force.
That such an event was interpreted as the Eagle devouring us he found
grotesque, because it turns an indescribable act into something as mundane
as eating.
"I'm a very average man," I said. "The description of an Eagle that
devours us had a great impact on me."
"The real impact can't be measured until the moment when you see it
yourself," he said. "But you must bear in mind that our flaws remain with us
even after we become seers. So when you see that force, you may very well
agree with the lax seers who called it the Eagle, as I did myself. On the
other hand, you may not. You may resist the temptation to ascribe human
attributes to what is incomprehensible, and actually improvise a new name
for it, a more accurate one."
"Seers who see the Eagle's emanations often call them commands," don
Juan said. "I wouldn't mind calling them commands myself if I hadn't got
used to calling them emanations. It was a reaction to my benefactor's
preference; for him they were commands. I thought that term was more in
keeping with his forceful personality than with mine. I wanted something
impersonal. 'Commands' sounds too human to me, but that's what they really
are, commands."
Don Juan said that to see the Eagle's emanations is to court disaster.
The new seers soon discovered the tremendous difficulties involved, and only
after great tribulations in trying to map the unknown and separate it from
the unknowable did they realize that everything is made out of the Eagle's
emanations. Only a small portion of those emanations is within reach of
human awareness, and that small portion is still further reduced, to a
minute fraction, by the constraints of our daily lives. That minute fraction
of the Eagle's emanations is the known; the small portion within possible
reach of human awareness is the unknown, and the incalculable rest is the
unknowable.
He went on to say that the new seers, being pragmatically oriented,
became immediately cognizant of the compelling power of the emanations. They
realized that all living creatures are forced to employ the Eagle's
emanations without ever knowing what they are. They also realized that
organisms are constructed to grasp a certain range of those emanations and
that every species has a definite range. The emanations exert great pressure
on organisms, and through that pressure organisms construct their
perceivable world.
"In our case, as human beings," don Juan said, "we employ those
emanations and interpret them as reality. But what man senses is such a
small portion of the Eagle's emanations that it's ridiculous to put much
stock in our perceptions, and yet it isn't possible for us to disregard our
perceptions. The new seers found this out the hard way-- after courting
tremendous dangers."
Don Juan was sitting where he usually sat in the large room. Ordinarily
there was no furniture in that room-- people sat on mats on the floor-- but
Carol, the nagual woman, had managed to furnish it with very comfortable
armchairs for the sessions when she and I took turns reading to him from the
works of Spanish-speaking poets.
"I want you to be very aware of what we are doing," he said as soon as
I sat down. "We are discussing the mastery of awareness. The truths we're
discussing are the principles of that mastery."
He added that in his teachings for the right side he had demonstrated
those principles to my normal awareness with the help of one of his seer
companions, Genaro, and that Genaro had played around with my awareness with
all the humor and irreverence for which the new seers were known.
"Genaro is the one who should be here telling you about the Eagle," he
said, "except that his versions are too irreverent. He thinks that the seers
who called that force the Eagle were either very stupid or were making a
grand joke, because eagles not only lay eggs, they also lay turds."
Don Juan laughed and said that he found Genaro's comments so
appropriate that he couldn't resist laughter. He added that if the new seers
had been the ones to describe the Eagle the description would certainly have
been made half in fun.
I told don Juan that on one level I took the Eagle as a poetic image,
and as such it delighted me, but on another level I took it literally, and
that terrified me.
"One of the greatest forces in the lives of warriors is fear," he said.
"It spurs them to learn."
He reminded me that the description of the Eagle came from the ancient
seers. The new seers were through with description, comparison, and
conjecture of any sort. They wanted to get directly to the source of things
and consequently risked unlimited danger to get to it. They did see the
Eagle's emanations. But they never tampered with the description of the
Eagle. They felt that it took too much energy to see the Eagle, and that the
ancient seers had already paid heavily for their scant glimpse of the
unknowable.
"How did the old seers come around to describing the Eagle?" I asked.
"They needed a minimal set of guidelines about the unknowable for
purposes of instruction," he replied. "They resolved it with a sketchy
description of the force that rules all there is, but not of its emanations,
because the emanations cannot be rendered at all in a language of
comparisons. Individual seers may feel the urge to make comments about
certain emanations, but that will remain personal, in other words, there is
no pat version of the emanations, as there is of the Eagle."
"The new seers seem to have been very abstract," I commented. "They
sound like modern-day philosophers."
"No. The new seers were terribly practical men," he replied. "They
weren't involved in concocting rational theories."
He said that the ancient seers were the ones who were the abstract
thinkers. They built monumental edifices of abstractions proper to them and
their time. And just like the modern-day philosophers, they were not at all
in control of their concatenations. The new seers, on the other hand, imbued
with practicality, were able to see a flux of emanations and to see how man
and other living beings utilize them to construct their perceivable world.
"How are those emanations utilized by man, don Juan?"
"It's so simple it sounds idiotic. For a seer, men are luminous beings.
Our luminosity is made up of that portion of the Eagle's emanations which is
encased in our egglike cocoon. That particular portion, that handful of
emanations that is encased, is what makes us men. To perceive is to match
the emanations contained inside our cocoon with those that are outside.
"Seers can see, for instance, the emanations inside any living creature
and can tell which of the outside emanations would match them."
"Are the emanations like beams of light?" I asked.
"No. Not at all. That would be too simple. They are something
indescribable. And yet, my personal comment would be to say that they are
like filaments of light. What's incomprehensible to normal awareness is that
the filaments are aware. I can't tell you what that means, because I don't
know what I am saying. All I can tell you with my personal comments is that
the filaments are aware of themselves, alive and vibrating, that there are
so many of them that numbers have no meaning and that each of them is an
eternity in itself."
4 The Glow of Awareness
Don Juan, don Genaro, and I had just returned from gathering plants in
the surrounding mountains. We were at don Genaro's house, sitting around the
table, when don Juan made me change levels of awareness. Don Genaro had been
staring at me and began to chuckle. He remarked how odd he thought it was
that I had two completely different standards for dealing with the two sides
of awareness. My relation with him was the most obvious example. On my right
side, he was the respected and feared sorcerer don Genaro, a man whose
incomprehensible acts delighted me and at the same time filled me with
mortal terror. On my left side, he was plain Genaro, or Genarito, with no
don attached to his name, a charming and kind seer whose acts were
thoroughly comprehensible and coherent with what I myself did or tried to
do.
I agreed with him and added that on my left side, the man whose mere
presence made me shake like a leaf was Silvio Manuel, the most mysterious of
don Juan's companions. I also said that don Juan, being a true nagual,
transcended arbitrary standards and was respected and admired by me in both
states.
"But is he feared?" Genaro asked in a quivering voice.
"Very feared," don Juan interjected in a falsetto voice.
We all laughed, but don Juan and Genaro laughed with such abandon that
I immediately suspected they knew something they were holding back.
Don Juan was reading me like a book. He explained that in the
intermediate stage, before one enters fully into the left-side awareness,
one is capable of tremendous concentration, but one is also susceptible to
every conceivable influence. I was being influenced by suspicion.
"La Gorda is always in this stage," he said. "She learns beautifully,
but she's a royal pain in the neck. She can't help being driven by anything
that comes her way, including, of corse, very good things, like keen
concentration."
Don Juan explained that the new seers discovered that the transition
period is the time when the deepest learning takes place, and that it is
also the time when warriors must be supervised and explanations must be
given to them so they can evaluate them properly. If no explanations are
given to them before they enter into the left side, they will be great
sorcerers but poor seers, as the ancient Toltecs were.
Female warriors in particular fall prey to the lure of the left side,
he said. They are so nimble that they can go into the left side with no
effort, often too soon for their own good.
After a long silence, Genaro fell asleep. Don Juan began to speak. He
said that the new seers had had to invent a number of terms in order to
explain the second truth about awareness. His benefactor had changed some of
those terms to suit himself, and he himself had done the same, guided by the
seers' belief that it does not make any difference what terms are used as
long as the truths have been verified by seeing.
I was curious to know what terms he had changed, but I didn't know
quite how to word my question. He took it that I was doubting his right or
his ability to change them and explained that if the terms we propose
originate in our reason they can only communicate the mundane agreement of
everyday life. When seers propose a term, on the other hand, it is never a
figure of speech because it stems from seeing and embraces everything that
seers can attain.
