had over the average man was that they
had the concentration and the discipline to intend things away; and they
actually intended death away."
He paused and looked at me with raised eyebrows. He said that I was
falling behind, that I was not asking my usual questions. I remarked that it
was plain to me that he was leading me to ask if the old seers had succeeded
in intending death away, but he himself had already told me that their
knowledge about the tumbled had not saved them from dying.
"They succeeded in intending death away," he said, pronouncing his
words with extra care. "But they still had to die."
"How did they intend death away?" I asked.
"They observed their allies," he said, "and seeing that they were
living beings with a much greater resilience to the rolling force, the seers
patterned themselves on their allies."
The old seers realized, don Juan explained, that only organic beings
have a gap that resembles a bowl. Its size and shape and its brittleness
make it the ideal configuration to hasten the cracking and collapsing of the
luminous shell under the onslaughts of the tumbling force. The allies, on
the other hand, who have only a line for a gap, present such a small surface
to the rolling force as to be practically immortal. Their cocoons can
sustain the onslaughts of the tumbler indefinitely. because hairline gaps
offer no ideal configuration to it.
"The old seers developed the most bizarre techniques for closing their
gaps," don Juan continued. "They were essentially correct in assuming that a
hairline gap is more durable than a bowl-like one."
"Are those techniques still in existence?" I asked.
"No, they are not," he said. "But some of the seers who practiced them
are."
For reasons unknown to me, his statement caused a reaction of sheer
terror in me. My breathing was altered instantly, and I couldn't control its
rapid pace.
"They're still alive to this day, isn't that so, Genaro?" don Juan
asked.
"Absolutely," Genaro muttered from an apparent state of deep sleep.
I asked don Juan if he knew the reason for my being so frightened. He
reminded me about a previous occasion in that very room when they had asked
me if I had noticed the weird creatures that had come in the moment Genaro
opened the door.
"That day your assemblage point went very deep into the left side and
assembled a frightening world," he went on. "But I have already said that to
you; what you don't remember is that you went directly to a very remote
world and scared yourself pissless there."
Don Juan turned to Genaro, who was snoring peacefully with his legs
stretched out in front of him.
"Wasn't he scared pissless, Genaro?" he asked.
"Absolutely pissless," Genaro muttered, and don Juan laughed.
"I want you to know that we don't blame you for being scared," don Juan
continued. "We, ourselves, are revolted by some of the actions of the old
seers. I'm sure that you have realized by now that what you can't remember
about that night is that you saw the old seers who are still alive."
I wanted to protest that I had realized nothing, but I could not voice
my words. I had to clear my throat over and over before I could articulate a
word. Genaro had stood up and was gently patting my upper back, by my neck,
as if I were choking.
"You have a frog in your throat," he said.
I thanked him in a high squeaky voice.
"No, I think you have a chicken there," he added and sat down to sleep.
Don Juan said that the new seers had rebelled against all the bizarre
practices of the old seers and declared them not only useless but injurious
to our total being. They even went so far as to ban those techniques from
whatever was taught to new warriors; and for generations there was no
mention of those practices at all.
It was in the early part of the eighteenth century that the nagual
Sebastian, a member of don Juan's direct line of naguals, rediscovered the
existence of those techniques.
"How did he rediscover them?" I asked.
"He was a superb stalker, and because of his impeccability he got a
chance to learn marvels," don Juan replied.
He said that one day as the nagual Sebastian was about to start his
daily routines-- he was the sexton at the cathedral in the city where he
lived-- he found a middle-aged Indian man who seemed to be in a quandary at
the door of the church.
The nagual Sebastian went to the man's side and asked him if he needed
help. "I need a bit of energy to close my gap," the man said to him in a
loud clear voice. "Would you give me some of your energy?"
Don Juan said that according to the story, the nagual Sebastian was
dumbfounded. He did not know what the man was talking about. He offered to
take the Indian to see the parish priest. The man lost his patience and
angrily accused the nagual Sebastian of stalling. "I need your energy
because you're a nagual," he said. "Let's go quietly."
The nagual Sebastian succumbed to the magnetic power of the stranger
and meekly went with him into the mountains. He was gone for many days. When
he came back he not only had a new outlook about the ancient seers, but
detailed knowledge of their techniques. The stranger was an ancient Toltec.
One of the last survivors.
"The nagual Sebastian found out marvels about the old seers," don Juan
went on. "He was the one who first knew how grotesque and aberrant they
really were. Before him, that knowledge was only hearsay.
"One night my benefactor and the nagual Elias gave me a sample of those
aberrations. They really showed it to Genaro and me together, so it's only
proper that we both show you the same sample."
I wanted to talk in order to stall; I needed time to calm down, to
think things out. But before I could say anything, don Juan and Genaro were
practically dragging me out of the house. They headed for the same eroded
hills we had visited before.
We stopped at the bottom of a large barren hill. Don Juan pointed
toward some distant mountains to the south, and said that between the place
where we stood and a natural cut in one of those mountains, a cut that
looked like an open mouth, there were at least seven sites where the ancient
seers had focused all the power of their awareness.
Don Juan said that those seers had not only been knowledgeable and
daring but downright successful. He added that his benefactor had showed him
and Genaro a site where the old seers, driven by their love for life, had
buried themselves alive and actually intended the rolling force away.
"There is nothing that would catch the eye in those places," he went
on. "The old seers were careful not to leave marks. It is just a landscape.
One has to see to know where those places are."
