Eagle's emanations inside man's cocoon."
Don Juan expressed his awe for the new seers' deliberate effort to
attain the third attention while they are alive and conscious of their
individuality.
He did not consider it worthwhile to discuss the random cases of men
and other sentient beings who enter into the unknown and the unknowable
without being aware of it; he referred to this as the Eagle's gift. He
asserted that for the new seers to enter into the third attention is also a
gift, but has a different meaning, it is more like a reward for an
attainment.
He added that at the moment of dying all human beings enter into the
unknowable and some of them do attain the third attention, but altogether
too briefly and only to purify the food for the Eagle.
"The supreme accomplishment of human beings," he said, "is to attain
that level of attention while retaining the life-force, without becoming a
disembodied awareness moving like a flicker of light up to the Eagle's beak
to be devoured."
While listening to don Juan's explanation I had again completely lost
sight of everything that surrounded me. Genaro apparently had gotten up and
left us, and was nowhere in sight. Strangely, I found myself crouching on
the rock, with don Juan squatting by me holding me down by gently pushing on
my shoulders. I reclined on the rock and closed my eyes. There was a soft
breeze blowing from the west.
"Don't fall asleep," don Juan said. "Not for any reason should you fall
asleep on this rock."
I sat up. Don Juan was staring at me.
"Just relax," he went on. "Let the internal dialogue die out."
All my concentration was involved in following what he was saying when
I got a jolt of fright. I did not know what it was at first; I thought I was
going through another attack of distrust. But then it struck me, like a
bolt, that it was very late in the afternoon. What I had thought was an
hour's conversation had consumed an entire day.
I jumped up, fully aware of the incongruity, although I could not
conceive what had happened to me. I felt a strange sensation that made my
body want to run. Don Juan jumped me, restraining me forcefully. We fell to
the soft ground, and he held me there with an iron grip. I had had no idea
that don Juan was so strong.
My body shook violently. My arms flew every which way as they shook. I
was having something like a seizure. Yet some part of me was detached to the
point of becoming fascinated with watching my body vibrate, twist, and
shake.
The spasms finally died out and don Juan let go of me. He was panting
with the exertion. He recommended that we climb back up on the rock and sit
there until I was all right.
I could not help pressing him with my usual question: What had happened
to me? He answered that as he talked to me I had pushed beyond a certain
limit and had entered very deeply into the left side. He and Genaro had
followed me in there. And then I had rushed out in the same fashion I had
rushed in.
"I caught you right on time," he said. "Otherwise you would have gone
straight out to your normal self."
I was totally confused. He explained that the three of us had been
playing with awareness. I must have gotten scared and run out on them.
"Genaro is the master of awareness," don Juan went on. "Silvio Manuel
is the master of wilt. The two of them were mercilessly pushed into the
unknown. My benefactor did to them what his benefactor did to him. Genaro
and Silvio Manuel are very much like the old seers in some respects. They
know what they can do, but they don't care to know how they do it. Today,
Genaro seized the opportunity to push your glow of awareness and we all
ended up in the weird confines of the unknown."
I begged him to tell me what had happened in the unknown.
"You'll have to remember that yourself," a voice said just by my ear.
I was so convinced that it was the voice of seeing that it did not
frighten me at all. I did not even obey the impulse to turn around.
"I am the voice of seeing and I tell you that you are a peckerhead,"
the voice said again and chuckled.
I turned around. Genaro was sitting behind me. I was so surprised that
I laughed perhaps a bit more hysterically than they did.
"It's getting dark now," Genaro said to me. "As I promised you earlier
today, we are going to have a ball here."
Don Juan intervened and said that we should stop for the day, because I
was the kind of nincompoop who could die offright.
"Nah, he's all right," Genaro said, patting me on the shoulder.
"You'd better ask him," don Juan said to Genaro. "He himself will tell
you that he's that kind of nincompoop."
"Are you really that kind of nincompoop?" Genaro asked me with a frown.
I didn't answer him. And that made them roll around laughing. Genaro
rolled all the way to the ground.
"He's caught," Genaro said to don Juan, referring to me, after don Juan
had swiftly jumped down and helped him to stand up. "He'll never say he's a
nincompoop. He's too self-important for that, but he's shivering in his
pants with fear of what might happen because he didn't confess he's a
nincompoop."
Watching them laugh, I was convinced that only Indians could laugh with
such joyfulness. But I also became convinced that there was a mile-wide
streak of maliciousness in them. They were poking fun at a non-Indian.
Don Juan immediately caught my feelings.
"Don't let your self-importance run rampant," he said. "You're not
special by any standards. None of us are, Indians and non-Indians. The
nagual Julian and his benefactor added years of enjoyment to their lives
laughing at us."
Genaro nimbly climbed back onto the rock and came to my side.
"If I were you. I'd feel so frigging embarrassed I'd cry," he said to
me. "Cry, cry. Have a good cry and you'll feel better."
To my utter amazement I began to weep softly. Then I got so angry that
I roared with fury. Only then I felt better.
Don Juan patted my back gently. He said that usually anger is very
sobering, or sometimes fear is, or humor. My violent nature made me respond
only to anger.
He added that a sudden shift in the glow of awareness makes us weak.
They had been trying to reinforce me, to bolster me. Apparently, Genaro had
succeeded by making me rage.
It was twilight by then. Suddenly Genaro pointed to a flicker in midair
at eye level, in the twilight it appeared to be a large moth flying around
the place where we sat.
"Be very gentle with your exaggerated nature," don Juan said to me.
"Don't be eager. Just let Genaro guide you. Don't take your eyes from that
spot."
The flickering point was definitely a moth. I could clearly distinguish
all its features. I followed its convoluted, tired flight, until I could see
every speck of dust on its wings.
Something got me out of my total absorption. I sensed a flurry of
soundless noise, if that could be possible, just behind me. I turned around
and caught sight of an entire row of people on the other edge of the rock,
an edge that was a bit higher than the one on which we were sitting. I
supposed that the people who lived nearby must have gotten suspicious of us
hanging around all day and had climbed onto the rock intending to harm us. I
knew about their intentions instantly.
Don Juan and Genaro slid down from the rock and told me to hurry down.
We left immediately without turning back to see if the men were following
us. Don Juan and Genaro refused to talk while we walked back to Genaro's
house. Don Juan even made me hush with a fierce grunt, putting his finger to
his lips. Genaro did not come into the house, but kept on walking as don
Juan dragged me inside.
"Who were those people, don Juan?" I asked him, when the two of us were
safely inside the house and he had lit the lantern.
"They were not people," he replied.
"Come on, don Juan, don't mystify me," I said. "They were men; I saw
them with my own eyes."
"Of course, you saw them with your own eyes," he retorted, "but that
doesn't say anything. Your eyes misled you. Those were not people and they
were following you. Genaro had to draw them away from you."
"What were they, then, if not people?"
"Oh, there is the mystery," he said. "It's a mystery of awareness and
it can't be solved rationally by talking about it. The mystery can only be
witnessed."
"Let me witness it then." I said.
"But you already have, twice in one day," he said. "You don't remember
now. You will, however, when you rekindle the emanations that were glowing
when you witnessed the mystery of awareness i'm referring to. In the
meantime, let's go back to our explanation of awareness."
He reiterated that awareness begins with the permanent pressure that
the emanations at large exert on the ones trapped inside the cocoon. This
pressure produces the first act of consciousness; it stops the motion of the
trapped emanations, which are fighting to break the cocoon, fighting to die.
"For a seer, the truth is that all living beings are struggling to
die," he went on. "What stops death is awareness."
Don Juan said that the new seers were profoundly disturbed by the fact
that awareness forestalls death and at the same time induces it by being
food for the Eagle. Since they could not explain it, for there is no
rational way to understand existence, seers realized that their knowledge is
composed of contradictory propositions.
"Why did they develop a system of contradictions?" I asked.
"They didn't develop anything," he said. "They found unquestionable
truths by means of their seeing. Those truths are arranged in terms of
supposedly blatant contradictions, that's all.
"For example, seers have to be methodical, rational beings, paragons of
sobriety, and at the same time they must shy away from all of those
qualities in order to be completely free and open to the wonders and
mysteries of existence."
