assemble worlds entirely different from the world we know."
Still in a whisper, he said that certain geographical areas not only
help that precarious movement of the assemblage point, but also select
specific directions for that movement. For instance, the Sonoran desert
helps the assemblage point move downward from its customary position, to the
place of the beast.
"That's why there are true sorcerers in Sonora," he continued.
"Especially sorceresses. You already know one, la Catalina. In the past, I
have arranged bouts between the two of you. I wanted to make your assemblage
point shift, and la Catalina, with her sorcery antics, jolted it loose."
Don Juan explained that the chilling experiences I had had with la
Catalina had been part of a prearranged agreement between the two of them.
"What would you think if we invited her to join us?" Genaro asked me in
a loud voice, as he sat up.
The abruptness of his question and the strange sound of his voice
plunged me into instant terror.
Don Juan laughed and shook me by the arms. He assured me that there was
no need for alarm. He said that la Catalina was like a cousin or an aunt to
us. She was part of our world, although she did not quite follow our quests.
She was infinitely closer to the ancient seers.
Genaro smiled and winked at me.
"I understand that you've got hot pants for her," he said to me. "She
herself confessed to me that every time you have had a confrontation with
her, the greater your fright, the hotter your pants."
Don Juan and Genaro laughed to near hysteria.
I had to admit that somehow I had always found la Catalina to be a very
scary but at the same time an extremely appealing woman. What impressed me
the most about her was her exuding energy.
"She has so much energy saved," don Juan commented, "that you didn't
have to be in heightened awareness for her to move your assemblage point all
the way to the depths of the left side."
Don Juan said again that la Catalina was very closely related to us,
because she belonged to the nagual Julian's party. He explained that usually
the nagual and all the members of his party leave the world together, but
that there are instances when they leave either in smaller groups or one by
one. The nagual Julian and his party were an example of the latter. Although
he had left the world nearly forty years ago, la Catalina was still here.
He reminded me about something he mentioned to me before, that the
nagual Julian's party consisted of a group of three thoroughly
inconsequential men and eight superb women. Don Juan had always maintained
that such a disparity was one of the reasons why the members of the nagual
Julian's party left the world one by one.
He said that la Catalina had been attached to one of the superb women
seers of the nagual Julian's party, who taught her extraordinary maneuvers
to shift her assemblage point to the area below. That seer was one of the
last to leave the world. She lived to an extremely old age, and since both
she and la Catalina were originally from Sonora, they returned, in her
advanced years, to the desert and lived together until the seer left the
world. In the years they spent together, la Catalina became her most
dedicated helper and disciple, a disciple who was willing to learn the
extravagant ways the old seers knew to make the assemblage point shift.
I asked don Juan if la Catalina's knowledge was inherently different
from his own.
"We are exactly the same," he replied. "She's more like Silvio Manuel
or Genaro; she is really the female version of them, but, of course, being a
woman she's infinitely more aggressive and dangerous than both of them."
Genaro assented with a nod of his head. "Infinitely more," he said and
winked again.
"Is she attached to your party?" I asked don Juan.
"I said that she's like a cousin or an aunt to us," he replied. "I
meant she belongs to the older generation, although she's younger than all
of us. She is the last of that group. She is rarely in contact with us. She
doesn't quite like us. We are too stiff for her, because she's used to the
nagual Julian's touch. She prefers the high adventure of the unknown to the
quest for freedom."
"What is the difference between the two?" I asked don Juan.
"In the last part of my explanation of the truths about awareness," he
replied, "we are going to discuss that difference slowly and thoroughly.
What's important for you to know. at this moment, is that you're jealously
guarding weird secrets in your leftside awareness; that is why la Catalina
and you like each other."
I insisted again that it was not that I liked her, it was rather that I
admired her great strength.
Don Juan and Genaro laughed and patted me as if they knew something I
did not.
"She likes you because she knows what you're like," Genaro said and
smacked his lips. "She knew the nagual Julian very well."
Both of them gave me a long look that made me feel embarrassed.
"What are you driving at?" I asked Genaro in a belligerent tone.
He grinned at me and moved his eyebrows up and down in a comical
gesture. But he kept quiet.
Don Juan spoke and broke the silence.
"There are very strange points in common between the nagual Julian and
you," he said. "Genaro is just trying to figure out if you're aware of it."
I asked both of them how on earth I would be aware of something so
farfetched.
"La Catalina thinks you are," Genaro said. "She says so because she
knew the nagual Julian better than any of us here."
I commented that I couldn't believe that she knew the nagual Julian,
since he had left the world nearly forty years ago.
"La Catalina is no spring chicken," Genaro said. "She just looks young;
that's part of her knowledge. Just as it was part of the nagual Julian's
knowledge. You've seen her only when she looks young. If you see her when
she looks old, she'll scare the living daylights out of you."
"What la Catalina does," don Juan interrupted, "can be explained only
in terms of the three masteries: the mastery of awareness, the mastery of
stalking, and the mastery of intent.
"But today, we are going to examine what she does only in light of the
last truth about awareness: the truth that says that the assemblage point
can assemble worlds different from our own after it moves from its original
position."
Don Juan signaled me to get up. Genaro also stood up. I automatically
grabbed the burlap sack filled with medicinal plants. Genaro stopped me as I
was about to put it on my shoulders.
"Leave the sack alone," he said, smiling. "We have to take a little
hike up the hill and meet la Catalina."
"Where is she?" I asked.
"Up there," Genaro said, pointing to the top of a small hill. "If you
stare with your eyes half-closed, you'll see her as a very dark spot against
the green shrubbery."
I strained to see the dark spot, but I couldn't see anything.
"Why don't you walk up there?" don Juan suggested to me.
I felt dizzy and sick to my stomach. Don Juan urged me with a movement
of his hand to go up, but I didn't dare move. Finally, Genaro took me by the
arm and both of us climbed toward the top of the hill. When we got there, I
realized that don Juan had come up right behind us. The three of us reached
the top at the same time.
Don Juan very calmly began to talk to Genaro. He asked him if he
remembered the many times the nagual Julian was about to choke both of them
to death, because they indulged in their fears.
Genaro turned to me and assured me that the nagual Julian had been a
ruthless teacher. He and his own teacher, the nagual Elias, who was still in
the world then, used to push everyone's assemblage points beyond a crucial
limit and let them fend for themselves.
"I once told you that the nagual Julian recommended us not to waste our
sexual energy," Genaro went on. "He meant that for the assemblage point to
shift, one needs energy. If one doesn't have it, the nagual's blow is not
the blow of freedom, but the blow of death."
"Without enough energy," don Juan said, "the force of alignment is
crushing. You have to have energy to sustain the pressure of alignments
which never take place under ordinary circumstances."
Genaro said that the nagual Julian was an inspiring teacher. He always
found ways to teach and at the same time entertain himself. One of his
favorite teaching devices was to catch them unawares once or twice, in their
normal awareness, and make their assemblage points shift. From then on, all
he had to do to have their undivided attention was to threaten them with an
unexpected nagual's blow.
"The nagual Julian was really an unforgettable man," don Juan said. "He
had a great touch with people. He would do the worst things in the world,
but done by him they were great. Done by anyone else, they would have been
crude and callous.
"The nagual Ellas, on the other hand, had no touch, but he was indeed a
great, great teacher."
"The nagual Elias was very much like the nagual Juan Matus," Genaro
said to me. "They got along very fine. And the nagual Elias taught him
everything without ever raising his voice, or playing tricks on him.
"But the nagual Julian was quite different," Genaro went on, giving me
a friendly shove. "I'd say that he jealously guarded strange secrets in his
left side, just like you. Wouldn't you say so?" he asked don Juan.
Don Juan did not answer, but nodded affirmatively. He seemed to be
holding back his laughter.
"He had a playful nature," don Juan said, and both of them broke into a
great laughter.
The fact that they were obviously alluding to something they knew made
me feel even more threatened.
Don Juan matter-of-factly said that they were referring to the bizarre
sorcery techniques that the nagual Julian had learned in the course of his
life. Genaro added that the nagual Julian had a unique teacher besides the
nagual Elias. A teacher who had liked him immensely and had taught him novel
and complex ways of moving his assemblage point. As a result of this, the
nagual Julian was extraordinarily eccentric in his behavior.
