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Carlos Castaneda. The Power Of Silence
Carlos Castaneda — "The Power Of Silence"
Foreword
My books are a true account of a teaching method that don Juan Matus, a
Mexican Indian sorcerer, used in order to help me understand the sorcerers'
world. In this sense, my books are the account of an on-going process which
becomes more clear to me as time goes by.
It takes years of training to teach us to deal intelligently with the
world of everyday life. Our schooling - whether In plain reasoning or formal
topics - is rigorous, because the knowledge we are trying to impart is very
complex. The same criteria apply to the sorcerers' world: their schooling,
which relies on oral instruction and the manipulation of awareness, although
different from ours, is just as rigorous, because their knowledge is as, or
perhaps more, complex
Introduction
At various times don Juan attempted to name his knowledge for my
benefit. He felt that the most appropriate name was nagualism, but that the
term was too obscure. Calling it simply "knowledge" made it too vague, and
to call it "witchcraft" was debasing. "The mastery of intent" was too
abstract, and "the search for total freedom" too long and metaphorical.
Finally, because he was unable to find a more appropriate name, he called it
"sorcery," although he admitted it was not really accurate.
Over the years, he had given me different definitions of sorcery, but
he had always maintained that definitions change as knowledge increases.
Toward the end of my apprenticeship, I felt I was in a position to
appreciate a clearer definition, so I asked him once more.
"From where the average man stands," don Juan said, "sorcery is
nonsense or an ominous mystery beyond his reach. And he is right - not
because this is an absolute fact, but because the average man lacks the
energy to deal with sorcery."
He stopped for a moment before he continued. "Human beings are born
with a finite amount of energy," don Juan said, "an energy that is
systematically deployed, beginning at the moment of birth, in order that it
may be used most advantageously by the modality of the time."
"What do you mean by the modality of the time?" I asked.
"The modality of the time is the precise bundle of energy fields being
perceived," he answered. "I believe man's perception has changed through the
ages. The actual time decides the mode; the time decides which precise
bundle of energy fields, out of an incalculable number, are to be used. And
handling the modality of the time - those few, selected energy fields -
takes all our available energy, leaving us nothing that would help us use
any of the other energy fields."
He urged me with a subtle movement of his eyebrows to consider all
this.
"This is what I mean when I say that the average man lacks the energy
needed to deal with sorcery," he went on. "If he uses only the energy he
has, he can't perceive the worlds sorcerers do. To perceive them, sorcerers
need to use a cluster of energy fields not ordinarily used. Naturally, if
the average man is to perceive those worlds and understand sorcerers'
perception he must use the same cluster they have used. And this is just not
possible, because all his energy is already deployed."
He paused as if searching for the appropriate words to make his point.
"Think of it this way," he proceeded. "It isn't that as time goes by
you're learning sorcery; rather, what you're learning is to save energy. And
this energy will enable you to handle some of the energy fields which are
inaccessible to you now. And that is sorcery: the ability to use energy
fields that are not employed in perceiving the ordinary world we know.
Sorcery is a state of awareness. Sorcery is the ability to perceive
something which ordinary perception cannot.
"Everything I've put you through," don Juan went on, "each of the
things I've shown you was only a device to convince you that there's more to
us than meets the eye.
We don't need anyone to teach us sorcery, because there is really
nothing to learn. What we need is a teacher to convince us that there is
incalculable power at our fingertips. What a strange paradox! Every warrior
on the path of knowledge thinks, at one time or another, that he's learning
sorcery, but all he's doing is allowing himself to be convinced of the power
hidden in his being, and that he can reach it."
"Is that what you're doing, don Juan - convincing me?"
"Exactly. I'm trying to convince you that you can reach that power. I
went through the same thing. And I was as hard to convince as you are."
"Once we have reached it, what exactly do we do with it, don Juan?"
"Nothing. Once we have reached it, it will, by itself, make use of
energy fields which are available to us but inaccessible. And that, as I
have said, is sorcery. We begin then to see - that is, to perceive -
something else; not as imagination, but as real and concrete. And then we
begin to know without having to use words. And what any of us does with that
increased perception, with that silent knowledge, depends on our own
temperament."