His example left me baffled, but not to the extreme. I understood what
he meant. He himself had sponsored my rationality only to crush it and
demand a total absence of it. I told him how I understood his point.
"Only a feeling of supreme sobriety can bridge the contradictions," he
said.
"Could you say, don Juan, that art is that bridge?"
"You may call the bridge between contradictions anything you want--
art, affection, sobriety, love, or even kindness."
Don Juan continued his explanation and said that in examining the first
attention, the new seers realized that all organic beings, except man, quiet
down their agitated trapped emanations so that those emanations can align
themselves with their matching ones outside. Human beings do not do that;
instead, their first attention lakes an inventory of the Eagle's emanations
inside their cocoons.
"What is an inventory, don Juan?" I asked.
"Human beings take notice of the emanations they have inside their
cocoons," he replied. "No other creatures do that. The moment the pressure
from the emanations at large fixates the emanations inside, the first
attention begins to watch itself. It notes everything about itself, or at
least it tries to, in whatever aberrant ways it can. This is the process
seers call taking an inventory.
"I don't mean to say that human beings choose to take an inventory, or
that they can refuse to take it. To take an inventory is the Eagle's
command. What is subject to volition, however, is the manner in which the
command is obeyed."
He said that although he disliked calling the emanations commands, that
is what they are: commands that no one can disobey. Yet the way out of
obeying the commands is in obeying them.
"In the case of the inventory of the first attention," he went on,
"seers take it, for they can't disobey. But once they have taken it they
throw it away. The Eagle doesn't command us to worship our inventory; it
commands us to take it, that's all."
"How do seers see that man takes an inventory?" I asked.
"The emanations inside the cocoon of man are not quieted down for
purposes of matching them with those outside," he replied. "This is evident
after seeing what other creatures do. On quieting down, some of them
actually merge themselves with the emanations at large and move with them.
Seers can see, for instance, the light of the scarabs' emanations expanding
to great size.
"But human beings quiet down their emanations and then reflect on them.
The emanations focus on themselves."
He said that human beings carry the command of taking an inventory to
its logical extreme and disregard everything else. Once they are deeply
involved in the inventory, two things may happen. They may ignore the
impulses of the emanations at large, or they may use them in a very
specialized way.
The end result of ignoring those impulses after taking an inventory is
a unique state known as reason. The result of using every impulse in a
specialized way is known as self-absorption.
Human reason appears to a seer as an unusually homogeneous dull glow
that rarely if ever responds to the constant pressure from the emanations at
large-- a glow that makes the egglike shell become tougher, but more
brittle.
Don Juan remarked that reason in the human species should be bountiful,
but that in actuality it is very rare. The majority of human beings turn to
self-absorption.
He asserted that the awareness of all living beings has a degree of
self-reflection in order for them to interact. But none except man's first
attention has such a degree of self-absorption. Contrary to men of reason,
who ignore the impulse of the emanations at large, the self-absorbed
individuals use every impulse and turn them all into a force to stir the
trapped emanations inside their cocoons.
Observing all this, seers arrived at a practical conclusion. They saw
that men of reason are bound to live longer, because by disregarding the
impulse of the emanations at large, they quiet down the natural agitation
inside their cocoons. The self-absorbed individuals, on the other hand, by
using the impulse of the emanations at large to create more agitation,
shorten their lives.
"What do seers see when they gaze at self-absorbed human beings?" I
asked.
"They see them as intermittent bursts of white light, followed by long
pauses of dullness," he said.
Don Juan stopped talking. I had no more questions to ask, or perhaps I
was too tired to ask about anything. There was a loud bang that made me
jump. The front door flew open and Genaro came in, out of breath. He slumped
on the mat. He was actually covered with perspiration.
"I was explaining about the first attention," don Juan said to him.
"The first attention works only with the known," Genaro said. "it isn't
worth two plugged nickels with the unknown."
"That is not quite right," don Juan retorted. "The first attention
works very well with the unknown. It blocks it; it denies it so fiercely
that in the end, the unknown doesn't exist for the first attention.
"Taking an inventory makes us invulnerable. That is why the inventory
came into existence in the first place."
"What are you talking about?" I asked don Juan.
He didn't reply. He looked at Genaro as if waiting for an answer.
"But if I open the door," Genaro said, "would the first attention be
capable of dealing with what will come in?"
"Yours and mine wouldn't, but his will," don Juan said, pointing at me.
"Let's try it."
"Even though he's in heightened awareness?" Genaro asked don Juan.
"That won't make any difference," don Juan answered.
Genaro got up and went to the front door and threw it open. He
instantly jumped back. A gust of cold wind came in. Don Juan came to my
side, and so did Genaro. Both of them looked at me in amazement.
I wanted to close the front door. The cold was making me uncomfortable.
But as I moved toward the door, don Juan and Genaro jumped in front of me
and shielded me.
"Do you notice anything in the room?" Genaro asked me.
"No, I don't," I said, and I really meant it.
Except for the cold wind pouring in through the open door, there was
nothing to notice in there.
"Weird creatures came in when I opened the door," he said. "Don't you
notice anything?"
There was something in his voice that told me he was not joking this
time.
The three of us, with both of them flanking me, walked out of the
house. Don Juan picked up the kerosene lantern, and Genaro locked the front
door. We got inside the car, through the passenger's side. They pushed me in
first. And then we drove to don Juan's house in the next town.
6 Inorganic Beings
The next day I repeatedly asked don Juan to explain our hasty departure
from Genaro's house. He refused even to mention the incident. Genaro was no
help either. Every time I asked him he winked at me, grinning like a fool.
In the afternoon, don Juan came to the back patio of his house, where I
was talking with his apprentices. As if on cue, all the young apprentices
left instantly.
Don Juan took me by the arm, and we began to walk along the corridor.
He did not say anything; for a while we just strolled around, very much as
if we were in the public square.
Don Juan stopped walking and turned to me. He circled me, looking over
my entire body. I knew that he was seeing me. I felt a strange fatigue, a
laziness I had not felt until his eyes swept over me. He began to talk all
of a sudden.
"The reason Genaro and I didn't want to focus on what happened last
night," he said, "was that you had been very frightened during the time you
were in the unknown. Genaro pushed you, and things happened to you in
there."
"What things, don Juan?"
"Things that are still difficult if not impossible to explain to you
now," he said. "You don't have enough surplus energy to enter into the
unknown and make sense of it. When the new seers arranged the order of the
truths about awareness, they saw that the first attention consumes all the
glow of awareness that human beings have, and not an iota of energy is left
free. That's your problem now. So, the new seers proposed that warriors,
since they have to enter into the unknown, have to save their energy. But
where are they going to get energy, if all of it is taken? They'll get it,
the new seers say, from eradicating unnecessary habits."
He stopped talking and solicited questions. I asked him what
eradicating unnecessary habits did to the glow of awareness.
He replied that it detaches awareness from self-reflection and allows
it the freedom to focus on something else.
"The unknown is forever present," he continued, "but it is outside the
possibility of our normal awareness. The unknown is the superfluous part of
the average man. And it is superfluous because the average man doesn't have
enough free energy to grasp it.
"After all the time you've spent in the warrior's path, you have enough
free energy to grasp the unknown, but not enough energy to understand it or
even to remember it."
He explained that at the site of the flat rock, I had entered very
deeply into the unknown. But I indulged in my exaggerated nature and became
terrified, which was about the worst thing anyone can do. So I had rushed
out of the left side, like a bat out of hell; unfortunately, taking a legion
of strange things with me.
I told don Juan that he was not getting to the point, that he should
come out and tell me exactly what he meant by a legion of strange things.
He took me by the arm and continued strolling around with me.
"In explaining awareness," he said, "I am presumably fitting everything
or nearly everything into place. Let's talk a little bit about the old
seers. Genaro, as I've told you, is very much like them."
He led me then to the big room. We sat down there and he began his
elucidation.
"The new seers were simply terrified by the knowledge that the old
seers had accumulated over the years," don Juan said. "It's understandable.
The new seers knew that that knowledge leads only to total destruction. Yet
they were also fascinated by it-- especially by the practices."
"How did the new seers know about those practices?" I asked.
