I wanted to turn tail and run for dear life, but don Juan held my arm
and pointed to the sky. I noticed that a remarkable change in visibility had
taken place. Instead of the pitch-black darkness that had prevailed, there
was a pleasant dawn twilight. I made a quick assessment of the cardinal
points. The sky was definitely lighter toward the east.
I felt a strange pressure around my head. My ears were buzzing. I felt
cold and feverish at the same time. I was scared as I had never been before,
but what bothered me was a nagging sensation of defeat, of being a coward. I
felt nauseated and miserable.
Don Juan whispered in my ear. He said that I had to be on the alert,
that the onslaught of the old seers would be felt by all three of us at any
moment.
"You can grab on to me if you want to," Genaro said in a fast whisper
as if something were prodding him.
I hesitated for an instant. I did not want don Juan to believe that I
was so scared I needed to hold on to Genaro.
"Here they come!" Genaro said in a loud whisper.
The world turned upside down instantaneously for me when something
gripped me by my left ankle. I felt the coldness of death on my entire body.
I knew I had stepped on an iron clamp, maybe a bear trap. That all flashed
through my mind before I let out a piercing scream, as intense as my fright.
Don Juan and Genaro laughed out loud. They were flanking me no more
than three feet away, but I was so terrified I did not even notice them.
"Sing! Sing for dear life!" I heard don Juan ordering me under his
breath.
I tried to pull my foot loose. I felt then a sting, as if needles were
piercing my skin. Don Juan insisted over and over that I sing. He and Genaro
started to sing a popular song. Genaro spoke the lyrics as he looked at me
from hardly two inches away. They sang off-key in raspy voices, getting so
completely out of breath and so high out of the range of their voices that I
ended up laughing.
"Sing, or you're going to perish," don Juan said to me.
"Let's make a trio," Genaro said, "We'll sing a bolero."
I joined them in an off-key trio. We sang for quite a while at the top
of our voices, like drunkards. I felt that the iron grip on my leg was
gradually letting go of me. I had not dared to look down at my ankle. At one
moment I did and I realized then that there was no trap clutching me. A
dark, headlike shape was biting me!
Only a supreme effort kept me from fainting. I felt I was getting sick
and automatically tried to bend over, but somebody with superhuman strength
grabbed me painlessly by the elbows and the nape of my neck and did not let
me move. I got sick all over my clothes.
My revulsion was so complete that I began to fall in a faint. Don Juan
sprinkled my face with some water from the small gourd he always carried
when we went into the mountains. The water slid under my collar. The
coldness restored my physical balance, but it did not affect the force that
was holding me by my elbows and neck.
"I think you are going too far with your fright," don Juan said loudly
and in such a matter-of-fact tone that he created an immediate feeling of
order.
"Let's sing again," he added. "Let's sing a song with substance-- I
don't want any more boleros."
I silently thanked him for his sobriety and for his grand style. I was
so moved as I heard them singing "La Valentina" that I began to weep.
"Because of my passion, they say that ill fortune is on my way. It
doesn't matter that it might be the devil himself. I do know how to die
Valentina, Valentina. I throw my self in your way. If I am going to die
tomorrow, why not, once and for all, today?"
All of my being staggered under the impact of that inconceivable
juxtaposition of values. Never had a song meant so much to me. As I heard
them sing those lyrics, which I ordinarily considered reeking with cheap
sentimentalism, I thought I understood the ethos of the warrior. Don Juan
had drilled into me that warriors live with death at their side, and from
the knowledge that death is with them they draw the courage to face
anything. Don Juan had said that the worst that could happen to us is that
we have to die, and since that is already our unalterable fate, we are free;
those who have lost everything no longer have anything to fear.
I walked to don Juan and Genaro and embraced them to express my
boundless gratitude and admiration for them.
Then I realized that nothing was holding me any longer. Without a word
don Juan took my arm and guided me to sit on the flat rock.
"The show is just about to begin now," Genaro said in a jovial tone as
he tried to find a comfortable position to sit. "You've just paid your
admission ticket. It's all over your chest."
He looked at me, and both of them began to laugh.
"Don't sit too close to me," Genaro said. "I don't appreciate pukers.
But don't go too far, either. The old seers are not yet through with their
tricks."
I moved as close to them as politeness permitted. I was concerned about
my slate for an instant, and then all my qualms became nonsense, for I
noticed that some people were coming toward us. I could not make out their
shapes clearly but I distinguished a mass of human figures moving in the
semidarkness. They did not carry lanterns or flashlights with them, which at
that hour they would still have needed. Somehow that detail worried me. I
did not want to focus on it and I deliberately began to think rationally. I
figured that we must have attracted attention with our loud singing and they
were coming to investigate. Don Juan tapped me on the shoulder. He pointed
with a movement of his chin to the men in front of the group of others.
"Those four are the old seers," he said. "The rest are their allies."
Before I could remark that they were just local peasants, I heard a
swishing sound right behind me. I quickly turned around in a state of total
alarm. My movement was so sudden that don Juan's warning came too late.
"Don't turn around!" I heard him yell.
His words were only background; they did not mean anything to me. On
turning around, I saw that three grotesquely deformed men had climbed up on
the rock right behind me; they were crawling toward me, with their mouths
open in a nightmarish grimace and their arms outstretched to grab me.
I intended to scream at the top of my lungs, but what came out was an
agonizing croak, as if something were obstructing my windpipe. I
automatically rolled out of their reach and onto the ground.
As I stood up, don Juan jumped to my side, at the very same moment that
a horde of men, led by those don Juan had pointed out, descended on me like
vultures. They were actually squeaking like bats or rats. I yelled in
terror. This time I was able to let out a piercing cry.
Don Juan, as nimbly as an athlete in top form, pulled me out of their
clutches onto the rock. He told me in a stern voice not to turn around to
look, no matter how scared I was. He said that the allies cannot push at
all, but that they certainly could scare me and make me fall to the ground.
On the ground, however, the allies could hold anybody down. If I were to
fall on the ground by the place where the seers were buried, I would be at
their mercy. They would rip me apart while their allies held me. He added
that he had not told me all that before because he had hoped I would be
forced to see and understand it by myself. His decision had nearly cost me
my life.
The sensation that the grotesque men were just behind me was nearly
unbearable. Don Juan forcefully ordered me to keep calm and focus my
attention on four men at the head of a crowd of perhaps ten or twelve. The
instant I focused my eyes on them, as if on cue, they all advanced to the
edge of the flat rock. They stopped there and began hissing like serpents.
They walked back and forth. Their movement seemed to be synchronized. It was
so consistent and orderly that it seemed to be mechanical. It was as if they
were following a repetitive pattern, aimed at mesmerizing me.
"Don't gaze at them, dear," Genaro said to me as if he were talking to
a child.
The laughter that followed was as hysterical as my fear. I laughed so
hard that the sound reverberated on the surrounding hills.
The men stopped at once and seemed to be perplexed. I could distinguish
the shapes of their heads bobbing up and down as if they were talking,
deliberating among themselves. Then one of them jumped onto the rock.
"Watch out! That one is a seer!" Genaro exclaimed.
"What are we going to do?" I shouted.
"We could start singing again," don Juan replied matter-of-factly.
My fear reached its apex then. I began to jump up and down and to roar
like an animal. The man jumped down to the ground.
"Don't pay any more attention to those clowns," don Juan said. "Let's
talk as usual."
He said that we had gone there for my enlightenment, and that I was
failing miserably. I had to reorganize myself. The first thing to do was to
realize that my assemblage point had moved and was now making obscure
emanations glow. To carry the feelings from my usual state of awareness into
the world I had assembled was indeed a travesty, for fear is only prevalent
among the emanations of daily life.
I told him that if my assemblage point had shifted as he was saying it
had, I had news for him. My fear was infinitely greater and more devastating
than anything I had ever experienced in my daily life.
"You're wrong," he said. "Your first attention is confused and doesn't
want to give up control, that's all. I have the feeling that you could walk
right up to those creatures and face them and they wouldn't do a thing to
you."
I insisted that I was definitely in no condition to test such a
preposterous thing as that.
He laughed at me. He said that sooner or later I had to cure myself of
my madness, and that to take the initiative and face up to those four seers
was infinitely less preposterous than the idea that I was seeing them at
all. He said that to him madness was to be confronted by men who had been
buried for two thousand years and were still alive, and not to think that
that was the epitome of preposterousness.
