warriorship is done only by seers who are also impeccable warriors and have
mastery over will. Such an interplay is a supreme maneuver that cannot be
performed on the daily human stage.
"Four attributes are all that is needed to deal with the worst of petty
tyrants," he continued. "Provided, of course, that a petty tyrant has been
found. As I said, the petty tyrant is the outside element, the one we cannot
control and the element that is perhaps the most important of them all. My
benefactor used to say that the warrior who stumbles on a petty tyrant is a
lucky one. He meant that you're fortunate if you come upon one in your path,
because if you don't, you have to go out and look for one."
He explained that one of the greatest accomplishments of the seers of
the Conquest was a construct he called the three-phase progression. By
understanding the nature of man, they were able to reach the incontestable
conclusion that if seers can hold their own in facing petty tyrants, they
can certainly face the unknown with impunity, and then they can even stand
the presence of the unknowable.
"The average man's reaction is to think that the order of that
statement should be reversed," he went on. "A seer who can hold his own in
the face of the unknown can certainly face petty tyrants. But that's not so.
What destroyed the superb seers of ancient times was that assumption. We
know better now. We know that nothing can temper the spirit of a warrior as
much as the challenge of dealing with impossible people in positions of
power. Only under those conditions can warriors acquire the sobriety and
serenity to stand the pressure of the unknowable."
I vociferously disagreed with him. I told him that in my opinion
tyrants can only render their victims helpless or make them as brutal as
they themselves are. I pointed out that countless studies had been done on
the effects of physical and psychological torture on such victims.
"The difference is in something you just said," he retorted. "They are
victims, not warriors. Once I felt just as you do. I'll tell you what made
me change, but first let's go back again to what I said about the Conquest.
The seers of that time couldn't have found a better ground. The Spaniards
were the petty tyrants who tested the seers' skills to the limit; after
dealing with the conquerors, the seers were capable of facing anything. They
were the lucky ones. At that time there were petty tyrants everywhere.
"After all those marvelous years of abundance things changed a great
deal. Petty tyrants never again had that scope; it was only during those
times that their authority was unlimited. The perfect ingredient for the
making of a superb seer is a petty tyrant with unlimited prerogatives.
"In our times, unfortunately, seers have to go to extremes to find a
worthy one. Most of the time they have to be satisfied with very small fry."
"Did you find a petty tyrant yourself, don Juan?"
"I was lucky. A king-size one found me. At the time, though, I felt
like you; I couldn't consider myself fortunate."
Don Juan said that his ordeal began a few weeks before he met his
benefactor. He was barely twenty years old at the time. He had gotten a job
at a sugar mill working as a laborer. He had always been very strong, so it
was easy for him to get jobs that required muscle. One day when he was
moving some heavy sacks of sugar a woman came by. She was very well dressed
and seemed to be a woman of means. She was perhaps in her fifties, don Juan
said, and very domineering. She looked at don Juan and then spoke to the
foreman and left. Don Juan was then approached by the foreman, who told him
that for a fee he would recommend him for a job in the boss's house. Don
Juan told the man that he had no money. The foreman smiled and said not to
worry because he would have plenty on payday. He patted don Juan's back and
assured him it was a great honor to work for the boss.
Don Juan said that being a lowly ignorant Indian living hand-to-mouth,
not only did he believe every word, he thought a good fairy had touched him.
He promised to pay the foreman anything he wished. The foreman named a large
sum, which had to be paid in installments.
Immediately thereafter the foreman himself took don Juan to the house,
which was quite a distance from the town, and left him there with another
foreman, a huge, somber, ugly man who asked a lot of questions. He wanted to
know about don Juan's family. Don Juan answered that he didn't have any. The
man was so pleased that he even smiled through his rotten teeth.
He promised don Juan that they would pay him plenty, and that he would
even be in a position to save money, because he didn't have to spend any,
for he was going to live and eat in the house.
The way the man laughed was terrifying. Don Juan knew that he had to
escape immediately. He ran for the gate, but the man cut in front of him
with a revolver in his hand. He cocked it and rammed it into don Juan's
stomach. "You're here to work yourself to the bone," he said. "And don't you
forget it." He shoved don Juan around with a billy club. Then he took him to
the side of the house and, after observing that he worked his men every day
from sunrise to sunset without a break, he put don Juan to work digging out
two enormous tree stumps. He also told don Juan that if he ever tried to
escape or went to the authorities he would shoot him dead-- and that if don
Juan should ever get away, he would swear in court that don Juan had tried
to murder the boss. "You'll work here until you die," he said. "Another
Indian will get your job then, just as you're taking a dead Indian's place."
Don Juan said that the house looked like a fortress, with armed men
with machetes everywhere. So he got busy working and tried not to think
about his predicament. At the end of the day, the man came back and kicked
him all the way to the kitchen, because he did not like the defiant look in
don Juan's eyes. He threatened to cut the tendons of don Juan's arms if he
didn't obey him.
In the kitchen an old woman brought food, but don Juan was so upset and
afraid that he couldn't eat. The old woman advised him to eat as much as he
could. He had to be strong, she said, because his work would never end. She
warned him that the man who had held his job had died just a day earlier. He
was too weak to work and had fallen from a second-story window.
Don Juan said that he worked at the boss's place for three weeks and
that the man bullied him every moment of every day. He made him work under
the most dangerous conditions, doing the heaviest work imaginable, under the
constant threat of his knife, gun, or billy club. He sent him daily to the
stables to clean the stalls while the nervous stallions were in them. At the
beginning of every day don Juan thought it would be his last one on earth.
And surviving meant only that he had to go through the same hell again the
next day.
What precipitated the end was don Juan's request to have some time off.
The pretext was that he needed to go to town to pay the foreman of the sugar
mill the money that he owed him. The other foreman retorted that don Juan
could not stop working, not even for a minute, because he was in debt up to
his ears just for the privilege of working there.
Don Juan knew that he was done for. He understood the man's maneuvers.
Both he and the other foreman were in cahoots to get lowly Indians from the
mill, work them to death, and divide their salaries. That realization
angered him so intensely that he ran through the kitchen screaming and got
inside the main house. The foreman and the other workers were caught totally
by surprise. He ran out the front door and almost got away, but the foreman
caught up with him on the road and shot him in the chest. He left him for
dead.
Don Juan said that it was not his destiny to die; his benefactor found
him there and tended him until he got well.
"When I told my benefactor the whole story," don Juan said, "he could
hardly contain his excitement. 'That foreman is really a prize,' my
benefactor said. 'He is too good to be wasted. Someday you must go back to
that house. '
"He raved about my luck in finding a one-in-a-million petty tyrant with
almost unlimited power. I thought the old man was nuts. It was years before
I fully understood what he was talking about."
"That is one of the most horrible stories I have ever heard," I said.
"Did you really go back to that house?"
"I certainly did, three years later. My benefactor was right. A petty
tyrant like that one was one in a million and couldn't be wasted."
"How did you manage to go back?"
"My benefactor developed a strategy using the four attributes of
warriorship: control, discipline, forbearance, and timing."
Don Juan said that his benefactor, in explaining to him what he had to
do to profit from facing that ogre of a man, also told him what the new
seers considered to be the four steps on the path of knowledge. The first
step is the decision to become apprentices. After the apprentices change
their views about themselves and the world they take the second step and
become warriors, which is to say, beings capable of the utmost discipline
and control over themselves. The third step, after acquiring forbearance and
timing, is to become men of knowledge. When men of knowledge learn to see
they have taken the fourth step and have become seers.
His benefactor stressed the fact that don Juan had been on the path of
knowledge long enough to have acquired a minimum of the first two
attributes: control and discipline. Don Juan emphasized that both of these
attributes refer to an inner state. A warrior is self-oriented, not in a
selfish way, but in the sense of a total and continuous examination of the
self.
"At that time, I was barred from the other two attributes," don Juan
went on. "Forbearance and timing are not quite an inner state. They are in
the domain of the man of knowledge. My benefactor showed them to me through
his strategy."
"Does this mean that you couldn't have faced the petty tyrant by
yourself?" I asked.
"I'm sure that I could have done it myself, although I have always
doubted that I would have carried it off with flair and joyfulness. My
benefactor was simply enjoying the encounter by directing it. The idea of
using a petty tyrant is not only for perfecting the warrior's spirit, but
also for enjoyment and happiness."
