suit would be a preposterous sight.
"Put your coat on over the knapsack," he said. "It is better that
people think you're a hunchback than to ruin your body carrying all this
around." He urged me to get out my notebook and write. He seemed to be
making a deliberate effort to put me at ease. I complained again about the
feeling of physical discomfort and the strange sense of unhappiness I was
experiencing. Don Juan laughed and said, "You're beginning to learn."
We then had a long conversation. He said that Mescalito, by allowing me
to play with him, had pointed me out as a "chosen man" and that, although he
was baffled by the omen because I was not an Indian, he was going to pass on
to me some secret knowledge. He said that he had had a "benefactor" himself,
who taught him how to become a "man of knowledge."
I sensed that something dreadful was about to happen. The revelation
that I was his chosen man, plus the unquestionable strangeness of his ways
and the devastating effect that peyote had had on me, created a state of
unbearable apprehension and indecision. But don Juan disregarded my feelings
and recommended that I should only think of the wonder of Mescalito playing
with me.
"Think about nothing else, " he said. "The rest will come to you of
itself."
He stood up and patted me gently on the head and said in a very soft
voice, "I am going to teach you how to become a warrior in the same manner I
have taught you how to hunt. I must warn you, though, learning how to hunt
has not made you into a hunter, nor would learning how to become a warrior
make you one."
I experienced a sense of frustration, a physical discomfort that
bordered on anguish. I complained about the vivid dreams and nightmares I
was having. He seemed to deliberate for a moment and sat down again.
"They're weird dreams, " I said.
"You've always had weird dreams, " he retorted.
"I'm telling you, this time they are truly more weird than anything
I've ever had."
"Don't concern yourself. They are only dreams. Like the dreams of any
ordinary dreamer, they don't have power. So what's the use of worrying about
them or talking about them?"
"They bother me, don Juan. Isn't there something I can do to stop
them?"
"Nothing. Let them pass, " he said. "Now it's time for you to become
accessible to power, and you are going to begin by tackling dreaming."
The tone of voice he used when he said "dreaming" made me think that he
was using the word in a very particular fashion. I was pondering about a
proper question to ask when he began to talk again.
"I've never told you about dreaming, because until now I was only
concerned with teaching you how to be a hunter, " he said. "A hunter is not
concerned with the manipulation of power, therefore his dreams are only
dreams. They might be poignant but they are not dreaming.
"A warrior, on the other hand, seeks power, and one of the avenues to
power is dreaming. You may say that the difference between a hunter and a
warrior is that a warrior is on his
way to power, while a hunter knows nothing or very little about it.
"The decision as to who can be a warrior and who can only be a hunter
is not up to us. That decision is in the realm of the powers that guide men.
That's why your playing with Mescalito was such an important omen. Those
forces guided you to me; they took you to that bus depot, remember? Some
clown brought you to me. A perfect omen, a clown pointing you out. So, I
taught you how to be a hunter. And then the other perfect omen, Mescalito
himself playing with you. See what I mean?"
His weird logic was overwhelming. His words created visions of myself
succumbing to something awesome and unknown, something which I had not
bargained for, and which I had not conceived existed, even in my wildest
fantasies.
"What do you propose I should do?" I asked.
"Become accessible to power; tackle your dreams, " he replied. "You
call them dreams because you have no power. A warrior, being a man who seeks
power, doesn't call them dreams, he calls them real."
"You mean he takes his dreams as being reality?"
"He doesn't take anything as being anything else. What you call dreams
are real for a warrior. You must understand that a warrior is not a fool. A
warrior is an immaculate hunter who hunts power; he's not drunk, or crazed,
and he has neither the time nor the disposition to bluff, or to lie to
himself, or to make a wrong move. The stakes are too high for that. The
stakes are his trimmed orderly life which he has taken so long to tighten
and perfect. He is not going to throw that away by making some stupid
miscalculation, by taking something for being something else.
"Dreaming is real for a warrior because in it he can act deliberately,
he can choose and reject, he can select from a variety of items those which
lead to power, and then he can manipulate them and use them, while in an
ordinary dream he cannot act deliberately." "Do you mean then, don Juan,
that dreaming is real?"
"Of course it is real."
"As real as what we are doing now?"
"If you want to compare things, I can say that it is perhaps more real.
In dreaming you have power; you can change things; you may find out
countless concealed facts; you can control whatever you want."
Don Juan's premises always had appealed to me at a certain level. I
could easily understand his liking the idea that one could do anything in
dreams, but I could not take him seriously. The jump was too great. We
looked at each other for a moment. His statements were insane and yet he
was, to the best of my knowledge, one of the most level-headed men I had
ever met.
I told him that I could not believe he took his dreams to be reality.
He chuckled as if he knew the magnitude of my untenable position, then he
stood up without saying a word and walked inside his house.
I sat for a long time in a state of stupor until he called me to the
back of his house. He had made some corn gruel and handed me a bowl. I asked
him about the time when one was awake. I wanted to know if he called it
anything in particular. But he did not understand or did not want to answer.
"What do you call this, what we're doing now?" I asked, meaning that
what we were doing was reality as opposed to dreams.
"I call it eating, " he said and contained his laughter.
"I call it reality, " I said. "Because our eating is actually taking
place."
"Dreaming also takes place, " he replied, giggling. "And so does
hunting, walking, laughing."
I did not persist in arguing. I could not, however, even if I stretched
myself beyond my limits, accept his premise. He seemed to be delighted with
my despair.
As soon as we had finished eating he casually stated that we were going
to go for a hike, but we were not going to roam in the desert in the manner
we had done before. "It's different this time, " he said. "From now on we're
going to places of power; you're going to learn how to make yourself
accessible to power." I again expressed my turmoil. I said I was not
qualified for that endeavor.
"Come on, you're indulging in silly fears, " he said in a low voice,
patting me on the back and smiling benevolently. "I've been catering to your
hunter's spirit. You like to roam with me in this beautiful desert. It's too
late for you to quit."
He began to walk into the desert chaparral. He signaled me with his
head to follow him. I could have walked to my car and left, except that I
liked to roam in that beautiful desert with him. I liked the sensation,
which I experienced only in his company, that this was indeed an awesome,
mysterious, yet beautiful world. As he said, I was hooked.
Don Juan led me to the hills towards the east. It was a long hike. It
was a hot day; the heat, however, which ordinarily would have been
unbearable to me, was somehow unnoticeable. We walked for quite a distance
into a canyon until don Juan came to a halt and sat down in the shade of
some boulders. I took some crackers out of my knapsack but he told me not to
bother with them.
He said that I should sit in a prominent place. He pointed to a single
almost round boulder ten or fifteen feet away and helped me climb to the
top. I thought he was also going to sit there, but instead he just climbed
part of the way in order to hand me some pieces of dry meat. He told me with
a deadly serious expression that it was power meat and should be chewed very
slowly and should not be mixed with any other food. He then walked back to
the shaded area and sat down with his back against a rock. He seemed
relaxed, almost sleepy. He remained in the same position until I had
finished eating. Then he sat up straight and tilted his head to the right.
He seemed to be listening attentively. He glanced at me two or three
times, stood up abruptly, and began to scan the surroundings with his eyes,
the way a hunter would do. I automatically froze on the spot and only moved
my eyes in order to follow his movements. Very carefully he stepped behind
some rocks, as if he were expecting game to come into the area where we
were. I realized then that we were in a round covelike bend in the dry water
canyon, surrounded by sandstone boulders.
Don Juan suddenly came out from behind the rocks and smiled at me. He
stretched his arms, yawned, and walked towards the boulder where I was. I
relaxed my tense position and sat down.
"What happened?" I asked in a whisper.
He answered me, yelling, that there was nothing around there to worry
about.
I felt an immediate jolt in my stomach. His answer was inappropriate
and it was inconceivable to me that he would yell, unless he had a specific
reason for it. I began to slide down from the boulder, but he yelled that I
should stay there a while longer. "What are you doing?" I asked.
He sat down and concealed himself between two rocks at the base of the
boulder where I was, and then he said in a very loud voice that he had only
been looking around because he thought he had heard something.
I asked if he had heard a large animal. He put his hand to his ear and
yelled that he was unable to hear me and that I should shout my words. I
felt ill at ease yelling, but he urged me in a loud voice to speak up. I
shouted that I wanted to know what was going on, and he shouted back that
there was really nothing around there. He yelled, asking if I could see
anything unusual from the top of the boulder. I said no, and he asked me to
describe to him the terrain towards the south.
We shouted back and forth for a while and then he signaled me to come
down. I joined him and he whispered in my ear that the yelling was necessary
to make our presence known, because I had to make myself accessible to the
power of that specific water hole.
I looked around but could not see the water hole. He pointed that we
were standing on it. "There's water here, " he said in a whisper, "and also
power. There's a spirit here and we have to lure it out; perhaps it will
come after you."