I heard everything he said with clarity, but I was not really paying
attention to him. I was terrified of the men around the rock. They seemed to
be preparing to jump us, to jump me really. They were fixed on me. My right
arm began to shake as if I were stricken by some muscular disorder. Then I
became aware that the light in the sky had changed. I had not noticed before
that it was already dawn. The strange thing was that an uncontrollable urge
made me stand up and run to the group of men.
I had at that moment two completely different feelings about the same
event. The minor one was of sheer terror. The other, the major one, was of
total indifference. I could not have cared less.
When I reached the group I realized that don Juan was right; they were
not really men. Only four of them had any resemblance to men, but they were
not men either; they were strange creatures with huge yellow eyes. The
others were just shapes that were propelled by the four that resembled men.
I felt extraordinarily sad for those creatures with yellow eyes. I
tried to touch them, but I could not find them. Some sort of wind scooped
them away.
I looked for don Juan and Genaro. They were not there. It was
pitch-black again. I called out their names over and over again. I thrashed
around in darkness for a few minutes. Don Juan came to my side and startled
me. I did not see Genaro.
"Let's go home," he said. "We have a long walk."
Don Juan commented on how well I had performed at the site of the
buried seers, especially during the last part of our encounter with them. He
said that a shift of the assemblage point is marked by a change in light. In
the daytime, light becomes very dark; at night, darkness becomes twilight.
He added that I had performed two shifts by myself, aided only by animal
fright. The only thing he found objectionable was my indulging in fear,
especially after I had realized that warriors have nothing to fear.
"How do you know I had realized that?" I asked.
"Because you were free. When fear disappears all the ties that bind us
dissolve," he said. "An ally was gripping your foot because it was attracted
by your animal terror."
I told him how sorry I was for not being able to uphold my
realizations.
"Don't concern yourself with that." He laughed. "You know that such
realizations are a dime a dozen; they don't amount to anything in the life
of warriors, because they are canceled out as the assemblage point shifts.
"What Genaro and I wanted to do was to make you shift very deeply. This
time Genaro was there simply to entice the old seers. He did it once
already, and you went so far into the left side that it will take quite a
while for you to remember it. Your fright tonight was just as intense as it
was that first time when the seers and their allies followed you to this
very room, but your sturdy first attention wouldn't let you be aware of
them."
"Explain to me what happened at the site of the seers," I asked.
"The allies came out to see you," he replied. "Since they have very low
energy, they always need the help of men. The four seers have collected
twelve allies.
"The countryside in Mexico and also certain cities are dangerous. What
happened to you can happen to any man or woman. If they bump into that tomb,
they may even see the seers and their allies, if they are pliable enough to
let their fear make their assemblage points shift; but one thing is for
sure: they can die of fright."
"But do you honestly believe that those Toltec seers are still alive?"
I asked.
He laughed and shook his head in disbelief.
"It's time for you to shift that assemblage point of yours just a bit,"
he said. "I can't talk to you when you are in your idiot's stage."
He smacked me with the palm of his hand on three spots: right on the
crest of my right hipbone, on the center of my back below my shoulder
blades, and on the upper part of my right pectoral muscle.
My ears immediately began to buzz. A trickle of blood ran out of my
right nostril, and something inside me became unplugged. It was as if some
flow of energy had been blocked and suddenly began to move again.
"What were those seers and their allies after?" I asked.
"Nothing," he replied. "We were the ones who were after them. The
seers, of course, had already noticed your field of energy the first time
you saw them; when you came back, they were set to feast on you."
"You claim that they are alive, don Juan," I said. "You must mean that
they are alive as allies are alive, is that so?"
"That's exactly right," he said. "They cannot possibly be alive as you
and I are. That would be preposterous."
He went on to explain that the ancient seers' concern with death made
them look into the most bizarre possibilities. The ones who opted for the
allies' pattern had in mind, doubtless, a desire for a haven. And they found
it, at a fixed position in one of the seven bands of inorganic awareness.
The seers felt that they were relatively safe there. After all, they were
separated from the daily world by a nearly insurmountable barrier, the
barrier of perception set by the assemblage point.
"When the four seers saw that you could shift your assemblage point
they took off like bats out of hell," he said and laughed.
"Do you mean that I assembled one of the seven worlds?" I asked.
"No, you didn't," he replied. "But you have done it before, when the
seers and their allies chased you. That day you went all the way to their
world. The problem is that you love to act stupid, so you can't remember it
at all.
"I'm sure that it is the nagual's presence," he continued, "that
sometimes makes people act dumb. When the nagual Julian was still around, I
was dumber than I am now. I am convinced that when I'm no longer here,
you'll be capable of remembering everything."
Don Juan explained that since he needed to show me the death defiers,
he and Genaro had lured them to the outskirts of our world. What I had done
at first was a deep lateral shift, which allowed me to see them as people,
but at the end I had correctly made the shift that allowed me to see the
death defiers and their allies as they are.
Very early the next morning, at Silvio Manuel's house, don Juan called
me to the big room to discuss the events of the previous night. I felt
exhausted and wanted to rest, to sleep, but don Juan was pressed for time.
He immediately started his explanation. He said that the old seers had found
out a way to utilize the rolling force and be propelled by it. Instead of
succumbing to the onslaughts of the tumbler they rode with it and let it
move their assemblage points to the confines of human possibilities.
Don Juan expressed unbiased admiration for such an accomplishment. He
admitted that nothing else could give the assemblage point the boost that
the tumbler gives.
I asked him about the difference between the earth's boost and the
tumbler's boost. He explained that the earth's boost is the force of
alignment of only the amber emanations, it is a boost that heightens
awareness to unthinkable degrees. To the new seers it is a blast of
unlimited consciousness, which they call total freedom.
He said that the tumbler's boost, on the other hand, is the force of
death. Under the impact of the tumbler, the assemblage point moves to new,
unpredictable positions. Thus, the old seers were always alone in their
journeys, although the enterprise they were involved in was always communal.
The company of other seers on their journeys was fortuitous and usually
meant struggle for supremacy.
I confessed to don Juan that the concerns of the old seers, whatever
they may have been, were worse than morbid horror tales to me. He laughed
uproariously. He seemed to be enjoying himself.
"You have to admit, no matter how disgusted you feel, that those devils
were very daring," he went on. "I never liked them myself, as you know, but
I can't help admiring them. Their love for life is truly beyond me."
"How can that be love for life, don Juan? It's something nauseating," I
said.
"What else could push a man to those extremes if it is not love for
life?" he asked. "They loved life so intensely that they were not willing to
give it up. That's the way I have seen it. My benefactor saw something else.
He believed that they were afraid to die, which is not the same as loving
life. I say that they were afraid to die because they loved life and because
they had seen marvels, and not because they were greedy little monsters. No.
They were aberrant because nobody ever challenged them and they were spoiled
like rotten children, but their daring was impeccable and so was their
courage.
"Would you venture into the unknown out of greed? No way. Greed works
only in the world of ordinary affairs. To venture into that terrifying
loneliness one must have something greater than greed. Love, one needs love
for life, for intrigue, for mystery. One needs unquenching curiosity and
guts galore. So don't give me this nonsense about your being revolted. It's
embarrassing!"
Don Juan's eyes were shining with contained laughter. He was putting me
in my place, but he was laughing at it.
Don Juan left me alone in the room for perhaps an hour. I wanted to
organize my thoughts and feelings. I had no way to do that. I knew without
any doubt that my assemblage point was at a position where reasoning does
not prevail, yet I was moved by reasonable concerns. Don Juan had said that
technically, as soon as the assemblage point shifts, we are asleep. I
wondered, for instance, if I was sound asleep from the stand of an onlooker,
just as Genaro had been asleep to me.
I asked don Juan about it as soon as he returned.
"You are absolutely asleep without having to be stretched out," he
replied. "If people in a normal state of awareness saw you now, you would
appear to them to be a bit dizzy, even drunk."
He explained that during normal sleep, the shift of the assemblage
point runs along either edge of man's band. Such shifts are always coupled
with slumber. Shifts that are induced by practice occur along the midsection
of man's band and are not coupled with slumber, yet a dreamer is asleep.