"Who was that teacher, don Juan?" I asked.
Don Juan and Genaro looked at each other and giggled like two children.
"That is a very tough question to answer," don Juan replied. "All I can
say is that he was the teacher that deviated the course of our line. He
taught us many things, good and bad, but among the worst, he taught us what
the old seers did. So, some of us got trapped. The nagual Julian was one of
them, and so is la Catalina. We only hope that you won't follow them."
I immediately began to protest. Don Juan interrupted me. He said that I
did not know what I was protesting.
As don Juan spoke, I became terribly angry with him and Genaro.
Suddenly, I was raging, yelling at them at the top of my voice. My reaction
was so out of tone with me that it scared me. It was as if I were someone
else. I stopped and looked at them for help.
Genaro had his hands on don Juan's shoulders as if he needed support.
Both of them were laughing uncontrollably.
I became so despondent I was nearly in tears. Don Juan came to my side.
He reassuringly put his hand on my shoulder. He said that the Sonoran
desert, for reasons incomprehensible to him, fostered definite belligerence
in man or any other organism.
"People may say that it's because the air is too dry here," he
continued, "or because it's too hot. Seers would say that there is a
particular confluence of the Eagle's emanations here, which, as I've already
said, helps the assemblage point to shift below.
"Be that as it may, warriors are in the world to train themselves to be
unbiased witnesses, so as to understand the mystery of ourselves and relish
the exultation of finding what we really are. This is the highest of the new
seers' goals. And not every warrior attains it. We believe that the nagual
Julian didn't attain it. He was waylaid, and so was la Catalina."
He further said that to be a peerless nagual, one has to love freedom,
and one has to have supreme detachment. He explained that what makes the
warrior's path so very dangerous is that it is the opposite of the life
situation of modern man. He said that modern man has left the realm of the
unknown and the mysterious, and has settled down in the realm of the
functional. He has turned his back to the world of the foreboding and the
exulting and has welcomed the world of boredom.
"To be given a chance to go back again to the mystery of the world,"
don Juan continued, "is sometimes too much for warriors, and they succumb;
they are waylaid by what I've called the high adventure of the unknown. They
forget the quest for freedom; they forget to be unbiased witnesses. They
sink into the unknown and love it."
"And you think i'm like that, don't you?" I asked don Juan.
"We don't think, we know," Genaro replied. "And la Catalina knows
better than anyone else."
"Why would she know it?" I demanded.
"Because she's like you," Genaro replied, pronouncing his words with a
comical intonation.
I was about to get into a heated argument again when don Juan
interrupted me.
"There's no need to get so worked up," he said to me. "You are what you
are. The fight for freedom is harder for some. You are one of them.
"In order to be unbiased witnesses," he went on, "we begin by
understanding that the fixation or the movement of the assemblage point is
all there is to us and the world we witness, whatever that world might be.
"The new seers say that when we were taught to talk to ourselves, we
were taught the means to dull ourselves in order to keep the assemblage
point fixed on one spot."
Genaro clapped his hands noisily and let out a piercing whistle that
imitated the whistle of a football coach.
"Let's get that assemblage point moving!" he yelled. "Up, up, up! Move,
move, move!"
We were all still laughing when the bushes by my right side were
suddenly stirred. Don Juan and Genaro immediately sat down with the left leg
tucked under the seat. The right leg, with the knee up, was like a shield in
front of them. Don Juan signaled me to do the same. He raised his brows and
made a gesture of resignation at the corner of his mouth.
"Sorcerers have their own quirks," he said in a whisper. "When the
assemblage point moves to the regions below its normal position, the vision
of sorcerers becomes limited. If they see you standing, they'll attack you."
"The nagual Julian kept me once for two days in this warrior's
position," Genaro whispered to me. "I even had to urinate while I sat in
this position."
"And defecate," don Juan added.
"Right," Genaro said. And then he whispered to me, as if on second
thought, "I hope you did your kaka earlier. If your bowels aren't empty when
la Catalina shows up, you'll shit in your pants, unless I show you how to
take them off. If you have to shit in this position, you've got to get your
pants off."
He began to show me how to maneuver out of my trousers. He did it in a
most serious and concerned manner. All my concentration was focused on his
movements. It was only when I had gotten out of my pants that I became aware
that don Juan was roaring with laughter. I realized that Genaro was again
poking fun at me. I was about to stand up to put on my pants, when don Juan
stopped me. He was laughing so hard that he could hardly articulate his
words. He told me to stay put, that Genaro did things only half in fun, and
that la Catalina was really there behind the bushes.
His tone of urgency, in the midst of laughter, got to me. I froze on
the spot. A moment later a rustle in the bushes sent me into such a panic
that I forgot about my pants. I looked at Genaro. He was again wearing his
pants. He shrugged his shoulders.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I didn't have time to show you how to put
them back on without getting up."
I did not have time to get angry or to join them in their mirth.
Suddenly, right in front of me, the bushes separated and a most horrendous
creature came out. It was so outlandish I was no longer afraid. I was
spellbound. Whatever was in front of me was not a human being; it was
something not even remotely resembling one. It was more like a reptile. Or a
bulky grotesque insect. Or even a hairy, ultimately repulsive bird. Its body
was dark and had coarse reddish hair. I could not see any legs, just the
ugly enormous head. The nose was flat and the nostrils were two enormous
lateral holes. It had something like a beak with teeth. Horrifying as that
thing was, its eyes were magnificent. They were like two mesmeric pools of
inconceivable clarity. They had knowledge. They were not human eyes, or bird
eyes, or any kind of eyes I had ever seen.
The creature moved toward my left, rustling the bushes. As I moved my
head to follow it, I noticed that don Juan and Genaro seemed to be as
spellbound by its presence as I was. It occurred to me that they had never
seen anything like that either.
In an instant, the creature had moved completely out of sight. But a
moment later there was a growl and its gigantic shape again loomed in front
of us.
I was fascinated and at the same time worried by the fact that I was
not in the least afraid of that grotesque creature. It was as if my early
panic had been experienced by someone else.
I felt, at one moment, that I was beginning to stand up. Against my
volition, my legs straightened up and I found myself standing up, facing the
creature. I vaguely felt that I was taking off my jacket, my shirt, and my
shoes. Then I was naked. The muscles of my legs tensed with a tremendously
powerful contraction. I jumped up and down with colossal agility, and then
the creature and I raced toward some ineffable greenness in the distance.
The creature raced ahead of me, coiling on itself, like a serpent. But
then I caught up with it. As we speeded together, I became aware of
something I already knew-- the creature was really la Catalina. All of a
sudden, la Catalina, in the flesh, was next to me. We moved effortlessly. It
was as if we were stationary, only posed in a bodily gesture of movement and
speed, while the scenery around us was being moved, giving the impression of
enormous acceleration.
Our racing stopped as suddenly as it had started, and then I was alone
with la Catalina in a different world. There was not a single recognizable
feature in it. There was an intense glare and heat coming from what seemed
to be the ground, a ground covered with huge rocks. Or at least they seemed
to be rocks. They had the color of sandstone, but they had no weight; they
were like chunks of sponge tissue. I could send them hurling around by only
leaning on them.
I became so fascinated with my strength that I was oblivious to
anything else. I had assessed, in whatever way, that the chunks of seemingly
weightless material opposed resistance to me. It was my superior strength
that sent them hurling around.
I tried to grab them with my hands, and I realized that my entire body
had changed. La Catalina was looking at me. She was again the grotesque
creature she had been before, and so was I. I could not see myself, but I
knew that both of us were exactly alike.
An indescribable joy possessed me, as if joy were some force that came
from outside me. La Catalina and I cavorted, and twisted, and played until I
had no more thoughts, or feelings, or human awareness in any degree. Yet, I
was definitely aware. My awareness was a vague knowledge that gave me
confidence; it was a limitless trust, a physical certainty of my existence,
not in the sense of a human feeling of individuality, but in the sense of a
presence that was everything.
Then, everything came again into human focus all at once. La Catalina
was holding my hand. We were walking on the desert floor among the desert
shrubs. I had the immediate and painful realization that the desert rocks
and hard clumps of dirt were horribly injurious to my bare feet.
We came to a spot clear of vegetation. Don Juan and Genaro were there.
I sat down and put on my clothes.