He said that he did not want to walk to the faraway sites, but would
take me to the one that was nearest. I insisted on knowing what we were
after. He said that we were going to see the buried seers, and that for that
we had to stay until it got dark under the cover of some green bushes. He
pointed them out; they were perhaps half a mile away, up a steep slope.
We reached the patch of bushes and sat down as comfortably as we could.
He began then to explain in a very low voice that in order to get energy
from the earth, ancient seers used to bury themselves for periods of time,
depending on what they wanted to accomplish. The more difficult their task,
the longer their burial period.
Don Juan stood up and in a melodramatic way showed me a spot a few
yards from where we were.
"Two old seers are buried there," he said. "They buried themselves
about two thousand years ago to escape death, not in the spirit of running
away from it but in the spirit of defy ing it."
Don Juan asked Genaro to show me the exact spot where the old seers
were buried. I turned to look at Genaro and realized that he was sitting by
my side sound asleep again. But to my utter amazement, he jumped up and
barked like a dog and ran on all fours to the spot don Juan was pointing
out. There he ran around the place in a perfect mime of a small dog.
I found his performance hilarious. Don Juan was nearly on the ground
laughing.
"Genaro has shown you something extraordinary," don Juan said, after
Genaro had returned to where we were and had gone back to sleep. "He has
shown you something about the assemblage point and dreaming. He's dreaming
now, but he can act as if he were fully awake and he can hear everything you
say. From that position he can do more than if he were awake."
He was silent for a moment as if assessing what to say next. Genaro
snored rhythmically.
Don Juan remarked how easy it was for him to find flaws with what the
old seers had done, yet, in all fairness, he never tired of repeating how
wonderful their accomplishments were. He said that they understood the earth
to perfection. Not only did they discover and use the boost from the earth,
but they also discovered that if they remained buried, their assemblage
points aligned emanations that were ordinarily inaccessible, and that such
an alignment engaged the earth's strange, inexplicable capacity to deflect
the ceaseless strikes of the rolling force. Consequently, they developed the
most astounding and complex techniques for burying themselves for extremely
long periods of time without any detriment to themselves. In their fight
against death, they learned how to elongate those periods to cover
millennia.
It was a cloudy day, and night fell quickly. In no time at all,
everything was in darkness. Don Juan stood up and guided me and the
sleepwalker Genaro to an enormous flat oval rock that had caught my eye the
moment we got to that place. It was similar to the flat rock we had visited
before, but bigger. It occurred to me that the rock, enormous as it was, had
deliberately been placed there.
"This is another site," don Juan said. "This huge rock was placed here
as a trap, to attract people. Soon you'll know why."
I felt a shiver run through my body. I thought I was going to faint. I
knew that I was definitely overreacting and wanted to say something about
it, but don Juan kept on talking in a hoarse whisper. He said that Genaro,
since he was dreaming, had enough control over his assemblage point to move
it until he could reach the specific emanations that would wake up whatever
was around that rock. He recommended that I try to move my assemblage point,
and follow Genaro's. He said that I could do it, first by setting up my
unbending intent to move it, and second by letting the context of the
situation dictate where it should move.
After a moment's thought he whispered in my ear not to worry about
procedures, because most of the really unusual things that happen to seers,
or to the average man for that matter, happen by themselves, with only the
intervention of intent.
He was silent for a moment and then added that the danger for me was
going to be the buried seers' inevitable attempt to scare me to death. He
exhorted me to keep myself calm and not to succumb to fear, but follow
Genaro's movements.
I fought desperately not to be sick. Don Juan patted me on the back and
said that I was an old pro at playing an innocent bystander. He assured me
that I was not consciously refusing to let my assemblage point move, but
that every human being does it automatically.
"Something is going to scare the living daylights out of you," he
whispered. "Don't give up, because if you do, you'll die and the old
vultures around here are going to feast on your energy."
"Let's get out of here," I pleaded. "I really don't give a damn about
getting an example of the old seers' grotesqueness."
"It's too late," Genaro said, fully awake now, standing by my side.
"Even if we try to get away, the two seers and their allies on the other
spot will cut you down. They have already made a circle around us. There are
as many as sixteen awarenesses focused on you right now."
"Who are they?" I whispered in Genaro's ear.
"The four seers and their court," he replied. "They've been aware of us
since we got here."
either.
Don Juan was laughing with total abandon. Genaro moved his hands up and
down. The movement created an immediate fixation in me. I sensed that the
three of us suddenly got up and walked away from the square, the two of them
flanking me.
As we continued walking, I lost my peripheral vision. I did not
distinguish any more houses or streets. I did not notice any mountains or
any vegetation either. At one moment I realized that I had lost sight of don
Juan and Genaro; instead I saw two luminous bundles moving up and down
beside me.
I felt an instantaneous panic, which I immediately controlled. I had
the unusual but well-known sensation that I was myself and yet I was not. I
was aware, however, of everything around me by means of a strange and at the
same time most familiar capacity. The sight of the world came to me all at
once. All of me saw; the entirety of what I in my normal consciousness call
my body was capable of sensing as if it were an enormous eye that detected
everything. What I first detected, after seeing the two blobs of light, was
a sharp violet-purple world made out of something that looked like colored
panels and canopies. Flat, screenlike panels of irregular concentric circles
were everywhere.