I asked him why he had changed the terms.
"It's a nagual's duty always to look for better ways to explain," he
replied. "Time changes everything, and every new nagual has to incorporate
new words, new ideas, to describe his seeing. '"
"Do you mean that a nagual takes ideas from the world of every day
life?" I asked.
"No. I mean that a nagual talks about seeing in ever new ways," he
said. "For instance, as the new nagual, you'd have to say that awareness
gives rise to perception. You'd be saying the same thing my benefactor said,
but in a different way."
"What do the new seers say perception is, don Juan?"
"They say that perception is a condition of alignment; the emanations
inside the cocoon become aligned with those outside that fit them. Alignment
is what allows awareness to be cultivated by every living creature. Seers
make these statements because they see living creatures as they really are:
luminous beings that look like bubbles of whitish light."
I asked him how the emanations inside the cocoon fit those outside so
as to accomplish perception.
"The emanations inside and the emanations outside," he said, "are the
same filaments of light. Sentient beings are minute bubbles made out of
those filaments, microscopic points of light, attached to the infinite
emanations."
He went on to explain that the luminosity of living beings is made by
the particular portion of the Eagle's emanations they happen to have inside
their luminous cocoons. When seers see perception, they witness that the
luminosity of the Eagle's emanations outside those creatures' cocoons
brightens the luminosity of the emanations inside their cocoons. The outside
luminosity attracts the inside one; it traps it, so to speak, and fixes it.
That fixation is the awareness of every specific being.
Seers can also see how the emanations outside the cocoon exert a
particular pressure on the portion of emanations inside. This pressure
determines the degree of awareness that every living being has.
I asked him to clarify how the Eagle's emanations outside the cocoon
exert pressure on those inside.
"The Eagle's emanations are more than filaments of light," he replied.
"Each one of them is a source of boundless energy. Think of it this way:
since some of the emanations outside the cocoon are the same as the
emanations inside, their energies are like a continuous pressure. But the
cocoon isolates the emanations that are inside its web and thereby directs
the pressure.
"I've mentioned to you that the old seers were masters of the art of
handling awareness," he went on. "What I can add now is that they were the
masters of that art because they learned to manipulate the structure of
man's cocoon. I've said to you that they unraveled the mystery of being
aware. By that I meant that they saw and realized that awareness is a glow
in the cocoon of living beings. They rightly called it the glow of
awareness."
He explained that the old seers saw that man's awareness is a glow of
amber luminosity more intense than the rest of the cocoon. That glow is on a
narrow, vertical band on the extreme right side of the cocoon, running along
its entire length. The mastery of the old seers was to move that glow, to
make it spread from its original setting on the surface of the cocoon inward
across its width.
He stopped talking and looked at Genaro, who was still sound asleep.
"Genaro doesn't give a fig about explanations," he said. "He's a doer.
My benefactor pushed him constantly to face insoluble problems. So he
entered into the left side proper and never had a chance to ponder and
wonder."
"Is it better to be that way, don Juan?"
"It depends. For him, it's perfect. For you and for me, it wouldn't be
satisfactory, because in one way or another we are called upon to explain.
Genaro or my benefactor are more like the old than the new seers: they can
control and do what they want with the glow of awareness."
He stood up from the mat where we were sitting and stretched his arms
and legs. I pressed him to continue talking. He smiled and said that I
needed to rest, that my concentration was waning.
There was a knock at the door. I woke up. It was dark. For a moment I
could not remember where I was. There was something in me that was far away,
as if part of me were still asleep, yet I was fully awake. Enough moonlight
came through the open window so that I could see.
I saw don Genaro get up and go to the door. I realized then that I was
at his house. Don Juan was sound asleep on a mat on the floor. I had the
distinct impression that the three of us had fallen asleep after returning
dead tired from a trip to the mountains.
Don Genaro lit his kerosene lantern. I followed him into the kitchen.
Someone had brought him a pot of hot stew and a stack of tortillas.
"Who brought you food?" I asked him. "Do you have a woman around here
that cooks for you?"
Don Juan had come into the kitchen. Both of them looked at me, smiling.
For some reason their smiles were terrifying to me. I was about to scream in
terror, in fact, when don Juan hit me on the back and made me shift into a
state of heightened awareness. I realized then that perhaps during my sleep,
or as I woke up, I had drifted back to everyday awareness.
The sensation I experienced then, once I was back in heightened
awareness, was a mixture of relief and anger and the most acute sadness. I
was relieved that I was myself again, for I had come to regard those
incomprehensible states as being my true self. There was one simple reason
for that-- in those states I felt complete; nothing was missing from me. The
anger and the sadness were a reaction to impotence. I was more aware than
ever of the limitations of my being.
I asked don Juan to explain to me how it was possible for me to do what
I was doing. In states of heightened awareness I could look back and
remember everything about myself; I could give an account of everything I
had done in either state; I could even remember my incapacity to recollect.
But once I had returned to my normal, everyday level of awareness I could
not recall anything I had done in heightened awareness, even if my life
depended on it.
"Hold it, hold it there," he said. "You haven't remembered anything
yet. Heightened awareness is only an intermediate state. There is infinitely
more beyond that, and you have been there many, many times. Right now you
can't remember, even if your life depends on it."
He was right. I had no idea what he was talking about. I pleaded for an
explanation.
"The explanation is coming," he said. "It's a slow process, but we'll
get to it. It is slow because I am just like you: I like to understand. I am
the opposite of my benefactor, who was not given to explaining. For him
there was only action. He used to put us squarely against incomprehensible
problems and let us resolve them for ourselves. Some of us never did resolve
anything, and we ended up very much in the same boat with the old seers: all
action and no real knowledge."
"Are those memories trapped in my mind?" I asked.
"No. That would make it too simple," he replied. "The actions of seers
are more complex than dividing a man into mind and body. You have forgotten
what you've done, or what you've witnessed, because when you were performing
what you've forgotten you were seeing."
I asked don Juan to reinterpret what he had just said.
Patiently, he explained that everything I had forgotten had taken place
in states in which my everyday awareness had been enhanced, intensified, a
condition that meant that other areas of my total being were used.
"Whatever you've forgotten is trapped in those areas of your total
being," he said. "To be using those other areas is to see."
"I'm more confused than ever, don Juan," I said.
"I don't blame you," he said. "Seeing is to lay bare the core of
everything, to witness the unknown and to glimpse into the unknowable. As
such, it doesn't bring one solace. Seers ordinarily go to pieces on finding
out that existence is incomprehensibly complex and that our normal awareness
maligns it with its limitations."
He reiterated that my concentration had to be total, that to understand
was of crucial importance, that the new seers placed the highest value on
deep, unemotional realizations.
"For instance, the other day," he went on, "when you understood about
la Gorda's and your self-importance, you didn't understand anything really.
You had an emotional outburst, that was all. I say this because the next day
you were back on your high horse of selfimportance as if you never had
realized anything.
"The same thing happened to the old seers. They were given to emotional
reactions. But when the time came for them to understand what they had seen,
they couldn't do it. To understand one needs sobriety, not emotionality.
Beware of those who weep with realization, for they have realized nothing.
"There are untold dangers in the path of knowledge for those without
sober understanding," he continued. "I am outlining the order in which the
new seers arranged the truths about awareness, so it will serve you as a
map. a map that you have to corroborate with your seeing, but not with your
eyes."
There was a long pause. He stared at me. He was definitely waiting for
me to ask him a question.
"Everybody falls prey to the mistake that seeing is done with the
eyes," he continued. "But don't be surprised that after so many years you
haven't realized yet that seeing is not a matter of the eyes. It's quite
normal to make that mistake."
"What is seeing, then?" I asked.
He replied that seeing is alignment. And I reminded him that he had
said that perception is alignment. He explained then that the alignment of
emanations used routinely is the perception of the day-to-day world, but the
alignment of emanations that are never used ordinarily is seeing. When such
an alignment occurs one sees. Seeing, therefore, being produced by alignment
out of the ordinary, cannot be something one could merely look at. He said
that in spite of the fact that I had seen countless times, it had not
occurred to me to disregard my eyes. I had succumbed to the way seeing is
labeled and described.