My experience with la Catalina delayed our trip back to the south of
Mexico. It had unhinged me in some indescribable way. In my normal state of
awareness, I became disassociated. It was as if I had lost a point of
reference. I had become despondent. I told don Juan that I had even lost my
desire to live.
We were sitting around in the ramada of don Juan's house. My car was
loaded with sacks and we were ready to leave, but my feeling of despair got
the best of me and I began to weep.
Don Juan and Genaro laughed until their eyes were tearing. The more
desperate I felt, the greater was their enjoyment. Finally, don Juan had me
shift into heightened awareness and explained that their laughter was not
unkindness on their part, or the result of a weird sense of humor, but the
genuine expression of happiness at seeing me advance in the path of
knowledge.
"I'll tell you what the nagual Julian used to say to us when we got to
where you are," don Juan went on. "That way, you'll know that you're not
alone. What's happening to you happens to anyone who stores enough energy to
catch a glimpse of the unknown."
He said that the nagual Julian used to tell them that they had been
evicted from the homes where they had lived all their lives. A result of
having saved energy had been the disruption of their cozy but utterly
limiting and boring nest in the world of everyday life. Their depression,
the nagual Julian told them, was not so much the sadness of having lost
their nest, but the annoyance of having to look for new quarters.
"The new quarters," don Juan went on, "are not as cozy. But they are
infinitely more roomy.
"Your eviction notice came in the form of a great depression, a loss of
the desire to live, just as it happened to us. When you told us that you
didn't want to live, we couldn't help laughing."
"What's going to happen to me now?" I asked.
"Using the vernacular, you got to get another pad," don Juan replied.
Don Juan and Genaro again entered into a state of great euphoria. Every
one of their statements and remarks made them laugh hysterically.
"It's all very simple," don Juan said. "Your new level of energy will
create a new spot to house your assemblage point. And the warriors' dialogue
you carry on with us every time we get together will solidify that new
position."
Genaro adopted a serious look and in a booming voice he asked me, "Did
you shit today?"
He urged me with a movement of his head to answer. "Did you, did you?"
he demanded. "Let's get going with our warriors' dialogue."
When their laughter had subsided, Genaro said that I had to be aware of
a drawback, the fact that from time to time the assemblage point returns to
its original position. He told me that in his own case, the normal position
of his assemblage point had forced him to see people as threatening and
often terrifying beings. To his utter amazement, one day he realized that he
had changed. He was considerably more daring and had successfully dealt with
a situation that would have ordinarily thrown him into chaos and fear.
"I found myself making love," Genaro continued, and he winked at me.
"Usually I was afraid to death of women. But one day I found myself in bed
with a most ferocious woman, it was so unlike me that when I realized what I
was doing I nearly had a heart attack. The jolt made my assemblage point
return to its miserable normal position and I had to run out of the house,
shaking like a scared rabbit.
"You'd better watch out for the recoil of the assemblage point," Genaro
added, and they were laughing again.
"The position of the assemblage point on man's cocoon," don Juan
explained, "is maintained by the internal dialogue, and because of that, it
is a flimsy position at best. That's why men and women lose their minds so
easily, especially those whose internal dialogue is repetitious, boring, and
without any depth.
"The new seers say that the more resilient human beings are those whose
internal dialogue is more fluid and varied."
He said that the position of the warrior's assemblage point is
infinitely stronger, because as soon as the assemblage point begins to move
in the cocoon, it creates a dimple in the luminosity, a dimple that houses
the assemblage point from then on.
"That's the reason why we can't say that warriors lose their minds,"
don Juan went on. "If they lose anything, they lose their dimple."
Don Juan and Genaro found that statement so hilarious that they rolled
on the floor laughing.
I asked don Juan to explain my experience with la Catalina. And both of
them again howled with laughter.
"Women are definitely more bizarre than men," don Juan finally said.
"The fact that they have an extra opening between their legs makes them fall
prey to strange influences. Strange, powerful forces possess them through
that opening. That's the only way I can understand their quirks."
He kept silent for a while, and I asked what he meant by that.
"La Catalina came to us as a giant worm," he replied.
Don Juan's expression when he said that, and Genaro's explosion of
laughter, took me into sheer mirth. I laughed until I was nearly sick.
Don Juan said that la Catalina's skill was so extraordinary that she
could do anything she wanted in the realm of the beast. Her unparalleled
display had been motivated by her affinity with me. The final result of all
that, he said, was that la Catalina pulled my assemblage point with her.
"What did you two do as worms?" Genaro asked and slapped me on the
back.
Don Juan seemed to be close to choking with laughter.
"That's why I've said that women are more bizarre than men," he
commented at last.
"I don't agree with you," Genaro said to don Juan. "The nagual Julian
didn't have an extra hole between his legs and he was more weird than la
Catalina. I believe she learned the worm bit from him. He used to do that to
her."
Don Juan jumped up and down, like a child who is trying to keep from
wetting his pants.
When he had regained a measure of calm, don Juan said that the nagual
Julian had a knack for creating and exploiting the most bizarre situations.
He also said that la Catalina had given me a superb example of the shift
below. She had let me see her as the being whose form she had adopted by
moving her assemblage point, and she had then helped me move mine to the
same position that gave her her monstrous appearance.
"The other teacher that the nagual Julian had," don Juan went on,
"taught him how to get to specific spots in that immensity of the area
below. None of us could follow him there, but all the members of his party
did, especially la Catalina and the woman seer who taught her."
Don Juan further said that a shift below entailed a view, not of
another world proper, but of our same world of everyday life seen from a
different perspective. He added that in order for me to see another world I
had to perceive another great band of the Eagle's emanations.
He then brought his explanation to an end. He said that he had no time
to elaborate on the subject of the great bands of emanations, because we had
to be on our way. I wanted to stay a bit longer and keep on talking, but he
argued that he would need a good deal of time to explain that topic and I
would need fresh concentration.
10 Great Bands of Emanations
Days later, in his house in southern Mexico, don Juan continued with
his explanation. He took me to the big room. It was early evening. The room
was in darkness. I wanted to light the gasoline lanterns, but don Juan would
not let me. He said that I had to let the sound of his voice move my
assemblage point so that it would glow on the emanations of total
concentration and total recall.
He then told me that we were going to talk about the great bands of
emanations. He called it another key discovery that the old seers made, but
that, in their aberration, they relegated to oblivion until it was rescued
by the new seers.
"The Eagle's emanations are always grouped in clusters," he went on.
"The old seers called those clusters the great bands of emanations. They
aren't really bands, but the name stuck.
"For instance, there is an immeasurable cluster that produces organic
beings. The emanations of that organic band have a sort of fluffiness. They
are transparent and have a unique light of their own, a peculiar energy.
They are aware, they jump. That's the reason why all organic beings are
filled with a peculiar consuming energy. The other bands are darker, less
fluffy. Some of them have no light at all, but a quality of opaqueness."
"Do you mean, don Juan, that all organic beings have the same kind of
emanations inside their cocoons?" I asked.
"No. I don't mean that. It isn't really that simple, although organic
beings belong to the same great band. Think of it as an enormously wide band
of luminous filaments, luminous strings with no end. Organic beings are
bubbles that grow around a group of luminous filaments. Imagine that in this
band of organic life some bubbles are formed around the luminous filaments
in the center of the band, others are formed close to the edges; the band is
wide enough to accommodate every kind of organic being with room to spare.
In such an arrangement, bubbles that are close to the edges of the band miss
altogether the emanations that are in the center of the band, which are
shared only by bubbles that are aligned with the center. By the same token,
bubbles in the center miss the emanations from the edges.
"As you can understand, organic beings share the emanations of one
band; yet seers see that within that organic band beings are as different as
they can be."
"Are there many of these great bands?" I asked.
"As many as infinity itself," he replied. "Seers have found out,
however, that in the earth there are only forty-eight such bands."
"What is the meaning of that, don Juan?"
"For seers it means that there are forty-eight types of organizations
on the earth, forty-eight types of clusters or structures. Organic life is
one of them."
"Does that mean that there are forty-seven types of inorganic life?"
"No, not at all. The old seers counted seven bands that produced
inorganic bubbles of awareness. In other words, there are forty bands that
produce bubbles without awareness; those are bands that generate only
organization.