I wanted to know more about the alleged spirit, but he insisted on
total silence. He advised me to stay perfectly still and not let out a
whisper or make the slightest movement to betray our presence.
Apparently it was easy for him to remain in complete immobility for
hours; for me, however, it was sheer torture. My legs fell asleep, my back
ached, and tension built up around my neck and shoulders. My entire body
became numb and cold. I was in great discomfort when don Juan finally stood
up. He just sprung to his feet and extended his hand to me to help me stand
up.
As I was trying to stretch my legs I realized the inconceivable
easiness with which don Juan had jumped up after hours of immobility. It
took quite some time for my muscles to regain the elasticity needed for
walking.
Don Juan headed back for the house. He walked extremely slowly. He set
up a length of three paces as the distance I should observe in following
him. He meandered around the regular route and crossed it four or five times
in different directions; when we finally arrived at his house it was late
afternoon.
I tried to question him about the events of the day. He explained that
talking was unnecessary. For the time being, I had to refrain from asking
questions until we were in a place of power. I was dying to know what he
meant by that and tried to whisper a question, but he reminded me, with a
cold severe look, that he meant business.
We sat on his porch for hours. I worked on my notes. From time to time
he handed me a piece of dry meat; finally it was too dark to write. I tried
to think about the new developments, but some part of myself refused to and
I fell asleep.
Saturday, August 19, 1961
Yesterday morning don Juan and I drove to town and ate breakfast at a
restaurant. He advised me not to change my eating habits too drastically.
"Your body is not used to power meat, " he said. "You'd get sick if you
didn't eat your food." He himself ate heartily. When I joked about it he
simply said, "My body likes everything."
Around noon we hiked back to the water canyon. We proceeded to make
ourselves noticeable to the spirit by "noisy talk" and by a forced silence
which lasted hours. When we left the place, instead of heading back to the
house, don Juan took off in the direction of the mountains. We reached some
mild slopes first and then we climbed to the top of some high hills. There,
don Juan picked out a spot to rest in the open unshaded area. He told me
that we had to wait until dusk , and that I should conduct myself in the
most natural fashion, which included asking all the questions I wanted.
"I know that the spirit is out there lurking, " he said in a very low
voice.
"Where?"
"Out there, in the bushes."
"What kind of spirit is it?"
He looked at me with a quizzical expression and retorted,
"How many kinds are there?"
We both laughed. I was asking questions out of nervousness.
"It'll come out at dusk, " he said. "We just have to wait." I remained
quiet. I had run out of questions.
"This is the time when we must keep on talking, " he said. "The human
voice attracts spirits. There's one lurking out there now. We are making
ourselves available to it, so keep on talking."
I experienced an idiotic sense of vacuity. I could not think of
anything to say. He laughed and patted me on the back.
"You're truly a pill, " he said. "When you have to talk, you lose your
tongue. Come on, beat your gums."
He made a hilarious gesture of beating his gums together, opening and
closing his mouth with great speed.
"There are certain things we will talk about from now on only at places
of power, " he went on. "I have brought you here, because this is your first
trial. This is a place of power, and here we can talk only about power."
"I really don't know what power is, " I said.
"Power is something a warrior deals with, " he said. "At first it's an
incredible, far-fetched affair; it is hard to even think about it. This is
what's happening to you now. Then power becomes a serious matter; one may
not have it, or one may not even fully realize that it exists, yet one knows
that something is there, something which was not noticeable before. Next
power is manifested as something uncontrollable that comes to oneself. It is
not possible for me to say how it comes or what it really is. It is nothing
and yet it makes marvels appear before your very eyes. And finally power is
something in oneself, something that controls one's acts and yet obeys one's
command."
There was a short pause. Don Juan asked me if I had understood. I felt
ludicrous saying I did. He seemed to have noticed my dismay and chuckled.
"I am going to teach you right here the first step to power, " he said
as if he were dictating a letter to me. "I am going to teach you how to set
up dreaming."
He looked at me and again asked me if I knew what he meant. I did not.
I was hardly following him at all. He explained that to "set up dreaming"
meant to have a concise and pragmatic control over the general situation of
a dream, comparable to the control one has over any choice in the desert,
such as climbing up a hill or remaining in the shade of a water canyon.
"You must start by doing something very simple, " he said.
"Tonight in your dreams you must look at your hands." I laughed out
loud. His tone was so factual that it was as if he were telling me to do
something commonplace.
"Why do you laugh?" he asked with surprise.
"How can I look at my hands in my dreams?"
"Very simple, focus your eyes on them just like this." He bent his head
forward and stared at his hands with his mouth open. His gesture was so
comical that I had to laugh.
"Seriously, how can you expect me to do that?" I asked.
"The way I've told you, " he snapped. "You can, of course, look at
whatever you goddamn please-your toes, or your belly, or your pecker, for
that matter. I said your hands because that was the easiest thing for me to
look at. Don't think it's a joke. Dreaming is as serious as seeing or dying
or any other thing in this awesome, mysterious world.
"Think about it as something entertaining. Imagine all the
inconceivable things you could accomplish. A man hunting for power has
almost no limits in his dreaming."
I asked him to give me some pointers.
"There aren't any pointers, " he said. "Just look at your hands."
"There must be more that you could tell me, " I insisted.
He shook his head and squinted his eyes, staring at me in short
glances.
"Every one of us is different, " he finally said. "What you call
pointers would only be what I myself did when I was learning. We are not the
same; we aren't even vaguely alike."
"Maybe anything you'd say would help me."
"It would be simpler for you just to start looking at your hands."
He seemed to be organizing his thoughts and bobbed his head up and
down.
"Every time you look at anything in your dreams it changes shape, " he
said after a long silence. "The trick in learning to set up dreaming is
obviously not just to look at things but to sustain the sight of them.
Dreaming is real when one has succeeded in bringing everything into focus.
Then there is no difference between what you do when you sleep and what you
do when you are not sleeping. Do you see what I mean?"
I confessed that although I understood what he had said I was incapable
of accepting his premise. I brought up the point that in a civilized world
there were scores of people who had delusions and could not distinguish what
took place in the real world from what took place in their fantasies. I said
that such persons were undoubtedly mentally ill, and my uneasiness increased
every time he would recommend I should act like a crazy man.
After my long explanation don Juan made a comical gesture of despair by
putting his hands to his cheeks and sighing loudly. "Leave your civilized
world alone, " he said. "Let it be! Nobody is asking you to behave like a
madman. I've already told you, a warrior has to be perfect in order to deal
with the powers he hunts; how can you conceive that a warrior would not be
able to tell things apart?
"On the other hand, you, my friend, who know what the real world is,
would fumble and die in no time at all if you would have to depend on your
ability for telling what is real and what is not."
I obviously had not expressed what I really had in mind. Every time I
protested I was simply voicing the unbearable frustration of being in an
untenable position.
"I am not trying to make you into a sick, crazy man, " don Juan went
on. "You can do that yourself without my help.
But the forces that guide us brought you to me, and I have been
endeavoring to teach you to change your stupid ways and live the strong
clean life of a hunter. Then the forces guided you again and told me that
you should learn to live the impeccable life of a warrior. Apparently you
can't. But who can tell? We are as mysterious and as awesome as this
unfathomable world, so who can tell what you're capable of?"
There was an underlying tone of sadness in don Juan's voice. I wanted
to apologize, but he began to talk again.
"You don't have to look at your hands, " he said. "Like I've said, pick
anything at all. But pick one thing in advance and find it in your dreams. I
said your hands because they'll always be there.
"When they begin to change shape you must move your sight away from
them and pick something else, and then look at your hands again. It takes a
long time to perfect this technique."
I had become so involved in writing that I had not noticed that it was
getting dark. The sun had already disappeared over the horizon. The sky was
cloudy and the twilight was imminent. Don Juan stood up and gave furtive
glances towards the south.
"Let's go, " he said. "We must walk south until the spirit of the water
hole shows itself."
We walked for perhaps half an hour. The terrain changed abruptly and we
came to a barren area. There was a large round hill where the chaparral had
burnt. It looked like a bald head. We walked towards it. I thought that don
Juan was going to climb the mild slope, but he stopped instead and remained
in a very attentive position. His body seemed to have tensed as a single
unit and shivered for an instant. Then he relaxed again and stood limply. I
could not figure out how his body could remain erect while his muscles were
so relaxed.
At that moment a very strong gust of wind jolted me. Don Juan's body
turned in the direction of the wind, towards the west. He did not use his
muscles to turn, or at least he did not use them the way I would use mine to
turn. Don Juan's body seemed rather to have been pulled from the outside. It
was as if someone else had arranged his body to face a new direction.
I kept on staring at him. He looked at me from the corner of his eye.
The expression on his face was one of determination, purpose. All of his
being was attentive, and I stared at him in wonder. I had never been in any
situation that called for such a strange concentration.