On another occasion, he gave me another kind of explanation. We were
discussing an unrelated topic when he abruptly changed the subject and began
to tell me a joke. He laughed and, very gently, patted my back between the
shoulder blades, as if he were shy and it was too forward of him to touch
me. He chuckled at my nervous reaction.
"You're skittish," he said teasingly, and slapped my back with greater
force.
My ears buzzed. For an instant I lost my breath. It felt us though he
had hurt my lungs. Every breath brought me great discomfort. Yet, after I
had coughed and choked a few times, my nasal passages opened and I found
myself
taking deep, soothing breaths. I had such a feeling of well-being that
I was not even annoyed at him for his blow, which had been hard as well as
unexpected.
Then don Juan began a most remarkable explanation. Clearly and
concisely, he gave me a different and more precise definition of sorcery.
I had entered into a wondrous state of awareness! I had such clarity of
mind that I was able to comprehend and assimilate everything don Juan was
saying. He said that in the universe there is an unmeasurable, indescribable
force which sorcerers call intent, and that absolutely everything that
exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link.
Sorcerers, or warriors, as he called them, were concerned with discussing,
understanding, and employing that connecting link. They were especially
concerned with cleaning it of the numbing effects brought about by the
ordinary concerns of their everyday lives. Sorcery at this level could be
defined as the procedure of cleaning one's connecting link to intent. Don
Juan stressed that this "cleaning procedure" was extremely difficult to
understand, or to learn to perform. Sorcerers, therefore, divided their
instruction into two categories. One was instruction for the everyday-life
state of awareness, in which the cleaning process was presented in a
disguised fashion. The other was instruction for the states of heightened
awareness, such as the one I was presently experiencing, in which sorcerers
obtained knowledge directly from intent, without the distracting
intervention of spoken language.
Don Juan explained that by using heightened awareness over thousands of
years of painful struggle, sorcerers had gained specific insights into
intent; and that they had passed these nuggets of direct knowledge on from
generation to generation to the present. He said that the task of sorcery is
to take this seemingly incomprehensible knowledge and make it understandable
by the standards of awareness of everyday life.
Then he explained the role of the guide in the lives of sorcerers. He
said that a guide is called "the nagual," and that the nagual is a man or a
woman with extraordinary energy, a teacher who has sobriety, endurance,
stability; someone seers see as a luminous sphere having four compartments,
as if four luminous balls have been compressed together. Because of their
extraordinary energy, naguals are intermediaries. Their energy allows them
to channel peace, harmony, laughter, and knowledge directly from the source,
from intent, and transmit them to their companions. Naguals are responsible
for supplying what sorcerers call "the minimal chance": the awareness of
one's connection with intent.
I told him that my mind was grasping everything he was telling me, that
the only part of his explanation still unclear to me was why two sets of
teachings were needed. I could understand everything he was saying about his
world easily, and yet he had described the process of understanding as very
difficult.
"You will need a lifetime to remember the insights you've had today,"
he said, "because most of them were silent knowledge. A few moments from now
you will have forgotten them. That's one of the unfathomable mysteries of
awareness."
Don Juan then made me shift levels of consciousness by striking me on
my left side, at the edge of my ribcage.
Instantly I lost my extraordinary clarity of mind and could not
remember having ever had it. ...
Don Juan himself set me the task of writing about the premises of
sorcery. Once, very casually in the early stages
of my apprenticeship, he suggested that I write a book in order to make
use of the notes I had always taken. I had accumulated reams of notes and
never considered what to do with them. I argued that the suggestion was
absurd because I was not a writer.
"Of course, you're not a writer," he said, "so you will have to use
sorcery. First, you must visualize your experiences as if you were reliving
them, and then you must see the text in your dreaming. For you, writing
should not be a literary exercise, but rather an exercise in sorcery."
I have written in that manner about the premises of sorcery just as don
Juan explained them to me, within the context of his teaching.
In his teaching scheme, which was developed by sorcerers of ancient
times, there were two categories of instruction. One was called "teachings
for the right side," carried out in the ordinary state of awareness. The
other was called "teachings for the left side," put into practice solely in
states of heightened awareness.