"Right at this juncture is where the new and the old seers made their
separate bids for power," he went on. "The old seers wanted a replica of the
body, but with more physical strength, so they made their assemblage points
slide along the right edge of man's band. The deeper they moved along the
right edge the more bizarre their dreaming body became. You, yourself,
witnessed last night the monstrous result of a deep shift along the right
edge."
He said that the new seers were completely different, that they
maintain their assemblage points along the midsection of man's band. If the
shift is a shallow one, like the shift into heightened awareness, the
dreamer is almost like anyone else in the street, except for a slight
vulnerability to emotions, such as fear and doubt. But at a certain degree
of depth, the dreamer who is shifting along the midsection becomes a blob of
light. A blob of light is the dreaming body of the new seers.
He also said that such an impersonal dreaming body is more conducive to
understanding and examination, which are the basis of all the new seers do.
The intensely humanized dreaming body of the old seers drove them to look
for answers that were equally personal, humanized.
Don Juan suddenly seemed to be groping for words.
"There is another death defier," he said curtly, "so unlike the four
you've seen that he's indistinguishable from the average man in the street.
He's accomplished this unique feat by being able to open and close his gap
whenever he wants."
He played with his fingers almost nervously.
"The ancient seer that the nagual Sebastian found in 1723 is that death
defier," he went on. "We count that day as the beginning of our line, the
second beginning. That death defier, who's been on the earth for hundreds of
years, has changed the lives of every nagual he met, some more profoundly
than others. And he has met every single nagual of our line since that day
in 1723."
Don Juan looked fixedly at me. I got strangely embarrassed. I thought
my embarrassment was the result of a dilemma. I had very serious doubts
about the content of the story, and at the same time I had the most
disconcerting trust that everything he had said was true. I expressed my
quandary to him.
"The problem of rational disbelief is not yours alone," don Juan said.
"My benefactor was at first plagued by the same question. Of course, later
on he remembered everything. But it took him a long time to do so. When I
met him he had already recollected everything, so I never witnessed his
doubts. I only heard about them.
"The weird part is that people who have never set eyes on the man have
less difficulty accepting that he's one of the original seers. My benefactor
said that his quandaries stemmed from the fact that the shock of meeting
such a creature had lumped together a number of emanations. It takes time
for those emanations to separate themselves."
Don Juan went on to explain that as my assemblage point kept on
shifting, a moment would come when it would hit the proper combination of
emanations; at that moment the proof of the existence of that man would
become overwhelmingly evident to me.
I felt compelled to talk again about my ambivalence.
"We're deviating from our subject," he said. "It may seem that I'm
trying to convince you of the existence of that man; and what I meant to
talk about is the fact that the old seer knows how to handle the rolling
force. Whether or not you believe that he exists is not important. Someday
you'll know for a fact that he certainly succeeded in closing his gap. The
energy that he borrows from the nagual every generation he uses exclusively
to close his gap."
"How did he succeed in closing it?" I asked.
"There is no way of knowing that," he replied. "I've talked to two
other naguals who saw that man face to face, the nagual Julian and the
nagual Elias. Neither of them knew how. The man never revealed how he closes
that opening, which I suppose begins to expand after a time. The nagual
Sebastian said that when he first saw the old seer, the man was very weak,
actually dying. But my benefactor found him prancing vigorously, like a
young man."
Don Juan said that the nagual Sebastian nicknamed that nameless man
"the tenant," for they struck an arrangement by which the man was given
energy, lodging so to speak, and he paid rent in the form of favors and
knowledge.
"Did anybody ever get hurt in the exchange?" I asked.
"None of the naguals who exchanged energy with him was injured," he
replied. "The man's commitment was that he'd only take a bit of superfluous
energy from the nagual in exchange for gifts, for extraordinary abilities.
For instance, the nagual Julian got the gait of power. With it, he could
activate or make dormant the emanations inside his cocoon in order to look
young or old at will."
Don Juan explained that the death defiers in general went as far as
rendering dormant all the emanations inside their cocoons, except those that
matched the emanations of the allies. In this fashion they were able to
imitate the allies in some form.
Each of the death defiers we had encountered at the rock, don Juan
said, had been able to move his assemblage point to a precise spot on his
cocoon in order to emphasize the emanations shared with the allies and to
interact with them. But they were all unable to move it back to its usual
position and interact with people. The tenant, on the other hand, is capable
of shifting his assemblage point to assemble the everyday world as if
nothing had ever happened.
Don Juan also said that his benefactor was convinced-- and he fully
agreed with him-- that what takes place during the borrowing of energy is
that the old sorcerer moves the nagual's assemblage point to emphasize the
ally's emanations inside the nagual's cocoon. He then uses the great jolt of
energy produced by those emanations that suddenly become aligned after being
so deeply dormant.
He said that the energy locked within us, in the dormant emanations,
has a tremendous force and an incalculable scope. We can only vaguely assess
the scope of that tremendous force, if we consider that the energy involved
in perceiving and acting in the world of everyday life is a product of the
alignment of hardly one-tenth of the emanations encased in man's cocoon.
"What happens at the moment of death is that all that energy is
released at once," he continued. "Living beings at that moment become
flooded by the most inconceivable force. It is not the rolling force that
has cracked their gaps, because that force never enters inside the cocoon;
it only makes it collapse. What floods them is the force of all the
emanations that are suddenly aligned after being dormant for a lifetime.
There is no outlet for such a giant force except to escape through the gap."
He added that the old sorcerer has found a way to tap that energy. By
aligning a limited and very specific spectrum of the dormant emanations
inside the nagual's cocoon, the old seer taps a limited but gigantic jolt.
"How do you think he takes that energy into his own body?" I asked.
"By cracking the nagual's gap," he replied. "He moves the nagual's
assemblage point until the gap opens a little. When the energy of newly
aligned emanations is released through that opening, he takes it into his
own gap."
"Why is that old seer doing what he's doing?" I asked.
"My opinion is that he's caught in a circle he can't break," he
replied. "We got into an agreement with him. He's doing his best to keep it,
and so are we. We can't judge him, yet we have to know that his path doesn't
lead to freedom. He knows that, and he also knows he can't change it; he's
trapped in a situation of his own making. The only thing he can do is to
prolong his ally-like existence as long as he possibly can."
16 The Mold of Man
Right after lunch, don Juan and I sat down to talk. He started without
any preamble. He announced that we had come to the end of his explanation.
He said that he had discussed with me, in painstaking detail, all the truths
about awareness that the old seers had discovered. He stressed that I now
knew the order in which the new seers had arranged them. In the last
sessions of his explanation, he said, he had given me a detailed account of
the two forces that aid our assemblage points to move: the earth's boost and
the rolling force. He had also explained the three techniques worked out by
the new seers-- stalking, intent, and dreaming -- and their effects on the
movement of the assemblage point.
"Now, the only thing left for you to do before the explanation of the
mastery of awareness is completed," he went on, "is to break the barrier of
perception by yourself. You must move your assemblage point, unaided by
anyone, and align another great band of emanations.
"Not to do this will turn everything you've learned and done with me
into merely talk, just words. And words are fairly cheap."
He explained that when the assemblage point is moving away from its
customary position and reaches a certain depth, it breaks a barrier that
momentarily disrupts its capacity to align emanations. We experience it as a
moment of perceptual blankness. The old seers called that moment the wall of
fog, because a bank of fog appears whenever the alignment of emanations
falters.
He said that there were three ways of dealing with it. It could be
taken abstractly as a barrier of perception; it could be felt as the act of
piercing a tight paper screen with the entire body; or it could be seen as a
wall of fog.
In the course of my apprenticeship with don Juan, he had guided me
countless times to see the barrier of perception. At first I had liked the
idea of a wall of fog. Don Juan had warned me that the old seers had also
preferred to see it that way. He had said that there is great comfort and
ease in seeing it as a wall of fog, but that there is also the grave danger
of turning something incomprehensible into something somber and foreboding;
hence, his recommendation was to keep incomprehensible things
incomprehensible rather than making them part of the inventory of the first
attention.
After a short-lived feeling of comfort in seeing the wall of fog I had
to agree with don Juan that it was better to keep the transition period as
an incomprehensible abstraction, but by then it was impossible for me to
break the fixation of my awareness. Every time I was placed in a position to
break the barrier of perception I saw the wall of fog.