"They are the legacy of the old Toltecs," he said. "The new seers learn
about them as they go along. They hardly ever use them, but the practices
are there as part of their knowledge."
"What kind of practices are they, don Juan?"
"They are very obscure formulas, incantations, lengthy procedures that
have to do with the handling of a very mysterious force. At least it was
mysterious to the ancient Toltecs, who masked it and made it more horrifying
than it really is."
"What is that mysterious force?" I asked.
"It's a force that is present throughout everything there is," he said.
"The old seers never attempted to unravel the mystery of the force that made
them create their secret practices; they simply accepted it as something
sacred. But the new seers took a close look and called it wilt, the will of
the Eagle's emanations, or intent."'
Don Juan went on explaining that the ancient Toltecs had divided their
secret knowledge into five sets of two categories each: the earth and the
dark regions, fire and water, the above and the below, the loud and the
silent, the moving and the stationary. He speculated that there must have
been thousands of different techniques, which became more and more intricate
as time passed.
"The secret knowledge of the earth," he went on, "had to do with
everything that stands on the ground. There were particular sets of
movements, words, unguents, potions that were applied to people, animals,
insects, trees, small plants, rocks, soil.
"These were techniques that made the old seers into horrid beings. And
their secret knowledge of the earth was employed either to groom or to
destroy anything that stands on the ground.
"The counterpart of the earth was what they knew as the dark regions.
These practices were by far the most dangerous. They dealt with entities
without organic life. Living creatures that are present on the earth and
populate it together with all organic beings.
"Doubtlessly, one of the most worthwhile findings of the ancient seers,
especially for them, was the discovery that organic life is not the only
form of life present on this earth."
I did not quite comprehend what he had said. I waited for him to
clarify his statements.
"Organic beings are not the only creatures that have life," he said and
paused again as if to allow me time to think his statements over.
I countered with a long argument about the definition of life and being
alive. I talked about reproduction, metabolism, and growth, the processes
that distinguish live organisms from inanimate things.
"You're drawing from the organic," he said. "But that's only one
instance. You shouldn't draw all you have to say from one category alone."
"But how else can it be?" I asked.
"For seers, to be alive means to be aware," he replied. "For the
average man, to be aware means to be an organism. This is where seers are
different. For them, to be aware means that the emanations that cause
awareness are encased inside a receptacle.
"Organic living beings have a cocoon that encloses the emanations. But
there are other creatures whose receptacles don't look like a cocoon to a
seer. Yet they have the emanations of awareness in them and characteristics
of life other than reproduction and metabolism."
"Such as what, don Juan?"
"Such as emotional dependency, sadness, joy, wrath, and so forth and so
on. And I forgot the best yet, love; a kind of love man can't even
conceive."
"Are you serious, don Juan?" I asked in earnest.
"Inanimately serious," he answered with a deadpan expression and then
broke into laughter.
"If we take as our clue what seers see," he continued, "life is indeed
extraordinary."
"If those beings are alive, why don't they make themselves known to
man?" I asked.
"They do, all the time. And not only to seers but also to the average
man. The problem is that all the energy available is consumed by the first
attention. Man's inventory not only takes it all, but it also toughens the
cocoon to the point of making it inflexible. Under those circumstances there
is no possible interaction."
He reminded me of the countless times, in the course of my
apprenticeship with him, when I had had a firsthand view of inorganic
beings. I retorted that I had explained away nearly every one of those
instances. I had even formulated the hypothesis that his teachings, through
the use of hallucinogenic plants, were geared to force an agreement, on the
part of the apprentice, about a primitive interpretation of the world. I
told him that I had not formally called it primitive interpretation but in
anthropological terms I had labeled it a "world view more proper to hunting
and gathering societies."
Don Juan laughed until he was out of breath.
"I really don't know whether you're worse in your normal state of
awareness or in a heightened one," he said. "In your normal state you're not
suspicious, but boringly reasonable. I think I like you best when you are
way inside the left side, in spite of the fact that you are terribly afraid
of everything, as you were yesterday."
Before I had time to say anything at all, he stated that he was pitting
what the old seers did against the accomplishments of the new seers, as a
sort of counterpoint, with which he intended to give me a more inclusive
view of the odds I was up against.
He continued then with his elucidation of the practices of the old
seers. He said that another of their great findings had to do with the next
category of secret knowledge: fire and water. They discovered that flames
have a most peculiar quality; they can transport man bodily, just as water
does.
Don Juan called it a brilliant discovery. I remarked that there are
basic laws of physics that would prove that to be impossible. He asked me to
wait until he had explained everything before drawing any conclusions. He
remarked that I had to check my excessive rationality, because it constantly
affected my states of heightened awareness. It was not a case of reacting
every which way to external influences, but of succumbing to my own devices.
He went on explaining that the ancient Toltecs, although they obviously
saw, did not understand what they saw. They merely used their findings
without bothering to relate them to a larger picture. In the case of their
category of fire and water, they divided fire into heat and flame, and water
into wetness and fluidity. They correlated heat and wetness and called them
lesser properties. They considered flames and fluidity to be higher, magical
properties, and they used them as a means for bodily transportation to the
realm of nonorganic life. Between their knowledge of that kind of life and
their fire and water practices, the ancient seers became bogged down in a
quagmire with no way out.
Don Juan assured me that the new seers agreed that the discovery of
nonorganic living beings was indeed extraordinary, but not in the way the
old seers believed it to be. To find themselves in a one-to-one relation
with another kind of life gave the ancient seers a false feeling of
invulnerability, which spelled their doom.
I wanted him to explain the fire and water techniques in greater
detail. He said that the old seers' knowledge was as intricate as it was
useless and that he was only going to outline it.
Then he summarized the practices of the above and the below. The above
dealt with secret knowledge about wind, rain, sheets of lightning, clouds,
thunder, daylight, and the sun. The knowledge of the below had to do with
fog, water of underground springs, swamps, lightning bolts, earthquakes, the
night, moonlight, and the moon.
The loud and the silent were a category of secret knowledge that had to
do with the manipulation of sound and quiet. The moving and the stationary
were practices concerned with mysterious aspects of motion and
motionlessness.
I asked him if he could give me an example of any of the techniques he
had outlined. He replied that he had already given me dozens of
demonstrations over the years. I insisted that I had rationally explained
away everything he had done to me.
He did not answer. He seemed to be either angry at me for asking
questions or seriously involved in searching for a good example. After a
while he smiled and said that he had visualized the proper example.
"The technique I have in mind has to be put in action in the shallow
depths of a stream," he said. "There is one near Genaro's house."
"What will I have to do?"
"You'll have to get a medium-size mirror."
I was surprised at his request. I remarked that the ancient Toltecs did
not know about mirrors.
"They didn't," he admitted, smiling. "This is my benefactor's addition
to the technique. All the ancient seers needed was a reflecting surface."
He explained that the technique consisted of submerging a shiny surface
into the shallow water of a stream. The surface could be any flat object
that had some capacity to reflect images.
"I want you to construct a solid frame made of sheet metal for a
medium-size mirror," he said. "it has to be waterproof, so you must seal it
with tar. You must make it yourself with your own hands. When you have made
it, bring it over and we'll proceed."
"What's going to happen, don Juan?"
"Don't be apprehensive. You yourself have asked me to give you an
example of an ancient Toltec practice. I asked the same thing of my
benefactor. I think everybody asks for one at a certain moment. My
benefactor said that he did the same thing himself. His benefactor, the
nagual Ellas, gave him an example; my benefactor in turn gave the same one
to me, and now I am going to give it to you.
"At the time my benefactor gave me the example I didn't know how he did
it. I know now. Someday you yourself will also know how the technique works;
you will understand what's behind all this."
I thought that don Juan wanted me to go back home to Los Angeles and
construct the frame for the mirror there. I commented that it would be
impossible for me to remember the task if I did not remain in heightened
awareness.
"There are two things out of kilter with your comment," he said. "One
is that there is no way for you to remain in heightened awareness, because
you won't be able to function unless I or Genaro or any of the warriors in
the nagual's party nurse you every minute of the day, as I do now. The other
is that Mexico is not the moon. There are hardware stores here. We can go to
Oaxaca and buy anything you need."