These two categories allowed teachers to school their apprentices
toward three areas of expertise: the mastery of awareness, the art of
stalking, and the mastery of intent.
These three areas of expertise are the three riddles sorcerers
encounter in their search for knowledge.
The mastery of awareness is the riddle of the mind; the perplexity
sorcerers experience when they recognize the astounding mystery and scope of
awareness and perception.
The art of stalking is the riddle of the heart; the puzzlement
sorcerers feel upon becoming aware of two things: first that the world
appears to us to be unalterably objective and factual, because of
peculiarities of our awareness and perception; second, that if different
peculiarities of perception come into play, the very things about the world
that seem so unalterably objective and factual change. The mastery of intent
is the riddle of the spirit, or the paradox of the abstract - sorcerers'
thoughts and actions projected beyond our human condition.
Don Juan's instruction on the art of stalking and the mastery of intent
depended upon his instruction on the mastery of awareness, which was the
cornerstone of his teachings, and which consist of the following basic
premises:
1. The universe is an infinite agglomeration of energy fields,
resembling threads of light.
2. These energy fields, called the Eagle's emanations, radiate from a
source of inconceivable proportions metaphorically called the Eagle.
3. Human beings are also composed of an incalculable number of the same
threadlike energy fields. These Eagle's emanations form an encased
agglomeration that manifests itself as a ball of light the size of the
person's body with the arms extended laterally, like a giant luminous egg.
4. Only a very small group of the energy fields inside this luminous
ball are lit up by a point of intense brilliance located on the ball's
surface.
5. Perception occurs when the energy fields in that small group
immediately surrounding the point of brilliance extend their light to
illuminate identical energy fields outside the ball. Since the only energy
fields perceivable are those lit by the point of brilliance, that point is
named "the point where perception is assembled" or simply "the assemblage
point."
6. The assemblage point can be moved from its usual position on the
surface of the luminous ball to another position on the surface, or into the
interior. Since the brilliance of the assemblage point can light up whatever
energy field it comes in contact with, when it moves to a new position it
immediately brightens up new energy fields, making them perceivable. This
perception is known as seeing.
7. When the assemblage point shifts, it makes possible the perception
of an entirely different world - as objective and factual as the one we
normally perceive. Sorcerers go into that other world to get energy, power,
solutions to general and particular problems, or to face the unimaginable.
8. Intent is the pervasive force that causes us to perceive. We do not
become aware because we perceive; rather, we perceive as a result of the
pressure and intrusion of intent.
9. The aim of sorcerers is to reach a state of total awareness in order
to experience all the possibilities of perception available to man. This
state of awareness even implies an alternative way of dying.
A level of practical knowledge was included as part of teaching the
mastery of awareness. On that practical level don Juan taught the procedures
necessary to move the assemblage point. The two great systems devised by the
sorcerer seers of ancient times to accomplish this were: dreaming, the
control and utilization of dreams; and stalking, the control of behavior.
Moving one's assemblage point was an essential maneuver that every
sorcerer had to learn. Some of them, the naguals, also learned to perform it
for others. They were able to dislodge the assemblage point from its
customary position by delivering a hard slap directly to the assemblage
point. This blow, which was experienced as a smack on the right shoulder
blade - although the body was never touched - resulted in a state of
heightened awareness.
In compliance with his tradition, it was exclusively in these states of
heightened awareness that don Juan carried
out the most important and dramatic part of his teachings: the
instructions for the left side. Because of the extraordinary quality of
these states, don Juan demanded that I not discuss them with others until we
had concluded everything in the sorcerers' teaching scheme. That demand was
not difficult for me to accept. In those unique states of awareness my
capabilities for understanding the instruction were unbelievably enhanced,
but at the same time my capabilities for describing or even remembering it
were impaired. I could function in those states with proficiency and
assuredness, but I could not recollect anything about them once I returned
to my normal consciousness.
It took me years to be able to make the crucial conversion of my
enhanced awareness into plain memory. My reason and common sense delayed
this moment because they were colliding head-on with the preposterous,
unthinkable reality of heightened awareness and direct knowledge. For years
the resulting cognitive disarrangement forced me to avoid the issue by not
thinking about it.