"Think of the great bands as being like trees. All of them bear fruit;
they produce containers filled with emanations; yet only eight of those
trees bear edible fruit, that is, bubbles of awareness. Seven have sour
fruit, but edible nonetheless, and one has the most juicy, luscious fruit
there is."
He laughed and said that in his analogy he had taken the point of view
of the Eagle, for whom the most delectable morsels are the organic bubbles
of awareness.
"What makes those eight bands produce awareness?" I asked.
"The Eagle bestows awareness through its emanations," he replied.
His answer made me argue with him. I told him that to say that the
Eagle bestows awareness through its emanations is like what a religious man
would say about God, that God bestows life through love. It does not mean
anything.
"The two statements are not made from the same point of view," he
patiently said. "And yet I think they mean the same thing. The difference is
that seers see how the Eagle bestows awareness through its emanations and
religious men don't see how God bestows life through his love."
He said that the way the Eagle bestows awareness is by means of three
giant bundles of emanations that run through eight great bands. These
bundles are quite peculiar, because they make seers feel a hue. One bundle
gives the feeling of being beige-pink, something like the glow of
pink-colored street lamps; another gives the feeling of being peach, like
buff neon lights; and the third bundle gives the feeling of being amber,
like clear honey.
"So, it is a matter of seeing a hue when seers see that the Eagle
bestows awareness through its emanations," he went on. "Religious men don't
see God's love, but if they would see it, they would know that it is either
pink, peach, or amber.
"Man, for example, is attached to the amber bundle, but so are other
beings."
I wanted to know which beings shared those emanations with man.
"Details like that you will have to find out for yourself through your
own seeing,"' he said. "There is no point in my telling you which ones; you
will only be making another inventory. Suffice it to say that finding that
out for yourself will be one of the most exciting things you'll ever do."
"Do the pink and peach bundles also show in man?" I asked.
"Never. Those bundles belong to other living beings," he replied.
I was about to ask a question, but with a forceful movement of his
hand, he signaled me to stop. He then became immersed in thought. We were
enveloped in complete silence for a long time.
"I've told you that the glow of awareness in man has different colors."
he finally said. "What I didn't tell you then, because we hadn't gotten to
that point yet, was that they are not colors but casts of amber."
He said that the amber bundle of awareness has an infinitude of subtle
variants, which always denote differences in quality of awareness. Pink and
pale-green amber are the most common casts. Blue amber is more unusual, but
pure amber is by far the most rare.
"What determines the particular casts of amber?"
"Seers say that the amount of energy that one saves and stores
determines the cast. Countless numbers of warriors have begun with an
ordinary pink amber cast and have finished with the purest of all ambers.
Genaro and Silvio Manuel are examples of that."
"What forms of life belong to the pink and the peach bundles of
awareness?" I asked.
"The three bundles with all their casts crisscross the eight bands," he
replied. "In the organic band, the pink bundle belongs mainly to plants, the
peach band belongs to insects, and the amber band belongs to man and other
animals.
"The same situation is prevalent in the inorganic bands. The three
bundles of awareness produce specific kinds of inorganic beings in each of
the seven great bands."
I asked him to elaborate on the kinds of inorganic beings that existed.
"That is another thing that you must see for yourself," he said. "The
seven bands and what they produce are indeed inaccessible to human reason,
but not to human seeing."
I told him that I could not quite grasp his explanation of the great
bands, because his description had forced me to imagine them as independent
bundles of strings, or even as flat bands, like conveyor belts.
He explained that the great bands are neither flat nor round, but
indescribably clustered together, like a pile of hay, which is held together
in midair by the force of the hand that pitched it. Thus, there is no order
to the emanations; to say that there is a central part or that there are
edges is misleading, but necessary to understanding.
Continuing, he explained that inorganic beings produced by the seven
other bands of awareness are characterized by having a container that has no
motion; it is rather a formless receptacle with a low degree of luminosity.
It does not look like the cocoon of organic beings. It lacks the tautness,
the inflated quality that makes organic beings look like luminous balls
bursting with energy.
Don Juan said that the only similarity between inorganic and organic
beings is that all of them have the awareness-bestowing pink or peach or
amber emanations.
"Those emanations, under certain circumstances," he continued, "make
possible the most fascinating communication between the beings of those
eight great bands."
He said that usually the organic beings, with their greater fields of
energy, are the initiators of communication with inorganic beings, but a
subtle and sophisticated follow-up is always the province of the inorganic
beings. Once the barrier is broken, inorganic beings change and become what
seers call allies. From that moment inorganic beings can anticipate the
seer's most subtle thoughts or moods or fears.
"The old seers became mesmerized by such devotion from their allies,"
he went on. "Stories are that the old seers could make their allies do
anything they wanted. That was one of the reasons they believed in their own
invulnerability. They got fooled by their self-importance. The allies have
power only if the seer who sees them is the paragon of impeccability; and
those old seers just weren't."
"Are there as many inorganic beings as there are living organisms?" I
asked.
He said that inorganic beings are not as plentiful as organic ones, but
that this is offset by the greater number of bands of inorganic awareness.
Also, the differences among the inorganic beings themselves are more vast
than the differences among organisms, because organisms belong to only one
band while inorganic beings belong to seven bands.
"Besides, inorganic beings live infinitely longer than organisms," he
continued. "This matter is what prompted the old seers to concentrate their
seeing on the allies, for reasons I will tell you about later on."
He said that the old seers also came to realize that it is the high
energy of organisms and the subsequent high development of their awareness
that make them delectable morsels for the Eagle. In the old seers' view,
gluttony was the reason the Eagle produced as many organisms as possible.
He explained next that the product of the other forty great bands is
not awareness at all, but a configuration of inanimate energy. The old seers
chose to call whatever is produced by those bands, vessels. While cocoons
and containers are fields of energetic awareness, which accounts for their
independent luminosity, vessels are rigid receptacles that hold emanations
without being fields of energetic awareness. Their luminosity comes only
from the energy of the encased emanations.
"You must bear in mind that everything on the earth is encased," he
continued. "Whatever we perceive is made up of portions of cocoons or
vessels with emanations. Ordinarily, we don't perceive the containers of
inorganic beings at all."
He looked at me, waiting for a sign of comprehension. When he realized
I was not going to oblige him, he continued explaining.
"The total world is made of the forty-eight bands," he said. "The world
that our assemblage point assembles for our normal perception is made up of
two bands; one is the organic band, the other is a band that has only
structure, but no awareness. The other fortysix great bands are not part of
the world we normally perceive."
He paused again for pertinent questions. I had none.
"There are other complete worlds that our assemblage points can
assemble," he went on. "The old seers counted seven such worlds, one for
each band of awareness. I'll add that two of those worlds, besides the world
of everyday life, are easy to assemble; the other five are something else."
When we again sat down to talk, don Juan immediately began to talk
about my experience with la Catalina. He said that a shift of the assemblage
point to the area below its customary position allows the seer a detailed
and narrow view of the world we know. So detailed is that view that it seems
to be an entirely different world. It is a mesmerizing view that has a
tremendous appeal, especially for those seers who have an adventurous but
somehow indolent and lazy spirit.
"The change of perspective is very pleasant," don Juan went on.
"Minimal effort is required, and the results are staggering. If a seer is
driven by quick gain, there is no better maneuver than the shift below. The
only problem is that in those positions of the assemblage point, seers are
plagued by death, which happens even more brutally and more quickly than in
man's position.
"The nagual Julian thought it was a great place for cavorting, but
that's all."
He said that a true change of worlds happens only when the assemblage
point moves into man's band, deep enough to reach a crucial threshold, at
which stage the assemblage point can use another of the great bands.
"How does it use it?" I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. "It's a matter of energy," he said. "The
force of alignment hooks another band, provided that the seer has enough
energy. Our normal energy allows our assemblage points to use the force of
alignment of one great band of emanations. And we perceive the world we
know. But if we have a surplus of energy, we can use the force of alignment
of other great bands, and consequently we perceive other worlds."
Don Juan abruptly changed the subject and began to talk about plants.
"This may seem like an oddity to you," he said, "but trees, for
instance, are closer to man than ants. I've told you that trees and man can
develop a great relationship; that's so because they share emanations."
"How big are their cocoons?" I asked.
"The cocoon of a giant tree is not much larger than the tree itself.