Suddenly his body shivered as though he had been splashed by a sudden
shower of cold water. He had another jolt and then he started to walk as if
nothing had happened.
I followed him. We flanked the naked hills on the east side until we
were at the middle part of it; he stopped there, turning to face the west.
From where we stood, the top of the hill was not so round and smooth as
it had seemed to be from the distance. There was a cave, or a hole, near the
top. I looked at it fixedly because don Juan was doing the same. Another
strong gust of wind sent a chill up my spine. Don Juan turned towards the
south and scanned the area with his eyes.
"There!" he said in a whisper and pointed to an object on the ground.
I strained my eyes to see. There was something on the ground, perhaps
twenty feet away. It was light brown and as I looked at it, it shivered. I
focused all my attention on it.
The object was almost round and seemed to be curled; in fact, it looked
like a curled up dog.
"What is it?" I whispered to don Juan.
"I don't know, " he whispered back as he peered at the object. "What
does it look like to you?"
I told him that it seemed to be a dog.
"Too large for a dog, " he said matter-of-factly.
I took a couple of steps towards it, but don Juan stopped me gently. I
stared at it again. It was definitely some animal that was either asleep or
dead. I could almost see its head; its ears protruded like the ears of a
wolf. By then I was definitely sure that it was a curled-up animal. I
thought that it could have been a brown calf. I whispered that to don Juan.
He answered that it was too compact to be a calf, besides its ears were
pointed.
The animal shivered again and then I noticed that it was alive. I could
actually see that it was breathing, yet it did not seem to breathe
rhythmically. The breaths that it took were more like irregular shivers. I
had a sudden realization at that moment.
"It's an animal that is dying, " I whispered to don Juan.
"You're right, " he whispered back. "But what kind of an animal?"
I could not make out its specific features. Don Juan took a couple of
cautious steps towards it. I followed him. It was quite dark by then and we
had to take two more steps in order to keep the animal in view.
"Watch out, " don Juan whispered in my ear. "If it is a dying animal it
may leap on us with its last strength."
The animal, whatever it was, seemed to be on its last legs; its
breathing was irregular, its body shook spasmodically, but it did not change
its curled-up position. At a given moment, however, a tremendous spasm
actually lifted the animal off the ground. I heard an inhuman shriek and the
animal stretched its legs; its claws were more than frightening, they were
nauseating. The animal tumbled on its side after stretching its legs and
then rolled on its back. I heard a formidable growl and don Juan's voice
shouting,
"Run for your life!"
And that was exactly what I did. I scrambled towards the top of the
hill with unbelievable speed and agility. When I was halfway to the top I
looked back and saw don Juan standing in the same place. He signaled me to
come down. I ran down the hill.
"What happened?" I asked, completely out of breath.
"I think the animal is dead, " he said.
We advanced cautiously towards the animal. It was sprawled on its back.
As I came closer to it I nearly yelled with fright. I realized that it was
not quite dead yet. Its body was still trembling. Its legs, which were
sticking up in the air, shook wildly. The animal was definitely in its last
gasps. I walked in front of don Juan. A new jolt moved the animal's body and
I could see its head. I turned to don Juan, horrified. Judging by its body
the animal was obviously a mammal, yet it had a beak, like a bird.
I stared at it in complete and absolute horror. My mind refused to
believe it. I was dumbfounded. I could not even articulate a word. Never in
my whole existence had I witnessed anything of that nature. Something
inconceivable was there in front of my very eyes. I wanted don Juan to
explain that incredible animal but I could only mumble to him. He was
staring at me. I glanced at him and glanced at the animal, and then
something in me arranged the world and I knew at once what the animal was. I
walked over to it and picked it up. It was a large branch of a bush. It had
been burnt, and possibly the wind had blown some burnt debris which got
caught in the dry branch and thus gave the appearance of a large bulging
round animal. The color of the burnt debris made it look light brown in
contrast with the green vegetation.
I laughed at my idiocy and excitedly explained to don Juan that the
wind blowing through it had made it look like a live animal. I thought he
would be pleased with the way I had resolved the mystery, but he turned
around and began walking to the top of the hill. I followed him. He crawled
inside the depression that looked like a cave. It was not a hole but a
shallow dent in the sandstone.
Don Juan took some small branches and used them to scoop up the dirt
that had accumulated in the bottom of the depression.
"We have to get rid of the ticks, " he said. He signaled me to sit down
and told me to make myself comfortable because we were going to spend the
night there. I began to talk about the branch, but he hushed me up.
"What you've done is no triumph, " he said. "You've wasted a beautiful
power, a power that blew life into that dry twig." He said that a real
triumph would have been for me to let go and follow the power until the
world had ceased to exist.
He did not seem to be angry with me or disappointed with my
performance. He repeatedly stated that this was only the beginning, that it
took time to handle power. He patted me on the shoulder and joked that
earlier that day I was the person who knew what was real and what was not.
I felt embarrassed. I began to apologize for my tendency of always
being so sure of my ways.
"It doesn't matter, " he said. "That branch was a real animal and it
was alive at the moment the power touched it. Since what kept it alive was
power, the trick was, like in dreaming, to sustain the sight of it. See what
I mean?"
I wanted to ask something else, but he hushed me up and said that I
should remain completely silent but awake all night and that he alone was
going to talk for a while.
He said that the spirit, which knew his voice, might become subdued
with the sound of it and leave us alone. He explained that the idea of
making oneself accessible to power had serious overtones. Power was a
devastating force that could easily lead to one's death and had to be
treated with great care. Becoming available to power had to be done
systematically, but always with great caution.
It involved making one's presence obvious by a contained display of
loud talk or any other type of noisy activity, and then it was mandatory to
observe a prolonged and total silence. A controlled outburst and a
controlled quietness were the mark of a warrior. He said that properly I
should have sustained the sight of the live monster for a while longer. In a
controlled fashion, without losing my mind or becoming deranged with
excitation or fear, I should have striven to "stop the world." He pointed
out that after I had run up the hill for dear life I was in a perfect state
for "stopping the world."
Combined in that state were fear, awe, power and death; he said that
such a state would be pretty hard to repeat.
I whispered in his ear, "What do you mean by 'stopping the world'?"
He gave me a ferocious look before he answered that it was a technique
practiced by those who were hunting for power, a technique by virtue of
which the world as we know it was made to collapse.
THE MOOD OF A WARRIOR
I drove up to don Juan's house on Thursday, August 31, 1961, and before
I even had a chance to greet him he stuck his head through the window of my
car, smiled at me, and said, "We must drive quite a distance to a place of
power and it's almost noon."
He opened the door of my car, sat down next to me in the front seat,
and directed me to drive south for about seventy miles; we then turned east
onto a dirt road and followed it until we had reached the slopes of the
mountains. I parked my car off the road in a depression don Juan picked
because it was deep enough to hide the car from view. From there we went
directly to the top of the low hills, crossing a vast flat desolate area.
When it got dark don Juan selected a place to sleep. He demanded
complete silence.
The next day we ate frugally and continued our journey in an easterly
direction. The vegetation was no longer desert shrubbery but thick green
mountain bushes and trees. Around mid-afternoon we climbed to the top of a
gigantic bluff of conglomerate rock which looked like a wall. Don Juan sat
down and signaled me to sit down also. "This is a place of power, " he said
after a moment's pause.
"This is the place where warriors were buried a long time ago."
At that instant a crow flew right above us, cawing. Don Juan followed
its flight with a fixed gaze.
I examined the rock and was wondering how and where the warriors had
been buried when he tapped me on the shoulder.
"Not here, you fool, " he said, smiling. "Down there."
He pointed to the field right below us at the bottom of the bluff,
towards the east; he explained that the field in question was surrounded by
a natural corral of boulders. From where I was sitting I saw an area which
was perhaps a hundred yards in diameter and which looked like a perfect
circle.
Thick bushes covered its surface, camouflaging the boulders. I would
not have noticed its perfect roundness if don Juan had not pointed it out to
me. He said that there were scores of such places scattered in the old world
of the Indians. They were not exactly places of power, like certain hills or
land formations which were the abode of spirits, but rather places of
enlightenment where one could be taught, where one could find solutions to
dilemmas.
"All you have to do is come here, " he said. "Or spend the night on
this rock in order to rearrange your feelings."
"Are we going to spend the night here?"
"I thought so, but a little crow just told me not to do that." I tried
to find out more about the crow but he hushed me up with an impatient
movement of his hand.
"Look at that circle of boulders, " he said. "Fix it in your memory and
then someday a crow will lead you to another one of these places. The more
perfect its roundness is, the greater its power."
"Are the warriors' bones still buried here?" Don Juan made a comical
gesture of puzzlement and then smiled broadly.
"This is not a cemetery, " he said. "Nobody is buried here.
I said warriors were once buried here. I meant they used to come here
to bury themselves for a night, or for two days, or for whatever length of
time they needed to. I did not mean dead people's bones are buried here. I'm
not concerned with cemeteries. There is no power in them. There is power in
the bones of a warrior, though, but they are never in cemeteries.