Whatever I have written about my sorcery apprenticeship, up to now, has
been a recounting of how don Juan taught me the mastery of awareness. I have
not yet described the art of stalking or the mastery of intent.
Don Juan taught me their principles and applications with the help of
two of his companions: a sorcerer named Vicente Medrano and another named
Silvio Manuel, but whatever I learned from them still remains clouded in
what Don Juan called the intricacies of heightened awareness. Until now it
has been impossible for me to write or even to think coherently about the
art of stalking and the mastery of intent. My mistake has been to regard
them as subjects for normal memory and recollection. They are, but at the
mime time they are not. In order to resolve this contradiction, I have not
pursued the subjects directly - a virtual impossibility - but have dealt
with them indirectly through the concluding topic of don Juan's instruction:
the stories of the sorcerers of the past.
He recounted these stories to make evident what he called the abstract
cores of his lessons. But I was incapable of grasping the nature of the
abstract cores despite his comprehensive explanations, which, I know now,
were intended more to open my mind than to explain anything in a rational
manner. His way of talking made me believe for many years that his
explanations of the abstract cores were like academic dissertations; and all
I was able to do, under these circumstances, was to take his explanations as
given. They became part of my tacit acceptance of his teachings, but without
the thorough assessment on my part that was essential to understanding them.
Don Juan presented three sets of six abstract cores each, arranged in
an increasing level of complexity. I have dealt here with the first set,
which is composed of the following: the manifestations of the spirit, the
knock of the spirit, the trickery of the spirit, the descent of the spirit,
the requirements of intent, and handling intent.
THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE SPIRIT
The First Abstract Core
Don Juan, whenever it was pertinent, used to tell me brief stories
about the sorcerers of his lineage, especially his teacher, the nagual
Julian. They were not really stories, but rather descriptions of the way
those sorcerers behaved and of aspects of their personalities. These
accounts were each designed to shed light on a specific topic in my
apprenticeship.
I had heard the same stories from the other fifteen members of don
Juan's group of sorcerers, but none of these accounts had been able to give
me a clear picture of the people they described. Since I had no way of
persuading don Juan to give me more details about those sorcerers, I had
resigned myself to the idea of never knowing about them in any depth.
One afternoon, in the mountains of southern Mexico, don Juan, after
having explained to me more about the intricacies of the mastery of
awareness, made a statement that completely baffled me.
"I think it's time for us to talk about the sorcerers of our past," he
said.
Don Juan explained that it was necessary that I begin drawing
conclusions based on a systematic view of the past,
conclusions about both the world of daily affairs and the sorcerers'
world.
"Sorcerers are vitally concerned with their past," he said. "But I
don't mean their personal past. For sorcerers their past is what other
sorcerers in bygone days have done. And what we are now going to do is
examine that past.
"The average man also examines the past. But it's mostly his personal
past he examines, and he does so for personal reasons. Sorcerers do quite
the opposite; they consult their past in order to obtain a point of
reference."
"But isn't that what everyone does? Look at the past to get a point of
reference?"
"No!" he answered emphatically. "The average man measures himself
against the past, whether his personal past or the past knowledge of his
time, in order to find justifications for his present or future behavior, or
to establish a model for himself. Only sorcerers genuinely seek a point of
reference in their past."
"Perhaps, don Juan, things would be clear to me if you tell me what a
point of reference for a sorcerer is."
"For sorcerers, establishing a point of reference means getting a
chance to examine intent" he replied. "Which is exactly the aim of this
final topic of instruction. And nothing can give sorcerers a better view of
intent than examining stories of other sorcerers battling to understand the
same force."
He explained that as they examined their past, the sorcerers of his
lineage took careful notice of the basic abstract order of their knowledge.
"In sorcery there are twenty-one abstract cores," don Juan went on.
"And then, based on those abstract cores, there are scores of sorcery
stories about the naguals of our lineage battling to understand the spirit.
It's time to tell you the abstract cores and the sorcery stories."
I waited for don Juan to begin telling me the stories, but he changed
the subject and went back to explaining awareness.
"Wait a minute," I protested. "What about the sorcery stories? Aren't
you going to tell them to me?"
"Of course I am," he said. "But they are not stories that one can tell
as if they were tales. You've got to think your way through them and then
rethink them - relive them, so to speak."