The interesting part is that some tiny plants have a cocoon almost as big as
Still in a whisper, he said that certain geographical areas not only
help that precarious movement of the assemblage point, but also select
specific directions for that movement. For instance, the Sonoran desert
helps the assemblage point move downward from its customary position, to the
place of the beast.
"That's why there are true sorcerers in Sonora," he continued.
"Especially sorceresses. You already know one, la Catalina. In the past, I
have arranged bouts between the two of you. I wanted to make your assemblage
point shift, and la Catalina, with her sorcery antics, jolted it loose."
Don Juan explained that the chilling experiences I had had with la
Catalina had been part of a prearranged agreement between the two of them.
"What would you think if we invited her to join us?" Genaro asked me in
a loud voice, as he sat up.
The abruptness of his question and the strange sound of his voice
plunged me into instant terror.
Don Juan laughed and shook me by the arms. He assured me that there was
no need for alarm. He said that la Catalina was like a cousin or an aunt to
us. She was part of our world, although she did not quite follow our quests.
She was infinitely closer to the ancient seers.
Genaro smiled and winked at me.
"I understand that you've got hot pants for her," he said to me. "She
herself confessed to me that every time you have had a confrontation with
her, the greater your fright, the hotter your pants."
Don Juan and Genaro laughed to near hysteria.
I had to admit that somehow I had always found la Catalina to be a very
scary but at the same time an extremely appealing woman. What impressed me
the most about her was her exuding energy.
"She has so much energy saved," don Juan commented, "that you didn't
have to be in heightened awareness for her to move your assemblage point all
the way to the depths of the left side."
Don Juan said again that la Catalina was very closely related to us,
because she belonged to the nagual Julian's party. He explained that usually
the nagual and all the members of his party leave the world together, but
that there are instances when they leave either in smaller groups or one by
one. The nagual Julian and his party were an example of the latter. Although
he had left the world nearly forty years ago, la Catalina was still here.
He reminded me about something he mentioned to me before, that the
nagual Julian's party consisted of a group of three thoroughly
inconsequential men and eight superb women. Don Juan had always maintained
that such a disparity was one of the reasons why the members of the nagual
Julian's party left the world one by one.
He said that la Catalina had been attached to one of the superb women
seers of the nagual Julian's party, who taught her extraordinary maneuvers
to shift her assemblage point to the area below. That seer was one of the
last to leave the world. She lived to an extremely old age, and since both
she and la Catalina were originally from Sonora, they returned, in her
advanced years, to the desert and lived together until the seer left the
world. In the years they spent together, la Catalina became her most
dedicated helper and disciple, a disciple who was willing to learn the
extravagant ways the old seers knew to make the assemblage point shift.
I asked don Juan if la Catalina's knowledge was inherently different
from his own.
"We are exactly the same," he replied. "She's more like Silvio Manuel
or Genaro; she is really the female version of them, but, of course, being a
woman she's infinitely more aggressive and dangerous than both of them."
Genaro assented with a nod of his head. "Infinitely more," he said and
winked again.
"Is she attached to your party?" I asked don Juan.
"I said that she's like a cousin or an aunt to us," he replied. "I
meant she belongs to the older generation, although she's younger than all
of us. She is the last of that group. She is rarely in contact with us. She
doesn't quite like us. We are too stiff for her, because she's used to the
nagual Julian's touch. She prefers the high adventure of the unknown to the
quest for freedom."
"What is the difference between the two?" I asked don Juan.
"In the last part of my explanation of the truths about awareness," he
replied, "we are going to discuss that difference slowly and thoroughly.
What's important for you to know. at this moment, is that you're jealously
guarding weird secrets in your leftside awareness; that is why la Catalina
and you like each other."
I insisted again that it was not that I liked her, it was rather that I
admired her great strength.
Don Juan and Genaro laughed and patted me as if they knew something I
did not.
"She likes you because she knows what you're like," Genaro said and
smacked his lips. "She knew the nagual Julian very well."
Both of them gave me a long look that made me feel embarrassed.
"What are you driving at?" I asked Genaro in a belligerent tone.
He grinned at me and moved his eyebrows up and down in a comical
gesture. But he kept quiet.
Don Juan spoke and broke the silence.
"There are very strange points in common between the nagual Julian and
you," he said. "Genaro is just trying to figure out if you're aware of it."
I asked both of them how on earth I would be aware of something so
farfetched.
"La Catalina thinks you are," Genaro said. "She says so because she
knew the nagual Julian better than any of us here."
I commented that I couldn't believe that she knew the nagual Julian,
since he had left the world nearly forty years ago.
"La Catalina is no spring chicken," Genaro said. "She just looks young;
that's part of her knowledge. Just as it was part of the nagual Julian's
knowledge. You've seen her only when she looks young. If you see her when
she looks old, she'll scare the living daylights out of you."
"What la Catalina does," don Juan interrupted, "can be explained only
in terms of the three masteries: the mastery of awareness, the mastery of
stalking, and the mastery of intent.
"But today, we are going to examine what she does only in light of the
last truth about awareness: the truth that says that the assemblage point
can assemble worlds different from our own after it moves from its original
position."
Don Juan signaled me to get up. Genaro also stood up. I automatically
grabbed the burlap sack filled with medicinal plants. Genaro stopped me as I
was about to put it on my shoulders.
"Leave the sack alone," he said, smiling. "We have to take a little
hike up the hill and meet la Catalina."
"Where is she?" I asked.
"Up there," Genaro said, pointing to the top of a small hill. "If you
stare with your eyes half-closed, you'll see her as a very dark spot against
the green shrubbery."
I strained to see the dark spot, but I couldn't see anything.
"Why don't you walk up there?" don Juan suggested to me.
I felt dizzy and sick to my stomach. Don Juan urged me with a movement
of his hand to go up, but I didn't dare move. Finally, Genaro took me by the
arm and both of us climbed toward the top of the hill. When we got there, I
realized that don Juan had come up right behind us. The three of us reached
the top at the same time.
Don Juan very calmly began to talk to Genaro. He asked him if he
remembered the many times the nagual Julian was about to choke both of them
to death, because they indulged in their fears.
Genaro turned to me and assured me that the nagual Julian had been a
ruthless teacher. He and his own teacher, the nagual Elias, who was still in
the world then, used to push everyone's assemblage points beyond a crucial
limit and let them fend for themselves.
"I once told you that the nagual Julian recommended us not to waste our
sexual energy," Genaro went on. "He meant that for the assemblage point to
shift, one needs energy. If one doesn't have it, the nagual's blow is not
the blow of freedom, but the blow of death."
"Without enough energy," don Juan said, "the force of alignment is
crushing. You have to have energy to sustain the pressure of alignments
which never take place under ordinary circumstances."
Genaro said that the nagual Julian was an inspiring teacher. He always
found ways to teach and at the same time entertain himself. One of his
favorite teaching devices was to catch them unawares once or twice, in their
normal awareness, and make their assemblage points shift. From then on, all
he had to do to have their undivided attention was to threaten them with an
unexpected nagual's blow.
"The nagual Julian was really an unforgettable man," don Juan said. "He
had a great touch with people. He would do the worst things in the world,
but done by him they were great. Done by anyone else, they would have been
crude and callous.
"The nagual Ellas, on the other hand, had no touch, but he was indeed a
great, great teacher."
"The nagual Elias was very much like the nagual Juan Matus," Genaro
said to me. "They got along very fine. And the nagual Elias taught him
everything without ever raising his voice, or playing tricks on him.
"But the nagual Julian was quite different," Genaro went on, giving me
a friendly shove. "I'd say that he jealously guarded strange secrets in his
left side, just like you. Wouldn't you say so?" he asked don Juan.
Don Juan did not answer, but nodded affirmatively. He seemed to be
holding back his laughter.
"He had a playful nature," don Juan said, and both of them broke into a
great laughter.
The fact that they were obviously alluding to something they knew made
me feel even more threatened.
Don Juan matter-of-factly said that they were referring to the bizarre
sorcery techniques that the nagual Julian had learned in the course of his
life. Genaro added that the nagual Julian had a unique teacher besides the
nagual Elias. A teacher who had liked him immensely and had taught him novel
and complex ways of moving his assemblage point. As a result of this, the
nagual Julian was extraordinarily eccentric in his behavior.
"Who was that teacher, don Juan?" I asked.