I felt a great pressure all over me, and then I heard a voice in my
ear. I was seeing. The voice said that the pressure was due to the act of
moving. I was moving together with don Juan and Genaro. I felt a faint jolt,
as if I had broken a paper barrier, and I found myself facing a luminescent
world. Light radiated from everyplace, but without being glaring. It was as
if the sun were about to erupt from behind some white diaphanous clouds. I
was looking down into the source of light. It was a beautiful sight. There
were no landmasses, just fluffy white clouds and light. And we were walking
on the clouds.
Then something imprisoned me again. I moved at the same pace as the two
blobs of light by my sides. Gradually they began to lose their brilliance,
then became opaque, and finally they were don Juan and Genaro. We were
walking on a deserted side street away from the main square. Then we turned
back.
"Genaro just helped you to align your emanations with those emanations
at large that belong to another band," don Juan said to me. "Alignment has
to be a very peaceful, unnoticeable act. No flying away, no great fuss."
He said that the sobriety needed to let the assemblage point assemble
other worlds is something that cannot be improvised. Sobriety has to mature
and become a force in itself before warriors can break the barrier of
perception with impunity.
We were coming closer to the main square. Genaro had not said a word.
He walked in silence, as if absorbed in thought. Just before we came into
the square, don Juan said that Genaro wanted to show me one more thing: that
the position of the assemblage point is everything, and that the world it
makes us perceive is so real that it does not leave room for anything except
realness.
"Genaro will let his assemblage point assemble another world just for
your benefit," don Juan said to me. "And then you'll realize that as he
perceives it, the force of his perception will leave room for nothing else."
Genaro walked ahead of us, and don Juan ordered me to roll my eyes in a
counterclockwise direction while I looked at Genaro, to avoid being dragged
with him. I obeyed him. Genaro was five or six feet away from me. Suddenly
his shape became diffuse and in one instant he was gone like a puff of air.
I thought of the science fiction movies I had seen and wondered whether
we are subliminally aware of our possibilities.
"Genaro is separated from us at this moment by the force of
perception," don Juan said quietly. "When the assemblage point assembles a
world, that world is total. This is the marvel that the old seers stumbled
upon and never realized what it was: the awareness of the earth can give us
a boost to align other great bands of emanations, and the force of that new
alignment makes the world vanish.
"Every time the old seers made a new alignment they believed they had
descended to the depths' or ascended to the heavens above. They never knew
that the world disappears like a puff of air when a new total alignment
makes us perceive another total world."
14 The Rolling Force
Don Juan was about to start his explanation of the mastery of
awareness, but he changed his mind and stood up. We had been sitting in the
big room, observing a moment of quiet.
"I want you to try seeing the Eagle's emanations," he said. "For that
you must first move your assemblage point until you see the cocoon of man."
We walked from the house to the center of town. We sat down on art
empty, worn park bench in front of the church, it was early afternoon; a
sunny, windy day with lots of people milling around.
He repeated, as if he were trying to drill it into me, that alignment
is a unique force because it either helps the assemblage point shift, or it
keeps it glued to its customary position. The aspect of alignment that keeps
the point stationary, he said, is will; and the aspect that makes it shift
is intent. He remarked that one of the most haunting mysteries is how will,
the impersonal force of alignment, changes into intent, the personalized
force, which is at the service of each individual.
"The strangest part of this mystery is that the change is so easy to
accomplish," he went on. "But what is not so easy is to convince ourselves
that it is possible. There, right there, is our safety catch. We have to be
convinced. And none of us wants to be."
He told me then that I was in my keenest state of awareness, and that
it was possible for me to infend my assemblage point to shift deeper into my
left side, to a dreaming position. He said that warriors should never
attempt seeing unless they are aided by dreaming. I argued that to fall
asleep in public was not one of my fortes. He clarified his statement,
saying that to move the assemblage point away from its natural setting and
to keep it fixed at a new location is to be asleep; with practice, seers
learn to be asleep and yet behave as if nothing is happening to them.
After a moment's pause he added that for purposes of seeing the cocoon
of man, one has to gaze at people from behind, as they walk away. It is
useless to gaze at people face to face, because the front of the egglike
cocoon of man has a protective shield, which seers call the front plate, it
is an almost impregnable, unyielding shield that protects us throughout our
lives against the onslaught of a peculiar force that stems from the
emanations themselves.
He also told me not to be surprised if my body was stiff, as though it
were frozen; he said that I was going to feel very much like someone
standing in the middle of a room looking at the street through a window, and
that speed was of the essence, as people were going to move extremely fast
by my seeing window. He told me then to relax my muscles, shut off my
internal dialogue, and let my assemblage point drift away under the spell of
inner silence. He urged me to smack myself gently but firmly on my right
side, between my hipbone and my ribcage.
I did that three times and I was sound asleep. It was a most peculiar
state of sleep. My body was dormant, but I was perfectly aware of everything
that was taking place. I could hear don Juan talking to me and I could
follow every one of his statements as if I were awake, yet I could not move
my body at all.
Don Juan said that a man was going to walk by my seeing window and that
I should try to see him. I unsuccessfully attempted to move my head and then
a shiny egglike shape appeared, it was resplendent. I was awed by the sight
and before I could recover from my surprise, it was gone. It floated away,
bobbing up and down.
Everything had been so sudden and fast that it made me feel frustrated
and impatient. I felt that I was beginning to wake up. Don Juan talked to me
again and urged me to relax. He said that I had no right and no time to be
impatient. Suddenly, another luminous being appeared and moved away. It
seemed to be made of a white fluorescent shag.