There was a long silence. I became very cautious and was afraid that if
I persisted in asking him again to tell me the stories, I could be
committing myself to something I might later regret. But my curiosity was
greater than my good sense.
"Well, let's get on with them," I croaked.
Don Juan, obviously catching the gist of my thoughts, smiled
maliciously. He stood and signaled me to follow. We had been sitting on some
dry rocks at the bottom of a gully. It was mid-afternoon. The sky was dark
and cloudy. Low, almost-black rain clouds hovered above the peaks to the
east. In comparison, the high clouds made the sky seem clear to the south.
Earlier it had rained heavily, but then the rain seemed to have retreated to
a hiding place, leaving behind only a threat.
I should have been chilled to the bone, for it was very cold. But I was
warm. As I clutched a rock don Juan had given me to hold, I realized that
this sensation of being warm in nearly freezing weather was familiar to me,
yet it amazed me each time. Whenever I seemed about to freeze, don Juan
would give me a branch to hold, or a stone, or he would put a bunch of
leaves under my shirt, on the tip of my sternum, and that would be
sufficient to raise my body temperature.
I had tried unsuccessfully to recreate, by myself, the effect of his
ministrations. He told me it was not the ministrations but his inner silence
that kept me warm, and the branches or stones or leaves were merely devices
to trap my attention and maintain it in focus.
Moving quickly, we climbed the steep west side of a mountain until we
reached a rock ledge at the very top. We were in the foothills of a higher
range of mountains. From the rock ledge I could see that fog had begun to
move onto the south end of the valley floor below us. Low, wispy clouds
seemed to be closing in on us, too, sliding down from the black-green, high
mountain peaks to the west. After the rain, under the dark cloudy sky the
valley and the mountains to the east and south appeared covered in a mantle
of black-green silence.
"This is the ideal place to have a talk," don Juan said, sitting on the
rock floor of a concealed shallow cave.
The cave was perfect for the two of us to sit side by side. Our heads
were nearly touching the roof and our backs fitted snugly against the curved
surface of the rock wall. It was as if the cave had been carved deliberately
to accommodate two persons of our size.
I noticed another strange feature of the cave: when I stood on the
ledge, I could see the entire valley and the mountain ranges to the east and
south, but when I sat down, I was boxed in by the rocks. Yet the ledge was
at the level of the cave floor, and flat.
I was about to point this strange effect out to don Juan, but he
anticipated me.
"This cave is man-made," he said. "The ledge is slanted but the eye
doesn't register the incline."
"Who made this cave, don Juan?"
"The ancient sorcerers. Perhaps thousands of years ago. And one of the
peculiarities of this cave is that animals and insects and even people stay
away from it. The ancient sorcerers seem to have infused it with an ominous
charge that makes every living thing feel ill at ease."
But strangely I felt irrationally secure and happy there. A sensation
of physical contentment made my entire body tingle. I actually felt the most
agreeable, the most delectable, sensation in my stomach. It was as if my
nerves were being tickled.
"I don't feel ill at ease," I commented.
"Neither do I," he said. "Which only means that you and I aren't that
far temperamentally from those old sorcerers of the past; something which
worries me no end."
I was afraid to pursue that subject any further, so I waited for him to
talk.
"The first sorcery story I am going to tell you is called 'The
Manifestations of the Spirit,' " don Juan began, "but don't let the title
mystify you. The manifestations of the spirit is only the first abstract
core around which the first sorcery story is built.
"That first abstract core is a story in itself," he went on. "The story
says that once upon a time there was a man, an average man without any
special attributes. He was, like everyone else, a conduit for the spirit.
And by virtue of that, like everyone else, he was part of the spirit, part
of the abstract. But he didn't know it. The world kept him so busy that he
had neither the time nor the inclination really to examine the matter.
"The spirit tried, uselessly, to reveal their connection. Using an
inner voice, the spirit disclosed its secrets, but the man was incapable of
understanding the revelations. Naturally, he heard the inner voice, but he
believed it to be his own feelings he was feeling and his own thoughts he
was thinking.
"'The spirit, in order to shake him out of his slumber, gave him three
signs, three successive manifestations. The
spirit physically crossed the man's path in the most obvious manner.