Don Juan and Genaro looked at each other and giggled like two children.
"That is a very tough question to answer," don Juan replied. "All I can
say is that he was the teacher that deviated the course of our line. He
taught us many things, good and bad, but among the worst, he taught us what
the old seers did. So, some of us got trapped. The nagual Julian was one of
them, and so is la Catalina. We only hope that you won't follow them."
I immediately began to protest. Don Juan interrupted me. He said that I
did not know what I was protesting.
As don Juan spoke, I became terribly angry with him and Genaro.
Suddenly, I was raging, yelling at them at the top of my voice. My reaction
was so out of tone with me that it scared me. It was as if I were someone
else. I stopped and looked at them for help.
Genaro had his hands on don Juan's shoulders as if he needed support.
Both of them were laughing uncontrollably.
I became so despondent I was nearly in tears. Don Juan came to my side.
He reassuringly put his hand on my shoulder. He said that the Sonoran
desert, for reasons incomprehensible to him, fostered definite belligerence
in man or any other organism.
"People may say that it's because the air is too dry here," he
continued, "or because it's too hot. Seers would say that there is a
particular confluence of the Eagle's emanations here, which, as I've already
said, helps the assemblage point to shift below.
"Be that as it may, warriors are in the world to train themselves to be
unbiased witnesses, so as to understand the mystery of ourselves and relish
the exultation of finding what we really are. This is the highest of the new
seers' goals. And not every warrior attains it. We believe that the nagual
Julian didn't attain it. He was waylaid, and so was la Catalina."
He further said that to be a peerless nagual, one has to love freedom,
and one has to have supreme detachment. He explained that what makes the
warrior's path so very dangerous is that it is the opposite of the life
situation of modern man. He said that modern man has left the realm of the
unknown and the mysterious, and has settled down in the realm of the
functional. He has turned his back to the world of the foreboding and the
exulting and has welcomed the world of boredom.
"To be given a chance to go back again to the mystery of the world,"
don Juan continued, "is sometimes too much for warriors, and they succumb;
they are waylaid by what I've called the high adventure of the unknown. They
forget the quest for freedom; they forget to be unbiased witnesses. They
sink into the unknown and love it."
"And you think i'm like that, don't you?" I asked don Juan.
"We don't think, we know," Genaro replied. "And la Catalina knows
better than anyone else."
"Why would she know it?" I demanded.
"Because she's like you," Genaro replied, pronouncing his words with a
comical intonation.
I was about to get into a heated argument again when don Juan
interrupted me.
"There's no need to get so worked up," he said to me. "You are what you
are. The fight for freedom is harder for some. You are one of them.
"In order to be unbiased witnesses," he went on, "we begin by
understanding that the fixation or the movement of the assemblage point is
all there is to us and the world we witness, whatever that world might be.
"The new seers say that when we were taught to talk to ourselves, we
were taught the means to dull ourselves in order to keep the assemblage
point fixed on one spot."
Genaro clapped his hands noisily and let out a piercing whistle that
imitated the whistle of a football coach.
"Let's get that assemblage point moving!" he yelled. "Up, up, up! Move,
move, move!"
We were all still laughing when the bushes by my right side were
suddenly stirred. Don Juan and Genaro immediately sat down with the left leg
tucked under the seat. The right leg, with the knee up, was like a shield in
front of them. Don Juan signaled me to do the same. He raised his brows and
made a gesture of resignation at the corner of his mouth.
"Sorcerers have their own quirks," he said in a whisper. "When the
assemblage point moves to the regions below its normal position, the vision
of sorcerers becomes limited. If they see you standing, they'll attack you."
"The nagual Julian kept me once for two days in this warrior's
position," Genaro whispered to me. "I even had to urinate while I sat in
this position."
"And defecate," don Juan added.
"Right," Genaro said. And then he whispered to me, as if on second
thought, "I hope you did your kaka earlier. If your bowels aren't empty when
la Catalina shows up, you'll shit in your pants, unless I show you how to
take them off. If you have to shit in this position, you've got to get your
pants off."
He began to show me how to maneuver out of my trousers. He did it in a
most serious and concerned manner. All my concentration was focused on his
movements. It was only when I had gotten out of my pants that I became aware
that don Juan was roaring with laughter. I realized that Genaro was again
poking fun at me. I was about to stand up to put on my pants, when don Juan
stopped me. He was laughing so hard that he could hardly articulate his
words. He told me to stay put, that Genaro did things only half in fun, and
that la Catalina was really there behind the bushes.
His tone of urgency, in the midst of laughter, got to me. I froze on
the spot. A moment later a rustle in the bushes sent me into such a panic
that I forgot about my pants. I looked at Genaro. He was again wearing his
pants. He shrugged his shoulders.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I didn't have time to show you how to put
them back on without getting up."
I did not have time to get angry or to join them in their mirth.
Suddenly, right in front of me, the bushes separated and a most horrendous
creature came out. It was so outlandish I was no longer afraid. I was
spellbound. Whatever was in front of me was not a human being; it was
something not even remotely resembling one. It was more like a reptile. Or a
bulky grotesque insect. Or even a hairy, ultimately repulsive bird. Its body
was dark and had coarse reddish hair. I could not see any legs, just the
ugly enormous head. The nose was flat and the nostrils were two enormous
lateral holes. It had something like a beak with teeth. Horrifying as that
thing was, its eyes were magnificent. They were like two mesmeric pools of
inconceivable clarity. They had knowledge. They were not human eyes, or bird
eyes, or any kind of eyes I had ever seen.
The creature moved toward my left, rustling the bushes. As I moved my
head to follow it, I noticed that don Juan and Genaro seemed to be as
spellbound by its presence as I was. It occurred to me that they had never
seen anything like that either.
In an instant, the creature had moved completely out of sight. But a
moment later there was a growl and its gigantic shape again loomed in front
of us.
I was fascinated and at the same time worried by the fact that I was
not in the least afraid of that grotesque creature. It was as if my early
panic had been experienced by someone else.
I felt, at one moment, that I was beginning to stand up. Against my
volition, my legs straightened up and I found myself standing up, facing the
creature. I vaguely felt that I was taking off my jacket, my shirt, and my
shoes. Then I was naked. The muscles of my legs tensed with a tremendously
powerful contraction. I jumped up and down with colossal agility, and then
the creature and I raced toward some ineffable greenness in the distance.
The creature raced ahead of me, coiling on itself, like a serpent. But
then I caught up with it. As we speeded together, I became aware of
something I already knew-- the creature was really la Catalina. All of a
sudden, la Catalina, in the flesh, was next to me. We moved effortlessly. It
was as if we were stationary, only posed in a bodily gesture of movement and
speed, while the scenery around us was being moved, giving the impression of
enormous acceleration.
Our racing stopped as suddenly as it had started, and then I was alone
with la Catalina in a different world. There was not a single recognizable
feature in it. There was an intense glare and heat coming from what seemed
to be the ground, a ground covered with huge rocks. Or at least they seemed
to be rocks. They had the color of sandstone, but they had no weight; they
were like chunks of sponge tissue. I could send them hurling around by only
leaning on them.
I became so fascinated with my strength that I was oblivious to
anything else. I had assessed, in whatever way, that the chunks of seemingly
weightless material opposed resistance to me. It was my superior strength
that sent them hurling around.
I tried to grab them with my hands, and I realized that my entire body
had changed. La Catalina was looking at me. She was again the grotesque
creature she had been before, and so was I. I could not see myself, but I
knew that both of us were exactly alike.
An indescribable joy possessed me, as if joy were some force that came
from outside me. La Catalina and I cavorted, and twisted, and played until I
had no more thoughts, or feelings, or human awareness in any degree. Yet, I
was definitely aware. My awareness was a vague knowledge that gave me
confidence; it was a limitless trust, a physical certainty of my existence,
not in the sense of a human feeling of individuality, but in the sense of a
presence that was everything.
Then, everything came again into human focus all at once. La Catalina
was holding my hand. We were walking on the desert floor among the desert
shrubs. I had the immediate and painful realization that the desert rocks
and hard clumps of dirt were horribly injurious to my bare feet.
We came to a spot clear of vegetation. Don Juan and Genaro were there.
I sat down and put on my clothes.