Don Juan whispered in my ear that if I wanted to, my eyes were capable
of slowing down everything they focused on. Then he warned me that another
man was coming. I realized at that instant that there were two voices. The
one I had just heard was the same one that had admonished me to be patient.
That was don Juan's. The other, the one that told me to use my eyes to slow
down movement, was the voice of seeing.
That afternoon, I saw ten luminous beings in slow motion. The voice of
seeing guided me to witness in them everything don Juan had told me about
the glow of awareness. There was a vertical band with a stronger amber glow
on the right side of those egglike luminous creatures, perhaps one-tenth of
the total volume of the cocoon. The voice said that that was man's band of
awareness. The voice pointed out a dot on man's band, a dot with an intense
shine; it was high on the oblong shapes, almost on the crest of them, on the
surface of the cocoon; the voice said that it was the assemblage point.
When I saw each luminous creature in profile, from the point of view of
its body, its egglike shape was like a gigantic asymmetrical yoyo that was
standing edgewise, or like an almost round pot that was resting on its side
with its lid on. The part that looked like a lid was the front plate; it was
perhaps one-fifth the thickness of the total cocoon.
I would have gone on seeing those creatures, but don Juan said that I
should now gaze at people face to face and sustain my gaze until I had
broken the barrier and I was seeing the emanations.
I followed his command. Almost instantaneously, I saw a most brilliant
array of live, compelling fibers of light. It was a dazzling sight that
immediately shattered my balance. I fell down on the cement walk on my side.
From there, I saw the compelling fibers of light multiply themselves. They
burst open and myriads of other fibers came out of them. But the fibers,
compelling as they were, somehow did not interfere with my ordinary view.
There were scores of people going into church. I was no longer seeing them.
There were quite a few women and men just around the bench. I wanted to
focus my eyes on them, but instead I noticed how one of those fibers of
light bulged suddenly. It became like a ball of fire that was perhaps seven
feet in diameter, it rolled on me. My first impulse was to roll out of its
way. Before I could even move a muscle the ball had hit me. I felt it as
clearly as if someone had punched me gently in the stomach. An instant later
another ball of fire hit me, this time with considerably more strength, and
then don Juan whacked me really hard on the cheek with his open hand. I
jumped up involuntarily and lost sight of the fibers of light and the
balloons that were hitting me.
Don Juan said that I had successfully endured my first brief encounter
with the Eagle's emanations, but that a couple of shoves from the tumbler
had dangerously opened up my gap. He added that the balls that had hit me
were called the rolling force, or the tumbler.
We had returned to his house, although I did not remember how or when.
! had spent hours in a sort of semisleeping state. Don Juan and the other
seers of his group had given me large amounts of water to drink. They had
also submerged me in an ice-cold tub of water for short periods of time.
"Were those fibers I saw the Eagle's emanations?" I asked don Juan.
"Yes. But you didn't really see them," he replied. "No sooner had you
begun to see than the tumbler stopped you. If you had remained a moment
longer it would have blasted you."
"What exactly is the tumbler?" I asked.
"It is a force from the Eagle's emanations," he said. "A ceaseless
force that strikes us every instant of our lives, it is lethal when seen,
but otherwise we are oblivious to it, in our ordinary lives, because we have
protective shields. We have consuming interests that engage all our
awareness. We are permanently worried about our station, our possessions.
These shields, however, do not keep the tumbler away, they simply keep us
from seeing it directly, protecting us in this way from getting hurt by the
fright of seeing the balls of fire hitting us. Shields are a great help and
a great hindrance to us. They pacify us and at the same time fool us. They
give us a false sense of security."
He warned me that a moment would come in my life when I would be
without any shields, uninterruptedly at the mercy of the tumbler. He said
that it is an obligatory stage in the life of a warrior, known as losing the
human form.
I asked him to explain to me once and for all what the human form is
and what it means to lose it.
He replied that seers describe the human form as the compelling force
of alignment of the emanations lit by the glow of awareness on the precise
spot on which normally man's assemblage point is fixated. It is the force
that makes us into persons. Thus, to be a person is to be compelled to
affiliate with that force of alignment and consequently to be affiliated
with the precise spot where it originates.
By reason of their activities, at a given moment the assemblage points
of warriors drift toward the left. It is a permanent move, which results in
an uncommon sense of aloofness, or control, or even abandon. That drift of
the assemblage point entails a new alignment of emanations. It is the
beginning of a series of greater shifts. Seers very aptly called this
initial shift losing the human form, because it marks an inexorable movement
of the assemblage point away from its original setting, resulting in the
irreversible loss of our affiliation to the force that makes us persons.
He asked me then to describe all the details I could remember about the
balls of fire. I told him that I had seen them so briefly I was not sure I
could describe them in detail.
He pointed out that seeing is a euphemism for moving the assemblage
point, and that if I moved mine a fraction more to the left I would have a
clear picture of the balls of fire, a picture which I could interpret then
as having remembered them.
I tried to have a clear picture, but I couldn't, so I described what I
remembered.
He listened attentively and then urged me to recall if they were balls
or circles of fire. I told him I didn't remember.
He explained that those balls of fire are of crucial importance to
human beings because they are the expression of a force that pertains to all
details of life and death, something that the new seers call the rolling
force.
I asked him to clarify what he meant by all the details of life and
death.