"When seers see, something explains everything as the new alignment
takes place," he continued. "It's a voice that tells them in their ear
what's what. If that voice is not present, what the seer is engaged in isn't
seeing. "
After a moment's pause, he continued explaining the voice of seeing. He
said that it was equally fallacious to say that seeing was hearing, because
it was infinitely more than that, but that seers had opted for using sound
as a gauge of a new alignment.
He called the voice of seeing a most mysterious inexplicable thing. "My
personal conclusion is that the voice of seeing belongs only to man," he
said. "It may happen because talking is something that no one else besides
man does. The old seers believed it was the voice of an overpowering entity
intimately related to mankind, a protector of man. The new seers found out
that that entity, which they called the mold of man, doesn't have a voice.
The voice of seeing for the new seers is something quite Incomprehensible;
they say it's the glow of awareness playing on the Eagle's emanations as a
harpist plays on a harp."
He refused to explain it any further, arguing that later on, as he
proceeded with his explanation, everything would become clear to me.
My concentration had been so total while don Juan spoke that I actually
did not remember sitting down at the table to eat. When don Juan stopped
talking, I noticed that his plate of stew was nearly finished.
Genaro was staring at me with a beaming smile. My plate was in front of
me on the table, and it too was empty. There was only a tiny residue of stew
left in it, as if I had just finished eating. I did not remember eating it
at all, but neither did I remember walking to the table or sitting down.
"Did you like the stew?" Genaro asked me and looked away.
I said I did, because I did not want to admit that I was having
problems recollecting.
"It had too much chile for my taste," Genaro said. "You never eat hot
food yourself, so I'm sort of worried about what it will do to you. You
shouldn't have eaten two servings. I suppose you're a little more piggish
when you're in heightened awareness, eh?"
I admitted that he was probably right. He handed me a large pitcher of
water to quench my thirst and soothe my throat. When I eagerly drank all of
it, both of them broke into howling laughter.
Suddenly, I realized what was going on. My realization was physical. It
was a flash of yellowish light that hit me as if a match had been struck
right between my eyes. I knew then that Genaro was joking. I had not eaten.
I had been so absorbed in don Juan's explanation that I had forgotten about
everything else. The plate in front of me was Genaro's.
After dinner don Juan went on with his explanation about the glow of
awareness. Genaro sat by me, listening as if he had never heard the
explanation before.
Don Juan said that the pressure that the emanations outside the cocoon,
which are called emanations at large, exert on the emanations inside the
cocoon is the same in all sentient beings. Yet the results of that pressure
are vastly different among them, because their cocoons react to that
pressure in every conceivable way. There are, however, degrees of uniformity
within certain boundaries.
"Now," he went on, "when seers see that the pressure of the emanations
at large bears down on the emanations inside, which are always in motion,
and makes them stop moving, they know that the luminous being at that moment
is fixated by awareness.
"To say that the emanations at large bear down on those inside the
cocoon and make them stop moving means that seers see something
indescribable, the meaning of which they know without a shadow of doubt. It
means that the voice of seeing has told them that the emanations inside the
cocoon are completely at rest and match some of those which are outside."
He said that seers maintain, naturally, that awareness always comes
from outside ourselves, that the real mystery is not inside us. Since by
nature the emanations at large are made to fixate what is inside the cocoon,
the trick of awareness is to let the fixating emanations merge with what is
inside us. Seers believe that if we let that happen we become what we really
are-- fluid, forever in motion, eternal.
There was a long pause. Don Juan's eyes had an intense shine. They
seemed to be looking at me from a great depth. I had the feeling that each
of his eyes was an independent point of brilliance. For an instant he
appeared to be struggling against an invisible force, a fire from within
that intended to consume him. It passed and he went on talking.
"The degree of awareness of every individual sentient being," he
continued, "depends on the degree to which it is capable of letting the
pressure of the emanations at large carry it."
After a long interruption, don Juan continued explaining. He said that
seers saw that from the moment of conception awareness is enhanced,
enriched, by the process of being alive. He said that seers saw, for
instance, that the awareness of an individual insect or that of an
individual man grows from the moment of conception in astoundingly different
ways, but with equal consistency.
"Is it from the moment of conception or from the moment of birth that
awareness develops?" I asked.
"Awareness develops from the moment of conception," he replied. "I have
always told you that sexual energy is something of ultimate importance and
that it has to be controlled and used with great care. But you have always
resented what I said, because you thought I was speaking of control in terms
of morality; I always meant it in terms of saving and rechanneling energy."
Don Juan looked at Genaro. Genaro nodded his head in approval.
"Genaro is going to tell you what our benefactor, the nagual Julian,
used to say about saving and rechanneling sexual energy," don Juan said to
me.
"The nagual Julian used to say that to have sex is a matter of energy,"
Genaro began. "For instance, he never had any problems having sex, because
he had bushels of energy. But he took one look at me and prescribed right
away that my peter was just for peeing. He told me that I didn't have enough
energy to have sex. He said that my parents were too bored and too tired
when they made me; he said that I was the result of very boring sex, cojida
aburrida. I was born like that, bored and tired. The nagual Julian
recommended that people like me should never have sex; this way we can store
the little energy we have.
"He said the same thing to Silvio Manuel and to Emilito. He saw that
the others had enough energy. They were not the result of bored sex. He told
them that they could do anything they wanted with their sexual energy, but
he recommended that they control themselves and understand the Eagle's
command that sex is for bestowing the glow of awareness. We all said we had
understood.
"One day, without any warning at all, he opened the curtain of the
other world with the help of his own benefactor, the nagual Ellas, and
pushed all of us inside, with no hesitation whatsoever. All of us, except
Silvio Manuel, nearly died in there. We had no energy to withstand the
impact of the other world. None of us, except Silvio Manuel, had followed
the nagual's recommendation."
"What is the curtain of the other world?" I asked don Juan.
"What Genaro said-- it is a curtain," don Juan replied. "But you're
getting off the subject. You always do. We're talking about the Eagle's
command about sex. It is the Eagle's command that sexual energy be used for
creating life. Through sexual energy, the eagle bestows awareness. So when
sentient beings are engaged in sexual intercourse, the emanations inside
their cocoons do their best to bestow awareness to the new sentient being
they are creating."
He said that during the sexual act, the emanations encased inside the
cocoon of both partners undergo a profound agitation, the culminating point
of which is a merging, a fusing of two pieces of the glow of awareness, one
from each partner, that separate from their cocoons.
"Sexual intercourse is always a bestowal of awareness even though the
bestowal may not be consolidated," he went on. "The emanations inside the
cocoon of human beings don't know of intercourse for fun."
Genaro leaned over toward me from his chair across the table and talked
to me in a low voice, shaking his head for emphasis.
"The nagual is telling you the truth," he said and winked at me. "Those
emanations really don't know."
Don Juan fought not to laugh and added that the fallacy of man is to
act with total disregard for the mystery of existence and to believe that
such a sublime act of bestowing life and awareness is merely a physical
drive that one can twist at will.
Genaro made obscene sexual gestures, twisting his pelvis around, on and
on. Don Juan nodded and said that that was exactly what he meant. Genaro
thanked him for acknowledging his one and only contribution to the
explanation of awareness.
Both of them laughed like idiots, saying that if I had known how
serious their benefactor was about the explanation of awareness, I would be
laughing with them.
I earnestly asked don Juan what all this meant for an average man in
the day-to-day world.
"You mean what Genaro is doing?" he asked me in mock seriousness.
Their glee was always contagious. It took a long time for them to calm
down. Their level of energy was so high that next to them, I seemed old and
decrepit.
"I really don't know," don Juan finally answered me. "All I know is
what it means to warriors. They know that the only real energy we possess is
a lifebestowing sexual energy. This knowledge makes them permanently
conscious of their responsibility.
"If warriors want to have enough energy to see, they must become misers
with their sexual energy. That was the lesson the nagual Julian gave us. He
pushed us into the unknown, and we all nearly died. Since everyone of us
wanted to see, we, of course, abstained from wasting our glow of awareness."