On one occasion, in the past, I had complained to don Juan and Genaro
that although I wanted to see it as something else, I couldn't change it.
Don Juan had commented that that was understandable, because I was morbid
and somber, that he and I were very different in this respect. He was
lighthearted and practical and he did not worship the human inventory. I, on
the other hand, was unwilling to throw my inventory out the window and
consequently I was heavy, sinister, and impractical. I had been shocked and
saddened by his harsh criticism and became very gloomy. Don Juan and Genaro
had laughed until tears rolled down their cheeks.
Genaro had added that on top of all that I was vindictive and had a
tendency to get fat. They had laughed so hard I finally felt obliged to join
them.
Don Juan had told me then that exercises of assembling other worlds
allowed the assemblage point to gain experience in shifting. I had always
wondered, however, how to get the initial boost to dislodge my assemblage
point from its usual position. When I'd questioned him about it in the past
he'd pointed out that since alignment is the force that is involved in
everything, intent is what makes the assemblage point move.
I asked him again about it.
"You're in a position now to answer that question yourself," he
replied. "The mastery of awareness is what gives the assemblage point its
boost. After all, there is really very little to us human beings; we are, in
essence, an assemblage point fixed at a certain position. Our enemy and at
the same time our friend is our internal dialogue, our inventory. Be a
warrior; shut off your internal dialogue; make your inventory and then throw
it away. The new seers make accurate inventories and then laugh at them.
Without the inventory the assemblage point becomes free."
Don Juan reminded me that he had talked a great deal about one of the
most sturdy aspects of our inventory: our idea of God. That aspect, he said,
was like a powerful glue that bound the assemblage point to its original
position. If I were going to assemble another true world with another great
band of emanations, I had to take an obligatory step in order to release all
ties from my assemblage point.
"That step is to see the mold of man," he said. "You must do that today
unaided."
"What's the mold of man?" I asked.
"I've helped you see it many times," he replied. "You know what I'm
talking about."
I refrained from saying that I did not know what he was talking about.
If he said that I had seen the mold of man, I must have done that, although
I did not have the foggiest idea what it was like.
He knew what was going through my mind. He gave me a knowing smile and
slowly shook his head from side to side.
"The mold of man is a huge cluster of emanations in the great band of
organic life," he said. "It is called the mold of man because the cluster
appears only inside the cocoon of man.
"The mold of man is the portion of the Eagle's emanations that seers
can see directly without any danger to themselves."
There was a long pause before he spoke again.
"To break the barrier of perception is the last task of the mastery of
awareness," he said. "In order to move your assemblage point to that
position you must gather enough energy. Make a journey of recovery. Remember
what you've done!"
I tried unsuccessfully to recall what was the mold of man. I felt an
excruciating frustration that soon turned into real anger. I was furious
with myself, with don Juan, with everybody.
Don Juan was untouched by my fury. He said matter-of-factly that anger
was a natural reaction to the hesitation of the assemblage point to move on
command.
"It will be a long time before you can apply the principle that your
command is the Eagle's command," he said. "That's the essence of the mastery
of intent. In the meantime, make a command now not to fret, not even at the
worst moments of doubt. It will be a slow process until that command is
heard and obeyed as if it were the Eagle's command."
He also said that there was an unmeasurable area of awareness in
between the customary position of the assemblage point and the position
where there are no more doubts, which is almost the place where the barrier
of perception makes its appearance. In that unmeasurable area, warriors fall
prey to every conceivable misdeed. He warned me to be on the lockout and not
lose confidence, for I would unavoidably be struck at one time or another by
gripping feelings of defeat.
"The new seers recommend a very simple act when impatience, or despair,
or anger, or sadness comes their way," he continued. "They recommend that
warriors roll their eyes. Any direction will do; I prefer to roll mine
clockwise.
"The movement of the eyes makes the assemblage point shift momentarily.
In that movement, you will find relief. This is in lieu of true mastery of
intent."'
I complained that there was not enough time for him to tell me more
about intent.
"It will all come back to you someday," he assured me. "One thing will
trigger another. One key word and all of it will tumble out of you as if the
door of an overstuffed closet had given way."
He went back then to discussing the mold of man. He said that to see it
on my own, unaided by anyone, was an important step, because all of us have
certain ideas that must be broken before we are free; the seer who travels
into the unknown to see the unknowable must be in an impeccable state of
being.
He winked at me and said that to be in an impeccable state of being is
to be free of rational assumptions and rational fears. He added that both my
rational assumptions and my rational fears were preventing me at that moment
from realigning the emanations that would make me remember seeing the mold
of man. He urged me to relax and move my eyes in order to make my assemblage
point shift. He repeated over and over that it was really important to
remember having seen the mold before I see it again. And since he was
pressed for time there was no room for my usual slowness.
I moved my eyes as he suggested. Almost immediately I forgot my
discomfort and then a sudden flash of memory came to me and I remembered
that I had seen the mold of man. It had happened years earlier on an
occasion that had been quite memorable to me, because from the point of view
of my Catholic upbringing, don Juan had made the most sacrilegious
statements I had ever heard.
It had all started as a casual conversation while we hiked in the
foothills of the Sonoran desert. He was explaining to me the implications of
what he was doing to me with his teachings. We had stopped to rest and had
sat down on some large boulders. He had continued explaining his teaching
procedure, and this had encouraged me to try for the hundredth time to give
him an account of how I felt about it. It was evident that he did not want
to hear about it anymore. He made me change levels of awareness and told me
that if I would see the mold of man, I might understand everything he was
doing and thus save us both years of toil.
He gave me a detailed explanation of what the mold of man was. He did
not talk about it in terms of the Eagle's emanations, but in terms of a
pattern of energy that serves to stamp the qualities of humanness on an
amorphous blob of biological matter. At least, I understood it that way,
especially after he further described the mold of man using a mechanical
analogy. He said that it was like a gigantic die that stamps out human
beings endlessly as if they were coming to it on a mass-production conveyor
belt. He vividly mimed the process by bringing the palms of his hands
together with great force, as if the die molded a human being each time its
two halves were clapped.
He also said that every species has a mold of its own, and every
individual of every species molded by the process shows characteristics
particular to its own kind.
He began then an extremely disturbing elucidation about the mold of
man. He said that the old seers as well as the mystics of our world have one
thing in common-- they have been able to see the mold of man but not
understand what it is. Mystics, throughout the centuries, have given us
moving accounts of their experiences. But these accounts, however beautiful,
are flawed by the gross and despairing mistake of believing the mold of man
to be an omnipotent, omniscient creator; and so is the interpretation of the
old seers, who called the mold of man a friendly spirit, a protector of man.
He said that the new seers are the only ones who have the sobriety to
see the mold of man and understand what it is. What they have come to
realize is that the mold of man is not a creator, but the pattern of every
human attribute we can think of and some we cannot even conceive. The mold
is our God because we are what it stamps us with and not because it has
created us from nothing and made us in its image and likeness. Don Juan said
that in his opinion to fall on our knees in the presence of the mold of man
reeks of arrogance and human self-centeredness.
As I heard don Juan's explanation I got terribly worried. Even though I
had never considered my self to be a practicing Catholic, I was shocked by
his blasphemous implications. I had been politely listening to him, yet I
had been yearning for a pause in his barrage of sacrilegious judgments in
order to change the subject. But he went on drumming his point in a
merciless way. I finally interrupted him and told him that I believed that
God exists.
He retorted that my belief was based on faith and, as such, was a
secondhand conviction that did not amount to anything; my belief in the
existence of God was, like everyone else's, based on hearsay and not on the
act of seeing, he said.
He assured me that even if I was able to see, I was bound to make the
same misjudgment that mystics have made. Anyone who sees the mold of man
automatically assumes that it is God.
He called the mystical experience a chance seeing, a one-shot affair
that has no significance whatsoever because it is the result of a random
movement of the assemblage point. He asserted that the new seers are indeed
the only ones who can pass a fair judgment on this matter, because they have
ruled out chance seeings and are capable of seeing the mold of man as often
as they please.