"The rolling force is the means through which the Eagle distributes
life and awareness for safekeeping," he said. "But it also is the force
that, let's say, collects the rent. It makes all living beings die. What you
saw today was called by the ancient seers the tumbler."
He said that seers describe it as an eternal line of iridescent rings,
or balls of fire, that roll onto living beings ceaselessly. Luminous organic
beings meet the rolling force head on, until the day when the force proves
to be too much for them and the creatures finally collapse. The old seers
were mesmerized by seeing how the tumbler then tumbles them into the beak of
the Eagle to be devoured. That was the reason they called it the tumbler.
"You said that it is a mesmerizing sight. Have you yourself seen it
rolling human beings?" I asked.
"Certainly I've seen it," he replied, and after a pause he added, "You
and I saw it only a short while ago in Mexico City."
His assertion was so farfetched that I felt obliged to tell him that
this time he was wrong. He laughed and reminded me that on that occasion,
while both of us were sitting on a bench in the Alameda Park in Mexico City,
we had witnessed the death of a man. He said that I had recorded the event
in my everyday-life memory as well as in my left-side emanations.
As don Juan spoke to me I had the sensation of something inside me
becoming lucid by degrees, and I could visualize with uncanny clarity the
whole scene in the park. The man was lying on the grass with three policemen
standing by him to keep onlookers away. I distinctly remembered don Juan
hitting me on my back to make me change levels of awareness. And then I saw.
My seeing was imperfect. I was unable to shake off the sight of the world of
everyday life. What I ended up with was a composite of filaments of the most
gorgeous colors superimposed on the buildings and the traffic. The filaments
were actually lines of colored light that came from above. They had inner
life; they were bright and bursting with energy.
When I looked at the dying man, I saw what don Juan was talking about;
something that was at once like circles of fire, or iridescent tumbleweeds,
was rolling everywhere I focused my eyes. The circles were rolling on
people, on don Juan, on me. I felt them in my stomach and became ill.
Don Juan told me to focus my eyes on the dying man. I saw him at one
moment curling up, just as a sowbug curls itself up upon being touched. The
incandescent circles pushed him away, as if they were casting him aside, out
of their majestic, inalterable path.
I had not liked the feeling. The circles of fire had not scared me;
they were not awesome, or sinister. I did not feel morbid or somber. The
circles rather had nauseated me. I'd felt them in the pit of my stomach. It
was a revulsion that I'd felt that day.
Remembering them conjured up again the total feeling of discomfort I
had experienced on that occasion. As I got ill, don Juan laughed until he
was out of breath.
"You're such an exaggerated fellow." he said. "The rolling force is not
that bad. It's lovely, in fact. The new seers recommend that we open
ourselves to it. The old seers also opened themselves to it, but for reasons
and purposes guided mostly by self-importance and obsession.
"The new seers, on the other hand, make friends with it. They become
familiar with that force by handling it without any self-importance. The
result is staggering in its consequences."
He said that a shift of the assemblage point is all that is needed to
open oneself to the rolling force. He added that if the force is seen in a
deliberate manner, there is minimal danger. A situation that is extremely
dangerous, however, is an involuntary shift of the assemblage point owing,
perhaps, to physical fatigue, emotional exhaustion, disease, or simply a
minor emotional or physical crisis, such as being frightened or being drunk.
"When the assemblage point shifts involuntarily, the rolling force
cracks the cocoon," he went on. "I've talked many times about a gap that man
has below his navel. It's not really below the navel itself, but in the
cocoon, at the height of the navel. The gap is more like a dent, a natural
flaw in the otherwise smooth cocoon. It is there where the tumbler hits us
ceaselessly and where the cocoon cracks."
He went on to explain that if it is a minor shift of the assemblage
point, the crack is very small, the cocoon quickly repairs itself, and
people experience what everybody has at one time or another: blotches of
color and contorted shapes, which remain even if the eyes are closed.
If the shift is considerable, the crack also is extensive and it takes
time for the cocoon to repair itself, as in the case of warriors who
purposely use power plants to elicit that shift or people who take drugs and
unwittingly do the same. In these cases men feel numb and cold; they have
difficulty talking or even thinking; it is as if they have been frozen from
inside.
Don Juan said that in cases in which the assemblage point shifts
drastically because of the effects of trauma or of a mortal disease, the
rolling force produces a crack the length of the cocoon; the cocoon
collapses and curls in on itself, and the individual dies.
"Can a voluntary shift also produce a gap of that nature?" I asked.
"Sometimes," he replied. "We're really frail. As the tumbler hits us
over and over, death comes to us through the gap. Death is the rolling
force. When it finds weakness in the gap of a luminous being it
automatically cracks it open and makes it collapse."
"Does every living being have a gap?" I asked.
"Of course," he replied. "If it didn't have one it wouldn't die. The
gaps are different, however, in size and configuration. Man's gap is a
bowl-like depression the size of a fist, a very frail vulnerable
configuration. The gaps of other organic creatures are very much like man's;
some are stronger than ours and others are weaker. But the gap of inorganic
beings is really different. It's more like a long thread, a hair of
luminosity; consequently, inorganic beings are infinitely more durable than
we are.
"There is something hauntingly appealing about the long life of those
creatures, and the old seers could not resist being carried away by that
appeal."
He said that the same force can produce two effects that are
diametrically opposed. The old seers were imprisoned by the rolling force,
and the new seers are rewarded for their toils with the gift of freedom. By
becoming familiar with the rolling force through the mastery of intent, the
new seers, at a given moment, open their own cocoons and the force floods
them rather than rolling them up like a curled-up sowbug. The final result
is their total and instantaneous disintegration.