And there is even more power in the bones of a man of knowledge, yet it
would be practically impossible to find them."
"Who is a man of knowledge, don Juan?"
"Any warrior could become a man of knowledge. As I told you, a warrior
is an impeccable hunter that hunts power. If he succeeds in his hunting he
can be a man of knowledge."
"What do you . . ."
He stopped my question with a movement of his hand. He stood up,
signaled me to follow, and began descending on the steep east side of the
bluff. There was a definite trail in the almost perpendicular face, leading
to the round area.
We slowly worked our way down the perilous path, and when we reached
the bottom floor don Juan, without stopping at all, led me through the thick
chaparral to the middle of the circle. There he used some thick dry branches
to sweep a clean spot for us to sit. The spot was also perfectly round.
"I intended to bury you here all night, " he said. "But I know now that
it is not time yet. You don't have power. I'm going to bury you only for a
short while."
I became very nervous with the idea of being enclosed and asked how he
was planning to bury me. He giggled like a child and began collecting dry
branches. He did not let me help him and said I should sit down and wait.
He threw the branches he was collecting inside the clean circle. Then
he made me lie down with my head towards the east, put my jacket under my
head, and made a cage around my body. He constructed it by sticking pieces
of branches about two and a half feet in length in the soft dirt; the
branches, which ended in forks, served as supports for some long sticks that
gave the cage a frame and the appearance of an open coffin. He closed the
box like cage by placing small branches and leaves over the long sticks,
encasing me from the shoulders down. He let my head stick out with my jacket
as a pillow.
He then took a thick piece of dry wood and, using it as a digging
stick, he loosened the dirt around me and covered the cage with it. The
frame was so solid and the leaves were so well placed that no dirt came
inside. I could move my legs freely and could actually slide in and out.
Don Juan said that ordinarily a warrior would construct the cage and
then slip into it and seal it from the inside. "How about the animals?" I
asked. "Can they scratch the surface dirt and sneak into the cage and hurt
the man?"
"No, that's not a worry for a warrior. It's a worry for you because you
have no power. A warrior, on the other hand, is guided by his unbending
purpose and can fend off anything. No rat, or snake, or mountain lion could
bother him."
"What do they bury themselves for, don Juan?"
"For enlightenment and for power."
I experienced an extremely pleasant feeling of peace and satisfaction;
the world at that moment seemed at ease. The quietness was exquisite and at
the same time unnerving. I was not accustomed to that kind of silence. I
tried to talk but he hushed me. After a while the tranquility of the place
affected my mood. I began to think of my life and my personal history and
experienced a familiar sensation of sadness and remorse. I told him that I
did not deserve to be there, that his world was strong and fair and I was
weak, and that my spirit had been distorted by the circumstances of my life.
He laughed and threatened to cover my head with dirt if I kept on
talking in that vein. He said that I was a man. And like any man I deserved
everything that was a man's-lot-joy, pain, sadness and struggle-and that the
nature of one's acts was unimportant as long as one acted as a warrior.
Lowering his voice to almost a whisper, he said that if I really felt
that my spirit was distorted I should simply fix it purge it, make it
perfect-because there was no other task in our entire lives which was more
worthwhile. Not to fix the spirit was to seek death, and that was the same
as to seek nothing, since death was going to overtake us regardless of
anything.
He paused for a long time and then he said with a tone of profound
conviction, "To seek the perfection of the warrior's spirit is the only task
worthy of our manhood."
His words acted as a catalyst. I felt the weight of my past actions as
an unbearable and hindering load. I admitted that there was no hope for me.
I began to weep, talking about my life. I said that I had been roaming for
such a long time that I had become callous to pain and sadness, except on
certain occasions when I would realize my aloneness and my helplessness.
He did not say anything. He grabbed me by the armpits and pulled me out
of the cage. I sat up when he let go of me. He also sat down. An uneasy
silence set in between us. I thought he was giving me time to compose
myself. I took my notebook and scribbled out of nervousness.
"You feel like a leaf at the mercy of the wind, don't you?" he finally
said, staring at me.
That was exactly the way I felt. He seemed to empathize with me. He
said that my mood reminded him of a song and began to sing in a low tone;
his singing voice was very pleasing and the lyrics carried me away: "I'm so
far away from the sky where I was born. Immense nostalgia invades my
thoughts. Now that I am so alone and sad like a leaf in the wind, sometimes
I want to weep, sometimes I want to laugh with longing." (Que lejos estoy
del cielo donde he nacido. Inmensa nostalgia invade mi pensamiento. Ahora
que estoy tan solo y triste cual hoja al viento, quisiera llorar, quisiera
reir de sentimiento.)
We did not speak for a long while. He finally broke the silence.
"Since the day you were born, one way or another, someone has been
doing something to you, " he said.
"That's correct, " I said.
"And they have been doing something to you against your will."
"True."
"And by now you're helpless, like a leaf in the wind."
"That's correct. That's the way it is."
I said that the circumstances of my life had sometimes been
devastating. He listened attentively but I could not figure out whether he
was just being agreeable or genuinely concerned until I noticed that he was
trying to hide a smile.
"No matter how much you like to feel sorry for yourself, you have to
change that, " he said in a soft tone. "It doesn't jibe with the life of a
warrior."
He laughed and sang the song again but contorted the intonation of
certain words; the result was a ludicrous lament. He pointed out that the
reason I had liked the song was because in my own life I had done nothing
else but find flaws with everything and lament. I could not argue with him.
He was correct. Yet I believed I had sufficient reasons to justify my
feeling of being like a leaf in the "wind.
"The hardest thing in the world is to assume the mood of a warrior, "
he said. "It is of no use to be sad and complain and feel justified in doing
so, believing that someone is always doing something to us. Nobody is doing
anything to anybody, much less to a warrior.
"You are here, with me, because you want to be here. You should have
assumed full responsibility by now, so the idea that you are at the mercy of
the wind would be inadmissible."
He stood up and began to disassemble the cage. He scooped the dirt back
to where he had gotten it from and carefully scattered all the sticks in the
chaparral. Then he covered the clean circle with debris, leaving the area as
if nothing had ever touched it.
I commented on his proficiency. He said that a good hunter would know
that we had been there no matter how careful he had been, because the tracks
of men could not be completely erased.
He sat cross-legged and told me to sit down as comfortably as possible,
facing the spot where he had buried me, and stay put until my mood of
sadness had dissipated.
"A warrior buries himself in order to find power, not to weep with
self-pity, " he said.
I attempted to explain but he made me stop with an impatient movement
of his head. He said that he had to pull me out of the cage in a hurry
because my mood was intolerable and he was afraid that the place would
resent my softness and injure me.
"Self-pity doesn't jibe with power, " he said. "The mood of a warrior
calls for control over himself and at the same time it calls for abandoning
himself."
"How can that be?" I asked. "How can he control and abandon himself at
the same time?"
"It is a difficult technique, " he said.
He seemed to deliberate whether or not to continue talking.
Twice he was on the verge of saying something but he checked himself
and smiled.
"You're not over your sadness yet, " he said. "You still feel weak and
there is no point in talking about the mood of a warrior now."
Almost an hour went by in complete silence. Then he abruptly asked me
if I had succeeded in learning the "dreaming" techniques he had taught me. I
had been practicing assiduously and had been able, after a monumental
effort, to obtain a degree of control over my dreams. Don Juan was very
right in saying that one could interpret the exercises as being
entertainment. For the first time in my life I had been looking forward to
going to sleep.
I gave him a detailed report of my progress. It had been relatively
easy for me to learn to sustain the image of my hands after I had learned to
command myself to look at them. My visions, although not always of my own
hands, would last a seemingly long time, until I would finally lose control
and would become immersed in ordinary unpredictable dreams. I had no
volition whatsoever over when I would give myself the command to look at my
hands, or to look at other items of the dreams. It would just happen. At a
given moment I would remember that I had to look at my hands and then at the
surroundings. There were nights, however, when I could not recall having
done it at all.
He seemed to be satisfied and wanted to know what were the usual items
I had been finding in my visions. I could not think of anything in
particular and started elaborating on a nightmarish dream I had had the
night before.
"Don't get so fancy, " he said dryly.
I told him that I had been recording all the details of my dreams.
Since I had begun to practice looking at my hands my dreams had become very
compelling and my sense of recall had increased to the point that I could
remember minute details. He said that to follow them was a waste of time,
because details and vividness were in no way important.
"Ordinary dreams get very vivid as soon as you begin to set up
dreaming" he said. "That vividness and clarity is a formidable barrier and
you are worse off than anyone I have ever met in my life. You have the worst
mania. You write down everything you can."
In all fairness, I believed what I was doing was appropriate. Keeping a
meticulous record of my dreams was giving me a degree of clarity about the
nature of the visions I had while sleeping.