"How could anyone enjoy the monster you described?"
"He was nothing in comparison to the real monsters that the new seers
faced during the Conquest. By all indications those seers enjoyed themselves
blue dealing with them. They proved that even the worst tyrants can bring
delight, provided, of course, that one is a warrior."
Don Juan explained that the mistake average men make in confronting
petty tyrants is not to have a strategy to fall back on; the fatal flaw is
that average men take themselves too seriously; their actions and feelings,
as well as those of the petty tyrants, are allimportant. Warriors, on the
other hand, not only have a well-thought-out strategy, but are free from
self-importance. What restrains their self-importance is that they have
understood that reality is an interpretation we make. That knowledge was the
definitive advantage that the new seers had over the simple-minded
Spaniards.
He said that he became convinced he could defeat the foreman using only
the single realization that petty tyrants take themselves with deadly
seriousness while warriors do not.
Following his benefactor's strategic plan, therefore, don Juan got a
job in the same sugar mill as before. Nobody remembered that he had worked
there in the past; peons came to that sugar mill and left it without leaving
a trace.
His benefactor's strategy specified that don Juan had to be solicitous
of whoever came to look for another victim. As it happened, the same woman
came and spotted him, as she had done years ago. This time he was physically
even stronger than before.
The same routine took place. The strategy, however, called for refusing
payment to the foreman from the outset. The man had never been turned down
and was taken aback. He threatened to fire don Juan from the job. Don Juan
threatened him back, saying that he would go directly to the lady's house
and see her. Don Juan knew that the woman, who was the wife of the owner of
the mill, did not know what the two foremen were up to. He told the foreman
that he knew where she lived, because he had worked in the surrounding
fields cutting sugar cane. The man began to haggle, and don Juan demanded
money from him before he would accept going to the lady's house. The foreman
gave in and handed him a few bills. Don Juan was perfectly aware that the
foreman's acquiescence was just a ruse to get him to go to the house.
"He himself once again took me to the house," don Juan said. "It was an
old hacienda owned by the people of the sugar mill-- rich men who either
knew what was going on and didn't care, or were too indifferent even to
notice.
"As soon as we got there, I ran into the house to look for the lady. I
found her and dropped to my knees and kissed her hand to thank her. The two
foremen were livid.
"The foreman at the house followed the same pattern as before. But I
had the proper equipment to deal with him; I had control, discipline,
forbearance, and timing. It turned out as my benefactor had planned it. My
control made me fulfill the man's most asinine demands. What usually
exhausts us in a situation like that is the wear and tear on our
self-importance. Any man who has an iota of pride is ripped apart by being
made to feel worthless.
"I gladly did everything he asked of me. I was joyful and strong. And I
didn't give a fig about my pride or my fear. I was there as an impeccable
warrior. To tune the spirit when someone is trampling on you is called
control."
Don Juan explained that his benefactor's strategy required that instead
of feeling sorry for himself as he had done before, he immediately go to
work mapping the man's strong points, his weaknesses, his quirks of
behavior.
He found that the foreman's strongest points were his violent nature
and his daring. He had shot don Juan in broad daylight and in sight of
scores of onlookers. His great weakness was that he liked his job and did
not want to endanger it. Under no circumstances could he attempt to kill don
Juan inside the compound in the daytime. His other weakness was that he was
a family man. He had a wife and children who lived in a shack near the
house.
"To gather all this information while they are beating you up is called
discipline," don Juan said. "The man was a regular fiend. He had no saving
grace. According to the new seers, a perfect petty tyrant has no redeeming
feature."
Don Juan said that the other two attributes of warriorship, forbearance
and timing, which he did not yet have, had been automatically included in
his benefactor's strategy. Forbearance is to wait patiently-- no rush, no
anxiety-- a simple, joyful holding back of what is due.
"I groveled daily," don Juan continued, "sometimes crying under the
man's whip. And yet I was happy. My benefactor's strategy was what made me
go from day to day without hating the man's guts. I was a warrior. I knew
that I was waiting and I knew what I was waiting for. Right there is the
great joy of warriorship."
He added that his benefactor's strategy called for a systematic
harassment of the man by taking cover with a higher order, just as the seers
of the new cycle had done during the Conquest by shielding themselves with
the Catholic church. A lowly priest was sometimes more powerful than a
nobleman.
Don Juan's shield was the lady who got him the job. He kneeled in front
of her and called her a saint every time he saw her. He begged her to give
him the medallion of her patron saint so he could pray to him for her health
and well-being.
"She gave me one," don Juan went on, "and that rattled the foreman to
pieces. And when I got the servants to pray at night he nearly had a heart
attack. I think he decided then to kill me. He couldn't afford to let me go
on.
"As a countermeasure I organized a rosary among all the servants of the
house. The lady thought I had the makings of a most pious man.
"I didn't sleep soundly after that, nor did I sleep in my bed. I
climbed to the roof every night. From there I saw the man twice looking for
me in the middle of the night with murder in his eyes.
"Daily he shoved me into the stallions' stalls hoping that I would be
crushed to death, but I had a plank of heavy boards that I braced against
one of the corners and protected myself behind it. The man never knew
because he was nauseated by the horses-- another of his weaknesses, the
deadliest of all, as things turned out."
Don Juan said that timing is the quality that governs the release of
all that is held back. Control, discipline, and forbearance are like a dam
behind which everything is pooled. Timing is the gate in the dam.
The man knew only violence, with which he terrorized. If his violence
was neutralized he was rendered nearly helpless. Don Juan knew that the man
would not dare to kill him in view of the house, so one day, in the presence
of the other workers but in sight of his lady as well, don Juan insulted the
man. He called him a coward, who was mortally afraid of the boss's wife.
His benefactor's strategy had called for being on the alert for a
moment like that and using it to turn the tables on the petty tyrant.
Unexpected things always happen that way. The lowest of the slaves suddenly
makes fun of the tyrant, taunts him, makes him feel ridiculous in front of
significant witnesses, and then rushes away without giving the tyrant time
to retaliate.
"A moment later, the man went crazy with rage, but I was already
solicitously kneeling in front of the lady," he continued.
Don Juan said that when the lady went inside the house, the man and his
friends called him to the back, allegedly to do some work. The man was very
pale, white with anger. From the sound of his voice don Juan knew what the
man was really planning to do. Don Juan pretended to acquiesce, but instead
of heading for the back, he ran for the stables. He trusted that the horses
would make such a racket the owners would come out to see what was wrong. He
knew that the man would not dare shoot him. That would have been too noisy
and the man's fear of endangering his job was too overpowering. Don Juan
also knew that the man would not go where the horses were-- that is, unless
he had been pushed beyond his endurance.
"I jumped inside the stall of the wildest stallion," don Juan said,
"and the petty tyrant, blinded by rage, took out his knife and jumped in
after me. I went instantly behind my planks. The horse kicked him once and
it was all over.
"I had spent six months in that house and in that period of time I had
exercised the four attributes of warriorship. Thanks to them, I had
succeeded. Not once had I felt sorry for myself or wept in impotence. I had
been joyful and serene. My control and discipline were as keen as they'd
ever been, and I had had a firsthand view of what forbearance and timing did
for impeccable warriors. And I had not once wished the man to die.
"My benefactor explained something very interesting. Forbearance means
holding back with the spirit something that the warrior knows is rightfully
due. It doesn't mean that a warrior goes around plotting to do anybody
mischief, or planning to settle past scores. Forbearance is something
independent. As long as the warrior has control, discipline, and timing,
forbearance assures giving whatever is due to whoever deserves it."
"Do petty tyrants sometimes win, and destroy the warrior facing them?"
I asked.
"Of course. There was a time when warriors died like flies at the
beginning of the Conquest. Their ranks were decimated. The petty tyrants
could put anyone to death, simply acting on a whim. Under that kind of
pressure seers reached sublime states."
Don Juan said that that was the time when the surviving seers had to
exert themselves to the limit to find new ways.
"The new seers used petty tyrants," don Juan said, staring at me
fixedly, "not only to get rid of their self-importance, but to accomplish
the very sophisticated maneuver of moving themselves out of this world.
You'll understand that maneuver as we keep on discussing the mastery of
awareness."
I explained to don Juan that what I had wanted to know was whether, in
the present, in our times, the petty tyrants he had called small fry could
ever defeat a warrior.