They have seen, therefore, that what we call God is a static prototype
of humanness without any power. For the mold of man cannot under any
circumstances help us by intervening in our behalf, or punish our
wrongdoings, or reward us in any way. We are simply the product of its
stamp; we are its impression. The mold of man is exactly what its name tells
and pointed to the sky. I noticed that a remarkable change in visibility had
taken place. Instead of the pitch-black darkness that had prevailed, there
was a pleasant dawn twilight. I made a quick assessment of the cardinal
points. The sky was definitely lighter toward the east.
I felt a strange pressure around my head. My ears were buzzing. I felt
cold and feverish at the same time. I was scared as I had never been before,
but what bothered me was a nagging sensation of defeat, of being a coward. I
felt nauseated and miserable.
Don Juan whispered in my ear. He said that I had to be on the alert,
that the onslaught of the old seers would be felt by all three of us at any
moment.
"You can grab on to me if you want to," Genaro said in a fast whisper
as if something were prodding him.
I hesitated for an instant. I did not want don Juan to believe that I
was so scared I needed to hold on to Genaro.
"Here they come!" Genaro said in a loud whisper.
The world turned upside down instantaneously for me when something
gripped me by my left ankle. I felt the coldness of death on my entire body.
I knew I had stepped on an iron clamp, maybe a bear trap. That all flashed
through my mind before I let out a piercing scream, as intense as my fright.
Don Juan and Genaro laughed out loud. They were flanking me no more
than three feet away, but I was so terrified I did not even notice them.
"Sing! Sing for dear life!" I heard don Juan ordering me under his
breath.
I tried to pull my foot loose. I felt then a sting, as if needles were
piercing my skin. Don Juan insisted over and over that I sing. He and Genaro
started to sing a popular song. Genaro spoke the lyrics as he looked at me
from hardly two inches away. They sang off-key in raspy voices, getting so
completely out of breath and so high out of the range of their voices that I
ended up laughing.
"Sing, or you're going to perish," don Juan said to me.
"Let's make a trio," Genaro said, "We'll sing a bolero."
I joined them in an off-key trio. We sang for quite a while at the top
of our voices, like drunkards. I felt that the iron grip on my leg was
gradually letting go of me. I had not dared to look down at my ankle. At one
moment I did and I realized then that there was no trap clutching me. A
dark, headlike shape was biting me!
Only a supreme effort kept me from fainting. I felt I was getting sick
and automatically tried to bend over, but somebody with superhuman strength
grabbed me painlessly by the elbows and the nape of my neck and did not let
me move. I got sick all over my clothes.
My revulsion was so complete that I began to fall in a faint. Don Juan
sprinkled my face with some water from the small gourd he always carried
when we went into the mountains. The water slid under my collar. The
coldness restored my physical balance, but it did not affect the force that
was holding me by my elbows and neck.
"I think you are going too far with your fright," don Juan said loudly
and in such a matter-of-fact tone that he created an immediate feeling of
order.
"Let's sing again," he added. "Let's sing a song with substance-- I
don't want any more boleros."
I silently thanked him for his sobriety and for his grand style. I was
so moved as I heard them singing "La Valentina" that I began to weep.
"Because of my passion, they say that ill fortune is on my way. It
doesn't matter that it might be the devil himself. I do know how to die
Valentina, Valentina. I throw my self in your way. If I am going to die
tomorrow, why not, once and for all, today?"
All of my being staggered under the impact of that inconceivable
juxtaposition of values. Never had a song meant so much to me. As I heard
them sing those lyrics, which I ordinarily considered reeking with cheap
sentimentalism, I thought I understood the ethos of the warrior. Don Juan
had drilled into me that warriors live with death at their side, and from
the knowledge that death is with them they draw the courage to face
anything. Don Juan had said that the worst that could happen to us is that
we have to die, and since that is already our unalterable fate, we are free;
those who have lost everything no longer have anything to fear.
I walked to don Juan and Genaro and embraced them to express my
boundless gratitude and admiration for them.
Then I realized that nothing was holding me any longer. Without a word
don Juan took my arm and guided me to sit on the flat rock.
"The show is just about to begin now," Genaro said in a jovial tone as
he tried to find a comfortable position to sit. "You've just paid your
admission ticket. It's all over your chest."
He looked at me, and both of them began to laugh.
"Don't sit too close to me," Genaro said. "I don't appreciate pukers.
But don't go too far, either. The old seers are not yet through with their
tricks."
I moved as close to them as politeness permitted. I was concerned about
my slate for an instant, and then all my qualms became nonsense, for I
noticed that some people were coming toward us. I could not make out their
shapes clearly but I distinguished a mass of human figures moving in the
semidarkness. They did not carry lanterns or flashlights with them, which at
that hour they would still have needed. Somehow that detail worried me. I
did not want to focus on it and I deliberately began to think rationally. I
figured that we must have attracted attention with our loud singing and they
were coming to investigate. Don Juan tapped me on the shoulder. He pointed
with a movement of his chin to the men in front of the group of others.
"Those four are the old seers," he said. "The rest are their allies."
Before I could remark that they were just local peasants, I heard a
swishing sound right behind me. I quickly turned around in a state of total
alarm. My movement was so sudden that don Juan's warning came too late.
"Don't turn around!" I heard him yell.
His words were only background; they did not mean anything to me. On
turning around, I saw that three grotesquely deformed men had climbed up on
the rock right behind me; they were crawling toward me, with their mouths
open in a nightmarish grimace and their arms outstretched to grab me.
I intended to scream at the top of my lungs, but what came out was an
agonizing croak, as if something were obstructing my windpipe. I
automatically rolled out of their reach and onto the ground.
As I stood up, don Juan jumped to my side, at the very same moment that
a horde of men, led by those don Juan had pointed out, descended on me like
vultures. They were actually squeaking like bats or rats. I yelled in
terror. This time I was able to let out a piercing cry.
Don Juan, as nimbly as an athlete in top form, pulled me out of their
clutches onto the rock. He told me in a stern voice not to turn around to
look, no matter how scared I was. He said that the allies cannot push at
all, but that they certainly could scare me and make me fall to the ground.
On the ground, however, the allies could hold anybody down. If I were to
fall on the ground by the place where the seers were buried, I would be at
their mercy. They would rip me apart while their allies held me. He added
that he had not told me all that before because he had hoped I would be
forced to see and understand it by myself. His decision had nearly cost me
my life.
The sensation that the grotesque men were just behind me was nearly
unbearable. Don Juan forcefully ordered me to keep calm and focus my
attention on four men at the head of a crowd of perhaps ten or twelve. The
instant I focused my eyes on them, as if on cue, they all advanced to the
edge of the flat rock. They stopped there and began hissing like serpents.
They walked back and forth. Their movement seemed to be synchronized. It was
so consistent and orderly that it seemed to be mechanical. It was as if they
were following a repetitive pattern, aimed at mesmerizing me.
"Don't gaze at them, dear," Genaro said to me as if he were talking to
a child.
The laughter that followed was as hysterical as my fear. I laughed so
hard that the sound reverberated on the surrounding hills.
The men stopped at once and seemed to be perplexed. I could distinguish
the shapes of their heads bobbing up and down as if they were talking,
deliberating among themselves. Then one of them jumped onto the rock.
"Watch out! That one is a seer!" Genaro exclaimed.
"What are we going to do?" I shouted.
"We could start singing again," don Juan replied matter-of-factly.
My fear reached its apex then. I began to jump up and down and to roar
like an animal. The man jumped down to the ground.
"Don't pay any more attention to those clowns," don Juan said. "Let's
talk as usual."
He said that we had gone there for my enlightenment, and that I was
failing miserably. I had to reorganize myself. The first thing to do was to
realize that my assemblage point had moved and was now making obscure
emanations glow. To carry the feelings from my usual state of awareness into
the world I had assembled was indeed a travesty, for fear is only prevalent
among the emanations of daily life.
I told him that if my assemblage point had shifted as he was saying it
had, I had news for him. My fear was infinitely greater and more devastating
than anything I had ever experienced in my daily life.
"You're wrong," he said. "Your first attention is confused and doesn't
want to give up control, that's all. I have the feeling that you could walk
right up to those creatures and face them and they wouldn't do a thing to
you."
I insisted that I was definitely in no condition to test such a
preposterous thing as that.
He laughed at me. He said that sooner or later I had to cure myself of
my madness, and that to take the initiative and face up to those four seers
was infinitely less preposterous than the idea that I was seeing them at
all. He said that to him madness was to be confronted by men who had been
buried for two thousand years and were still alive, and not to think that
that was the epitome of preposterousness.