"Put your coat on over the knapsack," he said. "It is better that
people think you're a hunchback than to ruin your body carrying all this
around." He urged me to get out my notebook and write. He seemed to be
making a deliberate effort to put me at ease. I complained again about the
feeling of physical discomfort and the strange sense of unhappiness I was
experiencing. Don Juan laughed and said, "You're beginning to learn."
We then had a long conversation. He said that Mescalito, by allowing me
to play with him, had pointed me out as a "chosen man" and that, although he
was baffled by the omen because I was not an Indian, he was going to pass on
to me some secret knowledge. He said that he had had a "benefactor" himself,
who taught him how to become a "man of knowledge."
I sensed that something dreadful was about to happen. The revelation
that I was his chosen man, plus the unquestionable strangeness of his ways
and the devastating effect that peyote had had on me, created a state of
unbearable apprehension and indecision. But don Juan disregarded my feelings
and recommended that I should only think of the wonder of Mescalito playing
with me.
"Think about nothing else, " he said. "The rest will come to you of
itself."
He stood up and patted me gently on the head and said in a very soft
voice, "I am going to teach you how to become a warrior in the same manner I
have taught you how to hunt. I must warn you, though, learning how to hunt
has not made you into a hunter, nor would learning how to become a warrior
make you one."
I experienced a sense of frustration, a physical discomfort that
bordered on anguish. I complained about the vivid dreams and nightmares I
was having. He seemed to deliberate for a moment and sat down again.
"They're weird dreams, " I said.
"You've always had weird dreams, " he retorted.
"I'm telling you, this time they are truly more weird than anything
I've ever had."
"Don't concern yourself. They are only dreams. Like the dreams of any
ordinary dreamer, they don't have power. So what's the use of worrying about
them or talking about them?"
"They bother me, don Juan. Isn't there something I can do to stop
them?"
"Nothing. Let them pass, " he said. "Now it's time for you to become
accessible to power, and you are going to begin by tackling dreaming."
The tone of voice he used when he said "dreaming" made me think that he
was using the word in a very particular fashion. I was pondering about a
proper question to ask when he began to talk again.
"I've never told you about dreaming, because until now I was only
concerned with teaching you how to be a hunter, " he said. "A hunter is not
concerned with the manipulation of power, therefore his dreams are only
dreams. They might be poignant but they are not dreaming.
"A warrior, on the other hand, seeks power, and one of the avenues to
power is dreaming. You may say that the difference between a hunter and a
warrior is that a warrior is on his
way to power, while a hunter knows nothing or very little about it.
"The decision as to who can be a warrior and who can only be a hunter
is not up to us. That decision is in the realm of the powers that guide men.
That's why your playing with Mescalito was such an important omen. Those
forces guided you to me; they took you to that bus depot, remember? Some
clown brought you to me. A perfect omen, a clown pointing you out. So, I
taught you how to be a hunter. And then the other perfect omen, Mescalito
himself playing with you. See what I mean?"
His weird logic was overwhelming. His words created visions of myself
succumbing to something awesome and unknown, something which I had not
bargained for, and which I had not conceived existed, even in my wildest
fantasies.
"What do you propose I should do?" I asked.
"Become accessible to power; tackle your dreams, " he replied. "You
call them dreams because you have no power. A warrior, being a man who seeks
power, doesn't call them dreams, he calls them real."
"You mean he takes his dreams as being reality?"
"He doesn't take anything as being anything else. What you call dreams
are real for a warrior. You must understand that a warrior is not a fool. A
warrior is an immaculate hunter who hunts power; he's not drunk, or crazed,
and he has neither the time nor the disposition to bluff, or to lie to
himself, or to make a wrong move. The stakes are too high for that. The
stakes are his trimmed orderly life which he has taken so long to tighten
and perfect. He is not going to throw that away by making some stupid
miscalculation, by taking something for being something else.
"Dreaming is real for a warrior because in it he can act deliberately,
he can choose and reject, he can select from a variety of items those which
lead to power, and then he can manipulate them and use them, while in an
ordinary dream he cannot act deliberately." "Do you mean then, don Juan,
that dreaming is real?"
"Of course it is real."
"As real as what we are doing now?"
"If you want to compare things, I can say that it is perhaps more real.
In dreaming you have power; you can change things; you may find out
countless concealed facts; you can control whatever you want."
Don Juan's premises always had appealed to me at a certain level. I
could easily understand his liking the idea that one could do anything in
dreams, but I could not take him seriously. The jump was too great. We
looked at each other for a moment. His statements were insane and yet he
was, to the best of my knowledge, one of the most level-headed men I had
ever met.
I told him that I could not believe he took his dreams to be reality.
He chuckled as if he knew the magnitude of my untenable position, then he
stood up without saying a word and walked inside his house.
I sat for a long time in a state of stupor until he called me to the
back of his house. He had made some corn gruel and handed me a bowl. I asked
him about the time when one was awake. I wanted to know if he called it
anything in particular. But he did not understand or did not want to answer.
"What do you call this, what we're doing now?" I asked, meaning that
what we were doing was reality as opposed to dreams.
"I call it eating, " he said and contained his laughter.
"I call it reality, " I said. "Because our eating is actually taking
place."
"Dreaming also takes place, " he replied, giggling. "And so does
hunting, walking, laughing."
I did not persist in arguing. I could not, however, even if I stretched
myself beyond my limits, accept his premise. He seemed to be delighted with
my despair.
As soon as we had finished eating he casually stated that we were going
to go for a hike, but we were not going to roam in the desert in the manner
we had done before. "It's different this time, " he said. "From now on we're
going to places of power; you're going to learn how to make yourself
accessible to power." I again expressed my turmoil. I said I was not
qualified for that endeavor.
"Come on, you're indulging in silly fears, " he said in a low voice,
patting me on the back and smiling benevolently. "I've been catering to your
hunter's spirit. You like to roam with me in this beautiful desert. It's too
late for you to quit."
He began to walk into the desert chaparral. He signaled me with his
head to follow him. I could have walked to my car and left, except that I
liked to roam in that beautiful desert with him. I liked the sensation,
which I experienced only in his company, that this was indeed an awesome,
mysterious, yet beautiful world. As he said, I was hooked.
Don Juan led me to the hills towards the east. It was a long hike. It
was a hot day; the heat, however, which ordinarily would have been
unbearable to me, was somehow unnoticeable. We walked for quite a distance
into a canyon until don Juan came to a halt and sat down in the shade of
some boulders. I took some crackers out of my knapsack but he told me not to
bother with them.
He said that I should sit in a prominent place. He pointed to a single
almost round boulder ten or fifteen feet away and helped me climb to the
top. I thought he was also going to sit there, but instead he just climbed
part of the way in order to hand me some pieces of dry meat. He told me with
a deadly serious expression that it was power meat and should be chewed very
slowly and should not be mixed with any other food. He then walked back to
the shaded area and sat down with his back against a rock. He seemed
relaxed, almost sleepy. He remained in the same position until I had
finished eating. Then he sat up straight and tilted his head to the right.
He seemed to be listening attentively. He glanced at me two or three
times, stood up abruptly, and began to scan the surroundings with his eyes,
the way a hunter would do. I automatically froze on the spot and only moved
my eyes in order to follow his movements. Very carefully he stepped behind
some rocks, as if he were expecting game to come into the area where we
were. I realized then that we were in a round covelike bend in the dry water
canyon, surrounded by sandstone boulders.
Don Juan suddenly came out from behind the rocks and smiled at me. He
stretched his arms, yawned, and walked towards the boulder where I was. I
relaxed my tense position and sat down.
"What happened?" I asked in a whisper.
He answered me, yelling, that there was nothing around there to worry
about.
I felt an immediate jolt in my stomach. His answer was inappropriate
and it was inconceivable to me that he would yell, unless he had a specific
reason for it. I began to slide down from the boulder, but he yelled that I
should stay there a while longer. "What are you doing?" I asked.
He sat down and concealed himself between two rocks at the base of the
boulder where I was, and then he said in a very loud voice that he had only
been looking around because he thought he had heard something.
I asked if he had heard a large animal. He put his hand to his ear and
yelled that he was unable to hear me and that I should shout my words. I
felt ill at ease yelling, but he urged me in a loud voice to speak up. I
shouted that I wanted to know what was going on, and he shouted back that
there was really nothing around there. He yelled, asking if I could see
anything unusual from the top of the boulder. I said no, and he asked me to
describe to him the terrain towards the south.
We shouted back and forth for a while and then he signaled me to come
down. I joined him and he whispered in my ear that the yelling was necessary
to make our presence known, because I had to make myself accessible to the
power of that specific water hole.
I looked around but could not see the water hole. He pointed that we
were standing on it. "There's water here, " he said in a whisper, "and also
power. There's a spirit here and we have to lure it out; perhaps it will
come after you."