I asked him a lot of questions about the survival of awareness after
the luminous being is consumed by the fire from within. He did not answer.
He simply chuckled, shrugged his shoulders, and went on to say that the old
seers' obsession with the tumbler blinded them to the other side of that
force. The new seers, with their usual thoroughness in refusing tradition,
went to the other extreme. They were at first totally averse to focusing
their seeing on the tumbler; they argued that they needed to understand the
force of the emanations at large in its aspect of life-giver and enhancer of
awareness.
"They realized that it is infinitely easier to destroy something," don
Juan went on, "than it is to build it and maintain it. To roll life away is
nothing compared to giving it and nourishing it. Of course, the new seers
were wrong on this count, but in due course they corrected their mistake."
"How were they wrong, don Juan?"
"It's an error to isolate anything for seeing. At the beginning, the
new seers did exactly the opposite from what their predecessors did. They
focused with equal attention on the other side of the tumbler. What happened
to them was as terrible as, if not worse than, what happened to the old
seers. They died stupid deaths, just as the average man does. They didn't
have the mystery or the malignancy of the ancient seers, nor had they the
quest for freedom of the seers of today.
"Those first new seers served everybody. Because they were focusing
their seeing on the life-giving side of the emanations, they were filled
with love and kindness. But that didn't keep them from being tumbled. They
were vulnerable, just as were the old seers who were filled with morbidity."
He said that for the modern-day new seers, to be left stranded after a
life of discipline and toil, just like men who have never had a purposeful
moment in their lives, was intolerable.
Don Juan said that these new seers realized, after they had readopted
their tradition, that the old seers' knowledge of the rolling force had been
complete; at one point the old seers had concluded that there were, in
effect, two different aspects of the same force. The tumbling aspect relates
exclusively to destruction and death. The circular aspect, on the other
hand, is what maintains life and awareness, fulfillment and purpose. They
had chosen, however, to deal exclusively with the tumbling aspect.
"Gazing in teams, the new seers were able to see the separation between
the tumbling and the circular aspects," he explained. "They saw that both
forces are fused, but are not the same. The circular force comes to us just
before the tumbling force; they are so close to each other that they seem
the same.
"The reason it's called the circular force is that it comes in rings,
threadlike hoops of iridescence-- a very delicate affair indeed. And just
like the tumbling force, it strikes all living beings ceaselessly, but for a
different purpose. It strikes them to give them strength, direction,
awareness; to give them life.
"What the new seers discovered is that the balance of the two forces in
every living being is a very delicate one," he continued, "if at any given
time an individual feels that the tumbling force strikes harder than the
circular one, that means the balance is upset; the tumbling force strikes
harder and harder from then on, until it cracks the living being's gap and
makes it die."
He added that out of what I had called balls of fire comes an
iridescent hoop exactly the size of living beings, whether men, trees,
microbes, or allies.
"Are there different-size circles?" I asked.
"Don't take me so literally," he protested. "There are no circles to
speak of, just a circular force that gives seers, who are dreaming it, the
feeling of rings. And there are no different sizes either. It's one
indivisible force that fits all living beings, organic and inorganic."
"Why did the old seers focus on the tumbling aspect?" I asked.
"Because they believed that their lives depended on seeing it," he
replied. "They were sure that their seeing was going to give them answers to
age-old questions. You see, they figured that if they unraveled the secrets
of the rolling force they would be invulnerable and immortal. The sad part
is that in one way or another, they did unravel the secrets and yet they
were neither invulnerable nor immortal.
"The new seers changed it all by realizing that there is no way to
aspire to immortality as long as man has a cocoon."
Don Juan explained that the old seers apparently never realized that
the human cocoon is a receptacle and cannot sustain the onslaught of the
rolling force forever. In spite of all the knowledge that they had
accumulated, they were in the end certainly no better, and perhaps much
worse, off than the average man.
"In what way were they left worse off than the average man?" I asked.
"Their tremendous knowledge forced them to take it for granted that
their choices were infallible," he said. "So they chose to live at any
cost."
Don Juan looked at me and smiled. With his theatrical pause he was
telling me something I could not fathom.
"They chose to live," he repeated. "Just as they chose to become trees
in order to assemble worlds with those nearly unreachable great bands."
"What do you mean by that, don Juan?"
"I mean that they used the rolling force to shift their assemblage
points to unimaginable dreaming positions, instead of letting it roll them
to the beak of the Eagle to be devoured."
15 The Death Defiers
I arrived at Genaro's house around 2: 00 p. m. Don Juan and I became
involved in conversation, and then don Juan made me shift into heightened
awareness.
"Here we are again, the three of us, just as we were the day we went to
that flat rock," don Juan said. "And tonight we're going to make another
trip to that area.
"You have enough knowledge now to draw very serious conclusions about
that place and its effects on awareness."
"What is it with that place, don Juan?"
"Tonight you're going to find out some gruesome facts that the old
seers collected about the rolling force; and you're going to see what I
meant when I told you that the old seers chose to live at any cost."
Don Juan turned to Genaro, who was about to fall asleep. He nudged him.
"Wouldn't you say, Genaro, that the old seers-were dreadful men?" don
Juan asked.
"Absolutely," Genaro said in a crisp tone and then seemed to succumb to
fatigue.