I heard everything he said with clarity, but I was not really paying
attention to him. I was terrified of the men around the rock. They seemed to
be preparing to jump us, to jump me really. They were fixed on me. My right
arm began to shake as if I were stricken by some muscular disorder. Then I
became aware that the light in the sky had changed. I had not noticed before
that it was already dawn. The strange thing was that an uncontrollable urge
made me stand up and run to the group of men.
I had at that moment two completely different feelings about the same
event. The minor one was of sheer terror. The other, the major one, was of
total indifference. I could not have cared less.
When I reached the group I realized that don Juan was right; they were
not really men. Only four of them had any resemblance to men, but they were
not men either; they were strange creatures with huge yellow eyes. The
others were just shapes that were propelled by the four that resembled men.
I felt extraordinarily sad for those creatures with yellow eyes. I
tried to touch them, but I could not find them. Some sort of wind scooped
them away.
I looked for don Juan and Genaro. They were not there. It was
pitch-black again. I called out their names over and over again. I thrashed
around in darkness for a few minutes. Don Juan came to my side and startled
me. I did not see Genaro.
"Let's go home," he said. "We have a long walk."
Don Juan commented on how well I had performed at the site of the
buried seers, especially during the last part of our encounter with them. He
said that a shift of the assemblage point is marked by a change in light. In
the daytime, light becomes very dark; at night, darkness becomes twilight.
He added that I had performed two shifts by myself, aided only by animal
fright. The only thing he found objectionable was my indulging in fear,
especially after I had realized that warriors have nothing to fear.
"How do you know I had realized that?" I asked.
"Because you were free. When fear disappears all the ties that bind us
dissolve," he said. "An ally was gripping your foot because it was attracted
by your animal terror."
I told him how sorry I was for not being able to uphold my
realizations.
"Don't concern yourself with that." He laughed. "You know that such
realizations are a dime a dozen; they don't amount to anything in the life
of warriors, because they are canceled out as the assemblage point shifts.
"What Genaro and I wanted to do was to make you shift very deeply. This
time Genaro was there simply to entice the old seers. He did it once
already, and you went so far into the left side that it will take quite a
while for you to remember it. Your fright tonight was just as intense as it
was that first time when the seers and their allies followed you to this
very room, but your sturdy first attention wouldn't let you be aware of
them."
"Explain to me what happened at the site of the seers," I asked.
"The allies came out to see you," he replied. "Since they have very low
energy, they always need the help of men. The four seers have collected
twelve allies.
"The countryside in Mexico and also certain cities are dangerous. What
happened to you can happen to any man or woman. If they bump into that tomb,
they may even see the seers and their allies, if they are pliable enough to
let their fear make their assemblage points shift; but one thing is for
sure: they can die of fright."
"But do you honestly believe that those Toltec seers are still alive?"
I asked.
He laughed and shook his head in disbelief.
"It's time for you to shift that assemblage point of yours just a bit,"
he said. "I can't talk to you when you are in your idiot's stage."
He smacked me with the palm of his hand on three spots: right on the
crest of my right hipbone, on the center of my back below my shoulder
blades, and on the upper part of my right pectoral muscle.
My ears immediately began to buzz. A trickle of blood ran out of my
right nostril, and something inside me became unplugged. It was as if some
flow of energy had been blocked and suddenly began to move again.
"What were those seers and their allies after?" I asked.
"Nothing," he replied. "We were the ones who were after them. The
seers, of course, had already noticed your field of energy the first time
you saw them; when you came back, they were set to feast on you."
"You claim that they are alive, don Juan," I said. "You must mean that
they are alive as allies are alive, is that so?"
"That's exactly right," he said. "They cannot possibly be alive as you
and I are. That would be preposterous."
He went on to explain that the ancient seers' concern with death made
them look into the most bizarre possibilities. The ones who opted for the
allies' pattern had in mind, doubtless, a desire for a haven. And they found
it, at a fixed position in one of the seven bands of inorganic awareness.
The seers felt that they were relatively safe there. After all, they were
separated from the daily world by a nearly insurmountable barrier, the
barrier of perception set by the assemblage point.
"When the four seers saw that you could shift your assemblage point
they took off like bats out of hell," he said and laughed.
"Do you mean that I assembled one of the seven worlds?" I asked.
"No, you didn't," he replied. "But you have done it before, when the
seers and their allies chased you. That day you went all the way to their
world. The problem is that you love to act stupid, so you can't remember it
at all.
"I'm sure that it is the nagual's presence," he continued, "that
sometimes makes people act dumb. When the nagual Julian was still around, I
was dumber than I am now. I am convinced that when I'm no longer here,
you'll be capable of remembering everything."
Don Juan explained that since he needed to show me the death defiers,
he and Genaro had lured them to the outskirts of our world. What I had done
at first was a deep lateral shift, which allowed me to see them as people,
but at the end I had correctly made the shift that allowed me to see the
death defiers and their allies as they are.
Very early the next morning, at Silvio Manuel's house, don Juan called
me to the big room to discuss the events of the previous night. I felt
exhausted and wanted to rest, to sleep, but don Juan was pressed for time.
He immediately started his explanation. He said that the old seers had found
out a way to utilize the rolling force and be propelled by it. Instead of
succumbing to the onslaughts of the tumbler they rode with it and let it
move their assemblage points to the confines of human possibilities.
Don Juan expressed unbiased admiration for such an accomplishment. He
admitted that nothing else could give the assemblage point the boost that
the tumbler gives.
I asked him about the difference between the earth's boost and the
tumbler's boost. He explained that the earth's boost is the force of
alignment of only the amber emanations, it is a boost that heightens
awareness to unthinkable degrees. To the new seers it is a blast of
unlimited consciousness, which they call total freedom.
He said that the tumbler's boost, on the other hand, is the force of
death. Under the impact of the tumbler, the assemblage point moves to new,
unpredictable positions. Thus, the old seers were always alone in their
journeys, although the enterprise they were involved in was always communal.
The company of other seers on their journeys was fortuitous and usually
meant struggle for supremacy.
I confessed to don Juan that the concerns of the old seers, whatever
they may have been, were worse than morbid horror tales to me. He laughed
uproariously. He seemed to be enjoying himself.
"You have to admit, no matter how disgusted you feel, that those devils
were very daring," he went on. "I never liked them myself, as you know, but
I can't help admiring them. Their love for life is truly beyond me."
"How can that be love for life, don Juan? It's something nauseating," I
said.
"What else could push a man to those extremes if it is not love for
life?" he asked. "They loved life so intensely that they were not willing to
give it up. That's the way I have seen it. My benefactor saw something else.
He believed that they were afraid to die, which is not the same as loving
life. I say that they were afraid to die because they loved life and because
they had seen marvels, and not because they were greedy little monsters. No.
They were aberrant because nobody ever challenged them and they were spoiled
like rotten children, but their daring was impeccable and so was their
courage.
"Would you venture into the unknown out of greed? No way. Greed works
only in the world of ordinary affairs. To venture into that terrifying
loneliness one must have something greater than greed. Love, one needs love
for life, for intrigue, for mystery. One needs unquenching curiosity and
guts galore. So don't give me this nonsense about your being revolted. It's
embarrassing!"
Don Juan's eyes were shining with contained laughter. He was putting me
in my place, but he was laughing at it.
Don Juan left me alone in the room for perhaps an hour. I wanted to
organize my thoughts and feelings. I had no way to do that. I knew without
any doubt that my assemblage point was at a position where reasoning does
not prevail, yet I was moved by reasonable concerns. Don Juan had said that
technically, as soon as the assemblage point shifts, we are asleep. I
wondered, for instance, if I was sound asleep from the stand of an onlooker,
just as Genaro had been asleep to me.
I asked don Juan about it as soon as he returned.
"You are absolutely asleep without having to be stretched out," he
replied. "If people in a normal state of awareness saw you now, you would
appear to them to be a bit dizzy, even drunk."
He explained that during normal sleep, the shift of the assemblage
point runs along either edge of man's band. Such shifts are always coupled
with slumber. Shifts that are induced by practice occur along the midsection
of man's band and are not coupled with slumber, yet a dreamer is asleep.