"All the time," he replied. "The consequences aren't as dire as those
in the remote past. Today it goes without saying that warriors always have a
chance to recuperate or to retrieve and come back later. But there is
another side to this problem. To be defeated by a small-fry petty tyrant is
not deadly, but devastating. The degree of mortality, in a figurative sense,
is almost as high. By that I mean that warriors who succumb to a small-fry
petty tyrant are obliterated by their own sense of failure and unworthiness.
That spells high mortality to me."
"How do you measure defeat?"
"Anyone who joins the petty tyrant is defeated. To act in anger,
without control and discipline, to have no forbearance, is to be defeated."
"What happens after warriors are defeated?"
"They either regroup themselves or they abandon the quest for knowledge
and join the ranks of the petty tyrants for life."
3 The Eagle's Emanations
The next day, don Juan and I went for a walk along the road to the city
of Oaxaca. The road was deserted at that hour. It was 2: 00 p. m.
As we strolled leisurely, don Juan suddenly began to talk. He said that
our discussion about the petty tyrants had been merely an introduction to
the topic of awareness. I remarked that it had opened a new view for me. He
asked me to explain what I meant.
I told him that it had to do with an argument we had had some years
before about the Yaqui Indians. In the course of his teachings for the right
side, he had tried to tell me about the advantages that the Yaquis could
find in being oppressed. I had passionately argued that there were no
possible advantages in the wretched conditions in which they lived. And I
had told him that I could not understand how, being a Yaqui himself, he did
not react against such a flagrant injustice.
He had listened attentively. Then, when I was sure he was going to
defend his point, he agreed that the conditions of the Yaqui Indians were
indeed wretched. But he pointed out that it was useless to single out the
Yaquis when life conditions of man in general were horrendous.
"Don't just feel sorry for the poor Yaqui Indians," he had said. "Feel
sorry for mankind. In the case of the Yaqui Indians, I can even say they're
the lucky ones. They are oppressed, and because of that, some of them may
come out triumphant in the end. But the oppressors, the petty tyrants that
tread upon them, they don't have a chance in hell."
I had immediately answered him with a barrage of political slogans. I
had not understood his point at all. He again tried to explain to me the
concept of petty tyrants, but the whole idea bypassed me. It was only now
that everything fit into place.
"Nothing has fit into place yet," he said, laughing at what I had told
him. "Tomorrow, when you are in your normal state of awareness, you won't
even remember what you've realized now."
I felt utterly depressed, for I knew he was right.
"What's going to happen to you is what happened to me," he continued.
"My benefactor, the nagual Julian, made me realize in heightened awareness
what you have realized yourself about petty tyrants. And I ended up, in my
daily life, changing my opinions without knowing why.
"I had always been oppressed, so I had real venom toward my oppressors,
imagine my surprise when I found myself seeking the company of petty
tyrants. I thought I had lost my mind."
We came to a place, on the side of the road, where some large boulders
were half buried by an old landslide; don Juan headed for them and sat down
on a flat rock. He signaled me to sit down, facing him. And then without
further preliminaries, he started his explanation of the mastery of
awareness.
He said that there were a series of truths that seers, old and new, had
discovered about awareness, and that such truths had been arranged in a
specific sequence for purposes of comprehension.
He explained that the mastery of awareness consisted in internalizing
the total sequence of such truths. The first truth, he said, was that our
familiarity with the world we perceive compels us to believe that we are
surrounded by objects, existing by themselves and as themselves, just as we
perceive them, whereas, in fact, there is no world of objects, but a
universe of the Eagle's emanations.
He told me then that before he could explain the Eagle's emanations, he
had to talk about the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. Most of the
truths about awareness were discovered by the old seers, he said. But the
order in which they were arranged had been worked out by the new seers. And
without that order those truths were nearly incomprehensible.
He said that not to seek order was one of the great mistakes that the
ancient seers made. A deadly consequence of that mistake was their
assumption that the unknown and the unknowable are the same thing. It was up
to the new seers to correct that error. They set up boundaries and defined
the unknown as something that is veiled from man, shrouded perhaps by a
terrifying context, but which, nonetheless, is within man's reach. The
unknown becomes the known at a given time. The unknowable, on the other
hand, is the indescribable, the unthinkable, the unrealizable. It is
something that will never be known to us, and yet it is there, dazzling and
at the same time horrifying in its vastness.
"How can seers make the distinction between the two?" I asked.
"There is a simple rule of thumb," he said. "In the face of the
unknown, man is adventurous. It is a quality of the unknown to give us a
sense of hope and happiness. Man feels robust, exhilarated. Even the
apprehension that it arouses is very fulfilling. The new seers saw that man
is at his best in the face of the unknown."
He said that whenever what is taken to be the unknown turns out to be
the unknowable the results are disastrous. Seers feel drained, confused. A
terrible oppression takes possession of them. Their bodies lose tone, their
reasoning and sobriety wander away aimlessly, for the unknowable has no
energizing effects whatsoever. It is not within human reach; therefore, it
should not be intruded upon foolishly or even prudently. The new seers
realized that they had to be prepared to pay exorbitant prices for the
faintest contact with it.
Don Juan explained that the new seers had had formidable barriers of
tradition to overcome. At the time when the new cycle began, none of them
knew for certain which procedures of their immense tradition were the right
ones and which were not. Obviously, something had gone wrong with the
ancient seers, but the new seers did not know what. They began by assuming
that everything their predecessors had done was erroneous. Those ancient
seers had been the masters of conjecture. They had, for one thing, assumed
that their proficiency in seeing was a safeguard. They thought that they
were untouchable-- that is, until the invaders smashed them, and put most of
them to horrendous deaths. The ancient seers had no protection whatsoever,
despite their total certainty that they were invulnerable.
The new seers did not waste their time in speculations about what went
wrong. Instead, they began to map the unknown in order to separate it from
the unknowable.
"How did they map the unknown, don Juan?" I asked.
"Through the controlled use of seeing," he replied.
I said that what I had meant to ask was, what was entailed in mapping
the unknown?
He answered that mapping the unknown means making it available to our
perception. By steadily practicing seeing, the new seers found that the
unknown and the known are really on the same footing, because both are
within the reach of human perception. Seers, in fact, can leave the known at
a given moment and enter into the unknown.
Whatever is beyond our capacity to perceive is the unknowable. And the
distinction between it and the knowable is crucial. Confusing the two would
put seers in a most precarious position whenever they are confronted with
the unknowable.
"When this happened to the ancient seers," don Juan went on, "they
thought their procedures had gone haywire. It never occurred to them that
most of what's out there is beyond our comprehension. It was a terrifying
error of judgment on their part, for which they paid dearly."
"What happened after the distinction between the unknown and the
unknowable was realized?" I asked.
"The new cycle began," he replied. "That distinction is the frontier
between the old and the new. Everything that the new seers have done stems
from understanding that distinction."
Don Juan said that seeing was the crucial element in both the
destruction of the ancient seers' world and in the reconstruction of the new
view. It was through seeing that the new seers discovered certain undeniable
facts, which they used to arrive at certain conclusions, revolutionary to
them, about the nature of man and the world. These conclusions, which made
the new cycle possible, were the truths about awareness he was explaining to
me.
Don Juan asked me to accompany him to the center of town for a stroll
around the square. On our way, we began to talk about machines and delicate
instruments. He said that instruments are extensions of our senses, and I
maintained that there are instruments that are not in that category, because
they perform functions that we are not physiologically capable of
performing.
"Our senses are capable of everything," he asserted.
"I can tell you offhand that there are instruments that can detect
radio waves that come from outer space," I said. "Our senses cannot detect
radio waves."
"I have a different idea," he said. "I think our senses can detect
everything we are surrounded by."
"What about the case of ultrasonic sounds?" I insisted. "We don't have
the organic equipment to hear them."
"It is the seers' conviction that we've tapped a very small portion of
ourselves," he replied.
He immersed himself in thought for a while as if he were trying to
decide what to say next. Then he smiled.
"The first truth about awareness, as I have already told you," he
began, "is that the world out there is not really as we think it is. We
think it is a world of objects and it's not."
He paused as if to measure the effect of his words. I told him that I
agreed with his premise, because everything could be reduced to being a
field of energy. He said that I was merely intuiting a truth, and that to
reason it out was not to verify it. He was not interested in my agreement or
disagreement, he said, but in my attempt to comprehend what was involved in
that truth.