I had heard him voice that belief before. Every time he did, we got
into an argument. I always felt compelled to protest and raise objections to
what I thought was a puritanical attitude toward sex.
I again raised my objections. Both of them laughed to tears.
"What can be done with man's natural sensuality?" I asked don Juan.
"Nothing," he replied. "There is nothing wrong with man's sensuality,
it's man's ignorance of and disregard for his magical nature that is wrong.
It's a mistake to waste recklessly the life-bestowing force of sex and not
have children, but it's also a mistake not to know that in having children
one taxes the glow of awareness."
"How do seers know that having children taxes the glow of awareness?" I
asked.
"They see that on having a child, the parents' glow of awareness
diminishes and the child's increases. In some supersensitive, frail parents,
the glow of awareness almost disappears. As children enhance their
awareness, a big dark spot develops in the luminous cocoon of the parents,
on the very place from which the glow was taken away. It is usually on the
midsection of the cocoon. Sometimes those spots can even be seen
superimposed on the body itself."
I asked him if there was anything that could be done to give people a
more balanced understanding of the glow of awareness.
"Nothing," he said. "At least, there is nothing that seers can do.
Seers aim to be free, to be unbiased witnesses incapable of passing
judgment; otherwise they would have to assume the responsibility for
bringing about a more adjusted cycle. No one can do that. The new cycle, if
it is to come, must come of itself."
5 The First Attention
The following day we ate breakfast at dawn, then don Juan made me shift
levels of awareness.
"Today, let's go to an original setting," don Juan said to Genaro.
"By all means," Genaro said gravely. He glanced at me and then added in
a low voice, as if not wanting me to overhear him, "Does he have to. . .
perhaps it's too much. . ."
In a matter of seconds my fear and suspicion escalated to unbearable
heights. I was sweating and panting. Don Juan came to my side and, with an
expression of almost uncontrollable amusement, assured me that Genaro was
just entertaining himself at my expense, and that we were going to a place
where the original seers had lived thousands of years ago.
As don Juan was speaking to me, I happened to glance at Genaro. He
slowly shook his head from side to side. It was an almost imperceptible
gesture, as if he were letting me know that don Juan was not telling the
truth. I went into a state of nervous frenzy, near hysteria-- and stopped
only when Genaro burst into laughter.
I marveled how easily my emotional states could escalate to nearly
unmanageable heights or drop to nothing.
Don Juan, Genaro, and I left Genaro's house in the early morning and
traveled a short distance into the surrounding eroded hills. Presently we
stopped and sat down on top of an enormous flat rock, on a gradual slope, in
a corn field that seemed to have been recently harvested.
"This is the original setting," don Juan said to me. "We'll come back
here a couple more times, during the course of my explanation."
"Very weird things happen here at night," Genaro said. "The nagual
Julian actually caught an ally here. Or rather, the ally ..."
Don Juan made a noticeable gesture with his eyebrows and Genaro stopped
in midsentence. He smiled at me.
"It's too early in the day for scary stories," Genaro said. "Let's wait
until dark."
He stood up and began creeping all around the rock, tiptoeing with his
spine arched backward.
"What was he saying about your benefactor's catching an ally here?" I
asked don Juan.
He did not answer right away. He was ecstatic, watching Genaro's
antics.
"He was referring to some sophisticated use of awareness," he finally
replied, still staring at Genaro.
Genaro completed a circle around the rock and came back and sat down by
me. He was panting heavily, almost wheezing, out of breath.
Don Juan seemed fascinated by what Genaro had done. Again I had the
feeling that they were amusing themselves at my expense, that both of them
were up to something I knew nothing about.
Suddenly, don Juan began his explanation. His voice soothed me. He said
that after much toiling, seers arrived at the conclusion that the
consciousness of adult human beings, matured by the process of growth, can
no longer be called awareness, because it has been modified into something
more intense and complex, which seers call attention.
"How do seers know that man's awareness is being cultivated and that it
grows?" I asked.
He said that at a given time in the growth of human beings a band of
the emanations inside their cocoons becomes very bright; as human beings
accumulate experience, it begins to glow. In some instances, the glow of
this band of emanations increases so dramatically that it fuses with the
emanations from the outside. Seers, witnessing an enhancement of this kind,
had to surmise that awareness is the raw material and attention the end
product of maturation.
"How do seers describe attention?" I asked.
"They say that attention is the harnessing and enhancing of awareness
through the process of being alive," he replied.
He said that the danger of definitions is that they simplify matters to
make them understandable; in this case, in defining attention, one runs the
risk of transforming a magical, miraculous accomplishment into something
commonplace. Attention is man's greatest single accomplishment. It develops
from raw animal awareness until it covers the entire gamut of human
alternatives. Seers perfect it even further until it covers the whole scope
of human possibilities.
I wanted to know if there was a special significance to alternatives
and possibilities in the seers' view.
Don Juan replied that human alternatives are everything we are capable
of choosing as persons. They have to do with the level of our day-to-day
range, the known; and owing to that fact, they are quite limited in number
and scope. Human possibilities belong to the unknown. They are not what we
are capable of choosing but what we are capable of attaining. He said that
an example of human alternatives is our choice to believe that the human
body is an object among objects. An example of human possibilities is the
seers' achievement in viewing man as an egglike luminous being. With the
body as an object one tackles the known, with the body as a luminous egg one
tackles the unknown; human possibilities have, therefore, nearly an
inexhaustible scope.
"Seers say that there are three types of attention," don Juan went on.
"When they say that, they mean it just for human beings, not for all the
sentient beings in existence. But the three are not just types of attention,
they are rather three levels of attainment. They are the first, second, and
third attention, each of them an independent domain, complete in itself."
He explained that the first attention in man is animal awareness, which
has been developed, through the process of experience, into a complex,
intricate, and extremely fragile faculty that takes care of the day-today
world in all its innumerable aspects, in other words, everything that one
can think about is part of the first attention.
"The first attention is everything we are as average men," he
continued. "By virtue of such an absolute rule over our lives, the first
attention is the most valuable asset that the average man has. Perhaps it is
even our only asset.
"Taking into account its true value, the new seers started a rigorous
examination of the first attention through seeing. Their findings molded
their total outlook and the outlook of all their descendants, even though
most of them do not understand what those seers really saw."
He emphatically warned me that the conclusions of the new seers'
rigorous examination had very little to do with reason or rationality,
because in order to examine and explain the first attention, one must see
it. Only seers can do that. But to examine what seers see in the first
attention is essential. It allows the first attention the only opportunity
it will ever have to realize its own workings.
"In terms of what seers see, the first attention is the glow of
awareness developed to an ultra shine," he continued. "But it is a glow
fixed on the surface of the cocoon, so to speak. It is a glow that covers
the known.
"The second attention, on the other hand, is a more complex and
specialized state of the glow of awareness. It has to do with the unknown.
It comes about when unused emanations inside man's cocoon are utilized.
"The reason I called the second attention specialized is that in order
to utilize those unused emanations, one needs uncommon, elaborate tactics
that require supreme discipline and concentration."
He said that he had told me before, when he was teaching me the art of
dreaming, that the concentration needed to be aware that one is having a
dream is the forerunner of the second attention. That concentration is a
form of consciousness that is not in the same category as the consciousness
needed to deal with the daily world.
He said that the second attention is also called the left-side
awareness; and it is the vastest field that one can imagine, so vast in fact
that it seems limitless.
"I wouldn't stray into it for anything in this world," he went on. "It
is a quagmire so complex and bizarre that sober seers go into it only under
the strictest conditions.
"The great difficulty is that the entrance into the second attention is
utterly easy and its lure nearly irresistible."
He said that the old seers, being the masters of awareness, applied
their expertise to their own glows of awareness and made them expand to
inconceivable limits. They actually aimed at lighting up all the emanations
inside their cocoons, one band at a time. They succeeded, but oddly enough
the accomplishment of lighting up one band at a time was instrumental in
their becoming imprisoned in the quagmire of the second attention.
"The new seers corrected that error," he continued, "and let the
mastery of awareness develop to its natural end, which is to extend the glow
of awareness beyond the bounds of the luminous cocoon in one single stroke.