But the man was oblivious to anything but his self-concern."
Don Juan stopped and looked at me as he did whenever he was waiting for
my comments and questions. I had nothing to say. I did not understand the
point he was trying to make.
"I've just told you the first abstract core," he continued. "The only
other thing I could add is that because of the man's absolute unwillingness
to understand, the spirit was forced to use trickery. And trickery became
the essence of the sorcerers' path. But that is another story."
Don Juan explained that sorcerers understood this abstract core to be a
blueprint for events, or a recurrent pattern that appeared every time intent
was giving an indication of something meaningful. Abstract cores, then, were
blueprints of complete chains of events.
He assured me that by means beyond comprehension, every detail of every
abstract core reoccurred to every apprentice nagual. He further assured me
that he had helped intent to involve me in all the abstract cores of sorcery
in the same manner that his benefactor, the nagual Julian and all the
naguals before him, had involved their apprentices. The process by which
each apprentice nagual encountered the abstract cores created a series of
accounts woven around those abstract cores incorporating the particular
details of each apprentice's personality and circumstances.
He said, for example, that I had my own story about the manifestations
of the spirit, he had his, his benefactor had his own, so had the nagual
that preceded him, and so on, and so forth.
"What is my story about the manifestations of the spirit?" I asked,
somewhat mystified.
"If any warrior is aware of his stories it's you," he replied. "After
all, you've been writing about them for years. But you didn't notice the
abstract cores because you are a practical man. You do everything only for
the purpose of enhancing your practicality. Although you handled your
stories to exhaustion you had no idea that there was an abstract core in
them. Everything I've done appears to you, therefore, as an often-whimsical
practical activity: teaching sorcery to a reluctant and, most of the time,
stupid, apprentice. As long as you see it in those terms, the abstract cores
will elude you."
"You must forgive me, don Juan," I said, "but your statements are very
confusing. What are you saying?"
"I'm trying to introduce the sorcery stories as a subject," he replied.
"I've never talked to you specifically about this topic because
traditionally it's left hidden. It is the spirit's last artifice. It is said
that when the apprentice understands the abstract cores it's like the
placing of the stone that caps and seals a pyramid."
It was getting dark and it looked as though it was about to rain again.
I worried that if the wind blew from east to west while it was raining, we
were going to get soaked in that cave. I was sure don Juan was aware of
that, but he seemed to ignore it.
"It won't rain again until tomorrow morning," he said.
Hearing my inner thoughts being answered made me jump involuntarily and
hit the top of my head on the cave roof. It was a thud that sounded worse
than it felt.
Don Juan held his sides laughing. After a while my head really began to
hurt and I had to massage it.
"Your company is as enjoyable to me as mine must have been to my
benefactor," he said and began to laugh again.
We were quiet for a few minutes. The silence around me was ominous. I
fancied that I could hear the rustling of the low clouds as they descended
on us from the higher mountains. Then I realized that what I was hearing was
the soft wind. From my position in the shallow cave, it sounded like the
whispering of human voices.
"I had the incredible good luck to be taught by two naguals," don Juan
said and broke the mesmeric grip the wind had on me at that moment. "One
was, of course, my benefactor, the nagual Julian, and the other was his
benefactor, the nagual Elias. My case was unique."
"Why was your case unique?" I asked.
"Because for generations naguals have gathered their apprentices years
after their own teachers have left the world," he explained. "Except my
benefactor. I became the nagual Julian's apprentice eight years before his
benefactor left the world. I had eight years' grace. It was the luckiest
thing that could have happened to me, for I had the opportunity to be taught
by two opposite temperaments. It was like being reared by a powerful father
and an even more powerful grandfather who don't see eye to eye. In such a
contest, the grandfather always wins. So I'm properly the product of the
nagual Elfas's teachings. I was closer to him not only in temperament but
also in looks. I'd say that I owe him my fine tuning. However, the bulk of
the work that went into turning me from a miserable being into an impeccable
warrior I owe to my benefactor, the nagual Julian."
"What was the nagual Julian like physically?" I asked.