He began to nod noticeably. In an instant he was sound asleep, his head
resting on his chest with his chin tucked in. He snored.
I wanted to laugh out loud. But then I noticed that Genaro was staring
at me, as if he were sleeping with his eyes open.
"They were such dreadful men that they even defied death," Genaro added
between snores.
"Aren't you curious to know how those gruesome men defied death?" don
Juan asked me.
He seemed to be urging me to ask for an example of their gruesomeness.
He paused and looked at me with what I thought was a glint of expectation in
his eyes.
"You're waiting for me to ask for an example, aren't you?" I said.
"This is a great moment," he said, patting me on the back and laughing.
"My benefactor had me on the edge of my seat at this point. I asked him to
give me an example, and he did; now i'm going to give you one whether you
ask for it or not."
"What are you going to do?" I asked, so frightened that my stomach was
tied in knots and my voice cracked.
It took quite a while for don Juan to stop laughing. Every time he
started to speak, he'd get an attack of coughing laughter.
"As Genaro told you, the old seers were dreadful men," he said, rubbing
his eyes. "There was something they tried to avoid at all costs: they didn't
want to die. You may say that the average man doesn't want to die either,
but the advantage that the old seers had over the average man was that they
had the concentration and the discipline to intend things away; and they
actually intended death away."
He paused and looked at me with raised eyebrows. He said that I was
falling behind, that I was not asking my usual questions. I remarked that it
was plain to me that he was leading me to ask if the old seers had succeeded
in intending death away, but he himself had already told me that their
knowledge about the tumbled had not saved them from dying.
"They succeeded in intending death away," he said, pronouncing his
words with extra care. "But they still had to die."
"How did they intend death away?" I asked.
"They observed their allies," he said, "and seeing that they were
living beings with a much greater resilience to the rolling force, the seers
patterned themselves on their allies."
The old seers realized, don Juan explained, that only organic beings
have a gap that resembles a bowl. Its size and shape and its brittleness
make it the ideal configuration to hasten the cracking and collapsing of the
luminous shell under the onslaughts of the tumbling force. The allies, on
the other hand, who have only a line for a gap, present such a small surface
to the rolling force as to be practically immortal. Their cocoons can
sustain the onslaughts of the tumbler indefinitely. because hairline gaps
offer no ideal configuration to it.
"The old seers developed the most bizarre techniques for closing their
gaps," don Juan continued. "They were essentially correct in assuming that a
hairline gap is more durable than a bowl-like one."
"Are those techniques still in existence?" I asked.
"No, they are not," he said. "But some of the seers who practiced them
are."
For reasons unknown to me, his statement caused a reaction of sheer
terror in me. My breathing was altered instantly, and I couldn't control its
rapid pace.
"They're still alive to this day, isn't that so, Genaro?" don Juan
asked.
"Absolutely," Genaro muttered from an apparent state of deep sleep.
I asked don Juan if he knew the reason for my being so frightened. He
reminded me about a previous occasion in that very room when they had asked
me if I had noticed the weird creatures that had come in the moment Genaro
opened the door.
"That day your assemblage point went very deep into the left side and
assembled a frightening world," he went on. "But I have already said that to
you; what you don't remember is that you went directly to a very remote
world and scared yourself pissless there."
Don Juan turned to Genaro, who was snoring peacefully with his legs
stretched out in front of him.
"Wasn't he scared pissless, Genaro?" he asked.
"Absolutely pissless," Genaro muttered, and don Juan laughed.
"I want you to know that we don't blame you for being scared," don Juan
continued. "We, ourselves, are revolted by some of the actions of the old
seers. I'm sure that you have realized by now that what you can't remember
about that night is that you saw the old seers who are still alive."
I wanted to protest that I had realized nothing, but I could not voice
my words. I had to clear my throat over and over before I could articulate a
word. Genaro had stood up and was gently patting my upper back, by my neck,
as if I were choking.
"You have a frog in your throat," he said.
I thanked him in a high squeaky voice.
"No, I think you have a chicken there," he added and sat down to sleep.
Don Juan said that the new seers had rebelled against all the bizarre
practices of the old seers and declared them not only useless but injurious
to our total being. They even went so far as to ban those techniques from
whatever was taught to new warriors; and for generations there was no
mention of those practices at all.
It was in the early part of the eighteenth century that the nagual
Sebastian, a member of don Juan's direct line of naguals, rediscovered the
existence of those techniques.
"How did he rediscover them?" I asked.
"He was a superb stalker, and because of his impeccability he got a
chance to learn marvels," don Juan replied.
He said that one day as the nagual Sebastian was about to start his
daily routines-- he was the sexton at the cathedral in the city where he
lived-- he found a middle-aged Indian man who seemed to be in a quandary at
the door of the church.
The nagual Sebastian went to the man's side and asked him if he needed
help. "I need a bit of energy to close my gap," the man said to him in a
loud clear voice. "Would you give me some of your energy?"
Don Juan said that according to the story, the nagual Sebastian was
dumbfounded. He did not know what the man was talking about. He offered to
take the Indian to see the parish priest. The man lost his patience and
angrily accused the nagual Sebastian of stalling. "I need your energy
because you're a nagual," he said. "Let's go quietly."
The nagual Sebastian succumbed to the magnetic power of the stranger
and meekly went with him into the mountains. He was gone for many days. When
he came back he not only had a new outlook about the ancient seers, but
detailed knowledge of their techniques. The stranger was an ancient Toltec.
One of the last survivors.