"The third attention is attained when the glow of awareness turns into
the fire from within: a glow that kindles not one band at a time but all the
That such an event was interpreted as the Eagle devouring us he found
grotesque, because it turns an indescribable act into something as mundane
as eating.
"I'm a very average man," I said. "The description of an Eagle that
devours us had a great impact on me."
"The real impact can't be measured until the moment when you see it
yourself," he said. "But you must bear in mind that our flaws remain with us
even after we become seers. So when you see that force, you may very well
agree with the lax seers who called it the Eagle, as I did myself. On the
other hand, you may not. You may resist the temptation to ascribe human
attributes to what is incomprehensible, and actually improvise a new name
for it, a more accurate one."
"Seers who see the Eagle's emanations often call them commands," don
Juan said. "I wouldn't mind calling them commands myself if I hadn't got
used to calling them emanations. It was a reaction to my benefactor's
preference; for him they were commands. I thought that term was more in
keeping with his forceful personality than with mine. I wanted something
impersonal. 'Commands' sounds too human to me, but that's what they really
are, commands."
Don Juan said that to see the Eagle's emanations is to court disaster.
The new seers soon discovered the tremendous difficulties involved, and only
after great tribulations in trying to map the unknown and separate it from
the unknowable did they realize that everything is made out of the Eagle's
emanations. Only a small portion of those emanations is within reach of
human awareness, and that small portion is still further reduced, to a
minute fraction, by the constraints of our daily lives. That minute fraction
of the Eagle's emanations is the known; the small portion within possible
reach of human awareness is the unknown, and the incalculable rest is the
unknowable.
He went on to say that the new seers, being pragmatically oriented,
became immediately cognizant of the compelling power of the emanations. They
realized that all living creatures are forced to employ the Eagle's
emanations without ever knowing what they are. They also realized that
organisms are constructed to grasp a certain range of those emanations and
that every species has a definite range. The emanations exert great pressure
on organisms, and through that pressure organisms construct their
perceivable world.
"In our case, as human beings," don Juan said, "we employ those
emanations and interpret them as reality. But what man senses is such a
small portion of the Eagle's emanations that it's ridiculous to put much
stock in our perceptions, and yet it isn't possible for us to disregard our
perceptions. The new seers found this out the hard way-- after courting
tremendous dangers."
Don Juan was sitting where he usually sat in the large room. Ordinarily
there was no furniture in that room-- people sat on mats on the floor-- but
Carol, the nagual woman, had managed to furnish it with very comfortable
armchairs for the sessions when she and I took turns reading to him from the
works of Spanish-speaking poets.
"I want you to be very aware of what we are doing," he said as soon as
I sat down. "We are discussing the mastery of awareness. The truths we're
discussing are the principles of that mastery."
He added that in his teachings for the right side he had demonstrated
those principles to my normal awareness with the help of one of his seer
companions, Genaro, and that Genaro had played around with my awareness with
all the humor and irreverence for which the new seers were known.
"Genaro is the one who should be here telling you about the Eagle," he
said, "except that his versions are too irreverent. He thinks that the seers
who called that force the Eagle were either very stupid or were making a
grand joke, because eagles not only lay eggs, they also lay turds."
Don Juan laughed and said that he found Genaro's comments so
appropriate that he couldn't resist laughter. He added that if the new seers
had been the ones to describe the Eagle the description would certainly have
been made half in fun.
I told don Juan that on one level I took the Eagle as a poetic image,
and as such it delighted me, but on another level I took it literally, and
that terrified me.
"One of the greatest forces in the lives of warriors is fear," he said.
"It spurs them to learn."
He reminded me that the description of the Eagle came from the ancient
seers. The new seers were through with description, comparison, and
conjecture of any sort. They wanted to get directly to the source of things
and consequently risked unlimited danger to get to it. They did see the
Eagle's emanations. But they never tampered with the description of the
Eagle. They felt that it took too much energy to see the Eagle, and that the
ancient seers had already paid heavily for their scant glimpse of the
unknowable.
"How did the old seers come around to describing the Eagle?" I asked.
"They needed a minimal set of guidelines about the unknowable for
purposes of instruction," he replied. "They resolved it with a sketchy
description of the force that rules all there is, but not of its emanations,
because the emanations cannot be rendered at all in a language of
comparisons. Individual seers may feel the urge to make comments about
certain emanations, but that will remain personal, in other words, there is
no pat version of the emanations, as there is of the Eagle."
"The new seers seem to have been very abstract," I commented. "They
sound like modern-day philosophers."
"No. The new seers were terribly practical men," he replied. "They
weren't involved in concocting rational theories."
He said that the ancient seers were the ones who were the abstract
thinkers. They built monumental edifices of abstractions proper to them and
their time. And just like the modern-day philosophers, they were not at all
in control of their concatenations. The new seers, on the other hand, imbued
with practicality, were able to see a flux of emanations and to see how man
and other living beings utilize them to construct their perceivable world.
"How are those emanations utilized by man, don Juan?"
"It's so simple it sounds idiotic. For a seer, men are luminous beings.
Our luminosity is made up of that portion of the Eagle's emanations which is
encased in our egglike cocoon. That particular portion, that handful of
emanations that is encased, is what makes us men. To perceive is to match
the emanations contained inside our cocoon with those that are outside.
"Seers can see, for instance, the emanations inside any living creature
and can tell which of the outside emanations would match them."
"Are the emanations like beams of light?" I asked.
"No. Not at all. That would be too simple. They are something
indescribable. And yet, my personal comment would be to say that they are
like filaments of light. What's incomprehensible to normal awareness is that
the filaments are aware. I can't tell you what that means, because I don't
know what I am saying. All I can tell you with my personal comments is that
the filaments are aware of themselves, alive and vibrating, that there are
so many of them that numbers have no meaning and that each of them is an
eternity in itself."
4 The Glow of Awareness
Don Juan, don Genaro, and I had just returned from gathering plants in
the surrounding mountains. We were at don Genaro's house, sitting around the
table, when don Juan made me change levels of awareness. Don Genaro had been
staring at me and began to chuckle. He remarked how odd he thought it was
that I had two completely different standards for dealing with the two sides
of awareness. My relation with him was the most obvious example. On my right
side, he was the respected and feared sorcerer don Genaro, a man whose
incomprehensible acts delighted me and at the same time filled me with
mortal terror. On my left side, he was plain Genaro, or Genarito, with no
don attached to his name, a charming and kind seer whose acts were
thoroughly comprehensible and coherent with what I myself did or tried to
do.
I agreed with him and added that on my left side, the man whose mere
presence made me shake like a leaf was Silvio Manuel, the most mysterious of
don Juan's companions. I also said that don Juan, being a true nagual,
transcended arbitrary standards and was respected and admired by me in both
states.
"But is he feared?" Genaro asked in a quivering voice.
"Very feared," don Juan interjected in a falsetto voice.
We all laughed, but don Juan and Genaro laughed with such abandon that
I immediately suspected they knew something they were holding back.
Don Juan was reading me like a book. He explained that in the
intermediate stage, before one enters fully into the left-side awareness,
one is capable of tremendous concentration, but one is also susceptible to
every conceivable influence. I was being influenced by suspicion.
"La Gorda is always in this stage," he said. "She learns beautifully,
but she's a royal pain in the neck. She can't help being driven by anything
that comes her way, including, of corse, very good things, like keen
concentration."
Don Juan explained that the new seers discovered that the transition
period is the time when the deepest learning takes place, and that it is
also the time when warriors must be supervised and explanations must be
given to them so they can evaluate them properly. If no explanations are
given to them before they enter into the left side, they will be great
sorcerers but poor seers, as the ancient Toltecs were.
Female warriors in particular fall prey to the lure of the left side,
he said. They are so nimble that they can go into the left side with no
effort, often too soon for their own good.
After a long silence, Genaro fell asleep. Don Juan began to speak. He
said that the new seers had had to invent a number of terms in order to
explain the second truth about awareness. His benefactor had changed some of
those terms to suit himself, and he himself had done the same, guided by the
seers' belief that it does not make any difference what terms are used as
long as the truths have been verified by seeing.
I was curious to know what terms he had changed, but I didn't know
quite how to word my question. He took it that I was doubting his right or
his ability to change them and explained that if the terms we propose
originate in our reason they can only communicate the mundane agreement of
everyday life. When seers propose a term, on the other hand, it is never a
figure of speech because it stems from seeing and embraces everything that
seers can attain.