I wanted to know more about the alleged spirit, but he insisted on
total silence. He advised me to stay perfectly still and not let out a
whisper or make the slightest movement to betray our presence.
Apparently it was easy for him to remain in complete immobility for
hours; for me, however, it was sheer torture. My legs fell asleep, my back
ached, and tension built up around my neck and shoulders. My entire body
became numb and cold. I was in great discomfort when don Juan finally stood
up. He just sprung to his feet and extended his hand to me to help me stand
up.
As I was trying to stretch my legs I realized the inconceivable
easiness with which don Juan had jumped up after hours of immobility. It
took quite some time for my muscles to regain the elasticity needed for
walking.
Don Juan headed back for the house. He walked extremely slowly. He set
up a length of three paces as the distance I should observe in following
him. He meandered around the regular route and crossed it four or five times
in different directions; when we finally arrived at his house it was late
afternoon.
I tried to question him about the events of the day. He explained that
talking was unnecessary. For the time being, I had to refrain from asking
questions until we were in a place of power. I was dying to know what he
meant by that and tried to whisper a question, but he reminded me, with a
cold severe look, that he meant business.
We sat on his porch for hours. I worked on my notes. From time to time
he handed me a piece of dry meat; finally it was too dark to write. I tried
to think about the new developments, but some part of myself refused to and
I fell asleep.
Saturday, August 19, 1961
Yesterday morning don Juan and I drove to town and ate breakfast at a
restaurant. He advised me not to change my eating habits too drastically.
"Your body is not used to power meat, " he said. "You'd get sick if you
didn't eat your food." He himself ate heartily. When I joked about it he
simply said, "My body likes everything."
Around noon we hiked back to the water canyon. We proceeded to make
ourselves noticeable to the spirit by "noisy talk" and by a forced silence
which lasted hours. When we left the place, instead of heading back to the
house, don Juan took off in the direction of the mountains. We reached some
mild slopes first and then we climbed to the top of some high hills. There,
don Juan picked out a spot to rest in the open unshaded area. He told me
that we had to wait until dusk , and that I should conduct myself in the
most natural fashion, which included asking all the questions I wanted.
"I know that the spirit is out there lurking, " he said in a very low
voice.
"Where?"
"Out there, in the bushes."
"What kind of spirit is it?"
He looked at me with a quizzical expression and retorted,
"How many kinds are there?"
We both laughed. I was asking questions out of nervousness.
"It'll come out at dusk, " he said. "We just have to wait." I remained
quiet. I had run out of questions.
"This is the time when we must keep on talking, " he said. "The human
voice attracts spirits. There's one lurking out there now. We are making
ourselves available to it, so keep on talking."
I experienced an idiotic sense of vacuity. I could not think of
anything to say. He laughed and patted me on the back.
"You're truly a pill, " he said. "When you have to talk, you lose your
tongue. Come on, beat your gums."
He made a hilarious gesture of beating his gums together, opening and
closing his mouth with great speed.
"There are certain things we will talk about from now on only at places
of power, " he went on. "I have brought you here, because this is your first
trial. This is a place of power, and here we can talk only about power."
"I really don't know what power is, " I said.
"Power is something a warrior deals with, " he said. "At first it's an
incredible, far-fetched affair; it is hard to even think about it. This is
what's happening to you now. Then power becomes a serious matter; one may
not have it, or one may not even fully realize that it exists, yet one knows
that something is there, something which was not noticeable before. Next
power is manifested as something uncontrollable that comes to oneself. It is
not possible for me to say how it comes or what it really is. It is nothing
and yet it makes marvels appear before your very eyes. And finally power is
something in oneself, something that controls one's acts and yet obeys one's
command."
There was a short pause. Don Juan asked me if I had understood. I felt
ludicrous saying I did. He seemed to have noticed my dismay and chuckled.
"I am going to teach you right here the first step to power, " he said
as if he were dictating a letter to me. "I am going to teach you how to set
up dreaming."
He looked at me and again asked me if I knew what he meant. I did not.
I was hardly following him at all. He explained that to "set up dreaming"
meant to have a concise and pragmatic control over the general situation of
a dream, comparable to the control one has over any choice in the desert,
such as climbing up a hill or remaining in the shade of a water canyon.
"You must start by doing something very simple, " he said.
"Tonight in your dreams you must look at your hands." I laughed out
loud. His tone was so factual that it was as if he were telling me to do
something commonplace.
"Why do you laugh?" he asked with surprise.
"How can I look at my hands in my dreams?"
"Very simple, focus your eyes on them just like this." He bent his head
forward and stared at his hands with his mouth open. His gesture was so
comical that I had to laugh.
"Seriously, how can you expect me to do that?" I asked.
"The way I've told you, " he snapped. "You can, of course, look at
whatever you goddamn please-your toes, or your belly, or your pecker, for
that matter. I said your hands because that was the easiest thing for me to
look at. Don't think it's a joke. Dreaming is as serious as seeing or dying
or any other thing in this awesome, mysterious world.
"Think about it as something entertaining. Imagine all the
inconceivable things you could accomplish. A man hunting for power has
almost no limits in his dreaming."
I asked him to give me some pointers.
"There aren't any pointers, " he said. "Just look at your hands."
"There must be more that you could tell me, " I insisted.
He shook his head and squinted his eyes, staring at me in short
glances.
"Every one of us is different, " he finally said. "What you call
pointers would only be what I myself did when I was learning. We are not the
same; we aren't even vaguely alike."
"Maybe anything you'd say would help me."
"It would be simpler for you just to start looking at your hands."
He seemed to be organizing his thoughts and bobbed his head up and
down.
"Every time you look at anything in your dreams it changes shape, " he
said after a long silence. "The trick in learning to set up dreaming is
obviously not just to look at things but to sustain the sight of them.
Dreaming is real when one has succeeded in bringing everything into focus.
Then there is no difference between what you do when you sleep and what you
do when you are not sleeping. Do you see what I mean?"
I confessed that although I understood what he had said I was incapable
of accepting his premise. I brought up the point that in a civilized world
there were scores of people who had delusions and could not distinguish what
took place in the real world from what took place in their fantasies. I said
that such persons were undoubtedly mentally ill, and my uneasiness increased
every time he would recommend I should act like a crazy man.
After my long explanation don Juan made a comical gesture of despair by
putting his hands to his cheeks and sighing loudly. "Leave your civilized
world alone, " he said. "Let it be! Nobody is asking you to behave like a
madman. I've already told you, a warrior has to be perfect in order to deal
with the powers he hunts; how can you conceive that a warrior would not be
able to tell things apart?
"On the other hand, you, my friend, who know what the real world is,
would fumble and die in no time at all if you would have to depend on your
ability for telling what is real and what is not."
I obviously had not expressed what I really had in mind. Every time I
protested I was simply voicing the unbearable frustration of being in an
untenable position.
"I am not trying to make you into a sick, crazy man, " don Juan went
on. "You can do that yourself without my help.
But the forces that guide us brought you to me, and I have been
endeavoring to teach you to change your stupid ways and live the strong
clean life of a hunter. Then the forces guided you again and told me that
you should learn to live the impeccable life of a warrior. Apparently you
can't. But who can tell? We are as mysterious and as awesome as this
unfathomable world, so who can tell what you're capable of?"
There was an underlying tone of sadness in don Juan's voice. I wanted
to apologize, but he began to talk again.
"You don't have to look at your hands, " he said. "Like I've said, pick
anything at all. But pick one thing in advance and find it in your dreams. I
said your hands because they'll always be there.
"When they begin to change shape you must move your sight away from
them and pick something else, and then look at your hands again. It takes a
long time to perfect this technique."
I had become so involved in writing that I had not noticed that it was
getting dark. The sun had already disappeared over the horizon. The sky was
cloudy and the twilight was imminent. Don Juan stood up and gave furtive
glances towards the south.
"Let's go, " he said. "We must walk south until the spirit of the water
hole shows itself."
We walked for perhaps half an hour. The terrain changed abruptly and we
came to a barren area. There was a large round hill where the chaparral had
burnt. It looked like a bald head. We walked towards it. I thought that don
Juan was going to climb the mild slope, but he stopped instead and remained
in a very attentive position. His body seemed to have tensed as a single
unit and shivered for an instant. Then he relaxed again and stood limply. I
could not figure out how his body could remain erect while his muscles were
so relaxed.
At that moment a very strong gust of wind jolted me. Don Juan's body
turned in the direction of the wind, towards the west. He did not use his
muscles to turn, or at least he did not use them the way I would use mine to
turn. Don Juan's body seemed rather to have been pulled from the outside. It
was as if someone else had arranged his body to face a new direction.
I kept on staring at him. He looked at me from the corner of his eye.
The expression on his face was one of determination, purpose. All of his
being was attentive, and I stared at him in wonder. I had never been in any
situation that called for such a strange concentration.