"Right at this juncture is where the new and the old seers made their
separate bids for power," he went on. "The old seers wanted a replica of the
body, but with more physical strength, so they made their assemblage points
slide along the right edge of man's band. The deeper they moved along the
right edge the more bizarre their dreaming body became. You, yourself,
witnessed last night the monstrous result of a deep shift along the right
edge."
He said that the new seers were completely different, that they
maintain their assemblage points along the midsection of man's band. If the
shift is a shallow one, like the shift into heightened awareness, the
dreamer is almost like anyone else in the street, except for a slight
vulnerability to emotions, such as fear and doubt. But at a certain degree
of depth, the dreamer who is shifting along the midsection becomes a blob of
light. A blob of light is the dreaming body of the new seers.
He also said that such an impersonal dreaming body is more conducive to
understanding and examination, which are the basis of all the new seers do.
The intensely humanized dreaming body of the old seers drove them to look
for answers that were equally personal, humanized.
Don Juan suddenly seemed to be groping for words.
"There is another death defier," he said curtly, "so unlike the four
you've seen that he's indistinguishable from the average man in the street.
He's accomplished this unique feat by being able to open and close his gap
whenever he wants."
He played with his fingers almost nervously.
"The ancient seer that the nagual Sebastian found in 1723 is that death
defier," he went on. "We count that day as the beginning of our line, the
second beginning. That death defier, who's been on the earth for hundreds of
years, has changed the lives of every nagual he met, some more profoundly
than others. And he has met every single nagual of our line since that day
in 1723."
Don Juan looked fixedly at me. I got strangely embarrassed. I thought
my embarrassment was the result of a dilemma. I had very serious doubts
about the content of the story, and at the same time I had the most
disconcerting trust that everything he had said was true. I expressed my
quandary to him.
"The problem of rational disbelief is not yours alone," don Juan said.
"My benefactor was at first plagued by the same question. Of course, later
on he remembered everything. But it took him a long time to do so. When I
met him he had already recollected everything, so I never witnessed his
doubts. I only heard about them.
"The weird part is that people who have never set eyes on the man have
less difficulty accepting that he's one of the original seers. My benefactor
said that his quandaries stemmed from the fact that the shock of meeting
such a creature had lumped together a number of emanations. It takes time
for those emanations to separate themselves."
Don Juan went on to explain that as my assemblage point kept on
shifting, a moment would come when it would hit the proper combination of
emanations; at that moment the proof of the existence of that man would
become overwhelmingly evident to me.
I felt compelled to talk again about my ambivalence.
"We're deviating from our subject," he said. "It may seem that I'm
trying to convince you of the existence of that man; and what I meant to
talk about is the fact that the old seer knows how to handle the rolling
force. Whether or not you believe that he exists is not important. Someday
you'll know for a fact that he certainly succeeded in closing his gap. The
energy that he borrows from the nagual every generation he uses exclusively
to close his gap."
"How did he succeed in closing it?" I asked.
"There is no way of knowing that," he replied. "I've talked to two
other naguals who saw that man face to face, the nagual Julian and the
nagual Elias. Neither of them knew how. The man never revealed how he closes
that opening, which I suppose begins to expand after a time. The nagual
Sebastian said that when he first saw the old seer, the man was very weak,
actually dying. But my benefactor found him prancing vigorously, like a
young man."
Don Juan said that the nagual Sebastian nicknamed that nameless man
"the tenant," for they struck an arrangement by which the man was given
energy, lodging so to speak, and he paid rent in the form of favors and
knowledge.
"Did anybody ever get hurt in the exchange?" I asked.
"None of the naguals who exchanged energy with him was injured," he
replied. "The man's commitment was that he'd only take a bit of superfluous
energy from the nagual in exchange for gifts, for extraordinary abilities.
For instance, the nagual Julian got the gait of power. With it, he could
activate or make dormant the emanations inside his cocoon in order to look
young or old at will."
Don Juan explained that the death defiers in general went as far as
rendering dormant all the emanations inside their cocoons, except those that
matched the emanations of the allies. In this fashion they were able to
imitate the allies in some form.
Each of the death defiers we had encountered at the rock, don Juan
said, had been able to move his assemblage point to a precise spot on his
cocoon in order to emphasize the emanations shared with the allies and to
interact with them. But they were all unable to move it back to its usual
position and interact with people. The tenant, on the other hand, is capable
of shifting his assemblage point to assemble the everyday world as if
nothing had ever happened.
Don Juan also said that his benefactor was convinced-- and he fully
agreed with him-- that what takes place during the borrowing of energy is
that the old sorcerer moves the nagual's assemblage point to emphasize the
ally's emanations inside the nagual's cocoon. He then uses the great jolt of
energy produced by those emanations that suddenly become aligned after being
so deeply dormant.
He said that the energy locked within us, in the dormant emanations,
has a tremendous force and an incalculable scope. We can only vaguely assess
the scope of that tremendous force, if we consider that the energy involved
in perceiving and acting in the world of everyday life is a product of the
alignment of hardly one-tenth of the emanations encased in man's cocoon.
"What happens at the moment of death is that all that energy is
released at once," he continued. "Living beings at that moment become
flooded by the most inconceivable force. It is not the rolling force that
has cracked their gaps, because that force never enters inside the cocoon;
it only makes it collapse. What floods them is the force of all the
emanations that are suddenly aligned after being dormant for a lifetime.
There is no outlet for such a giant force except to escape through the gap."
He added that the old sorcerer has found a way to tap that energy. By
aligning a limited and very specific spectrum of the dormant emanations
inside the nagual's cocoon, the old seer taps a limited but gigantic jolt.
"How do you think he takes that energy into his own body?" I asked.
"By cracking the nagual's gap," he replied. "He moves the nagual's
assemblage point until the gap opens a little. When the energy of newly
aligned emanations is released through that opening, he takes it into his
own gap."
"Why is that old seer doing what he's doing?" I asked.
"My opinion is that he's caught in a circle he can't break," he
replied. "We got into an agreement with him. He's doing his best to keep it,
and so are we. We can't judge him, yet we have to know that his path doesn't
lead to freedom. He knows that, and he also knows he can't change it; he's
trapped in a situation of his own making. The only thing he can do is to
prolong his ally-like existence as long as he possibly can."
16 The Mold of Man
Right after lunch, don Juan and I sat down to talk. He started without
any preamble. He announced that we had come to the end of his explanation.
He said that he had discussed with me, in painstaking detail, all the truths
about awareness that the old seers had discovered. He stressed that I now
knew the order in which the new seers had arranged them. In the last
sessions of his explanation, he said, he had given me a detailed account of
the two forces that aid our assemblage points to move: the earth's boost and
the rolling force. He had also explained the three techniques worked out by
the new seers-- stalking, intent, and dreaming -- and their effects on the
movement of the assemblage point.
"Now, the only thing left for you to do before the explanation of the
mastery of awareness is completed," he went on, "is to break the barrier of
perception by yourself. You must move your assemblage point, unaided by
anyone, and align another great band of emanations.
"Not to do this will turn everything you've learned and done with me
into merely talk, just words. And words are fairly cheap."
He explained that when the assemblage point is moving away from its
customary position and reaches a certain depth, it breaks a barrier that
momentarily disrupts its capacity to align emanations. We experience it as a
moment of perceptual blankness. The old seers called that moment the wall of
fog, because a bank of fog appears whenever the alignment of emanations
falters.
He said that there were three ways of dealing with it. It could be
taken abstractly as a barrier of perception; it could be felt as the act of
piercing a tight paper screen with the entire body; or it could be seen as a
wall of fog.
In the course of my apprenticeship with don Juan, he had guided me
countless times to see the barrier of perception. At first I had liked the
idea of a wall of fog. Don Juan had warned me that the old seers had also
preferred to see it that way. He had said that there is great comfort and
ease in seeing it as a wall of fog, but that there is also the grave danger
of turning something incomprehensible into something somber and foreboding;
hence, his recommendation was to keep incomprehensible things
incomprehensible rather than making them part of the inventory of the first
attention.
After a short-lived feeling of comfort in seeing the wall of fog I had
to agree with don Juan that it was better to keep the transition period as
an incomprehensible abstraction, but by then it was impossible for me to
break the fixation of my awareness. Every time I was placed in a position to
break the barrier of perception I saw the wall of fog.