I asked him why he had changed the terms.
"It's a nagual's duty always to look for better ways to explain," he
replied. "Time changes everything, and every new nagual has to incorporate
new words, new ideas, to describe his seeing. '"
"Do you mean that a nagual takes ideas from the world of every day
life?" I asked.
"No. I mean that a nagual talks about seeing in ever new ways," he
said. "For instance, as the new nagual, you'd have to say that awareness
gives rise to perception. You'd be saying the same thing my benefactor said,
but in a different way."
"What do the new seers say perception is, don Juan?"
"They say that perception is a condition of alignment; the emanations
inside the cocoon become aligned with those outside that fit them. Alignment
is what allows awareness to be cultivated by every living creature. Seers
make these statements because they see living creatures as they really are:
luminous beings that look like bubbles of whitish light."
I asked him how the emanations inside the cocoon fit those outside so
as to accomplish perception.
"The emanations inside and the emanations outside," he said, "are the
same filaments of light. Sentient beings are minute bubbles made out of
those filaments, microscopic points of light, attached to the infinite
emanations."
He went on to explain that the luminosity of living beings is made by
the particular portion of the Eagle's emanations they happen to have inside
their luminous cocoons. When seers see perception, they witness that the
luminosity of the Eagle's emanations outside those creatures' cocoons
brightens the luminosity of the emanations inside their cocoons. The outside
luminosity attracts the inside one; it traps it, so to speak, and fixes it.
That fixation is the awareness of every specific being.
Seers can also see how the emanations outside the cocoon exert a
particular pressure on the portion of emanations inside. This pressure
determines the degree of awareness that every living being has.
I asked him to clarify how the Eagle's emanations outside the cocoon
exert pressure on those inside.
"The Eagle's emanations are more than filaments of light," he replied.
"Each one of them is a source of boundless energy. Think of it this way:
since some of the emanations outside the cocoon are the same as the
emanations inside, their energies are like a continuous pressure. But the
cocoon isolates the emanations that are inside its web and thereby directs
the pressure.
"I've mentioned to you that the old seers were masters of the art of
handling awareness," he went on. "What I can add now is that they were the
masters of that art because they learned to manipulate the structure of
man's cocoon. I've said to you that they unraveled the mystery of being
aware. By that I meant that they saw and realized that awareness is a glow
in the cocoon of living beings. They rightly called it the glow of
awareness."
He explained that the old seers saw that man's awareness is a glow of
amber luminosity more intense than the rest of the cocoon. That glow is on a
narrow, vertical band on the extreme right side of the cocoon, running along
its entire length. The mastery of the old seers was to move that glow, to
make it spread from its original setting on the surface of the cocoon inward
across its width.
He stopped talking and looked at Genaro, who was still sound asleep.
"Genaro doesn't give a fig about explanations," he said. "He's a doer.
My benefactor pushed him constantly to face insoluble problems. So he
entered into the left side proper and never had a chance to ponder and
wonder."
"Is it better to be that way, don Juan?"
"It depends. For him, it's perfect. For you and for me, it wouldn't be
satisfactory, because in one way or another we are called upon to explain.
Genaro or my benefactor are more like the old than the new seers: they can
control and do what they want with the glow of awareness."
He stood up from the mat where we were sitting and stretched his arms
and legs. I pressed him to continue talking. He smiled and said that I
needed to rest, that my concentration was waning.
There was a knock at the door. I woke up. It was dark. For a moment I
could not remember where I was. There was something in me that was far away,
as if part of me were still asleep, yet I was fully awake. Enough moonlight
came through the open window so that I could see.
I saw don Genaro get up and go to the door. I realized then that I was
at his house. Don Juan was sound asleep on a mat on the floor. I had the
distinct impression that the three of us had fallen asleep after returning
dead tired from a trip to the mountains.
Don Genaro lit his kerosene lantern. I followed him into the kitchen.
Someone had brought him a pot of hot stew and a stack of tortillas.
"Who brought you food?" I asked him. "Do you have a woman around here
that cooks for you?"
Don Juan had come into the kitchen. Both of them looked at me, smiling.
For some reason their smiles were terrifying to me. I was about to scream in
terror, in fact, when don Juan hit me on the back and made me shift into a
state of heightened awareness. I realized then that perhaps during my sleep,
or as I woke up, I had drifted back to everyday awareness.
The sensation I experienced then, once I was back in heightened
awareness, was a mixture of relief and anger and the most acute sadness. I
was relieved that I was myself again, for I had come to regard those
incomprehensible states as being my true self. There was one simple reason
for that-- in those states I felt complete; nothing was missing from me. The
anger and the sadness were a reaction to impotence. I was more aware than
ever of the limitations of my being.
I asked don Juan to explain to me how it was possible for me to do what
I was doing. In states of heightened awareness I could look back and
remember everything about myself; I could give an account of everything I
had done in either state; I could even remember my incapacity to recollect.
But once I had returned to my normal, everyday level of awareness I could
not recall anything I had done in heightened awareness, even if my life
depended on it.
"Hold it, hold it there," he said. "You haven't remembered anything
yet. Heightened awareness is only an intermediate state. There is infinitely
more beyond that, and you have been there many, many times. Right now you
can't remember, even if your life depends on it."
He was right. I had no idea what he was talking about. I pleaded for an
explanation.
"The explanation is coming," he said. "It's a slow process, but we'll
get to it. It is slow because I am just like you: I like to understand. I am
the opposite of my benefactor, who was not given to explaining. For him
there was only action. He used to put us squarely against incomprehensible
problems and let us resolve them for ourselves. Some of us never did resolve
anything, and we ended up very much in the same boat with the old seers: all
action and no real knowledge."
"Are those memories trapped in my mind?" I asked.
"No. That would make it too simple," he replied. "The actions of seers
are more complex than dividing a man into mind and body. You have forgotten
what you've done, or what you've witnessed, because when you were performing
what you've forgotten you were seeing."
I asked don Juan to reinterpret what he had just said.
Patiently, he explained that everything I had forgotten had taken place
in states in which my everyday awareness had been enhanced, intensified, a
condition that meant that other areas of my total being were used.
"Whatever you've forgotten is trapped in those areas of your total
being," he said. "To be using those other areas is to see."
"I'm more confused than ever, don Juan," I said.
"I don't blame you," he said. "Seeing is to lay bare the core of
everything, to witness the unknown and to glimpse into the unknowable. As
such, it doesn't bring one solace. Seers ordinarily go to pieces on finding
out that existence is incomprehensibly complex and that our normal awareness
maligns it with its limitations."
He reiterated that my concentration had to be total, that to understand
was of crucial importance, that the new seers placed the highest value on
deep, unemotional realizations.
"For instance, the other day," he went on, "when you understood about
la Gorda's and your self-importance, you didn't understand anything really.
You had an emotional outburst, that was all. I say this because the next day
you were back on your high horse of selfimportance as if you never had
realized anything.
"The same thing happened to the old seers. They were given to emotional
reactions. But when the time came for them to understand what they had seen,
they couldn't do it. To understand one needs sobriety, not emotionality.
Beware of those who weep with realization, for they have realized nothing.
"There are untold dangers in the path of knowledge for those without
sober understanding," he continued. "I am outlining the order in which the
new seers arranged the truths about awareness, so it will serve you as a
map. a map that you have to corroborate with your seeing, but not with your
eyes."
There was a long pause. He stared at me. He was definitely waiting for
me to ask him a question.
"Everybody falls prey to the mistake that seeing is done with the
eyes," he continued. "But don't be surprised that after so many years you
haven't realized yet that seeing is not a matter of the eyes. It's quite
normal to make that mistake."
"What is seeing, then?" I asked.
He replied that seeing is alignment. And I reminded him that he had
said that perception is alignment. He explained then that the alignment of
emanations used routinely is the perception of the day-to-day world, but the
alignment of emanations that are never used ordinarily is seeing. When such
an alignment occurs one sees. Seeing, therefore, being produced by alignment
out of the ordinary, cannot be something one could merely look at. He said
that in spite of the fact that I had seen countless times, it had not
occurred to me to disregard my eyes. I had succumbed to the way seeing is
labeled and described.