Suddenly his body shivered as though he had been splashed by a sudden
shower of cold water. He had another jolt and then he started to walk as if
nothing had happened.
I followed him. We flanked the naked hills on the east side until we
were at the middle part of it; he stopped there, turning to face the west.
From where we stood, the top of the hill was not so round and smooth as
it had seemed to be from the distance. There was a cave, or a hole, near the
top. I looked at it fixedly because don Juan was doing the same. Another
strong gust of wind sent a chill up my spine. Don Juan turned towards the
south and scanned the area with his eyes.
"There!" he said in a whisper and pointed to an object on the ground.
I strained my eyes to see. There was something on the ground, perhaps
twenty feet away. It was light brown and as I looked at it, it shivered. I
focused all my attention on it.
The object was almost round and seemed to be curled; in fact, it looked
like a curled up dog.
"What is it?" I whispered to don Juan.
"I don't know, " he whispered back as he peered at the object. "What
does it look like to you?"
I told him that it seemed to be a dog.
"Too large for a dog, " he said matter-of-factly.
I took a couple of steps towards it, but don Juan stopped me gently. I
stared at it again. It was definitely some animal that was either asleep or
dead. I could almost see its head; its ears protruded like the ears of a
wolf. By then I was definitely sure that it was a curled-up animal. I
thought that it could have been a brown calf. I whispered that to don Juan.
He answered that it was too compact to be a calf, besides its ears were
pointed.
The animal shivered again and then I noticed that it was alive. I could
actually see that it was breathing, yet it did not seem to breathe
rhythmically. The breaths that it took were more like irregular shivers. I
had a sudden realization at that moment.
"It's an animal that is dying, " I whispered to don Juan.
"You're right, " he whispered back. "But what kind of an animal?"
I could not make out its specific features. Don Juan took a couple of
cautious steps towards it. I followed him. It was quite dark by then and we
had to take two more steps in order to keep the animal in view.
"Watch out, " don Juan whispered in my ear. "If it is a dying animal it
may leap on us with its last strength."
The animal, whatever it was, seemed to be on its last legs; its
breathing was irregular, its body shook spasmodically, but it did not change
its curled-up position. At a given moment, however, a tremendous spasm
actually lifted the animal off the ground. I heard an inhuman shriek and the
animal stretched its legs; its claws were more than frightening, they were
nauseating. The animal tumbled on its side after stretching its legs and
then rolled on its back. I heard a formidable growl and don Juan's voice
shouting,
"Run for your life!"
And that was exactly what I did. I scrambled towards the top of the
hill with unbelievable speed and agility. When I was halfway to the top I
looked back and saw don Juan standing in the same place. He signaled me to
come down. I ran down the hill.
"What happened?" I asked, completely out of breath.
"I think the animal is dead, " he said.
We advanced cautiously towards the animal. It was sprawled on its back.
As I came closer to it I nearly yelled with fright. I realized that it was
not quite dead yet. Its body was still trembling. Its legs, which were
sticking up in the air, shook wildly. The animal was definitely in its last
gasps. I walked in front of don Juan. A new jolt moved the animal's body and
I could see its head. I turned to don Juan, horrified. Judging by its body
the animal was obviously a mammal, yet it had a beak, like a bird.
I stared at it in complete and absolute horror. My mind refused to
believe it. I was dumbfounded. I could not even articulate a word. Never in
my whole existence had I witnessed anything of that nature. Something
inconceivable was there in front of my very eyes. I wanted don Juan to
explain that incredible animal but I could only mumble to him. He was
staring at me. I glanced at him and glanced at the animal, and then
something in me arranged the world and I knew at once what the animal was. I
walked over to it and picked it up. It was a large branch of a bush. It had
been burnt, and possibly the wind had blown some burnt debris which got
caught in the dry branch and thus gave the appearance of a large bulging
round animal. The color of the burnt debris made it look light brown in
contrast with the green vegetation.
I laughed at my idiocy and excitedly explained to don Juan that the
wind blowing through it had made it look like a live animal. I thought he
would be pleased with the way I had resolved the mystery, but he turned
around and began walking to the top of the hill. I followed him. He crawled
inside the depression that looked like a cave. It was not a hole but a
shallow dent in the sandstone.
Don Juan took some small branches and used them to scoop up the dirt
that had accumulated in the bottom of the depression.
"We have to get rid of the ticks, " he said. He signaled me to sit down
and told me to make myself comfortable because we were going to spend the
night there. I began to talk about the branch, but he hushed me up.
"What you've done is no triumph, " he said. "You've wasted a beautiful
power, a power that blew life into that dry twig." He said that a real
triumph would have been for me to let go and follow the power until the
world had ceased to exist.
He did not seem to be angry with me or disappointed with my
performance. He repeatedly stated that this was only the beginning, that it
took time to handle power. He patted me on the shoulder and joked that
earlier that day I was the person who knew what was real and what was not.
I felt embarrassed. I began to apologize for my tendency of always
being so sure of my ways.
"It doesn't matter, " he said. "That branch was a real animal and it
was alive at the moment the power touched it. Since what kept it alive was
power, the trick was, like in dreaming, to sustain the sight of it. See what
I mean?"
I wanted to ask something else, but he hushed me up and said that I
should remain completely silent but awake all night and that he alone was
going to talk for a while.
He said that the spirit, which knew his voice, might become subdued
with the sound of it and leave us alone. He explained that the idea of
making oneself accessible to power had serious overtones. Power was a
devastating force that could easily lead to one's death and had to be
treated with great care. Becoming available to power had to be done
systematically, but always with great caution.
It involved making one's presence obvious by a contained display of
loud talk or any other type of noisy activity, and then it was mandatory to
observe a prolonged and total silence. A controlled outburst and a
controlled quietness were the mark of a warrior. He said that properly I
should have sustained the sight of the live monster for a while longer. In a
controlled fashion, without losing my mind or becoming deranged with
excitation or fear, I should have striven to "stop the world." He pointed
out that after I had run up the hill for dear life I was in a perfect state
for "stopping the world."
Combined in that state were fear, awe, power and death; he said that
such a state would be pretty hard to repeat.
I whispered in his ear, "What do you mean by 'stopping the world'?"
He gave me a ferocious look before he answered that it was a technique
practiced by those who were hunting for power, a technique by virtue of
which the world as we know it was made to collapse.
THE MOOD OF A WARRIOR
I drove up to don Juan's house on Thursday, August 31, 1961, and before
I even had a chance to greet him he stuck his head through the window of my
car, smiled at me, and said, "We must drive quite a distance to a place of
power and it's almost noon."
He opened the door of my car, sat down next to me in the front seat,
and directed me to drive south for about seventy miles; we then turned east
onto a dirt road and followed it until we had reached the slopes of the
mountains. I parked my car off the road in a depression don Juan picked
because it was deep enough to hide the car from view. From there we went
directly to the top of the low hills, crossing a vast flat desolate area.
When it got dark don Juan selected a place to sleep. He demanded
complete silence.
The next day we ate frugally and continued our journey in an easterly
direction. The vegetation was no longer desert shrubbery but thick green
mountain bushes and trees. Around mid-afternoon we climbed to the top of a
gigantic bluff of conglomerate rock which looked like a wall. Don Juan sat
down and signaled me to sit down also. "This is a place of power, " he said
after a moment's pause.
"This is the place where warriors were buried a long time ago."
At that instant a crow flew right above us, cawing. Don Juan followed
its flight with a fixed gaze.
I examined the rock and was wondering how and where the warriors had
been buried when he tapped me on the shoulder.
"Not here, you fool, " he said, smiling. "Down there."
He pointed to the field right below us at the bottom of the bluff,
towards the east; he explained that the field in question was surrounded by
a natural corral of boulders. From where I was sitting I saw an area which
was perhaps a hundred yards in diameter and which looked like a perfect
circle.
Thick bushes covered its surface, camouflaging the boulders. I would
not have noticed its perfect roundness if don Juan had not pointed it out to
me. He said that there were scores of such places scattered in the old world
of the Indians. They were not exactly places of power, like certain hills or
land formations which were the abode of spirits, but rather places of
enlightenment where one could be taught, where one could find solutions to
dilemmas.
"All you have to do is come here, " he said. "Or spend the night on
this rock in order to rearrange your feelings."
"Are we going to spend the night here?"
"I thought so, but a little crow just told me not to do that." I tried
to find out more about the crow but he hushed me up with an impatient
movement of his hand.
"Look at that circle of boulders, " he said. "Fix it in your memory and
then someday a crow will lead you to another one of these places. The more
perfect its roundness is, the greater its power."
"Are the warriors' bones still buried here?" Don Juan made a comical
gesture of puzzlement and then smiled broadly.
"This is not a cemetery, " he said. "Nobody is buried here.
I said warriors were once buried here. I meant they used to come here
to bury themselves for a night, or for two days, or for whatever length of
time they needed to. I did not mean dead people's bones are buried here. I'm
not concerned with cemeteries. There is no power in them. There is power in
the bones of a warrior, though, but they are never in cemeteries.