"Do you know that to this day it's hard for me to visualize him?" don
Juan said. "I know that sounds absurd, but depending on his needs or the
circumstances, he could be either young or old, handsome or homely, effete
and weak or strong and virile, fat or slender, of medium height or extremely
short."
"Do you mean he was an actor acting out different roles with the aid of
props?"
"No, there were no props involved and he was not merely an actor. He
was, of course, a great actor in his own right, but that is different. The
point is that he was capable of transforming himself and becoming all those
diametrically opposed persons. Being a great actor enabled him to portray
all the minute peculiarities of behavior that made each specific being real.
Let us say that he was at ease in every change of being. As you are at ease
in every change of clothes."
Eagerly, I asked don Juan to tell me more about his benefactor's
transformations. He said that someone taught him how to elicit those
transformations, but that to explain any further would force him to overlap
into different stories.
"What did the nagual Julian look like when he wasn't transforming
himself?" I asked.
"Let's say that before he became a nagual he was very slim and
muscular," don Juan said. "His hair was black, thick, and wavy. He had a
long, fine nose, strong big white teeth, an oval face, strong jaw, and shiny
dark-brown eyes. He was about five feet eight inches tall. He was not Indian
or even a brown Mexican, but he was not Anglo white either. In fact, his
complexion seemed to be like no one else's, especially in his later years
when his ever-changing complexion shifted constantly from dark to very light
and back again to dark. When I first met him he was a light-brown old man,
then as time went by, he became a light-skinned young man, perhaps only a
few years older than me. I was twenty at that time.
"But if the changes of his outer appearance were astonishing," don Juan
went on, "the changes of mood and behavior that accompanied each
transformation were even more astonishing. For example, when he was a fat
young man, he was jolly and sensual. When he was a skinny old man, he was
petty and vindictive. When he was a fat old man, he was the greatest
imbecile there was."
"Was he ever himself?" I asked.
"Not the way I am myself," he replied. "Since I'm not interested in
transformation I am always the same. But he was not like me at all." Don
Juan looked at me as if he were assessing my inner strength. He smiled,
shook his head from side to side and broke into a belly laugh.
"What's so funny, don Juan?" I asked.
"The fact is that you're still too prudish and stiff to appreciate
fully the nature of my benefactor's transformations and their total scope,"
he said. "I only hope that when I tell you about them you don't become
morbidly obsessed."
For some reason I suddenly became quite uncomfortable and had to change
the subject.
"Why are the naguals called 'benefactors' and not simply teachers?" I
asked nervously.
"Calling a nagual a benefactor is a gesture his apprentices make," don
Juan said. "A nagual creates an overwhelming feeling of gratitude in his
disciples. After all, a nagual molds them and guides them through
unimaginable areas."
I remarked that to teach was in my opinion the greatest, most
altruistic act anyone could perform for another.
"For you, teaching is talking about patterns," he said. "For a
sorcerer, to teach is what a nagual does for his apprentices. For them he
taps the prevailing force in the universe: intent - the force that changes
and reorders things or keeps them as they are. The nagual formulates, then
guides the consequences that that force can have on his disciples. Without
the nagual's molding intent there would be no awe, no wonder for them. And
his apprentices, instead of embarking on a magical journey of discovery,
would only be learning a trade: healer, sorcerer, diviner, charlatan, or
whatever."
"Can you explain intent to me?" I asked.
"The only way to know intent" he replied, "is to know it directly
through a living connection that exists between intent and all sentient
beings. Sorcerers call intent the indescribable, the spirit, the abstract,
the nagual. I would prefer to call it nagual, but it overlaps with the name
for the leader, the benefactor, who is also called nagual, so I have opted
for calling it the spirit, intent, the abstract."
Don Juan stopped abruptly and recommended that I keep quiet and think
about what he had told me. By then it was very dark. The silence was so
profound that instead of lulling me into a restful state, it agitated me. I
could not maintain order in my thoughts. I tried to focus my attention on
the story he had told me, but instead I thought of everything else, until
finally I fell asleep.