"When seers see, something explains everything as the new alignment
takes place," he continued. "It's a voice that tells them in their ear
what's what. If that voice is not present, what the seer is engaged in isn't
seeing. "
After a moment's pause, he continued explaining the voice of seeing. He
said that it was equally fallacious to say that seeing was hearing, because
it was infinitely more than that, but that seers had opted for using sound
as a gauge of a new alignment.
He called the voice of seeing a most mysterious inexplicable thing. "My
personal conclusion is that the voice of seeing belongs only to man," he
said. "It may happen because talking is something that no one else besides
man does. The old seers believed it was the voice of an overpowering entity
intimately related to mankind, a protector of man. The new seers found out
that that entity, which they called the mold of man, doesn't have a voice.
The voice of seeing for the new seers is something quite Incomprehensible;
they say it's the glow of awareness playing on the Eagle's emanations as a
harpist plays on a harp."
He refused to explain it any further, arguing that later on, as he
proceeded with his explanation, everything would become clear to me.
My concentration had been so total while don Juan spoke that I actually
did not remember sitting down at the table to eat. When don Juan stopped
talking, I noticed that his plate of stew was nearly finished.
Genaro was staring at me with a beaming smile. My plate was in front of
me on the table, and it too was empty. There was only a tiny residue of stew
left in it, as if I had just finished eating. I did not remember eating it
at all, but neither did I remember walking to the table or sitting down.
"Did you like the stew?" Genaro asked me and looked away.
I said I did, because I did not want to admit that I was having
problems recollecting.
"It had too much chile for my taste," Genaro said. "You never eat hot
food yourself, so I'm sort of worried about what it will do to you. You
shouldn't have eaten two servings. I suppose you're a little more piggish
when you're in heightened awareness, eh?"
I admitted that he was probably right. He handed me a large pitcher of
water to quench my thirst and soothe my throat. When I eagerly drank all of
it, both of them broke into howling laughter.
Suddenly, I realized what was going on. My realization was physical. It
was a flash of yellowish light that hit me as if a match had been struck
right between my eyes. I knew then that Genaro was joking. I had not eaten.
I had been so absorbed in don Juan's explanation that I had forgotten about
everything else. The plate in front of me was Genaro's.
After dinner don Juan went on with his explanation about the glow of
awareness. Genaro sat by me, listening as if he had never heard the
explanation before.
Don Juan said that the pressure that the emanations outside the cocoon,
which are called emanations at large, exert on the emanations inside the
cocoon is the same in all sentient beings. Yet the results of that pressure
are vastly different among them, because their cocoons react to that
pressure in every conceivable way. There are, however, degrees of uniformity
within certain boundaries.
"Now," he went on, "when seers see that the pressure of the emanations
at large bears down on the emanations inside, which are always in motion,
and makes them stop moving, they know that the luminous being at that moment
is fixated by awareness.
"To say that the emanations at large bear down on those inside the
cocoon and make them stop moving means that seers see something
indescribable, the meaning of which they know without a shadow of doubt. It
means that the voice of seeing has told them that the emanations inside the
cocoon are completely at rest and match some of those which are outside."
He said that seers maintain, naturally, that awareness always comes
from outside ourselves, that the real mystery is not inside us. Since by
nature the emanations at large are made to fixate what is inside the cocoon,
the trick of awareness is to let the fixating emanations merge with what is
inside us. Seers believe that if we let that happen we become what we really
are-- fluid, forever in motion, eternal.
There was a long pause. Don Juan's eyes had an intense shine. They
seemed to be looking at me from a great depth. I had the feeling that each
of his eyes was an independent point of brilliance. For an instant he
appeared to be struggling against an invisible force, a fire from within
that intended to consume him. It passed and he went on talking.
"The degree of awareness of every individual sentient being," he
continued, "depends on the degree to which it is capable of letting the
pressure of the emanations at large carry it."
After a long interruption, don Juan continued explaining. He said that
seers saw that from the moment of conception awareness is enhanced,
enriched, by the process of being alive. He said that seers saw, for
instance, that the awareness of an individual insect or that of an
individual man grows from the moment of conception in astoundingly different
ways, but with equal consistency.
"Is it from the moment of conception or from the moment of birth that
awareness develops?" I asked.
"Awareness develops from the moment of conception," he replied. "I have
always told you that sexual energy is something of ultimate importance and
that it has to be controlled and used with great care. But you have always
resented what I said, because you thought I was speaking of control in terms
of morality; I always meant it in terms of saving and rechanneling energy."
Don Juan looked at Genaro. Genaro nodded his head in approval.
"Genaro is going to tell you what our benefactor, the nagual Julian,
used to say about saving and rechanneling sexual energy," don Juan said to
me.
"The nagual Julian used to say that to have sex is a matter of energy,"
Genaro began. "For instance, he never had any problems having sex, because
he had bushels of energy. But he took one look at me and prescribed right
away that my peter was just for peeing. He told me that I didn't have enough
energy to have sex. He said that my parents were too bored and too tired
when they made me; he said that I was the result of very boring sex, cojida
aburrida. I was born like that, bored and tired. The nagual Julian
recommended that people like me should never have sex; this way we can store
the little energy we have.
"He said the same thing to Silvio Manuel and to Emilito. He saw that
the others had enough energy. They were not the result of bored sex. He told
them that they could do anything they wanted with their sexual energy, but
he recommended that they control themselves and understand the Eagle's
command that sex is for bestowing the glow of awareness. We all said we had
understood.
"One day, without any warning at all, he opened the curtain of the
other world with the help of his own benefactor, the nagual Ellas, and
pushed all of us inside, with no hesitation whatsoever. All of us, except
Silvio Manuel, nearly died in there. We had no energy to withstand the
impact of the other world. None of us, except Silvio Manuel, had followed
the nagual's recommendation."
"What is the curtain of the other world?" I asked don Juan.
"What Genaro said-- it is a curtain," don Juan replied. "But you're
getting off the subject. You always do. We're talking about the Eagle's
command about sex. It is the Eagle's command that sexual energy be used for
creating life. Through sexual energy, the eagle bestows awareness. So when
sentient beings are engaged in sexual intercourse, the emanations inside
their cocoons do their best to bestow awareness to the new sentient being
they are creating."
He said that during the sexual act, the emanations encased inside the
cocoon of both partners undergo a profound agitation, the culminating point
of which is a merging, a fusing of two pieces of the glow of awareness, one
from each partner, that separate from their cocoons.
"Sexual intercourse is always a bestowal of awareness even though the
bestowal may not be consolidated," he went on. "The emanations inside the
cocoon of human beings don't know of intercourse for fun."
Genaro leaned over toward me from his chair across the table and talked
to me in a low voice, shaking his head for emphasis.
"The nagual is telling you the truth," he said and winked at me. "Those
emanations really don't know."
Don Juan fought not to laugh and added that the fallacy of man is to
act with total disregard for the mystery of existence and to believe that
such a sublime act of bestowing life and awareness is merely a physical
drive that one can twist at will.
Genaro made obscene sexual gestures, twisting his pelvis around, on and
on. Don Juan nodded and said that that was exactly what he meant. Genaro
thanked him for acknowledging his one and only contribution to the
explanation of awareness.
Both of them laughed like idiots, saying that if I had known how
serious their benefactor was about the explanation of awareness, I would be
laughing with them.
I earnestly asked don Juan what all this meant for an average man in
the day-to-day world.
"You mean what Genaro is doing?" he asked me in mock seriousness.
Their glee was always contagious. It took a long time for them to calm
down. Their level of energy was so high that next to them, I seemed old and
decrepit.
"I really don't know," don Juan finally answered me. "All I know is
what it means to warriors. They know that the only real energy we possess is
a lifebestowing sexual energy. This knowledge makes them permanently
conscious of their responsibility.
"If warriors want to have enough energy to see, they must become misers
with their sexual energy. That was the lesson the nagual Julian gave us. He
pushed us into the unknown, and we all nearly died. Since everyone of us
wanted to see, we, of course, abstained from wasting our glow of awareness."