We drove to the city the next day and I bought all the pieces for the
frame. I assembled it myself in a mechanic's shop for a minimal fee. Don
Juan told me to put it in the trunk of my car. He did not so much as glance
at it.
We drove back to Genaro's house in the late afternoon and arrived there
in the early morning. I looked for Genaro. He was not there. The house
seemed deserted.
"Why does Genaro keep this house?" I asked don Juan. "He lives with
you, doesn't he?"
Don Juan did not answer. He gave me a strange look and went to light
the kerosene lantern. I was alone in the room in total darkness. I felt a
great tiredness that I attributed to the long, tortuous drive up the
mountains. I wanted to lie down. In the darkness, I could not see where
Genaro had put the mats. I stumbled over a pile of them. And then I knew why
Genaro kept that house; he took care of the male apprentices Pablito,
Nestor, and Benigno, who lived there when they were in their state of normal
awareness.
I felt exhilarated; I was no longer tired. Don Juan came in with a
lantern. I told him about my realization, but he said that it did not
matter, that I would not remember it for too long.
He asked me to show him the mirror. He seemed pleased and remarked
about its being light yet solid. He noticed that I had used metal screws to
affix an aluminum frame to a piece of sheet metal that I had used as a
backing for a mirror eighteen inches long by fourteen inches wide.
"I made a wooden frame for my mirror," he said. "This looks much better
than mine. My frame was too cumbersome and at the same time frail.
"Let me explain what we're going to do," he continued after he had
finished examining the mirror. "Or perhaps I should say, what we're going to
attempt to do. The two of us together are going to place this mirror on the
surface of the stream near the house. It is wide enough and shallow enough
to serve our purposes.
"The idea is to let the fluidity of the water exert pressure on us and
transport us away."
Before I could make any remarks or ask any questions, he reminded me
that in the past I had utilized the water of a similar stream and
accomplished extraordinary feats of perception. He was referring to the
aftereffects of ingesting hallucinogenic plants, which I had experienced
various times while being submerged in the irrigation ditch behind his house
in northern Mexico.
"Save any questions until I explain to you what the seers knew about
awareness," he said. "Then you'll understand everything we're doing in a
different light. But first let's go on with our procedure."
We walked to the nearby stream, and he selected a place with flat,
exposed rocks. He said that there the water was shallow enough for our
purposes.
"What do you expect to happen?" I asked in the midst of a gripping
apprehension.
"I don't know. All I know is what we are going to attempt. We will hold
the mirror very carefully, but very firmly. We will gently place it on the
surface of the water and then let it submerge. We will then hold it on the
bottom. I've checked it. There is enough silt there to allow us to dig our
fingers underneath the mirror to hold it firmly."
He asked me to squat on a flat rock above the surface in the middle of
the gentle stream and made me hold the mirror with both hands, almost at the
corners on one side. He squatted facing me and held the mirror the same way
I did. We let the mirror sink and then we held it by plunging our arms in
the water almost to our elbows.
He commanded me to empty myself of thoughts and stare at the surface of
the mirror. He repeated over and over that the trick was not to think at
all. I looked intently into the mirror. The gentle current mildly
disarranged the reflection of don Juan's face and mine. After a few minutes
of steady gazing into the mirror it seemed to me that gradually the image of
his face and mine became much clearer. And the mirror grew in size until it
was at least a yard square. The current seemed to have stopped, and the
mirror looked as clear as if it were placed on top of the water. Even more
odd was the crispness of our reflections, it was as if my face had been
magnified, not in size but in focus. I could see the pores in the skin of my
forehead.
Don Juan gently whispered not to stare at my eyes or his, but to let my
gaze wander around without focusing on any part of our reflections.
"Gaze fixedly without staring!" he repeatedly ordered in a forceful
whisper.
I did what he said without stopping to ponder about the seeming
contradiction. At that moment something inside me was caught in that mirror
and the contradiction actually made sense. "It is possible to gaze fixedly
without staring," I thought, and the instant that thought was formulated
another head appeared next to don Juan's and mine. It was on the lower side
of the mirror, to my left.
My whole body trembled. Don Juan whispered to calm down and not show
fear or surprise. He again commanded me to gaze without staring at the
newcomer. I had to make an unimaginable effort not to gasp and release the
mirror. My body was shaking from head to toe. Don Juan whispered again to
get hold of myself. He nudged me repeatedly with his shoulder.
Slowly I got my fear under control. I gazed at the third head and
gradually realized that it was not a human head, or an animal head either.
In fact, it was not a head at all. It was a shape that had no inner
mobility. As the thought occurred to me, I instantly realized that I was not
thinking it myself. The realization was not a thought either. I had a moment
of tremendous anxiety and then something incomprehensible became known to
me. The thoughts were a voice in my ear!
"I am seeing!" I yelled in English, but there was no sound. "Yes,
you're seeing," the voice in my ear said in Spanish.
I felt that I was encased in a force greater than myself. I was not in
pain or even anguished. I felt nothing. I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt,
because the voice was telling me so, that I could not break the grip of that
force by an act of will or strength. I knew I was dying. I lifted my eyes
automatically to look at don Juan, and at the instant our eyes met the force
let go of me. I was free. Don Juan was smiling at me as if he knew exactly
what I had gone through.
I realized that I was standing up. Don Juan was holding the mirror
edgewise to let the water drip off.
We walked back to the house in silence.
"The ancient Toltecs were simply mesmerized by their findings," don
Juan said.
"I can understand why," I said.
"So can I," don Juan retorted.
The force that had enveloped me had been so powerful as to incapacitate
me for speech, even for thought, for hours afterward. It had frozen me with
a total lack of volition. And I had thawed out only by tiny degrees.
"Without any deliberate intervention on our part," don Juan continued,
"this ancient Toltec technique has been divided into two parts for you. The
first was just enough to familiarize you with what takes place. In the
second, we will try to accomplish what the old seers pursued."
"What really took place out there, don Juan?" I asked.
"There are two versions. I'll give you the old seers' version first.
They thought that the reflecting surface of a shiny object submerged in
water enlarges the power of the water. What they used to do was gaze into
bodies of water, and the reflecting surface served them as an aid to
accelerate the process. They believed that our eyes are the keys to entering
into the unknown; by gazing into water, they were allowing the eyes to open
the way."
Don Juan said that the old seers observed that the wetness of water
only dampens or soaks, but that the fluidity of water moves. It runs, they
surmised, in search of other levels underneath us. They believed that water
had been given to us not only for life, but also as a link, a road to the
other levels below.
"Are there many levels below?" I asked.
"The ancient seers counted seven levels," he replied.
"Do you know them yourself, don Juan?"
"I am a seer of the new cycle, and consequently I have a different
view," he said. "I am just showing you what the old seers did and I'm
telling you what they believed."
He asserted that just because he had different views did not mean the
old seers' practices were invalid; their interpretations were wrong, but
their truths had practical value for them. In the instance of the water
practices, they were convinced that it was humanly possible to be
transported bodily by the fluidity of water anywhere between this level of
ours and the other seven levels below; or to be transported in essence
anywhere on this level, along the watercourse of a river in either
direction. They used, accordingly, running water to be transported on this
level of ours and the water of deep lakes or that of waterholes to be
transported to the depths.
"What they pursued with the technique I'm showing you was twofold," he
went on. "On the one hand they used the fluidity of the water to be
transported to the first level below. On the other, they used it to have a
face-to-face meeting with a living being from that first level. The headlike
shape in the mirror was one of those creatures that came to look us over."
"So, they really exist!" I exclaimed.
"They certainly do," he retorted.
He said that ancient seers were damaged by their aberrant insistence on
staying glued to their procedures, but that whatever they found was valid.
They found out that the surest way to meet one of those creatures is through
a body of water. The size of the body of water is not relevant; an ocean or
a pond serves the same purpose. He had chosen a small stream because he
hated to get wet. We could have gotten the same results in a lake or a large
river.
"The other life comes to find out what's going on when human beings
call," he continued. "That Toltec technique is like a knock on their door.
The old seers said the shiny surface on the bottom of the water served as a
bait and a window. So humans and those creatures meet at a window."
"Is that what happened to me there?" I asked.