My experience with la Catalina delayed our trip back to the south of
Mexico. It had unhinged me in some indescribable way. In my normal state of
awareness, I became disassociated. It was as if I had lost a point of
reference. I had become despondent. I told don Juan that I had even lost my
desire to live.
We were sitting around in the ramada of don Juan's house. My car was
loaded with sacks and we were ready to leave, but my feeling of despair got
the best of me and I began to weep.
Don Juan and Genaro laughed until their eyes were tearing. The more
desperate I felt, the greater was their enjoyment. Finally, don Juan had me
shift into heightened awareness and explained that their laughter was not
unkindness on their part, or the result of a weird sense of humor, but the
genuine expression of happiness at seeing me advance in the path of
knowledge.
"I'll tell you what the nagual Julian used to say to us when we got to
where you are," don Juan went on. "That way, you'll know that you're not
alone. What's happening to you happens to anyone who stores enough energy to
catch a glimpse of the unknown."
He said that the nagual Julian used to tell them that they had been
evicted from the homes where they had lived all their lives. A result of
having saved energy had been the disruption of their cozy but utterly
limiting and boring nest in the world of everyday life. Their depression,
the nagual Julian told them, was not so much the sadness of having lost
their nest, but the annoyance of having to look for new quarters.
"The new quarters," don Juan went on, "are not as cozy. But they are
infinitely more roomy.
"Your eviction notice came in the form of a great depression, a loss of
the desire to live, just as it happened to us. When you told us that you
didn't want to live, we couldn't help laughing."
"What's going to happen to me now?" I asked.
"Using the vernacular, you got to get another pad," don Juan replied.
Don Juan and Genaro again entered into a state of great euphoria. Every
one of their statements and remarks made them laugh hysterically.
"It's all very simple," don Juan said. "Your new level of energy will
create a new spot to house your assemblage point. And the warriors' dialogue
you carry on with us every time we get together will solidify that new
position."
Genaro adopted a serious look and in a booming voice he asked me, "Did
you shit today?"
He urged me with a movement of his head to answer. "Did you, did you?"
he demanded. "Let's get going with our warriors' dialogue."
When their laughter had subsided, Genaro said that I had to be aware of
a drawback, the fact that from time to time the assemblage point returns to
its original position. He told me that in his own case, the normal position
of his assemblage point had forced him to see people as threatening and
often terrifying beings. To his utter amazement, one day he realized that he
had changed. He was considerably more daring and had successfully dealt with
a situation that would have ordinarily thrown him into chaos and fear.
"I found myself making love," Genaro continued, and he winked at me.
"Usually I was afraid to death of women. But one day I found myself in bed
with a most ferocious woman, it was so unlike me that when I realized what I
was doing I nearly had a heart attack. The jolt made my assemblage point
return to its miserable normal position and I had to run out of the house,
shaking like a scared rabbit.
"You'd better watch out for the recoil of the assemblage point," Genaro
added, and they were laughing again.
"The position of the assemblage point on man's cocoon," don Juan
explained, "is maintained by the internal dialogue, and because of that, it
is a flimsy position at best. That's why men and women lose their minds so
easily, especially those whose internal dialogue is repetitious, boring, and
without any depth.
"The new seers say that the more resilient human beings are those whose
internal dialogue is more fluid and varied."
He said that the position of the warrior's assemblage point is
infinitely stronger, because as soon as the assemblage point begins to move
in the cocoon, it creates a dimple in the luminosity, a dimple that houses
the assemblage point from then on.
"That's the reason why we can't say that warriors lose their minds,"
don Juan went on. "If they lose anything, they lose their dimple."
Don Juan and Genaro found that statement so hilarious that they rolled
on the floor laughing.
I asked don Juan to explain my experience with la Catalina. And both of
them again howled with laughter.
"Women are definitely more bizarre than men," don Juan finally said.
"The fact that they have an extra opening between their legs makes them fall
prey to strange influences. Strange, powerful forces possess them through
that opening. That's the only way I can understand their quirks."
He kept silent for a while, and I asked what he meant by that.
"La Catalina came to us as a giant worm," he replied.
Don Juan's expression when he said that, and Genaro's explosion of
laughter, took me into sheer mirth. I laughed until I was nearly sick.
Don Juan said that la Catalina's skill was so extraordinary that she
could do anything she wanted in the realm of the beast. Her unparalleled
display had been motivated by her affinity with me. The final result of all
that, he said, was that la Catalina pulled my assemblage point with her.
"What did you two do as worms?" Genaro asked and slapped me on the
back.
Don Juan seemed to be close to choking with laughter.
"That's why I've said that women are more bizarre than men," he
commented at last.
"I don't agree with you," Genaro said to don Juan. "The nagual Julian
didn't have an extra hole between his legs and he was more weird than la
Catalina. I believe she learned the worm bit from him. He used to do that to
her."
Don Juan jumped up and down, like a child who is trying to keep from
wetting his pants.
When he had regained a measure of calm, don Juan said that the nagual
Julian had a knack for creating and exploiting the most bizarre situations.
He also said that la Catalina had given me a superb example of the shift
below. She had let me see her as the being whose form she had adopted by
moving her assemblage point, and she had then helped me move mine to the
same position that gave her her monstrous appearance.
"The other teacher that the nagual Julian had," don Juan went on,
"taught him how to get to specific spots in that immensity of the area
below. None of us could follow him there, but all the members of his party
did, especially la Catalina and the woman seer who taught her."
Don Juan further said that a shift below entailed a view, not of
another world proper, but of our same world of everyday life seen from a
different perspective. He added that in order for me to see another world I
had to perceive another great band of the Eagle's emanations.
He then brought his explanation to an end. He said that he had no time
to elaborate on the subject of the great bands of emanations, because we had
to be on our way. I wanted to stay a bit longer and keep on talking, but he
argued that he would need a good deal of time to explain that topic and I
would need fresh concentration.
10 Great Bands of Emanations
Days later, in his house in southern Mexico, don Juan continued with
his explanation. He took me to the big room. It was early evening. The room
was in darkness. I wanted to light the gasoline lanterns, but don Juan would
not let me. He said that I had to let the sound of his voice move my
assemblage point so that it would glow on the emanations of total
concentration and total recall.
He then told me that we were going to talk about the great bands of
emanations. He called it another key discovery that the old seers made, but
that, in their aberration, they relegated to oblivion until it was rescued
by the new seers.
"The Eagle's emanations are always grouped in clusters," he went on.
"The old seers called those clusters the great bands of emanations. They
aren't really bands, but the name stuck.
"For instance, there is an immeasurable cluster that produces organic
beings. The emanations of that organic band have a sort of fluffiness. They
are transparent and have a unique light of their own, a peculiar energy.
They are aware, they jump. That's the reason why all organic beings are
filled with a peculiar consuming energy. The other bands are darker, less
fluffy. Some of them have no light at all, but a quality of opaqueness."
"Do you mean, don Juan, that all organic beings have the same kind of
emanations inside their cocoons?" I asked.
"No. I don't mean that. It isn't really that simple, although organic
beings belong to the same great band. Think of it as an enormously wide band
of luminous filaments, luminous strings with no end. Organic beings are
bubbles that grow around a group of luminous filaments. Imagine that in this
band of organic life some bubbles are formed around the luminous filaments
in the center of the band, others are formed close to the edges; the band is
wide enough to accommodate every kind of organic being with room to spare.
In such an arrangement, bubbles that are close to the edges of the band miss
altogether the emanations that are in the center of the band, which are
shared only by bubbles that are aligned with the center. By the same token,
bubbles in the center miss the emanations from the edges.
"As you can understand, organic beings share the emanations of one
band; yet seers see that within that organic band beings are as different as
they can be."
"Are there many of these great bands?" I asked.
"As many as infinity itself," he replied. "Seers have found out,
however, that in the earth there are only forty-eight such bands."
"What is the meaning of that, don Juan?"
"For seers it means that there are forty-eight types of organizations
on the earth, forty-eight types of clusters or structures. Organic life is
one of them."
"Does that mean that there are forty-seven types of inorganic life?"
"No, not at all. The old seers counted seven bands that produced
inorganic bubbles of awareness. In other words, there are forty bands that
produce bubbles without awareness; those are bands that generate only
organization.