And there is even more power in the bones of a man of knowledge, yet it
would be practically impossible to find them."
"Who is a man of knowledge, don Juan?"
"Any warrior could become a man of knowledge. As I told you, a warrior
is an impeccable hunter that hunts power. If he succeeds in his hunting he
can be a man of knowledge."
"What do you . . ."
He stopped my question with a movement of his hand. He stood up,
signaled me to follow, and began descending on the steep east side of the
bluff. There was a definite trail in the almost perpendicular face, leading
to the round area.
We slowly worked our way down the perilous path, and when we reached
the bottom floor don Juan, without stopping at all, led me through the thick
chaparral to the middle of the circle. There he used some thick dry branches
to sweep a clean spot for us to sit. The spot was also perfectly round.
"I intended to bury you here all night, " he said. "But I know now that
it is not time yet. You don't have power. I'm going to bury you only for a
short while."
I became very nervous with the idea of being enclosed and asked how he
was planning to bury me. He giggled like a child and began collecting dry
branches. He did not let me help him and said I should sit down and wait.
He threw the branches he was collecting inside the clean circle. Then
he made me lie down with my head towards the east, put my jacket under my
head, and made a cage around my body. He constructed it by sticking pieces
of branches about two and a half feet in length in the soft dirt; the
branches, which ended in forks, served as supports for some long sticks that
gave the cage a frame and the appearance of an open coffin. He closed the
box like cage by placing small branches and leaves over the long sticks,
encasing me from the shoulders down. He let my head stick out with my jacket
as a pillow.
He then took a thick piece of dry wood and, using it as a digging
stick, he loosened the dirt around me and covered the cage with it. The
frame was so solid and the leaves were so well placed that no dirt came
inside. I could move my legs freely and could actually slide in and out.
Don Juan said that ordinarily a warrior would construct the cage and
then slip into it and seal it from the inside. "How about the animals?" I
asked. "Can they scratch the surface dirt and sneak into the cage and hurt
the man?"
"No, that's not a worry for a warrior. It's a worry for you because you
have no power. A warrior, on the other hand, is guided by his unbending
purpose and can fend off anything. No rat, or snake, or mountain lion could
bother him."
"What do they bury themselves for, don Juan?"
"For enlightenment and for power."
I experienced an extremely pleasant feeling of peace and satisfaction;
the world at that moment seemed at ease. The quietness was exquisite and at
the same time unnerving. I was not accustomed to that kind of silence. I
tried to talk but he hushed me. After a while the tranquility of the place
affected my mood. I began to think of my life and my personal history and
experienced a familiar sensation of sadness and remorse. I told him that I
did not deserve to be there, that his world was strong and fair and I was
weak, and that my spirit had been distorted by the circumstances of my life.
He laughed and threatened to cover my head with dirt if I kept on
talking in that vein. He said that I was a man. And like any man I deserved
everything that was a man's-lot-joy, pain, sadness and struggle-and that the
nature of one's acts was unimportant as long as one acted as a warrior.
Lowering his voice to almost a whisper, he said that if I really felt
that my spirit was distorted I should simply fix it purge it, make it
perfect-because there was no other task in our entire lives which was more
worthwhile. Not to fix the spirit was to seek death, and that was the same
as to seek nothing, since death was going to overtake us regardless of
anything.
He paused for a long time and then he said with a tone of profound
conviction, "To seek the perfection of the warrior's spirit is the only task
worthy of our manhood."
His words acted as a catalyst. I felt the weight of my past actions as
an unbearable and hindering load. I admitted that there was no hope for me.
I began to weep, talking about my life. I said that I had been roaming for
such a long time that I had become callous to pain and sadness, except on
certain occasions when I would realize my aloneness and my helplessness.
He did not say anything. He grabbed me by the armpits and pulled me out
of the cage. I sat up when he let go of me. He also sat down. An uneasy
silence set in between us. I thought he was giving me time to compose
myself. I took my notebook and scribbled out of nervousness.
"You feel like a leaf at the mercy of the wind, don't you?" he finally
said, staring at me.
That was exactly the way I felt. He seemed to empathize with me. He
said that my mood reminded him of a song and began to sing in a low tone;
his singing voice was very pleasing and the lyrics carried me away: "I'm so
far away from the sky where I was born. Immense nostalgia invades my
thoughts. Now that I am so alone and sad like a leaf in the wind, sometimes
I want to weep, sometimes I want to laugh with longing." (Que lejos estoy
del cielo donde he nacido. Inmensa nostalgia invade mi pensamiento. Ahora
que estoy tan solo y triste cual hoja al viento, quisiera llorar, quisiera
reir de sentimiento.)
We did not speak for a long while. He finally broke the silence.
"Since the day you were born, one way or another, someone has been
doing something to you, " he said.
"That's correct, " I said.
"And they have been doing something to you against your will."
"True."
"And by now you're helpless, like a leaf in the wind."
"That's correct. That's the way it is."
I said that the circumstances of my life had sometimes been
devastating. He listened attentively but I could not figure out whether he
was just being agreeable or genuinely concerned until I noticed that he was
trying to hide a smile.
"No matter how much you like to feel sorry for yourself, you have to
change that, " he said in a soft tone. "It doesn't jibe with the life of a
warrior."
He laughed and sang the song again but contorted the intonation of
certain words; the result was a ludicrous lament. He pointed out that the
reason I had liked the song was because in my own life I had done nothing
else but find flaws with everything and lament. I could not argue with him.
He was correct. Yet I believed I had sufficient reasons to justify my
feeling of being like a leaf in the "wind.
"The hardest thing in the world is to assume the mood of a warrior, "
he said. "It is of no use to be sad and complain and feel justified in doing
so, believing that someone is always doing something to us. Nobody is doing
anything to anybody, much less to a warrior.
"You are here, with me, because you want to be here. You should have
assumed full responsibility by now, so the idea that you are at the mercy of
the wind would be inadmissible."
He stood up and began to disassemble the cage. He scooped the dirt back
to where he had gotten it from and carefully scattered all the sticks in the
chaparral. Then he covered the clean circle with debris, leaving the area as
if nothing had ever touched it.
I commented on his proficiency. He said that a good hunter would know
that we had been there no matter how careful he had been, because the tracks
of men could not be completely erased.
He sat cross-legged and told me to sit down as comfortably as possible,
facing the spot where he had buried me, and stay put until my mood of
sadness had dissipated.
"A warrior buries himself in order to find power, not to weep with
self-pity, " he said.
I attempted to explain but he made me stop with an impatient movement
of his head. He said that he had to pull me out of the cage in a hurry
because my mood was intolerable and he was afraid that the place would
resent my softness and injure me.
"Self-pity doesn't jibe with power, " he said. "The mood of a warrior
calls for control over himself and at the same time it calls for abandoning
himself."
"How can that be?" I asked. "How can he control and abandon himself at
the same time?"
"It is a difficult technique, " he said.
He seemed to deliberate whether or not to continue talking.
Twice he was on the verge of saying something but he checked himself
and smiled.
"You're not over your sadness yet, " he said. "You still feel weak and
there is no point in talking about the mood of a warrior now."
Almost an hour went by in complete silence. Then he abruptly asked me
if I had succeeded in learning the "dreaming" techniques he had taught me. I
had been practicing assiduously and had been able, after a monumental
effort, to obtain a degree of control over my dreams. Don Juan was very
right in saying that one could interpret the exercises as being
entertainment. For the first time in my life I had been looking forward to
going to sleep.
I gave him a detailed report of my progress. It had been relatively
easy for me to learn to sustain the image of my hands after I had learned to
command myself to look at them. My visions, although not always of my own
hands, would last a seemingly long time, until I would finally lose control
and would become immersed in ordinary unpredictable dreams. I had no
volition whatsoever over when I would give myself the command to look at my
hands, or to look at other items of the dreams. It would just happen. At a
given moment I would remember that I had to look at my hands and then at the
surroundings. There were nights, however, when I could not recall having
done it at all.
He seemed to be satisfied and wanted to know what were the usual items
I had been finding in my visions. I could not think of anything in
particular and started elaborating on a nightmarish dream I had had the
night before.
"Don't get so fancy, " he said dryly.
I told him that I had been recording all the details of my dreams.
Since I had begun to practice looking at my hands my dreams had become very
compelling and my sense of recall had increased to the point that I could
remember minute details. He said that to follow them was a waste of time,
because details and vividness were in no way important.
"Ordinary dreams get very vivid as soon as you begin to set up
dreaming" he said. "That vividness and clarity is a formidable barrier and
you are worse off than anyone I have ever met in my life. You have the worst
mania. You write down everything you can."
In all fairness, I believed what I was doing was appropriate. Keeping a
meticulous record of my dreams was giving me a degree of clarity about the
nature of the visions I had while sleeping.