"The old seers would've said that you were being pulled by the power of
Don Juan expressed his awe for the new seers' deliberate effort to
attain the third attention while they are alive and conscious of their
individuality.
He did not consider it worthwhile to discuss the random cases of men
and other sentient beings who enter into the unknown and the unknowable
without being aware of it; he referred to this as the Eagle's gift. He
asserted that for the new seers to enter into the third attention is also a
gift, but has a different meaning, it is more like a reward for an
attainment.
He added that at the moment of dying all human beings enter into the
unknowable and some of them do attain the third attention, but altogether
too briefly and only to purify the food for the Eagle.
"The supreme accomplishment of human beings," he said, "is to attain
that level of attention while retaining the life-force, without becoming a
disembodied awareness moving like a flicker of light up to the Eagle's beak
to be devoured."
While listening to don Juan's explanation I had again completely lost
sight of everything that surrounded me. Genaro apparently had gotten up and
left us, and was nowhere in sight. Strangely, I found myself crouching on
the rock, with don Juan squatting by me holding me down by gently pushing on
my shoulders. I reclined on the rock and closed my eyes. There was a soft
breeze blowing from the west.
"Don't fall asleep," don Juan said. "Not for any reason should you fall
asleep on this rock."
I sat up. Don Juan was staring at me.
"Just relax," he went on. "Let the internal dialogue die out."
All my concentration was involved in following what he was saying when
I got a jolt of fright. I did not know what it was at first; I thought I was
going through another attack of distrust. But then it struck me, like a
bolt, that it was very late in the afternoon. What I had thought was an
hour's conversation had consumed an entire day.
I jumped up, fully aware of the incongruity, although I could not
conceive what had happened to me. I felt a strange sensation that made my
body want to run. Don Juan jumped me, restraining me forcefully. We fell to
the soft ground, and he held me there with an iron grip. I had had no idea
that don Juan was so strong.
My body shook violently. My arms flew every which way as they shook. I
was having something like a seizure. Yet some part of me was detached to the
point of becoming fascinated with watching my body vibrate, twist, and
shake.
The spasms finally died out and don Juan let go of me. He was panting
with the exertion. He recommended that we climb back up on the rock and sit
there until I was all right.
I could not help pressing him with my usual question: What had happened
to me? He answered that as he talked to me I had pushed beyond a certain
limit and had entered very deeply into the left side. He and Genaro had
followed me in there. And then I had rushed out in the same fashion I had
rushed in.
"I caught you right on time," he said. "Otherwise you would have gone
straight out to your normal self."
I was totally confused. He explained that the three of us had been
playing with awareness. I must have gotten scared and run out on them.
"Genaro is the master of awareness," don Juan went on. "Silvio Manuel
is the master of wilt. The two of them were mercilessly pushed into the
unknown. My benefactor did to them what his benefactor did to him. Genaro
and Silvio Manuel are very much like the old seers in some respects. They
know what they can do, but they don't care to know how they do it. Today,
Genaro seized the opportunity to push your glow of awareness and we all
ended up in the weird confines of the unknown."
I begged him to tell me what had happened in the unknown.
"You'll have to remember that yourself," a voice said just by my ear.
I was so convinced that it was the voice of seeing that it did not
frighten me at all. I did not even obey the impulse to turn around.
"I am the voice of seeing and I tell you that you are a peckerhead,"
the voice said again and chuckled.
I turned around. Genaro was sitting behind me. I was so surprised that
I laughed perhaps a bit more hysterically than they did.
"It's getting dark now," Genaro said to me. "As I promised you earlier
today, we are going to have a ball here."
Don Juan intervened and said that we should stop for the day, because I
was the kind of nincompoop who could die offright.
"Nah, he's all right," Genaro said, patting me on the shoulder.
"You'd better ask him," don Juan said to Genaro. "He himself will tell
you that he's that kind of nincompoop."
"Are you really that kind of nincompoop?" Genaro asked me with a frown.
I didn't answer him. And that made them roll around laughing. Genaro
rolled all the way to the ground.
"He's caught," Genaro said to don Juan, referring to me, after don Juan
had swiftly jumped down and helped him to stand up. "He'll never say he's a
nincompoop. He's too self-important for that, but he's shivering in his
pants with fear of what might happen because he didn't confess he's a
nincompoop."
Watching them laugh, I was convinced that only Indians could laugh with
such joyfulness. But I also became convinced that there was a mile-wide
streak of maliciousness in them. They were poking fun at a non-Indian.
Don Juan immediately caught my feelings.
"Don't let your self-importance run rampant," he said. "You're not
special by any standards. None of us are, Indians and non-Indians. The
nagual Julian and his benefactor added years of enjoyment to their lives
laughing at us."
Genaro nimbly climbed back onto the rock and came to my side.
"If I were you. I'd feel so frigging embarrassed I'd cry," he said to
me. "Cry, cry. Have a good cry and you'll feel better."
To my utter amazement I began to weep softly. Then I got so angry that
I roared with fury. Only then I felt better.
Don Juan patted my back gently. He said that usually anger is very
sobering, or sometimes fear is, or humor. My violent nature made me respond
only to anger.
He added that a sudden shift in the glow of awareness makes us weak.
They had been trying to reinforce me, to bolster me. Apparently, Genaro had
succeeded by making me rage.
It was twilight by then. Suddenly Genaro pointed to a flicker in midair
at eye level, in the twilight it appeared to be a large moth flying around
the place where we sat.
"Be very gentle with your exaggerated nature," don Juan said to me.
"Don't be eager. Just let Genaro guide you. Don't take your eyes from that
spot."
The flickering point was definitely a moth. I could clearly distinguish
all its features. I followed its convoluted, tired flight, until I could see
every speck of dust on its wings.
Something got me out of my total absorption. I sensed a flurry of
soundless noise, if that could be possible, just behind me. I turned around
and caught sight of an entire row of people on the other edge of the rock,
an edge that was a bit higher than the one on which we were sitting. I
supposed that the people who lived nearby must have gotten suspicious of us
hanging around all day and had climbed onto the rock intending to harm us. I
knew about their intentions instantly.
Don Juan and Genaro slid down from the rock and told me to hurry down.
We left immediately without turning back to see if the men were following
us. Don Juan and Genaro refused to talk while we walked back to Genaro's
house. Don Juan even made me hush with a fierce grunt, putting his finger to
his lips. Genaro did not come into the house, but kept on walking as don
Juan dragged me inside.
"Who were those people, don Juan?" I asked him, when the two of us were
safely inside the house and he had lit the lantern.
"They were not people," he replied.
"Come on, don Juan, don't mystify me," I said. "They were men; I saw
them with my own eyes."
"Of course, you saw them with your own eyes," he retorted, "but that
doesn't say anything. Your eyes misled you. Those were not people and they
were following you. Genaro had to draw them away from you."
"What were they, then, if not people?"
"Oh, there is the mystery," he said. "It's a mystery of awareness and
it can't be solved rationally by talking about it. The mystery can only be
witnessed."
"Let me witness it then." I said.
"But you already have, twice in one day," he said. "You don't remember
now. You will, however, when you rekindle the emanations that were glowing
when you witnessed the mystery of awareness i'm referring to. In the
meantime, let's go back to our explanation of awareness."
He reiterated that awareness begins with the permanent pressure that
the emanations at large exert on the ones trapped inside the cocoon. This
pressure produces the first act of consciousness; it stops the motion of the
trapped emanations, which are fighting to break the cocoon, fighting to die.
"For a seer, the truth is that all living beings are struggling to
die," he went on. "What stops death is awareness."
Don Juan said that the new seers were profoundly disturbed by the fact
that awareness forestalls death and at the same time induces it by being
food for the Eagle. Since they could not explain it, for there is no
rational way to understand existence, seers realized that their knowledge is
composed of contradictory propositions.
"Why did they develop a system of contradictions?" I asked.
"They didn't develop anything," he said. "They found unquestionable
truths by means of their seeing. Those truths are arranged in terms of
supposedly blatant contradictions, that's all.
"For example, seers have to be methodical, rational beings, paragons of
sobriety, and at the same time they must shy away from all of those
qualities in order to be completely free and open to the wonders and
mysteries of existence."