I had heard him voice that belief before. Every time he did, we got
into an argument. I always felt compelled to protest and raise objections to
what I thought was a puritanical attitude toward sex.
I again raised my objections. Both of them laughed to tears.
"What can be done with man's natural sensuality?" I asked don Juan.
"Nothing," he replied. "There is nothing wrong with man's sensuality,
it's man's ignorance of and disregard for his magical nature that is wrong.
It's a mistake to waste recklessly the life-bestowing force of sex and not
have children, but it's also a mistake not to know that in having children
one taxes the glow of awareness."
"How do seers know that having children taxes the glow of awareness?" I
asked.
"They see that on having a child, the parents' glow of awareness
diminishes and the child's increases. In some supersensitive, frail parents,
the glow of awareness almost disappears. As children enhance their
awareness, a big dark spot develops in the luminous cocoon of the parents,
on the very place from which the glow was taken away. It is usually on the
midsection of the cocoon. Sometimes those spots can even be seen
superimposed on the body itself."
I asked him if there was anything that could be done to give people a
more balanced understanding of the glow of awareness.
"Nothing," he said. "At least, there is nothing that seers can do.
Seers aim to be free, to be unbiased witnesses incapable of passing
judgment; otherwise they would have to assume the responsibility for
bringing about a more adjusted cycle. No one can do that. The new cycle, if
it is to come, must come of itself."
5 The First Attention
The following day we ate breakfast at dawn, then don Juan made me shift
levels of awareness.
"Today, let's go to an original setting," don Juan said to Genaro.
"By all means," Genaro said gravely. He glanced at me and then added in
a low voice, as if not wanting me to overhear him, "Does he have to. . .
perhaps it's too much. . ."
In a matter of seconds my fear and suspicion escalated to unbearable
heights. I was sweating and panting. Don Juan came to my side and, with an
expression of almost uncontrollable amusement, assured me that Genaro was
just entertaining himself at my expense, and that we were going to a place
where the original seers had lived thousands of years ago.
As don Juan was speaking to me, I happened to glance at Genaro. He
slowly shook his head from side to side. It was an almost imperceptible
gesture, as if he were letting me know that don Juan was not telling the
truth. I went into a state of nervous frenzy, near hysteria-- and stopped
only when Genaro burst into laughter.
I marveled how easily my emotional states could escalate to nearly
unmanageable heights or drop to nothing.
Don Juan, Genaro, and I left Genaro's house in the early morning and
traveled a short distance into the surrounding eroded hills. Presently we
stopped and sat down on top of an enormous flat rock, on a gradual slope, in
a corn field that seemed to have been recently harvested.
"This is the original setting," don Juan said to me. "We'll come back
here a couple more times, during the course of my explanation."
"Very weird things happen here at night," Genaro said. "The nagual
Julian actually caught an ally here. Or rather, the ally ..."
Don Juan made a noticeable gesture with his eyebrows and Genaro stopped
in midsentence. He smiled at me.
"It's too early in the day for scary stories," Genaro said. "Let's wait
until dark."
He stood up and began creeping all around the rock, tiptoeing with his
spine arched backward.
"What was he saying about your benefactor's catching an ally here?" I
asked don Juan.
He did not answer right away. He was ecstatic, watching Genaro's
antics.
"He was referring to some sophisticated use of awareness," he finally
replied, still staring at Genaro.
Genaro completed a circle around the rock and came back and sat down by
me. He was panting heavily, almost wheezing, out of breath.
Don Juan seemed fascinated by what Genaro had done. Again I had the
feeling that they were amusing themselves at my expense, that both of them
were up to something I knew nothing about.
Suddenly, don Juan began his explanation. His voice soothed me. He said
that after much toiling, seers arrived at the conclusion that the
consciousness of adult human beings, matured by the process of growth, can
no longer be called awareness, because it has been modified into something
more intense and complex, which seers call attention.
"How do seers know that man's awareness is being cultivated and that it
grows?" I asked.
He said that at a given time in the growth of human beings a band of
the emanations inside their cocoons becomes very bright; as human beings
accumulate experience, it begins to glow. In some instances, the glow of
this band of emanations increases so dramatically that it fuses with the
emanations from the outside. Seers, witnessing an enhancement of this kind,
had to surmise that awareness is the raw material and attention the end
product of maturation.
"How do seers describe attention?" I asked.
"They say that attention is the harnessing and enhancing of awareness
through the process of being alive," he replied.
He said that the danger of definitions is that they simplify matters to
make them understandable; in this case, in defining attention, one runs the
risk of transforming a magical, miraculous accomplishment into something
commonplace. Attention is man's greatest single accomplishment. It develops
from raw animal awareness until it covers the entire gamut of human
alternatives. Seers perfect it even further until it covers the whole scope
of human possibilities.
I wanted to know if there was a special significance to alternatives
and possibilities in the seers' view.
Don Juan replied that human alternatives are everything we are capable
of choosing as persons. They have to do with the level of our day-to-day
range, the known; and owing to that fact, they are quite limited in number
and scope. Human possibilities belong to the unknown. They are not what we
are capable of choosing but what we are capable of attaining. He said that
an example of human alternatives is our choice to believe that the human
body is an object among objects. An example of human possibilities is the
seers' achievement in viewing man as an egglike luminous being. With the
body as an object one tackles the known, with the body as a luminous egg one
tackles the unknown; human possibilities have, therefore, nearly an
inexhaustible scope.
"Seers say that there are three types of attention," don Juan went on.
"When they say that, they mean it just for human beings, not for all the
sentient beings in existence. But the three are not just types of attention,
they are rather three levels of attainment. They are the first, second, and
third attention, each of them an independent domain, complete in itself."
He explained that the first attention in man is animal awareness, which
has been developed, through the process of experience, into a complex,
intricate, and extremely fragile faculty that takes care of the day-today
world in all its innumerable aspects, in other words, everything that one
can think about is part of the first attention.
"The first attention is everything we are as average men," he
continued. "By virtue of such an absolute rule over our lives, the first
attention is the most valuable asset that the average man has. Perhaps it is
even our only asset.
"Taking into account its true value, the new seers started a rigorous
examination of the first attention through seeing. Their findings molded
their total outlook and the outlook of all their descendants, even though
most of them do not understand what those seers really saw."
He emphatically warned me that the conclusions of the new seers'
rigorous examination had very little to do with reason or rationality,
because in order to examine and explain the first attention, one must see
it. Only seers can do that. But to examine what seers see in the first
attention is essential. It allows the first attention the only opportunity
it will ever have to realize its own workings.
"In terms of what seers see, the first attention is the glow of
awareness developed to an ultra shine," he continued. "But it is a glow
fixed on the surface of the cocoon, so to speak. It is a glow that covers
the known.
"The second attention, on the other hand, is a more complex and
specialized state of the glow of awareness. It has to do with the unknown.
It comes about when unused emanations inside man's cocoon are utilized.
"The reason I called the second attention specialized is that in order
to utilize those unused emanations, one needs uncommon, elaborate tactics
that require supreme discipline and concentration."
He said that he had told me before, when he was teaching me the art of
dreaming, that the concentration needed to be aware that one is having a
dream is the forerunner of the second attention. That concentration is a
form of consciousness that is not in the same category as the consciousness
needed to deal with the daily world.
He said that the second attention is also called the left-side
awareness; and it is the vastest field that one can imagine, so vast in fact
that it seems limitless.
"I wouldn't stray into it for anything in this world," he went on. "It
is a quagmire so complex and bizarre that sober seers go into it only under
the strictest conditions.
"The great difficulty is that the entrance into the second attention is
utterly easy and its lure nearly irresistible."
He said that the old seers, being the masters of awareness, applied
their expertise to their own glows of awareness and made them expand to
inconceivable limits. They actually aimed at lighting up all the emanations
inside their cocoons, one band at a time. They succeeded, but oddly enough
the accomplishment of lighting up one band at a time was instrumental in
their becoming imprisoned in the quagmire of the second attention.
"The new seers corrected that error," he continued, "and let the
mastery of awareness develop to its natural end, which is to extend the glow
of awareness beyond the bounds of the luminous cocoon in one single stroke.
"The third attention is attained when the glow of awareness turns into
the fire from within: a glow that kindles not one band at a time but all the