"The nagual Sebastian found out marvels about the old seers," don Juan
went on. "He was the one who first knew how grotesque and aberrant they
really were. Before him, that knowledge was only hearsay.
"One night my benefactor and the nagual Elias gave me a sample of those
aberrations. They really showed it to Genaro and me together, so it's only
proper that we both show you the same sample."
I wanted to talk in order to stall; I needed time to calm down, to
think things out. But before I could say anything, don Juan and Genaro were
practically dragging me out of the house. They headed for the same eroded
hills we had visited before.
We stopped at the bottom of a large barren hill. Don Juan pointed
toward some distant mountains to the south, and said that between the place
where we stood and a natural cut in one of those mountains, a cut that
looked like an open mouth, there were at least seven sites where the ancient
seers had focused all the power of their awareness.
Don Juan said that those seers had not only been knowledgeable and
daring but downright successful. He added that his benefactor had showed him
and Genaro a site where the old seers, driven by their love for life, had
buried themselves alive and actually intended the rolling force away.
"There is nothing that would catch the eye in those places," he went
on. "The old seers were careful not to leave marks. It is just a landscape.
One has to see to know where those places are."
He said that he did not want to walk to the faraway sites, but would
take me to the one that was nearest. I insisted on knowing what we were
after. He said that we were going to see the buried seers, and that for that
we had to stay until it got dark under the cover of some green bushes. He
pointed them out; they were perhaps half a mile away, up a steep slope.
We reached the patch of bushes and sat down as comfortably as we could.
He began then to explain in a very low voice that in order to get energy
from the earth, ancient seers used to bury themselves for periods of time,
depending on what they wanted to accomplish. The more difficult their task,
the longer their burial period.
Don Juan stood up and in a melodramatic way showed me a spot a few
yards from where we were.
"Two old seers are buried there," he said. "They buried themselves
about two thousand years ago to escape death, not in the spirit of running
away from it but in the spirit of defy ing it."
Don Juan asked Genaro to show me the exact spot where the old seers
were buried. I turned to look at Genaro and realized that he was sitting by
my side sound asleep again. But to my utter amazement, he jumped up and
barked like a dog and ran on all fours to the spot don Juan was pointing
out. There he ran around the place in a perfect mime of a small dog.
I found his performance hilarious. Don Juan was nearly on the ground
laughing.
"Genaro has shown you something extraordinary," don Juan said, after
Genaro had returned to where we were and had gone back to sleep. "He has
shown you something about the assemblage point and dreaming. He's dreaming
now, but he can act as if he were fully awake and he can hear everything you
say. From that position he can do more than if he were awake."
He was silent for a moment as if assessing what to say next. Genaro
snored rhythmically.
Don Juan remarked how easy it was for him to find flaws with what the
old seers had done, yet, in all fairness, he never tired of repeating how
wonderful their accomplishments were. He said that they understood the earth
to perfection. Not only did they discover and use the boost from the earth,
but they also discovered that if they remained buried, their assemblage
points aligned emanations that were ordinarily inaccessible, and that such
an alignment engaged the earth's strange, inexplicable capacity to deflect
the ceaseless strikes of the rolling force. Consequently, they developed the
most astounding and complex techniques for burying themselves for extremely
long periods of time without any detriment to themselves. In their fight
against death, they learned how to elongate those periods to cover
millennia.
It was a cloudy day, and night fell quickly. In no time at all,
everything was in darkness. Don Juan stood up and guided me and the
sleepwalker Genaro to an enormous flat oval rock that had caught my eye the
moment we got to that place. It was similar to the flat rock we had visited
before, but bigger. It occurred to me that the rock, enormous as it was, had
deliberately been placed there.
"This is another site," don Juan said. "This huge rock was placed here
as a trap, to attract people. Soon you'll know why."
I felt a shiver run through my body. I thought I was going to faint. I
knew that I was definitely overreacting and wanted to say something about
it, but don Juan kept on talking in a hoarse whisper. He said that Genaro,
since he was dreaming, had enough control over his assemblage point to move
it until he could reach the specific emanations that would wake up whatever
was around that rock. He recommended that I try to move my assemblage point,
and follow Genaro's. He said that I could do it, first by setting up my
unbending intent to move it, and second by letting the context of the
situation dictate where it should move.
After a moment's thought he whispered in my ear not to worry about
procedures, because most of the really unusual things that happen to seers,
or to the average man for that matter, happen by themselves, with only the
intervention of intent.
He was silent for a moment and then added that the danger for me was
going to be the buried seers' inevitable attempt to scare me to death. He
exhorted me to keep myself calm and not to succumb to fear, but follow
Genaro's movements.
I fought desperately not to be sick. Don Juan patted me on the back and
said that I was an old pro at playing an innocent bystander. He assured me
that I was not consciously refusing to let my assemblage point move, but
that every human being does it automatically.
"Something is going to scare the living daylights out of you," he
whispered. "Don't give up, because if you do, you'll die and the old
vultures around here are going to feast on your energy."
"Let's get out of here," I pleaded. "I really don't give a damn about
getting an example of the old seers' grotesqueness."
"It's too late," Genaro said, fully awake now, standing by my side.
"Even if we try to get away, the two seers and their allies on the other
spot will cut you down. They have already made a circle around us. There are
as many as sixteen awarenesses focused on you right now."
"Who are they?" I whispered in Genaro's ear.
"The four seers and their court," he replied. "They've been aware of us
since we got here."