His example left me baffled, but not to the extreme. I understood what
he meant. He himself had sponsored my rationality only to crush it and
demand a total absence of it. I told him how I understood his point.
"Only a feeling of supreme sobriety can bridge the contradictions," he
said.
"Could you say, don Juan, that art is that bridge?"
"You may call the bridge between contradictions anything you want--
art, affection, sobriety, love, or even kindness."
Don Juan continued his explanation and said that in examining the first
attention, the new seers realized that all organic beings, except man, quiet
down their agitated trapped emanations so that those emanations can align
themselves with their matching ones outside. Human beings do not do that;
instead, their first attention lakes an inventory of the Eagle's emanations
inside their cocoons.
"What is an inventory, don Juan?" I asked.
"Human beings take notice of the emanations they have inside their
cocoons," he replied. "No other creatures do that. The moment the pressure
from the emanations at large fixates the emanations inside, the first
attention begins to watch itself. It notes everything about itself, or at
least it tries to, in whatever aberrant ways it can. This is the process
seers call taking an inventory.
"I don't mean to say that human beings choose to take an inventory, or
that they can refuse to take it. To take an inventory is the Eagle's
command. What is subject to volition, however, is the manner in which the
command is obeyed."
He said that although he disliked calling the emanations commands, that
is what they are: commands that no one can disobey. Yet the way out of
obeying the commands is in obeying them.
"In the case of the inventory of the first attention," he went on,
"seers take it, for they can't disobey. But once they have taken it they
throw it away. The Eagle doesn't command us to worship our inventory; it
commands us to take it, that's all."
"How do seers see that man takes an inventory?" I asked.
"The emanations inside the cocoon of man are not quieted down for
purposes of matching them with those outside," he replied. "This is evident
after seeing what other creatures do. On quieting down, some of them
actually merge themselves with the emanations at large and move with them.
Seers can see, for instance, the light of the scarabs' emanations expanding
to great size.
"But human beings quiet down their emanations and then reflect on them.
The emanations focus on themselves."
He said that human beings carry the command of taking an inventory to
its logical extreme and disregard everything else. Once they are deeply
involved in the inventory, two things may happen. They may ignore the
impulses of the emanations at large, or they may use them in a very
specialized way.
The end result of ignoring those impulses after taking an inventory is
a unique state known as reason. The result of using every impulse in a
specialized way is known as self-absorption.
Human reason appears to a seer as an unusually homogeneous dull glow
that rarely if ever responds to the constant pressure from the emanations at
large-- a glow that makes the egglike shell become tougher, but more
brittle.
Don Juan remarked that reason in the human species should be bountiful,
but that in actuality it is very rare. The majority of human beings turn to
self-absorption.
He asserted that the awareness of all living beings has a degree of
self-reflection in order for them to interact. But none except man's first
attention has such a degree of self-absorption. Contrary to men of reason,
who ignore the impulse of the emanations at large, the self-absorbed
individuals use every impulse and turn them all into a force to stir the
trapped emanations inside their cocoons.
Observing all this, seers arrived at a practical conclusion. They saw
that men of reason are bound to live longer, because by disregarding the
impulse of the emanations at large, they quiet down the natural agitation
inside their cocoons. The self-absorbed individuals, on the other hand, by
using the impulse of the emanations at large to create more agitation,
shorten their lives.
"What do seers see when they gaze at self-absorbed human beings?" I
asked.
"They see them as intermittent bursts of white light, followed by long
pauses of dullness," he said.
Don Juan stopped talking. I had no more questions to ask, or perhaps I
was too tired to ask about anything. There was a loud bang that made me
jump. The front door flew open and Genaro came in, out of breath. He slumped
on the mat. He was actually covered with perspiration.
"I was explaining about the first attention," don Juan said to him.
"The first attention works only with the known," Genaro said. "it isn't
worth two plugged nickels with the unknown."
"That is not quite right," don Juan retorted. "The first attention
works very well with the unknown. It blocks it; it denies it so fiercely
that in the end, the unknown doesn't exist for the first attention.
"Taking an inventory makes us invulnerable. That is why the inventory
came into existence in the first place."
"What are you talking about?" I asked don Juan.
He didn't reply. He looked at Genaro as if waiting for an answer.
"But if I open the door," Genaro said, "would the first attention be
capable of dealing with what will come in?"
"Yours and mine wouldn't, but his will," don Juan said, pointing at me.
"Let's try it."
"Even though he's in heightened awareness?" Genaro asked don Juan.
"That won't make any difference," don Juan answered.
Genaro got up and went to the front door and threw it open. He
instantly jumped back. A gust of cold wind came in. Don Juan came to my
side, and so did Genaro. Both of them looked at me in amazement.
I wanted to close the front door. The cold was making me uncomfortable.
But as I moved toward the door, don Juan and Genaro jumped in front of me
and shielded me.
"Do you notice anything in the room?" Genaro asked me.
"No, I don't," I said, and I really meant it.
Except for the cold wind pouring in through the open door, there was
nothing to notice in there.
"Weird creatures came in when I opened the door," he said. "Don't you
notice anything?"
There was something in his voice that told me he was not joking this
time.
The three of us, with both of them flanking me, walked out of the
house. Don Juan picked up the kerosene lantern, and Genaro locked the front
door. We got inside the car, through the passenger's side. They pushed me in
first. And then we drove to don Juan's house in the next town.
6 Inorganic Beings
The next day I repeatedly asked don Juan to explain our hasty departure
from Genaro's house. He refused even to mention the incident. Genaro was no
help either. Every time I asked him he winked at me, grinning like a fool.
In the afternoon, don Juan came to the back patio of his house, where I
was talking with his apprentices. As if on cue, all the young apprentices
left instantly.
Don Juan took me by the arm, and we began to walk along the corridor.
He did not say anything; for a while we just strolled around, very much as
if we were in the public square.
Don Juan stopped walking and turned to me. He circled me, looking over
my entire body. I knew that he was seeing me. I felt a strange fatigue, a
laziness I had not felt until his eyes swept over me. He began to talk all
of a sudden.
"The reason Genaro and I didn't want to focus on what happened last
night," he said, "was that you had been very frightened during the time you
were in the unknown. Genaro pushed you, and things happened to you in
there."
"What things, don Juan?"
"Things that are still difficult if not impossible to explain to you
now," he said. "You don't have enough surplus energy to enter into the
unknown and make sense of it. When the new seers arranged the order of the
truths about awareness, they saw that the first attention consumes all the
glow of awareness that human beings have, and not an iota of energy is left
free. That's your problem now. So, the new seers proposed that warriors,
since they have to enter into the unknown, have to save their energy. But
where are they going to get energy, if all of it is taken? They'll get it,
the new seers say, from eradicating unnecessary habits."
He stopped talking and solicited questions. I asked him what
eradicating unnecessary habits did to the glow of awareness.
He replied that it detaches awareness from self-reflection and allows
it the freedom to focus on something else.
"The unknown is forever present," he continued, "but it is outside the
possibility of our normal awareness. The unknown is the superfluous part of
the average man. And it is superfluous because the average man doesn't have
enough free energy to grasp it.
"After all the time you've spent in the warrior's path, you have enough
free energy to grasp the unknown, but not enough energy to understand it or
even to remember it."
He explained that at the site of the flat rock, I had entered very
deeply into the unknown. But I indulged in my exaggerated nature and became
terrified, which was about the worst thing anyone can do. So I had rushed
out of the left side, like a bat out of hell; unfortunately, taking a legion
of strange things with me.
I told don Juan that he was not getting to the point, that he should
come out and tell me exactly what he meant by a legion of strange things.
He took me by the arm and continued strolling around with me.
"In explaining awareness," he said, "I am presumably fitting everything
or nearly everything into place. Let's talk a little bit about the old
seers. Genaro, as I've told you, is very much like them."
He led me then to the big room. We sat down there and he began his
elucidation.
"The new seers were simply terrified by the knowledge that the old
seers had accumulated over the years," don Juan said. "It's understandable.
The new seers knew that that knowledge leads only to total destruction. Yet
they were also fascinated by it-- especially by the practices."
"How did the new seers know about those practices?" I asked.