On one occasion, in the past, I had complained to don Juan and Genaro
that although I wanted to see it as something else, I couldn't change it.
Don Juan had commented that that was understandable, because I was morbid
and somber, that he and I were very different in this respect. He was
lighthearted and practical and he did not worship the human inventory. I, on
the other hand, was unwilling to throw my inventory out the window and
consequently I was heavy, sinister, and impractical. I had been shocked and
saddened by his harsh criticism and became very gloomy. Don Juan and Genaro
had laughed until tears rolled down their cheeks.
Genaro had added that on top of all that I was vindictive and had a
tendency to get fat. They had laughed so hard I finally felt obliged to join
them.
Don Juan had told me then that exercises of assembling other worlds
allowed the assemblage point to gain experience in shifting. I had always
wondered, however, how to get the initial boost to dislodge my assemblage
point from its usual position. When I'd questioned him about it in the past
he'd pointed out that since alignment is the force that is involved in
everything, intent is what makes the assemblage point move.
I asked him again about it.
"You're in a position now to answer that question yourself," he
replied. "The mastery of awareness is what gives the assemblage point its
boost. After all, there is really very little to us human beings; we are, in
essence, an assemblage point fixed at a certain position. Our enemy and at
the same time our friend is our internal dialogue, our inventory. Be a
warrior; shut off your internal dialogue; make your inventory and then throw
it away. The new seers make accurate inventories and then laugh at them.
Without the inventory the assemblage point becomes free."
Don Juan reminded me that he had talked a great deal about one of the
most sturdy aspects of our inventory: our idea of God. That aspect, he said,
was like a powerful glue that bound the assemblage point to its original
position. If I were going to assemble another true world with another great
band of emanations, I had to take an obligatory step in order to release all
ties from my assemblage point.
"That step is to see the mold of man," he said. "You must do that today
unaided."
"What's the mold of man?" I asked.
"I've helped you see it many times," he replied. "You know what I'm
talking about."
I refrained from saying that I did not know what he was talking about.
If he said that I had seen the mold of man, I must have done that, although
I did not have the foggiest idea what it was like.
He knew what was going through my mind. He gave me a knowing smile and
slowly shook his head from side to side.
"The mold of man is a huge cluster of emanations in the great band of
organic life," he said. "It is called the mold of man because the cluster
appears only inside the cocoon of man.
"The mold of man is the portion of the Eagle's emanations that seers
can see directly without any danger to themselves."
There was a long pause before he spoke again.
"To break the barrier of perception is the last task of the mastery of
awareness," he said. "In order to move your assemblage point to that
position you must gather enough energy. Make a journey of recovery. Remember
what you've done!"
I tried unsuccessfully to recall what was the mold of man. I felt an
excruciating frustration that soon turned into real anger. I was furious
with myself, with don Juan, with everybody.
Don Juan was untouched by my fury. He said matter-of-factly that anger
was a natural reaction to the hesitation of the assemblage point to move on
command.
"It will be a long time before you can apply the principle that your
command is the Eagle's command," he said. "That's the essence of the mastery
of intent. In the meantime, make a command now not to fret, not even at the
worst moments of doubt. It will be a slow process until that command is
heard and obeyed as if it were the Eagle's command."
He also said that there was an unmeasurable area of awareness in
between the customary position of the assemblage point and the position
where there are no more doubts, which is almost the place where the barrier
of perception makes its appearance. In that unmeasurable area, warriors fall
prey to every conceivable misdeed. He warned me to be on the lockout and not
lose confidence, for I would unavoidably be struck at one time or another by
gripping feelings of defeat.
"The new seers recommend a very simple act when impatience, or despair,
or anger, or sadness comes their way," he continued. "They recommend that
warriors roll their eyes. Any direction will do; I prefer to roll mine
clockwise.
"The movement of the eyes makes the assemblage point shift momentarily.
In that movement, you will find relief. This is in lieu of true mastery of
intent."'
I complained that there was not enough time for him to tell me more
about intent.
"It will all come back to you someday," he assured me. "One thing will
trigger another. One key word and all of it will tumble out of you as if the
door of an overstuffed closet had given way."
He went back then to discussing the mold of man. He said that to see it
on my own, unaided by anyone, was an important step, because all of us have
certain ideas that must be broken before we are free; the seer who travels
into the unknown to see the unknowable must be in an impeccable state of
being.
He winked at me and said that to be in an impeccable state of being is
to be free of rational assumptions and rational fears. He added that both my
rational assumptions and my rational fears were preventing me at that moment
from realigning the emanations that would make me remember seeing the mold
of man. He urged me to relax and move my eyes in order to make my assemblage
point shift. He repeated over and over that it was really important to
remember having seen the mold before I see it again. And since he was
pressed for time there was no room for my usual slowness.
I moved my eyes as he suggested. Almost immediately I forgot my
discomfort and then a sudden flash of memory came to me and I remembered
that I had seen the mold of man. It had happened years earlier on an
occasion that had been quite memorable to me, because from the point of view
of my Catholic upbringing, don Juan had made the most sacrilegious
statements I had ever heard.
It had all started as a casual conversation while we hiked in the
foothills of the Sonoran desert. He was explaining to me the implications of
what he was doing to me with his teachings. We had stopped to rest and had
sat down on some large boulders. He had continued explaining his teaching
procedure, and this had encouraged me to try for the hundredth time to give
him an account of how I felt about it. It was evident that he did not want
to hear about it anymore. He made me change levels of awareness and told me
that if I would see the mold of man, I might understand everything he was
doing and thus save us both years of toil.
He gave me a detailed explanation of what the mold of man was. He did
not talk about it in terms of the Eagle's emanations, but in terms of a
pattern of energy that serves to stamp the qualities of humanness on an
amorphous blob of biological matter. At least, I understood it that way,
especially after he further described the mold of man using a mechanical
analogy. He said that it was like a gigantic die that stamps out human
beings endlessly as if they were coming to it on a mass-production conveyor
belt. He vividly mimed the process by bringing the palms of his hands
together with great force, as if the die molded a human being each time its
two halves were clapped.
He also said that every species has a mold of its own, and every
individual of every species molded by the process shows characteristics
particular to its own kind.
He began then an extremely disturbing elucidation about the mold of
man. He said that the old seers as well as the mystics of our world have one
thing in common-- they have been able to see the mold of man but not
understand what it is. Mystics, throughout the centuries, have given us
moving accounts of their experiences. But these accounts, however beautiful,
are flawed by the gross and despairing mistake of believing the mold of man
to be an omnipotent, omniscient creator; and so is the interpretation of the
old seers, who called the mold of man a friendly spirit, a protector of man.
He said that the new seers are the only ones who have the sobriety to
see the mold of man and understand what it is. What they have come to
realize is that the mold of man is not a creator, but the pattern of every
human attribute we can think of and some we cannot even conceive. The mold
is our God because we are what it stamps us with and not because it has
created us from nothing and made us in its image and likeness. Don Juan said
that in his opinion to fall on our knees in the presence of the mold of man
reeks of arrogance and human self-centeredness.
As I heard don Juan's explanation I got terribly worried. Even though I
had never considered my self to be a practicing Catholic, I was shocked by
his blasphemous implications. I had been politely listening to him, yet I
had been yearning for a pause in his barrage of sacrilegious judgments in
order to change the subject. But he went on drumming his point in a
merciless way. I finally interrupted him and told him that I believed that
God exists.
He retorted that my belief was based on faith and, as such, was a
secondhand conviction that did not amount to anything; my belief in the
existence of God was, like everyone else's, based on hearsay and not on the
act of seeing, he said.
He assured me that even if I was able to see, I was bound to make the
same misjudgment that mystics have made. Anyone who sees the mold of man
automatically assumes that it is God.
He called the mystical experience a chance seeing, a one-shot affair
that has no significance whatsoever because it is the result of a random
movement of the assemblage point. He asserted that the new seers are indeed
the only ones who can pass a fair judgment on this matter, because they have
ruled out chance seeings and are capable of seeing the mold of man as often
as they please.
They have seen, therefore, that what we call God is a static prototype
of humanness without any power. For the mold of man cannot under any
circumstances help us by intervening in our behalf, or punish our
wrongdoings, or reward us in any way. We are simply the product of its
stamp; we are its impression. The mold of man is exactly what its name tells