"You cannot witness fields of energy," he went on. "Not as an average
man, that is. Now, if you were able to see them, you would be a seer, in
which case you would be explaining the truths about awareness. Do you
understand what I mean?"
He went on to say that conclusions arrived at through reasoning had
very little or no influence in altering the course of our lives. Hence, the
countless examples of people who have the clearest convictions and yet act
diametrically against them time and time again; and have as the only
explanation for their behavior the idea that to err is human.
"The first truth is that the world is as it looks and yet it isn't," he
went on. "It's not as solid and real as our perception has been led to
believe, but it isn't a mirage either. The world is not an illusion, as it
has been said to be; it's real on the one hand, and unreal on the other. Pay
close attention to this, for it must be understood, not just accepted. We
perceive. This is a hard fact. But what we perceive is not a fact of the
same kind, because we learn what to perceive.
"Something out there is affecting our senses. This is the part that is
real. The unreal part is what our senses tell us is there. Take a mountain,
for instance. Our senses tell us that it is an object. It has size, color,
form. We even have categories of mountains, and they are downright accurate.
Nothing wrong with that; the flaw is simply that it has never occurred to us
that our senses play only a superficial role. Our senses perceive the way
they do because a specific feature of our awareness forces them to do so."
I began to agree with him again, but not because I wanted to, for I had
not quite understood his point. Rather, I was reacting to a threatening
situation. He made me stop.
"I've used the term 'the world, ' " don Juan went on, "to mean
everything that surrounds us. I have a better term, of course, but it would
be quite incomprehensible to you. Seers say that we think there is a world
of objects out there only because of our awareness. But what's really out
there are the Eagle's emanations, fluid, forever in motion, and yet
unchanged, eternal."
He stopped me with a gesture of his hand just as I was about to ask him
what the Eagle's emanations were. He explained that one of the most dramatic
legacies the old seers had left us was their discovery that the reason for
the existence of all sentient beings is to enhance awareness. Don Juan
called it a colossal discovery.
In a half-serious tone he asked me if I knew of a better answer to the
question that has always haunted man: the reason for our existence. I
immediately took a defensive position and began to argue about the
meaninglessness of the question because it cannot be logically answered. I
told him that in order to discuss that subject we would have to talk about
religious beliefs and turn it all into a matter of faith.
"The old seers were not just talking about faith," he said. "They were
not as practical as the new seers, but they were practical enough to know
what they were seeing. What I was trying to point out to you with that
question, which has rattled you so badly, is that our rationality alone
cannot come up with an answer about the reason for our existence. Every time
it tries, the answer turns into a matter of beliefs. The old seers took
another road, and they did find an answer which doesn't involve faith
alone."
He said that the old seers, risking untold dangers, actually saw the
indescribable force which is the source of all sentient beings. They called
it the Eagle, because in the few glimpses that they could sustain, they saw
it as something that resembled a black-andwhite eagle of infinite size.
They saw that it is the Eagle who bestows awareness. The Eagle creates
sentient beings so that they will live and enrich the awareness it gives
them with life. They also saw that it is the Eagle who devours that same
enriched awareness after making sentient beings relinquish it at the moment
of death.
"For the old seers," don Juan went on, "to say that the reason for
existence is to enhance awareness is not a matter of faith or deduction.
They saw it.
"They saw that the awareness of sentient beings flies away at the
moment of death and floats like a luminous cotton puff right into the
Eagle's beak to be consumed. For the old seers that was the evidence that
sentient beings live only to enrich the awareness that is the Eagle's food."
Don Juan's elucidation was interrupted because he had to leave on a
short business trip. Nestor drove him to Oaxaca. As I saw them off, I
remembered that at the beginning of my association with don Juan, every time
he mentioned a business trip I thought he was employing a euphemism for
something else. I eventually realized that he meant what he said. Whenever
such a trip was about to take place, he would put on one of his many
immaculately tailored three-piece suits and would look like anything but the
old Indian I knew. I had commented to him about the sophistication of his
metamorphosis.
"A nagual is someone flexible enough to be anything," he had said. "To
be a nagual, among other things, means to have no points to defend. Remember
this-- we'll come back to it over and over."
We had come back to it over and over, in every possible way; he did
indeed seem to have no points to defend, but during his absence in Oaxaca I
was given to just a shadow of doubt. Suddenly I realized that a nagual did
have one point to defend-- the description of the Eagle and what it does
required, in my opinion, a passionate defense.
I tried to pose that question to some of don Juan's companions, but
they eluded my probings. They told me that I was in quarantine from that
kind of discussion until don Juan had finished his explanation.
The moment he returned, we sat down to talk and I asked him about it.
"Those truths are not something to defend passionately," he replied.
"If you think that I'm trying to defend them, you are mistaken. Those truths
were put together for the delight and enlightenment of warriors, not to
engage any proprietary sentiments. When I told you that a nagual has no
points to defend, I meant, among other things, that a nagual has no
obsessions."
I told him that I was not following his teachings, for I had become
obsessed with his description of the Eagle and what it does. I remarked over
and over about the awesomeness of such an idea.
"It is not just an idea," he said. "It is a fact. And a damn scary one
if you ask me. The new seers were not simply playing with ideas."
"But what kind of a force would the Eagle be?"
"I wouldn't know how to answer that. The Eagle is as real for the seers
as gravity and time are for you, and just as abstract and incomprehensible."
"Wait a minute, don Juan. Those are abstract concepts, but they do
refer to real phenomena that can be corroborated. There are whole
disciplines dedicated to that."
"The Eagle and its emanations are equally corroboratable," don Juan
retorted. "And the discipline of the new seers is dedicated to doing just
that."
I asked him to explain what the Eagle's emanations are.
He said that the Eagle's emanations are an immutable thing-in-itself,
which engulfs everything that exists, the knowable and the unknowable.
"There is no way to describe in words what the Eagle's emanations
really are," don Juan continued. "A seer must witness them."
"Have you witnessed them yourself, don Juan?"
"Of course I have, and yet I can't tell you what they are. They are a
presence, almost a mass of sorts, a pressure that creates a dazzling
sensation. One can catch only a glimpse of them, as one can catch only a
glimpse of the Eagle itself."
"Would you say, don Juan, that the Eagle is the source of the
emanations?"
"It goes without saying that the Eagle is the source of its
emanations."
"I meant to ask if that is so visually."
"There is nothing visual about the Eagle. The entire body of a seer
senses the Eagle. There is something in all of us that can make us witness
with our entire body. Seers explain the act of seeing the Eagle in very
simple terms: because man is composed of the Eagle's emanations, man need
only revert back to his components. The problem arises with man's awareness;
it is his awareness that becomes entangled and confused. At the crucial
moment when it should be a simple case of the emanations acknowledging
themselves, man's awareness is compelled to interpret. The result is a
vision of the Eagle and the Eagle's emanations. But there is no Eagle and no
Eagle's emanations. What is out there is something that no living creature
can grasp."
I asked him if the source of the emanations was called the Eagle
because eagles in general have important attributes.
"This is simply the case of something unknowable vaguely resembling
something known," he replied. "On account of that, there have certainly been
attempts to imbue eagles with attributes they don't have. But that always
happens when impressionable people learn to perform acts that require great
sobriety. Seers come in all sizes and shapes."
"Do you mean to say that there are different kinds of seers?"
"No. I mean that there are scores of imbeciles who become seers. Seers
are human beings full of foibles, or rather, human beings full of foibles
are capable of becoming seers. Just as in the case of miserable people who
become superb scientists.
"The characteristic of miserable seers is that they are willing to
forget the wonder of the world. They become overwhelmed by the fact that
they see and believe that it's their genius that counts. A seer must be a
paragon in order to override the nearly invincible laxness of our human
condition. More important than seeing itself is what seers do with what they
see."
"What do you mean by that, don Juan?"
"Look at what some seers have done to us. We are stuck with their
vision of an Eagle that rules us and devours us at the moment of our death."
He said that there is a definite laxness in that version, and that
personally he did not appreciate the idea of something devouring us. For
him, it would be more accurate to say that there is a force that attracts
our consciousness, much as a magnet attracts iron shavings. At the moment of
dying, all of our being disintegrates under the attraction of that immense
mastery over will. Such an interplay is a supreme maneuver that cannot be
performed on the daily human stage.