The Impeccability Of The Nagual Elias
I had no way of telling how long I slept in that cave. Don Juan's voice
startled me and I awoke. He was saying that the first sorcery story
concerning the manifestations of the spirit was an account of the
relationship between intent and the nagual. It was the story of how the
spirit set up a lure for the nagual, a prospective disciple, and of how the
nagual had to evaluate the lure before making his decision either to accept
or reject it. It was very dark in the cave, and the small space was
confining. Ordinarily an area of that size would have made me
claustrophobic, but the cave kept soothing me, dispelling my feelings of
annoyance. Also, something in the configuration of the cave absorbed the
echoes of don Juan's words.
Don Juan explained that every act performed by sorcerers, especially by
the naguals, was either performed as a way to strengthen their link with
intent or as a response triggered by the link itself. Sorcerers, and
specifically the naguals, therefore had to be actively and permanently on
the lookout for manifestations of the spirit. Such manifestations were
called gestures of the spirit or, more simply, indications or omens.
He repeated a story he had already told me; the story of how he had met
his benefactor, the nagual Julian.
Don Juan had been cajoled by two crooked men to take a job on an
isolated hacienda. One of the men, the foreman of the hacienda, simply took
possession of don Juan and in effect made him a slave.
Desperate and with no other course of action, don Juan escaped. The
violent foreman chased him and caught him on a country road where he shot
don Juan in the chest and left him for dead.
Don Juan was lying unconscious in the road, bleeding to death, when the
nagual Julian came along. Using his healer's knowledge, he stopped the
bleeding, took don Juan, who was still unconscious, home and cured him.
The indications the spirit gave the nagual Julian about don Juan were,
first, a small cyclone that lifted a cone of dust on the road a couple of
yards from where he lay. The second omen was the thought which had crossed
the nagual Julian's mind an instant before he had heard the report of the
gun a few yards away: that it was time to have an apprentice nagual. Moments
later, the spirit gave him the third omen, when he ran to take cover and
instead collided with the gunman, putting him to flight, perhaps preventing
him from shooting don Juan a second time. A collision with someone was the
type of blunder which no sorcerer, much less a nagual, should ever make.
The nagual Julian immediately evaluated the opportunity. When he saw
don Juan he understood the reason for the spirit's manifestation: here was a
double man, a perfect candidate to be his apprentice nagual.
This brought up a nagging rational concern for me. I wanted to know if
sorcerers could interpret an omen erroneously. Don Juan replied that
although my question sounded perfectly legitimate, it was inapplicable, like
the majority of my questions, because I asked them based on my experiences
in the world of everyday life. Thus they were always about tested
procedures, steps to be followed, and rules of meticulousness, but had
nothing to do with the premises of sorcery. He pointed out that the flaw in
my reasoning was that I always failed to include my experiences in the
sorcerers' world.
I argued that very few of my experiences in the sorcerers' world had
continuity, and therefore I could not make use of those experiences in my
present day-to-day life. Very few times, and only when I was in states of
profound heightened awareness, had I remembered everything. At the level of
heightened awareness I usually reached, the only experience that had
continuity between past and present was that of knowing him.
He responded cuttingly that I was perfectly capable of engaging in
sorcerers' reasonings because I had experienced the sorcery premises in my
normal state of awareness. In a more mellow tone he added that heightened
awareness did not reveal everything until the whole edifice of sorcery
knowledge was completed.
Then he answered my question about whether or not sorcerers could
misinterpret omens. He explained that when a sorcerer interpreted an omen he
knew its exact meaning without having any notion of how he knew it. This was
one of the bewildering effects of the connecting link with intent. Sorcerers
had a sense of knowing things directly. How sure they were depended on the
strength and clarity of their connecting link.
He said that the feeling everyone knows as "intuition" is the
activation of our link with intent. And since sorcerers deliberately pursue
the understanding and strengthening of that link, it could be said that they
intuit everything unerringly and accurately. Reading omens is commonplace
for sorcerers - mistakes happen only when personal feelings intervene and
cloud the sorcerers' connecting link with intent. Otherwise their direct
knowledge is totally accurate and functional.
We remained quiet for a while.
All of a sudden he said, "I am going to tell you a story about the
nagual Elias and the manifestation of the spirit. The spirit manifests
itself to a sorcerer, especially to a nagual, at every turn. However, this
is not the entire truth. The entire truth is that the spirit reveals itself