"They are the legacy of the old Toltecs," he said. "The new seers learn
about them as they go along. They hardly ever use them, but the practices
are there as part of their knowledge."
"What kind of practices are they, don Juan?"
"They are very obscure formulas, incantations, lengthy procedures that
have to do with the handling of a very mysterious force. At least it was
mysterious to the ancient Toltecs, who masked it and made it more horrifying
than it really is."
"What is that mysterious force?" I asked.
"It's a force that is present throughout everything there is," he said.
"The old seers never attempted to unravel the mystery of the force that made
them create their secret practices; they simply accepted it as something
sacred. But the new seers took a close look and called it wilt, the will of
the Eagle's emanations, or intent."'
Don Juan went on explaining that the ancient Toltecs had divided their
secret knowledge into five sets of two categories each: the earth and the
dark regions, fire and water, the above and the below, the loud and the
silent, the moving and the stationary. He speculated that there must have
been thousands of different techniques, which became more and more intricate
as time passed.
"The secret knowledge of the earth," he went on, "had to do with
everything that stands on the ground. There were particular sets of
movements, words, unguents, potions that were applied to people, animals,
insects, trees, small plants, rocks, soil.
"These were techniques that made the old seers into horrid beings. And
their secret knowledge of the earth was employed either to groom or to
destroy anything that stands on the ground.
"The counterpart of the earth was what they knew as the dark regions.
These practices were by far the most dangerous. They dealt with entities
without organic life. Living creatures that are present on the earth and
populate it together with all organic beings.
"Doubtlessly, one of the most worthwhile findings of the ancient seers,
especially for them, was the discovery that organic life is not the only
form of life present on this earth."
I did not quite comprehend what he had said. I waited for him to
clarify his statements.
"Organic beings are not the only creatures that have life," he said and
paused again as if to allow me time to think his statements over.
I countered with a long argument about the definition of life and being
alive. I talked about reproduction, metabolism, and growth, the processes
that distinguish live organisms from inanimate things.
"You're drawing from the organic," he said. "But that's only one
instance. You shouldn't draw all you have to say from one category alone."
"But how else can it be?" I asked.
"For seers, to be alive means to be aware," he replied. "For the
average man, to be aware means to be an organism. This is where seers are
different. For them, to be aware means that the emanations that cause
awareness are encased inside a receptacle.
"Organic living beings have a cocoon that encloses the emanations. But
there are other creatures whose receptacles don't look like a cocoon to a
seer. Yet they have the emanations of awareness in them and characteristics
of life other than reproduction and metabolism."
"Such as what, don Juan?"
"Such as emotional dependency, sadness, joy, wrath, and so forth and so
on. And I forgot the best yet, love; a kind of love man can't even
conceive."
"Are you serious, don Juan?" I asked in earnest.
"Inanimately serious," he answered with a deadpan expression and then
broke into laughter.
"If we take as our clue what seers see," he continued, "life is indeed
extraordinary."
"If those beings are alive, why don't they make themselves known to
man?" I asked.
"They do, all the time. And not only to seers but also to the average
man. The problem is that all the energy available is consumed by the first
attention. Man's inventory not only takes it all, but it also toughens the
cocoon to the point of making it inflexible. Under those circumstances there
is no possible interaction."
He reminded me of the countless times, in the course of my
apprenticeship with him, when I had had a firsthand view of inorganic
beings. I retorted that I had explained away nearly every one of those
instances. I had even formulated the hypothesis that his teachings, through
the use of hallucinogenic plants, were geared to force an agreement, on the
part of the apprentice, about a primitive interpretation of the world. I
told him that I had not formally called it primitive interpretation but in
anthropological terms I had labeled it a "world view more proper to hunting
and gathering societies."
Don Juan laughed until he was out of breath.
"I really don't know whether you're worse in your normal state of
awareness or in a heightened one," he said. "In your normal state you're not
suspicious, but boringly reasonable. I think I like you best when you are
way inside the left side, in spite of the fact that you are terribly afraid
of everything, as you were yesterday."
Before I had time to say anything at all, he stated that he was pitting
what the old seers did against the accomplishments of the new seers, as a
sort of counterpoint, with which he intended to give me a more inclusive
view of the odds I was up against.
He continued then with his elucidation of the practices of the old
seers. He said that another of their great findings had to do with the next
category of secret knowledge: fire and water. They discovered that flames
have a most peculiar quality; they can transport man bodily, just as water
does.
Don Juan called it a brilliant discovery. I remarked that there are
basic laws of physics that would prove that to be impossible. He asked me to
wait until he had explained everything before drawing any conclusions. He
remarked that I had to check my excessive rationality, because it constantly
affected my states of heightened awareness. It was not a case of reacting
every which way to external influences, but of succumbing to my own devices.
He went on explaining that the ancient Toltecs, although they obviously
saw, did not understand what they saw. They merely used their findings
without bothering to relate them to a larger picture. In the case of their
category of fire and water, they divided fire into heat and flame, and water
into wetness and fluidity. They correlated heat and wetness and called them
lesser properties. They considered flames and fluidity to be higher, magical
properties, and they used them as a means for bodily transportation to the
realm of nonorganic life. Between their knowledge of that kind of life and
their fire and water practices, the ancient seers became bogged down in a
quagmire with no way out.
Don Juan assured me that the new seers agreed that the discovery of
nonorganic living beings was indeed extraordinary, but not in the way the
old seers believed it to be. To find themselves in a one-to-one relation
with another kind of life gave the ancient seers a false feeling of
invulnerability, which spelled their doom.
I wanted him to explain the fire and water techniques in greater
detail. He said that the old seers' knowledge was as intricate as it was
useless and that he was only going to outline it.
Then he summarized the practices of the above and the below. The above
dealt with secret knowledge about wind, rain, sheets of lightning, clouds,
thunder, daylight, and the sun. The knowledge of the below had to do with
fog, water of underground springs, swamps, lightning bolts, earthquakes, the
night, moonlight, and the moon.
The loud and the silent were a category of secret knowledge that had to
do with the manipulation of sound and quiet. The moving and the stationary
were practices concerned with mysterious aspects of motion and
motionlessness.
I asked him if he could give me an example of any of the techniques he
had outlined. He replied that he had already given me dozens of
demonstrations over the years. I insisted that I had rationally explained
away everything he had done to me.
He did not answer. He seemed to be either angry at me for asking
questions or seriously involved in searching for a good example. After a
while he smiled and said that he had visualized the proper example.
"The technique I have in mind has to be put in action in the shallow
depths of a stream," he said. "There is one near Genaro's house."
"What will I have to do?"
"You'll have to get a medium-size mirror."
I was surprised at his request. I remarked that the ancient Toltecs did
not know about mirrors.
"They didn't," he admitted, smiling. "This is my benefactor's addition
to the technique. All the ancient seers needed was a reflecting surface."
He explained that the technique consisted of submerging a shiny surface
into the shallow water of a stream. The surface could be any flat object
that had some capacity to reflect images.
"I want you to construct a solid frame made of sheet metal for a
medium-size mirror," he said. "it has to be waterproof, so you must seal it
with tar. You must make it yourself with your own hands. When you have made
it, bring it over and we'll proceed."
"What's going to happen, don Juan?"
"Don't be apprehensive. You yourself have asked me to give you an
example of an ancient Toltec practice. I asked the same thing of my
benefactor. I think everybody asks for one at a certain moment. My
benefactor said that he did the same thing himself. His benefactor, the
nagual Ellas, gave him an example; my benefactor in turn gave the same one
to me, and now I am going to give it to you.
"At the time my benefactor gave me the example I didn't know how he did
it. I know now. Someday you yourself will also know how the technique works;
you will understand what's behind all this."
I thought that don Juan wanted me to go back home to Los Angeles and
construct the frame for the mirror there. I commented that it would be
impossible for me to remember the task if I did not remain in heightened
awareness.
"There are two things out of kilter with your comment," he said. "One
is that there is no way for you to remain in heightened awareness, because
you won't be able to function unless I or Genaro or any of the warriors in
the nagual's party nurse you every minute of the day, as I do now. The other
is that Mexico is not the moon. There are hardware stores here. We can go to
Oaxaca and buy anything you need."