"Four attributes are all that is needed to deal with the worst of petty
tyrants," he continued. "Provided, of course, that a petty tyrant has been
found. As I said, the petty tyrant is the outside element, the one we cannot
control and the element that is perhaps the most important of them all. My
benefactor used to say that the warrior who stumbles on a petty tyrant is a
lucky one. He meant that you're fortunate if you come upon one in your path,
because if you don't, you have to go out and look for one."
He explained that one of the greatest accomplishments of the seers of
the Conquest was a construct he called the three-phase progression. By
understanding the nature of man, they were able to reach the incontestable
conclusion that if seers can hold their own in facing petty tyrants, they
can certainly face the unknown with impunity, and then they can even stand
the presence of the unknowable.
"The average man's reaction is to think that the order of that
statement should be reversed," he went on. "A seer who can hold his own in
the face of the unknown can certainly face petty tyrants. But that's not so.
What destroyed the superb seers of ancient times was that assumption. We
know better now. We know that nothing can temper the spirit of a warrior as
much as the challenge of dealing with impossible people in positions of
power. Only under those conditions can warriors acquire the sobriety and
serenity to stand the pressure of the unknowable."
I vociferously disagreed with him. I told him that in my opinion
tyrants can only render their victims helpless or make them as brutal as
they themselves are. I pointed out that countless studies had been done on
the effects of physical and psychological torture on such victims.
"The difference is in something you just said," he retorted. "They are
victims, not warriors. Once I felt just as you do. I'll tell you what made
me change, but first let's go back again to what I said about the Conquest.
The seers of that time couldn't have found a better ground. The Spaniards
were the petty tyrants who tested the seers' skills to the limit; after
dealing with the conquerors, the seers were capable of facing anything. They
were the lucky ones. At that time there were petty tyrants everywhere.
"After all those marvelous years of abundance things changed a great
deal. Petty tyrants never again had that scope; it was only during those
times that their authority was unlimited. The perfect ingredient for the
making of a superb seer is a petty tyrant with unlimited prerogatives.
"In our times, unfortunately, seers have to go to extremes to find a
worthy one. Most of the time they have to be satisfied with very small fry."
"Did you find a petty tyrant yourself, don Juan?"
"I was lucky. A king-size one found me. At the time, though, I felt
like you; I couldn't consider myself fortunate."
Don Juan said that his ordeal began a few weeks before he met his
benefactor. He was barely twenty years old at the time. He had gotten a job
at a sugar mill working as a laborer. He had always been very strong, so it
was easy for him to get jobs that required muscle. One day when he was
moving some heavy sacks of sugar a woman came by. She was very well dressed
and seemed to be a woman of means. She was perhaps in her fifties, don Juan
said, and very domineering. She looked at don Juan and then spoke to the
foreman and left. Don Juan was then approached by the foreman, who told him
that for a fee he would recommend him for a job in the boss's house. Don
Juan told the man that he had no money. The foreman smiled and said not to
worry because he would have plenty on payday. He patted don Juan's back and
assured him it was a great honor to work for the boss.
Don Juan said that being a lowly ignorant Indian living hand-to-mouth,
not only did he believe every word, he thought a good fairy had touched him.
He promised to pay the foreman anything he wished. The foreman named a large
sum, which had to be paid in installments.
Immediately thereafter the foreman himself took don Juan to the house,
which was quite a distance from the town, and left him there with another
foreman, a huge, somber, ugly man who asked a lot of questions. He wanted to
know about don Juan's family. Don Juan answered that he didn't have any. The
man was so pleased that he even smiled through his rotten teeth.
He promised don Juan that they would pay him plenty, and that he would
even be in a position to save money, because he didn't have to spend any,
for he was going to live and eat in the house.
The way the man laughed was terrifying. Don Juan knew that he had to
escape immediately. He ran for the gate, but the man cut in front of him
with a revolver in his hand. He cocked it and rammed it into don Juan's
stomach. "You're here to work yourself to the bone," he said. "And don't you
forget it." He shoved don Juan around with a billy club. Then he took him to
the side of the house and, after observing that he worked his men every day
from sunrise to sunset without a break, he put don Juan to work digging out
two enormous tree stumps. He also told don Juan that if he ever tried to
escape or went to the authorities he would shoot him dead-- and that if don
Juan should ever get away, he would swear in court that don Juan had tried
to murder the boss. "You'll work here until you die," he said. "Another
Indian will get your job then, just as you're taking a dead Indian's place."
Don Juan said that the house looked like a fortress, with armed men
with machetes everywhere. So he got busy working and tried not to think
about his predicament. At the end of the day, the man came back and kicked
him all the way to the kitchen, because he did not like the defiant look in
don Juan's eyes. He threatened to cut the tendons of don Juan's arms if he
didn't obey him.
In the kitchen an old woman brought food, but don Juan was so upset and
afraid that he couldn't eat. The old woman advised him to eat as much as he
could. He had to be strong, she said, because his work would never end. She
warned him that the man who had held his job had died just a day earlier. He
was too weak to work and had fallen from a second-story window.
Don Juan said that he worked at the boss's place for three weeks and
that the man bullied him every moment of every day. He made him work under
the most dangerous conditions, doing the heaviest work imaginable, under the
constant threat of his knife, gun, or billy club. He sent him daily to the
stables to clean the stalls while the nervous stallions were in them. At the
beginning of every day don Juan thought it would be his last one on earth.
And surviving meant only that he had to go through the same hell again the
next day.
What precipitated the end was don Juan's request to have some time off.
The pretext was that he needed to go to town to pay the foreman of the sugar
mill the money that he owed him. The other foreman retorted that don Juan
could not stop working, not even for a minute, because he was in debt up to
his ears just for the privilege of working there.
Don Juan knew that he was done for. He understood the man's maneuvers.
Both he and the other foreman were in cahoots to get lowly Indians from the
mill, work them to death, and divide their salaries. That realization
angered him so intensely that he ran through the kitchen screaming and got
inside the main house. The foreman and the other workers were caught totally
by surprise. He ran out the front door and almost got away, but the foreman
caught up with him on the road and shot him in the chest. He left him for
dead.
Don Juan said that it was not his destiny to die; his benefactor found
him there and tended him until he got well.
"When I told my benefactor the whole story," don Juan said, "he could
hardly contain his excitement. 'That foreman is really a prize,' my
benefactor said. 'He is too good to be wasted. Someday you must go back to
that house. '
"He raved about my luck in finding a one-in-a-million petty tyrant with
almost unlimited power. I thought the old man was nuts. It was years before
I fully understood what he was talking about."
"That is one of the most horrible stories I have ever heard," I said.
"Did you really go back to that house?"
"I certainly did, three years later. My benefactor was right. A petty
tyrant like that one was one in a million and couldn't be wasted."
"How did you manage to go back?"
"My benefactor developed a strategy using the four attributes of
warriorship: control, discipline, forbearance, and timing."
Don Juan said that his benefactor, in explaining to him what he had to
do to profit from facing that ogre of a man, also told him what the new
seers considered to be the four steps on the path of knowledge. The first
step is the decision to become apprentices. After the apprentices change
their views about themselves and the world they take the second step and
become warriors, which is to say, beings capable of the utmost discipline
and control over themselves. The third step, after acquiring forbearance and
timing, is to become men of knowledge. When men of knowledge learn to see
they have taken the fourth step and have become seers.
His benefactor stressed the fact that don Juan had been on the path of
knowledge long enough to have acquired a minimum of the first two
attributes: control and discipline. Don Juan emphasized that both of these
attributes refer to an inner state. A warrior is self-oriented, not in a
selfish way, but in the sense of a total and continuous examination of the
self.
"At that time, I was barred from the other two attributes," don Juan
went on. "Forbearance and timing are not quite an inner state. They are in
the domain of the man of knowledge. My benefactor showed them to me through
his strategy."
"Does this mean that you couldn't have faced the petty tyrant by
yourself?" I asked.
"I'm sure that I could have done it myself, although I have always
doubted that I would have carried it off with flair and joyfulness. My
benefactor was simply enjoying the encounter by directing it. The idea of
using a petty tyrant is not only for perfecting the warrior's spirit, but
also for enjoyment and happiness."