"Think of the great bands as being like trees. All of them bear fruit;
they produce containers filled with emanations; yet only eight of those
trees bear edible fruit, that is, bubbles of awareness. Seven have sour
fruit, but edible nonetheless, and one has the most juicy, luscious fruit
there is."
He laughed and said that in his analogy he had taken the point of view
of the Eagle, for whom the most delectable morsels are the organic bubbles
of awareness.
"What makes those eight bands produce awareness?" I asked.
"The Eagle bestows awareness through its emanations," he replied.
His answer made me argue with him. I told him that to say that the
Eagle bestows awareness through its emanations is like what a religious man
would say about God, that God bestows life through love. It does not mean
anything.
"The two statements are not made from the same point of view," he
patiently said. "And yet I think they mean the same thing. The difference is
that seers see how the Eagle bestows awareness through its emanations and
religious men don't see how God bestows life through his love."
He said that the way the Eagle bestows awareness is by means of three
giant bundles of emanations that run through eight great bands. These
bundles are quite peculiar, because they make seers feel a hue. One bundle
gives the feeling of being beige-pink, something like the glow of
pink-colored street lamps; another gives the feeling of being peach, like
buff neon lights; and the third bundle gives the feeling of being amber,
like clear honey.
"So, it is a matter of seeing a hue when seers see that the Eagle
bestows awareness through its emanations," he went on. "Religious men don't
see God's love, but if they would see it, they would know that it is either
pink, peach, or amber.
"Man, for example, is attached to the amber bundle, but so are other
beings."
I wanted to know which beings shared those emanations with man.
"Details like that you will have to find out for yourself through your
own seeing,"' he said. "There is no point in my telling you which ones; you
will only be making another inventory. Suffice it to say that finding that
out for yourself will be one of the most exciting things you'll ever do."
"Do the pink and peach bundles also show in man?" I asked.
"Never. Those bundles belong to other living beings," he replied.
I was about to ask a question, but with a forceful movement of his
hand, he signaled me to stop. He then became immersed in thought. We were
enveloped in complete silence for a long time.
"I've told you that the glow of awareness in man has different colors."
he finally said. "What I didn't tell you then, because we hadn't gotten to
that point yet, was that they are not colors but casts of amber."
He said that the amber bundle of awareness has an infinitude of subtle
variants, which always denote differences in quality of awareness. Pink and
pale-green amber are the most common casts. Blue amber is more unusual, but
pure amber is by far the most rare.
"What determines the particular casts of amber?"
"Seers say that the amount of energy that one saves and stores
determines the cast. Countless numbers of warriors have begun with an
ordinary pink amber cast and have finished with the purest of all ambers.
Genaro and Silvio Manuel are examples of that."
"What forms of life belong to the pink and the peach bundles of
awareness?" I asked.
"The three bundles with all their casts crisscross the eight bands," he
replied. "In the organic band, the pink bundle belongs mainly to plants, the
peach band belongs to insects, and the amber band belongs to man and other
animals.
"The same situation is prevalent in the inorganic bands. The three
bundles of awareness produce specific kinds of inorganic beings in each of
the seven great bands."
I asked him to elaborate on the kinds of inorganic beings that existed.
"That is another thing that you must see for yourself," he said. "The
seven bands and what they produce are indeed inaccessible to human reason,
but not to human seeing."
I told him that I could not quite grasp his explanation of the great
bands, because his description had forced me to imagine them as independent
bundles of strings, or even as flat bands, like conveyor belts.
He explained that the great bands are neither flat nor round, but
indescribably clustered together, like a pile of hay, which is held together
in midair by the force of the hand that pitched it. Thus, there is no order
to the emanations; to say that there is a central part or that there are
edges is misleading, but necessary to understanding.
Continuing, he explained that inorganic beings produced by the seven
other bands of awareness are characterized by having a container that has no
motion; it is rather a formless receptacle with a low degree of luminosity.
It does not look like the cocoon of organic beings. It lacks the tautness,
the inflated quality that makes organic beings look like luminous balls
bursting with energy.
Don Juan said that the only similarity between inorganic and organic
beings is that all of them have the awareness-bestowing pink or peach or
amber emanations.
"Those emanations, under certain circumstances," he continued, "make
possible the most fascinating communication between the beings of those
eight great bands."
He said that usually the organic beings, with their greater fields of
energy, are the initiators of communication with inorganic beings, but a
subtle and sophisticated follow-up is always the province of the inorganic
beings. Once the barrier is broken, inorganic beings change and become what
seers call allies. From that moment inorganic beings can anticipate the
seer's most subtle thoughts or moods or fears.
"The old seers became mesmerized by such devotion from their allies,"
he went on. "Stories are that the old seers could make their allies do
anything they wanted. That was one of the reasons they believed in their own
invulnerability. They got fooled by their self-importance. The allies have
power only if the seer who sees them is the paragon of impeccability; and
those old seers just weren't."
"Are there as many inorganic beings as there are living organisms?" I
asked.
He said that inorganic beings are not as plentiful as organic ones, but
that this is offset by the greater number of bands of inorganic awareness.
Also, the differences among the inorganic beings themselves are more vast
than the differences among organisms, because organisms belong to only one
band while inorganic beings belong to seven bands.
"Besides, inorganic beings live infinitely longer than organisms," he
continued. "This matter is what prompted the old seers to concentrate their
seeing on the allies, for reasons I will tell you about later on."
He said that the old seers also came to realize that it is the high
energy of organisms and the subsequent high development of their awareness
that make them delectable morsels for the Eagle. In the old seers' view,
gluttony was the reason the Eagle produced as many organisms as possible.
He explained next that the product of the other forty great bands is
not awareness at all, but a configuration of inanimate energy. The old seers
chose to call whatever is produced by those bands, vessels. While cocoons
and containers are fields of energetic awareness, which accounts for their
independent luminosity, vessels are rigid receptacles that hold emanations
without being fields of energetic awareness. Their luminosity comes only
from the energy of the encased emanations.
"You must bear in mind that everything on the earth is encased," he
continued. "Whatever we perceive is made up of portions of cocoons or
vessels with emanations. Ordinarily, we don't perceive the containers of
inorganic beings at all."
He looked at me, waiting for a sign of comprehension. When he realized
I was not going to oblige him, he continued explaining.
"The total world is made of the forty-eight bands," he said. "The world
that our assemblage point assembles for our normal perception is made up of
two bands; one is the organic band, the other is a band that has only
structure, but no awareness. The other fortysix great bands are not part of
the world we normally perceive."
He paused again for pertinent questions. I had none.
"There are other complete worlds that our assemblage points can
assemble," he went on. "The old seers counted seven such worlds, one for
each band of awareness. I'll add that two of those worlds, besides the world
of everyday life, are easy to assemble; the other five are something else."
When we again sat down to talk, don Juan immediately began to talk
about my experience with la Catalina. He said that a shift of the assemblage
point to the area below its customary position allows the seer a detailed
and narrow view of the world we know. So detailed is that view that it seems
to be an entirely different world. It is a mesmerizing view that has a
tremendous appeal, especially for those seers who have an adventurous but
somehow indolent and lazy spirit.
"The change of perspective is very pleasant," don Juan went on.
"Minimal effort is required, and the results are staggering. If a seer is
driven by quick gain, there is no better maneuver than the shift below. The
only problem is that in those positions of the assemblage point, seers are
plagued by death, which happens even more brutally and more quickly than in
man's position.
"The nagual Julian thought it was a great place for cavorting, but
that's all."
He said that a true change of worlds happens only when the assemblage
point moves into man's band, deep enough to reach a crucial threshold, at
which stage the assemblage point can use another of the great bands.
"How does it use it?" I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. "It's a matter of energy," he said. "The
force of alignment hooks another band, provided that the seer has enough
energy. Our normal energy allows our assemblage points to use the force of
alignment of one great band of emanations. And we perceive the world we
know. But if we have a surplus of energy, we can use the force of alignment
of other great bands, and consequently we perceive other worlds."
Don Juan abruptly changed the subject and began to talk about plants.
"This may seem like an oddity to you," he said, "but trees, for
instance, are closer to man than ants. I've told you that trees and man can
develop a great relationship; that's so because they share emanations."
"How big are their cocoons?" I asked.
"The cocoon of a giant tree is not much larger than the tree itself.
The interesting part is that some tiny plants have a cocoon almost as big as