We drove to the city the next day and I bought all the pieces for the
frame. I assembled it myself in a mechanic's shop for a minimal fee. Don
Juan told me to put it in the trunk of my car. He did not so much as glance
at it.
We drove back to Genaro's house in the late afternoon and arrived there
in the early morning. I looked for Genaro. He was not there. The house
seemed deserted.
"Why does Genaro keep this house?" I asked don Juan. "He lives with
you, doesn't he?"
Don Juan did not answer. He gave me a strange look and went to light
the kerosene lantern. I was alone in the room in total darkness. I felt a
great tiredness that I attributed to the long, tortuous drive up the
mountains. I wanted to lie down. In the darkness, I could not see where
Genaro had put the mats. I stumbled over a pile of them. And then I knew why
Genaro kept that house; he took care of the male apprentices Pablito,
Nestor, and Benigno, who lived there when they were in their state of normal
awareness.
I felt exhilarated; I was no longer tired. Don Juan came in with a
lantern. I told him about my realization, but he said that it did not
matter, that I would not remember it for too long.
He asked me to show him the mirror. He seemed pleased and remarked
about its being light yet solid. He noticed that I had used metal screws to
affix an aluminum frame to a piece of sheet metal that I had used as a
backing for a mirror eighteen inches long by fourteen inches wide.
"I made a wooden frame for my mirror," he said. "This looks much better
than mine. My frame was too cumbersome and at the same time frail.
"Let me explain what we're going to do," he continued after he had
finished examining the mirror. "Or perhaps I should say, what we're going to
attempt to do. The two of us together are going to place this mirror on the
surface of the stream near the house. It is wide enough and shallow enough
to serve our purposes.
"The idea is to let the fluidity of the water exert pressure on us and
transport us away."
Before I could make any remarks or ask any questions, he reminded me
that in the past I had utilized the water of a similar stream and
accomplished extraordinary feats of perception. He was referring to the
aftereffects of ingesting hallucinogenic plants, which I had experienced
various times while being submerged in the irrigation ditch behind his house
in northern Mexico.
"Save any questions until I explain to you what the seers knew about
awareness," he said. "Then you'll understand everything we're doing in a
different light. But first let's go on with our procedure."
We walked to the nearby stream, and he selected a place with flat,
exposed rocks. He said that there the water was shallow enough for our
purposes.
"What do you expect to happen?" I asked in the midst of a gripping
apprehension.
"I don't know. All I know is what we are going to attempt. We will hold
the mirror very carefully, but very firmly. We will gently place it on the
surface of the water and then let it submerge. We will then hold it on the
bottom. I've checked it. There is enough silt there to allow us to dig our
fingers underneath the mirror to hold it firmly."
He asked me to squat on a flat rock above the surface in the middle of
the gentle stream and made me hold the mirror with both hands, almost at the
corners on one side. He squatted facing me and held the mirror the same way
I did. We let the mirror sink and then we held it by plunging our arms in
the water almost to our elbows.
He commanded me to empty myself of thoughts and stare at the surface of
the mirror. He repeated over and over that the trick was not to think at
all. I looked intently into the mirror. The gentle current mildly
disarranged the reflection of don Juan's face and mine. After a few minutes
of steady gazing into the mirror it seemed to me that gradually the image of
his face and mine became much clearer. And the mirror grew in size until it
was at least a yard square. The current seemed to have stopped, and the
mirror looked as clear as if it were placed on top of the water. Even more
odd was the crispness of our reflections, it was as if my face had been
magnified, not in size but in focus. I could see the pores in the skin of my
forehead.
Don Juan gently whispered not to stare at my eyes or his, but to let my
gaze wander around without focusing on any part of our reflections.
"Gaze fixedly without staring!" he repeatedly ordered in a forceful
whisper.
I did what he said without stopping to ponder about the seeming
contradiction. At that moment something inside me was caught in that mirror
and the contradiction actually made sense. "It is possible to gaze fixedly
without staring," I thought, and the instant that thought was formulated
another head appeared next to don Juan's and mine. It was on the lower side
of the mirror, to my left.
My whole body trembled. Don Juan whispered to calm down and not show
fear or surprise. He again commanded me to gaze without staring at the
newcomer. I had to make an unimaginable effort not to gasp and release the
mirror. My body was shaking from head to toe. Don Juan whispered again to
get hold of myself. He nudged me repeatedly with his shoulder.
Slowly I got my fear under control. I gazed at the third head and
gradually realized that it was not a human head, or an animal head either.
In fact, it was not a head at all. It was a shape that had no inner
mobility. As the thought occurred to me, I instantly realized that I was not
thinking it myself. The realization was not a thought either. I had a moment
of tremendous anxiety and then something incomprehensible became known to
me. The thoughts were a voice in my ear!
"I am seeing!" I yelled in English, but there was no sound. "Yes,
you're seeing," the voice in my ear said in Spanish.
I felt that I was encased in a force greater than myself. I was not in
pain or even anguished. I felt nothing. I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt,
because the voice was telling me so, that I could not break the grip of that
force by an act of will or strength. I knew I was dying. I lifted my eyes
automatically to look at don Juan, and at the instant our eyes met the force
let go of me. I was free. Don Juan was smiling at me as if he knew exactly
what I had gone through.
I realized that I was standing up. Don Juan was holding the mirror
edgewise to let the water drip off.
We walked back to the house in silence.
"The ancient Toltecs were simply mesmerized by their findings," don
Juan said.
"I can understand why," I said.
"So can I," don Juan retorted.
The force that had enveloped me had been so powerful as to incapacitate
me for speech, even for thought, for hours afterward. It had frozen me with
a total lack of volition. And I had thawed out only by tiny degrees.
"Without any deliberate intervention on our part," don Juan continued,
"this ancient Toltec technique has been divided into two parts for you. The
first was just enough to familiarize you with what takes place. In the
second, we will try to accomplish what the old seers pursued."
"What really took place out there, don Juan?" I asked.
"There are two versions. I'll give you the old seers' version first.
They thought that the reflecting surface of a shiny object submerged in
water enlarges the power of the water. What they used to do was gaze into
bodies of water, and the reflecting surface served them as an aid to
accelerate the process. They believed that our eyes are the keys to entering
into the unknown; by gazing into water, they were allowing the eyes to open
the way."
Don Juan said that the old seers observed that the wetness of water
only dampens or soaks, but that the fluidity of water moves. It runs, they
surmised, in search of other levels underneath us. They believed that water
had been given to us not only for life, but also as a link, a road to the
other levels below.
"Are there many levels below?" I asked.
"The ancient seers counted seven levels," he replied.
"Do you know them yourself, don Juan?"
"I am a seer of the new cycle, and consequently I have a different
view," he said. "I am just showing you what the old seers did and I'm
telling you what they believed."
He asserted that just because he had different views did not mean the
old seers' practices were invalid; their interpretations were wrong, but
their truths had practical value for them. In the instance of the water
practices, they were convinced that it was humanly possible to be
transported bodily by the fluidity of water anywhere between this level of
ours and the other seven levels below; or to be transported in essence
anywhere on this level, along the watercourse of a river in either
direction. They used, accordingly, running water to be transported on this
level of ours and the water of deep lakes or that of waterholes to be
transported to the depths.
"What they pursued with the technique I'm showing you was twofold," he
went on. "On the one hand they used the fluidity of the water to be
transported to the first level below. On the other, they used it to have a
face-to-face meeting with a living being from that first level. The headlike
shape in the mirror was one of those creatures that came to look us over."
"So, they really exist!" I exclaimed.
"They certainly do," he retorted.
He said that ancient seers were damaged by their aberrant insistence on
staying glued to their procedures, but that whatever they found was valid.
They found out that the surest way to meet one of those creatures is through
a body of water. The size of the body of water is not relevant; an ocean or
a pond serves the same purpose. He had chosen a small stream because he
hated to get wet. We could have gotten the same results in a lake or a large
river.
"The other life comes to find out what's going on when human beings
call," he continued. "That Toltec technique is like a knock on their door.
The old seers said the shiny surface on the bottom of the water served as a
bait and a window. So humans and those creatures meet at a window."
"Is that what happened to me there?" I asked.
"The old seers would've said that you were being pulled by the power of