"How could anyone enjoy the monster you described?"
"He was nothing in comparison to the real monsters that the new seers
faced during the Conquest. By all indications those seers enjoyed themselves
blue dealing with them. They proved that even the worst tyrants can bring
delight, provided, of course, that one is a warrior."
Don Juan explained that the mistake average men make in confronting
petty tyrants is not to have a strategy to fall back on; the fatal flaw is
that average men take themselves too seriously; their actions and feelings,
as well as those of the petty tyrants, are allimportant. Warriors, on the
other hand, not only have a well-thought-out strategy, but are free from
self-importance. What restrains their self-importance is that they have
understood that reality is an interpretation we make. That knowledge was the
definitive advantage that the new seers had over the simple-minded
Spaniards.
He said that he became convinced he could defeat the foreman using only
the single realization that petty tyrants take themselves with deadly
seriousness while warriors do not.
Following his benefactor's strategic plan, therefore, don Juan got a
job in the same sugar mill as before. Nobody remembered that he had worked
there in the past; peons came to that sugar mill and left it without leaving
a trace.
His benefactor's strategy specified that don Juan had to be solicitous
of whoever came to look for another victim. As it happened, the same woman
came and spotted him, as she had done years ago. This time he was physically
even stronger than before.
The same routine took place. The strategy, however, called for refusing
payment to the foreman from the outset. The man had never been turned down
and was taken aback. He threatened to fire don Juan from the job. Don Juan
threatened him back, saying that he would go directly to the lady's house
and see her. Don Juan knew that the woman, who was the wife of the owner of
the mill, did not know what the two foremen were up to. He told the foreman
that he knew where she lived, because he had worked in the surrounding
fields cutting sugar cane. The man began to haggle, and don Juan demanded
money from him before he would accept going to the lady's house. The foreman
gave in and handed him a few bills. Don Juan was perfectly aware that the
foreman's acquiescence was just a ruse to get him to go to the house.
"He himself once again took me to the house," don Juan said. "It was an
old hacienda owned by the people of the sugar mill-- rich men who either
knew what was going on and didn't care, or were too indifferent even to
notice.
"As soon as we got there, I ran into the house to look for the lady. I
found her and dropped to my knees and kissed her hand to thank her. The two
foremen were livid.
"The foreman at the house followed the same pattern as before. But I
had the proper equipment to deal with him; I had control, discipline,
forbearance, and timing. It turned out as my benefactor had planned it. My
control made me fulfill the man's most asinine demands. What usually
exhausts us in a situation like that is the wear and tear on our
self-importance. Any man who has an iota of pride is ripped apart by being
made to feel worthless.
"I gladly did everything he asked of me. I was joyful and strong. And I
didn't give a fig about my pride or my fear. I was there as an impeccable
warrior. To tune the spirit when someone is trampling on you is called
control."
Don Juan explained that his benefactor's strategy required that instead
of feeling sorry for himself as he had done before, he immediately go to
work mapping the man's strong points, his weaknesses, his quirks of
behavior.
He found that the foreman's strongest points were his violent nature
and his daring. He had shot don Juan in broad daylight and in sight of
scores of onlookers. His great weakness was that he liked his job and did
not want to endanger it. Under no circumstances could he attempt to kill don
Juan inside the compound in the daytime. His other weakness was that he was
a family man. He had a wife and children who lived in a shack near the
house.
"To gather all this information while they are beating you up is called
discipline," don Juan said. "The man was a regular fiend. He had no saving
grace. According to the new seers, a perfect petty tyrant has no redeeming
feature."
Don Juan said that the other two attributes of warriorship, forbearance
and timing, which he did not yet have, had been automatically included in
his benefactor's strategy. Forbearance is to wait patiently-- no rush, no
anxiety-- a simple, joyful holding back of what is due.
"I groveled daily," don Juan continued, "sometimes crying under the
man's whip. And yet I was happy. My benefactor's strategy was what made me
go from day to day without hating the man's guts. I was a warrior. I knew
that I was waiting and I knew what I was waiting for. Right there is the
great joy of warriorship."
He added that his benefactor's strategy called for a systematic
harassment of the man by taking cover with a higher order, just as the seers
of the new cycle had done during the Conquest by shielding themselves with
the Catholic church. A lowly priest was sometimes more powerful than a
nobleman.
Don Juan's shield was the lady who got him the job. He kneeled in front
of her and called her a saint every time he saw her. He begged her to give
him the medallion of her patron saint so he could pray to him for her health
and well-being.
"She gave me one," don Juan went on, "and that rattled the foreman to
pieces. And when I got the servants to pray at night he nearly had a heart
attack. I think he decided then to kill me. He couldn't afford to let me go
on.
"As a countermeasure I organized a rosary among all the servants of the
house. The lady thought I had the makings of a most pious man.
"I didn't sleep soundly after that, nor did I sleep in my bed. I
climbed to the roof every night. From there I saw the man twice looking for
me in the middle of the night with murder in his eyes.
"Daily he shoved me into the stallions' stalls hoping that I would be
crushed to death, but I had a plank of heavy boards that I braced against
one of the corners and protected myself behind it. The man never knew
because he was nauseated by the horses-- another of his weaknesses, the
deadliest of all, as things turned out."
Don Juan said that timing is the quality that governs the release of
all that is held back. Control, discipline, and forbearance are like a dam
behind which everything is pooled. Timing is the gate in the dam.
The man knew only violence, with which he terrorized. If his violence
was neutralized he was rendered nearly helpless. Don Juan knew that the man
would not dare to kill him in view of the house, so one day, in the presence
of the other workers but in sight of his lady as well, don Juan insulted the
man. He called him a coward, who was mortally afraid of the boss's wife.
His benefactor's strategy had called for being on the alert for a
moment like that and using it to turn the tables on the petty tyrant.
Unexpected things always happen that way. The lowest of the slaves suddenly
makes fun of the tyrant, taunts him, makes him feel ridiculous in front of
significant witnesses, and then rushes away without giving the tyrant time
to retaliate.
"A moment later, the man went crazy with rage, but I was already
solicitously kneeling in front of the lady," he continued.
Don Juan said that when the lady went inside the house, the man and his
friends called him to the back, allegedly to do some work. The man was very
pale, white with anger. From the sound of his voice don Juan knew what the
man was really planning to do. Don Juan pretended to acquiesce, but instead
of heading for the back, he ran for the stables. He trusted that the horses
would make such a racket the owners would come out to see what was wrong. He
knew that the man would not dare shoot him. That would have been too noisy
and the man's fear of endangering his job was too overpowering. Don Juan
also knew that the man would not go where the horses were-- that is, unless
he had been pushed beyond his endurance.
"I jumped inside the stall of the wildest stallion," don Juan said,
"and the petty tyrant, blinded by rage, took out his knife and jumped in
after me. I went instantly behind my planks. The horse kicked him once and
it was all over.
"I had spent six months in that house and in that period of time I had
exercised the four attributes of warriorship. Thanks to them, I had
succeeded. Not once had I felt sorry for myself or wept in impotence. I had
been joyful and serene. My control and discipline were as keen as they'd
ever been, and I had had a firsthand view of what forbearance and timing did
for impeccable warriors. And I had not once wished the man to die.
"My benefactor explained something very interesting. Forbearance means
holding back with the spirit something that the warrior knows is rightfully
due. It doesn't mean that a warrior goes around plotting to do anybody
mischief, or planning to settle past scores. Forbearance is something
independent. As long as the warrior has control, discipline, and timing,
forbearance assures giving whatever is due to whoever deserves it."
"Do petty tyrants sometimes win, and destroy the warrior facing them?"
I asked.
"Of course. There was a time when warriors died like flies at the
beginning of the Conquest. Their ranks were decimated. The petty tyrants
could put anyone to death, simply acting on a whim. Under that kind of
pressure seers reached sublime states."
Don Juan said that that was the time when the surviving seers had to
exert themselves to the limit to find new ways.
"The new seers used petty tyrants," don Juan said, staring at me
fixedly, "not only to get rid of their self-importance, but to accomplish
the very sophisticated maneuver of moving themselves out of this world.
You'll understand that maneuver as we keep on discussing the mastery of
awareness."
I explained to don Juan that what I had wanted to know was whether, in
the present, in our times, the petty tyrants he had called small fry could
ever defeat a warrior.
"All the time," he replied. "The consequences aren't as dire as those
in the remote past. Today it goes without saying that warriors always have a
chance to recuperate or to retrieve and come back later. But there is
another side to this problem. To be defeated by a small-fry petty tyrant is
not deadly, but devastating. The degree of mortality, in a figurative sense,
is almost as high. By that I mean that warriors who succumb to a small-fry
petty tyrant are obliterated by their own sense of failure and unworthiness.
That spells high mortality to me."
"How do you measure defeat?"
"Anyone who joins the petty tyrant is defeated. To act in anger,
without control and discipline, to have no forbearance, is to be defeated."
"What happens after warriors are defeated?"
"They either regroup themselves or they abandon the quest for knowledge
and join the ranks of the petty tyrants for life."
3 The Eagle's Emanations
The next day, don Juan and I went for a walk along the road to the city
of Oaxaca. The road was deserted at that hour. It was 2: 00 p. m.
As we strolled leisurely, don Juan suddenly began to talk. He said that
our discussion about the petty tyrants had been merely an introduction to
the topic of awareness. I remarked that it had opened a new view for me. He
asked me to explain what I meant.
I told him that it had to do with an argument we had had some years
before about the Yaqui Indians. In the course of his teachings for the right
side, he had tried to tell me about the advantages that the Yaquis could
find in being oppressed. I had passionately argued that there were no
possible advantages in the wretched conditions in which they lived. And I
had told him that I could not understand how, being a Yaqui himself, he did
not react against such a flagrant injustice.
He had listened attentively. Then, when I was sure he was going to
defend his point, he agreed that the conditions of the Yaqui Indians were
indeed wretched. But he pointed out that it was useless to single out the
Yaquis when life conditions of man in general were horrendous.
"Don't just feel sorry for the poor Yaqui Indians," he had said. "Feel
sorry for mankind. In the case of the Yaqui Indians, I can even say they're
the lucky ones. They are oppressed, and because of that, some of them may
come out triumphant in the end. But the oppressors, the petty tyrants that
tread upon them, they don't have a chance in hell."
I had immediately answered him with a barrage of political slogans. I
had not understood his point at all. He again tried to explain to me the
concept of petty tyrants, but the whole idea bypassed me. It was only now
that everything fit into place.
"Nothing has fit into place yet," he said, laughing at what I had told
him. "Tomorrow, when you are in your normal state of awareness, you won't
even remember what you've realized now."
I felt utterly depressed, for I knew he was right.
"What's going to happen to you is what happened to me," he continued.
"My benefactor, the nagual Julian, made me realize in heightened awareness
what you have realized yourself about petty tyrants. And I ended up, in my
daily life, changing my opinions without knowing why.
"I had always been oppressed, so I had real venom toward my oppressors,
imagine my surprise when I found myself seeking the company of petty
tyrants. I thought I had lost my mind."
We came to a place, on the side of the road, where some large boulders
were half buried by an old landslide; don Juan headed for them and sat down
on a flat rock. He signaled me to sit down, facing him. And then without
further preliminaries, he started his explanation of the mastery of
awareness.
He said that there were a series of truths that seers, old and new, had
discovered about awareness, and that such truths had been arranged in a
specific sequence for purposes of comprehension.
He explained that the mastery of awareness consisted in internalizing
the total sequence of such truths. The first truth, he said, was that our
familiarity with the world we perceive compels us to believe that we are
surrounded by objects, existing by themselves and as themselves, just as we
perceive them, whereas, in fact, there is no world of objects, but a
universe of the Eagle's emanations.
He told me then that before he could explain the Eagle's emanations, he
had to talk about the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. Most of the
truths about awareness were discovered by the old seers, he said. But the
order in which they were arranged had been worked out by the new seers. And
without that order those truths were nearly incomprehensible.
He said that not to seek order was one of the great mistakes that the
ancient seers made. A deadly consequence of that mistake was their
assumption that the unknown and the unknowable are the same thing. It was up
to the new seers to correct that error. They set up boundaries and defined
the unknown as something that is veiled from man, shrouded perhaps by a
terrifying context, but which, nonetheless, is within man's reach. The
unknown becomes the known at a given time. The unknowable, on the other
hand, is the indescribable, the unthinkable, the unrealizable. It is
something that will never be known to us, and yet it is there, dazzling and
at the same time horrifying in its vastness.
"How can seers make the distinction between the two?" I asked.
"There is a simple rule of thumb," he said. "In the face of the
unknown, man is adventurous. It is a quality of the unknown to give us a
sense of hope and happiness. Man feels robust, exhilarated. Even the
apprehension that it arouses is very fulfilling. The new seers saw that man
is at his best in the face of the unknown."
He said that whenever what is taken to be the unknown turns out to be
the unknowable the results are disastrous. Seers feel drained, confused. A
terrible oppression takes possession of them. Their bodies lose tone, their
reasoning and sobriety wander away aimlessly, for the unknowable has no
energizing effects whatsoever. It is not within human reach; therefore, it
should not be intruded upon foolishly or even prudently. The new seers
realized that they had to be prepared to pay exorbitant prices for the
faintest contact with it.
Don Juan explained that the new seers had had formidable barriers of
tradition to overcome. At the time when the new cycle began, none of them
knew for certain which procedures of their immense tradition were the right
ones and which were not. Obviously, something had gone wrong with the
ancient seers, but the new seers did not know what. They began by assuming
that everything their predecessors had done was erroneous. Those ancient
seers had been the masters of conjecture. They had, for one thing, assumed
that their proficiency in seeing was a safeguard. They thought that they
were untouchable-- that is, until the invaders smashed them, and put most of
them to horrendous deaths. The ancient seers had no protection whatsoever,
despite their total certainty that they were invulnerable.
The new seers did not waste their time in speculations about what went
wrong. Instead, they began to map the unknown in order to separate it from
the unknowable.
"How did they map the unknown, don Juan?" I asked.
"Through the controlled use of seeing," he replied.
I said that what I had meant to ask was, what was entailed in mapping
the unknown?
He answered that mapping the unknown means making it available to our
perception. By steadily practicing seeing, the new seers found that the
unknown and the known are really on the same footing, because both are
within the reach of human perception. Seers, in fact, can leave the known at
a given moment and enter into the unknown.
Whatever is beyond our capacity to perceive is the unknowable. And the
distinction between it and the knowable is crucial. Confusing the two would
put seers in a most precarious position whenever they are confronted with
the unknowable.
"When this happened to the ancient seers," don Juan went on, "they
thought their procedures had gone haywire. It never occurred to them that
most of what's out there is beyond our comprehension. It was a terrifying
error of judgment on their part, for which they paid dearly."
"What happened after the distinction between the unknown and the
unknowable was realized?" I asked.
"The new cycle began," he replied. "That distinction is the frontier
between the old and the new. Everything that the new seers have done stems
from understanding that distinction."
Don Juan said that seeing was the crucial element in both the
destruction of the ancient seers' world and in the reconstruction of the new
view. It was through seeing that the new seers discovered certain undeniable
facts, which they used to arrive at certain conclusions, revolutionary to
them, about the nature of man and the world. These conclusions, which made
the new cycle possible, were the truths about awareness he was explaining to
me.
Don Juan asked me to accompany him to the center of town for a stroll
around the square. On our way, we began to talk about machines and delicate
instruments. He said that instruments are extensions of our senses, and I
maintained that there are instruments that are not in that category, because
they perform functions that we are not physiologically capable of
performing.
"Our senses are capable of everything," he asserted.
"I can tell you offhand that there are instruments that can detect
radio waves that come from outer space," I said. "Our senses cannot detect
radio waves."
"I have a different idea," he said. "I think our senses can detect
everything we are surrounded by."
"What about the case of ultrasonic sounds?" I insisted. "We don't have
the organic equipment to hear them."
"It is the seers' conviction that we've tapped a very small portion of
ourselves," he replied.
He immersed himself in thought for a while as if he were trying to
decide what to say next. Then he smiled.
"The first truth about awareness, as I have already told you," he
began, "is that the world out there is not really as we think it is. We
think it is a world of objects and it's not."
He paused as if to measure the effect of his words. I told him that I
agreed with his premise, because everything could be reduced to being a
field of energy. He said that I was merely intuiting a truth, and that to
reason it out was not to verify it. He was not interested in my agreement or
disagreement, he said, but in my attempt to comprehend what was involved in
that truth.
"You cannot witness fields of energy," he went on. "Not as an average
man, that is. Now, if you were able to see them, you would be a seer, in
which case you would be explaining the truths about awareness. Do you
understand what I mean?"
He went on to say that conclusions arrived at through reasoning had
very little or no influence in altering the course of our lives. Hence, the
countless examples of people who have the clearest convictions and yet act
diametrically against them time and time again; and have as the only
explanation for their behavior the idea that to err is human.
"The first truth is that the world is as it looks and yet it isn't," he
went on. "It's not as solid and real as our perception has been led to
believe, but it isn't a mirage either. The world is not an illusion, as it
has been said to be; it's real on the one hand, and unreal on the other. Pay
close attention to this, for it must be understood, not just accepted. We
perceive. This is a hard fact. But what we perceive is not a fact of the
same kind, because we learn what to perceive.
"Something out there is affecting our senses. This is the part that is
real. The unreal part is what our senses tell us is there. Take a mountain,
for instance. Our senses tell us that it is an object. It has size, color,
form. We even have categories of mountains, and they are downright accurate.
Nothing wrong with that; the flaw is simply that it has never occurred to us
that our senses play only a superficial role. Our senses perceive the way
they do because a specific feature of our awareness forces them to do so."
I began to agree with him again, but not because I wanted to, for I had
not quite understood his point. Rather, I was reacting to a threatening
situation. He made me stop.
"I've used the term 'the world, ' " don Juan went on, "to mean
everything that surrounds us. I have a better term, of course, but it would
be quite incomprehensible to you. Seers say that we think there is a world
of objects out there only because of our awareness. But what's really out
there are the Eagle's emanations, fluid, forever in motion, and yet
unchanged, eternal."
He stopped me with a gesture of his hand just as I was about to ask him
what the Eagle's emanations were. He explained that one of the most dramatic
legacies the old seers had left us was their discovery that the reason for
the existence of all sentient beings is to enhance awareness. Don Juan
called it a colossal discovery.
In a half-serious tone he asked me if I knew of a better answer to the
question that has always haunted man: the reason for our existence. I
immediately took a defensive position and began to argue about the
meaninglessness of the question because it cannot be logically answered. I
told him that in order to discuss that subject we would have to talk about
religious beliefs and turn it all into a matter of faith.
"The old seers were not just talking about faith," he said. "They were
not as practical as the new seers, but they were practical enough to know
what they were seeing. What I was trying to point out to you with that
question, which has rattled you so badly, is that our rationality alone
cannot come up with an answer about the reason for our existence. Every time
it tries, the answer turns into a matter of beliefs. The old seers took
another road, and they did find an answer which doesn't involve faith
alone."
He said that the old seers, risking untold dangers, actually saw the
indescribable force which is the source of all sentient beings. They called
it the Eagle, because in the few glimpses that they could sustain, they saw
it as something that resembled a black-andwhite eagle of infinite size.
They saw that it is the Eagle who bestows awareness. The Eagle creates
sentient beings so that they will live and enrich the awareness it gives
them with life. They also saw that it is the Eagle who devours that same
enriched awareness after making sentient beings relinquish it at the moment
of death.
"For the old seers," don Juan went on, "to say that the reason for
existence is to enhance awareness is not a matter of faith or deduction.
They saw it.
"They saw that the awareness of sentient beings flies away at the
moment of death and floats like a luminous cotton puff right into the
Eagle's beak to be consumed. For the old seers that was the evidence that
sentient beings live only to enrich the awareness that is the Eagle's food."
Don Juan's elucidation was interrupted because he had to leave on a
short business trip. Nestor drove him to Oaxaca. As I saw them off, I
remembered that at the beginning of my association with don Juan, every time
he mentioned a business trip I thought he was employing a euphemism for
something else. I eventually realized that he meant what he said. Whenever
such a trip was about to take place, he would put on one of his many
immaculately tailored three-piece suits and would look like anything but the
old Indian I knew. I had commented to him about the sophistication of his
metamorphosis.
"A nagual is someone flexible enough to be anything," he had said. "To
be a nagual, among other things, means to have no points to defend. Remember
this-- we'll come back to it over and over."
We had come back to it over and over, in every possible way; he did
indeed seem to have no points to defend, but during his absence in Oaxaca I
was given to just a shadow of doubt. Suddenly I realized that a nagual did
have one point to defend-- the description of the Eagle and what it does
required, in my opinion, a passionate defense.
I tried to pose that question to some of don Juan's companions, but
they eluded my probings. They told me that I was in quarantine from that
kind of discussion until don Juan had finished his explanation.
The moment he returned, we sat down to talk and I asked him about it.
"Those truths are not something to defend passionately," he replied.
"If you think that I'm trying to defend them, you are mistaken. Those truths
were put together for the delight and enlightenment of warriors, not to
engage any proprietary sentiments. When I told you that a nagual has no
points to defend, I meant, among other things, that a nagual has no
obsessions."
I told him that I was not following his teachings, for I had become
obsessed with his description of the Eagle and what it does. I remarked over
and over about the awesomeness of such an idea.
"It is not just an idea," he said. "It is a fact. And a damn scary one
if you ask me. The new seers were not simply playing with ideas."
"But what kind of a force would the Eagle be?"
"I wouldn't know how to answer that. The Eagle is as real for the seers
as gravity and time are for you, and just as abstract and incomprehensible."
"Wait a minute, don Juan. Those are abstract concepts, but they do
refer to real phenomena that can be corroborated. There are whole
disciplines dedicated to that."
"The Eagle and its emanations are equally corroboratable," don Juan
retorted. "And the discipline of the new seers is dedicated to doing just
that."
I asked him to explain what the Eagle's emanations are.
He said that the Eagle's emanations are an immutable thing-in-itself,
which engulfs everything that exists, the knowable and the unknowable.
"There is no way to describe in words what the Eagle's emanations
really are," don Juan continued. "A seer must witness them."
"Have you witnessed them yourself, don Juan?"
"Of course I have, and yet I can't tell you what they are. They are a
presence, almost a mass of sorts, a pressure that creates a dazzling
sensation. One can catch only a glimpse of them, as one can catch only a
glimpse of the Eagle itself."
"Would you say, don Juan, that the Eagle is the source of the
emanations?"
"It goes without saying that the Eagle is the source of its
emanations."
"I meant to ask if that is so visually."
"There is nothing visual about the Eagle. The entire body of a seer
senses the Eagle. There is something in all of us that can make us witness
with our entire body. Seers explain the act of seeing the Eagle in very
simple terms: because man is composed of the Eagle's emanations, man need
only revert back to his components. The problem arises with man's awareness;
it is his awareness that becomes entangled and confused. At the crucial
moment when it should be a simple case of the emanations acknowledging
themselves, man's awareness is compelled to interpret. The result is a
vision of the Eagle and the Eagle's emanations. But there is no Eagle and no
Eagle's emanations. What is out there is something that no living creature
can grasp."
I asked him if the source of the emanations was called the Eagle
because eagles in general have important attributes.
"This is simply the case of something unknowable vaguely resembling
something known," he replied. "On account of that, there have certainly been
attempts to imbue eagles with attributes they don't have. But that always
happens when impressionable people learn to perform acts that require great
sobriety. Seers come in all sizes and shapes."
"Do you mean to say that there are different kinds of seers?"
"No. I mean that there are scores of imbeciles who become seers. Seers
are human beings full of foibles, or rather, human beings full of foibles
are capable of becoming seers. Just as in the case of miserable people who
become superb scientists.
"The characteristic of miserable seers is that they are willing to
forget the wonder of the world. They become overwhelmed by the fact that
they see and believe that it's their genius that counts. A seer must be a
paragon in order to override the nearly invincible laxness of our human
condition. More important than seeing itself is what seers do with what they
see."
"What do you mean by that, don Juan?"
"Look at what some seers have done to us. We are stuck with their
vision of an Eagle that rules us and devours us at the moment of our death."
He said that there is a definite laxness in that version, and that
personally he did not appreciate the idea of something devouring us. For
him, it would be more accurate to say that there is a force that attracts
our consciousness, much as a magnet attracts iron shavings. At the moment of
dying, all of our being disintegrates under the attraction of that immense