Carlos Castaneda. Fire from within
Copyright (c) 1984 by Carlos Castaneda. Cover artwork copyright (c)
1985 Robert Giusti
Something was grabbing the edge of the mirror, as if from the inside of
the glass, as if the glass surface were an open window and something or
somebody were just climbing through it.
Don Juan and I fought desperately; the loud thrashing continued
unremittingly like an enormous fish in our bare hands. A strange shape was
actually trying to climb up through it. . .
I vacillated a second and the mirror flew out of my hands.
"Grab it! Grab it!" Don Juan yelled. . .
"A VISION OF THE SORCERER'S WORLD THAT IS FULL OF MIND-SPINNING
IMPLICATIONS IN THE CASTANEDA TRADITION."
-- United Press International
"HIS STORIES OF INITIATION INTO THE WORLD OF MAGIC AND SORCERY. . . CAN
BE BOTH MOCKING AND TERRIFYING. . . . THE FIRE FROM WITHIN WILL FASCINATE
YOU."
--The Nashville Tennessean
"ONE CAN'T EXAGGERATE THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WHAT CASTANEDA HAS DONE."
--The New York Times
Each of Carlos Castaneda's books is a brilliant and tantalizing burst
of illumination into the depths of our deepest mysteries, like a sudden
flash of light, like a burst of lightning over the desert at night, which
shows us a world that is both alien and totally familiar--the landscape of
our dreams.
THE FIRE FROM WITHIN is the author's most brilliant, thought-provoking
and unusual book, one in which Castaneda, under the tutelage of don Juan and
his "disciples," at last constructs, from the teachings of don Juan and his
own experiences, a stunning portrait of the "sorcerer's world" that is
crystal-clear and dizzying in its implications.
"It's impossible to view the world in quite the same way after reading
THE FIRE FROM WITHIN."
-- Chicago Tribune
I WANT TO EXPRESS MY ADMIRATION AND GRATITUDE TO A MASTERFUL TEACHER,H.
Y. L., FOR HELPING ME RESTORE MY ENERGY, AND FOR TEACHING ME AN ALTERNATE
WAY TO PLENITUDE AND WELL-BEING.
Contents
FOREWORD
1. The New Seers
2. Petty Tyrants
3. The Eagle's Emanations
4. The Glow of Awareness
5. The First Attention
6. Inorganic Beings
7. The Assemblage Point
8. The Position of the Assemblage Point
9. The Shift Below 10. Great Bands of Emanations 11. Stalking, Intent,
and the Dreaming Position 12. The Nagual Julian 13. The Earth's Boost 14.
The Rolling Force 15. The Death Defiers 16. The Mold of Man 17. The Journey
of the Dreaming Body 18. Breaking the Barrier of Perception EPILOGUE
Foreword
I have written extensive descriptive accounts of my apprentice
relationship with a Mexican Indian sorcerer, don Juan Matus. Due to the
foreignness of the concepts and practices don Juan wanted me to understand
and internalize, I have had no other choice but to render his teachings in
the form of a narrative, a narrative of what happened, as it happened.
The organization of don Juan's instruction was predicated on the idea
that man has two types of awareness. He labeled them the right side and the
left side. He described the first as the state of normal awareness necessary
for everyday life. The second, he said, was the mysterious side of man, the
state of awareness needed to function as sorcerer and seer. Don Juan divided
his instruction, accordingly, into teachings for the right side and
teachings for the left side.
He conducted his teachings for the right side when I was in my state of
normal awareness, and I have described those teachings in all my accounts.
In my state of normal awareness don Juan told me that he was a sorcerer. He
even introduced me to another sorcerer, don Genaro Flores, and because of
the nature of our association, I logically concluded that they had taken me
as their apprentice.
That apprenticeship ended with an incomprehensible act that both don
Juan and don Genaro led me to perform. They made me jump from the top of a
flat mountain into an abyss.
I have described in one of my accounts what took place on that
mountaintop. The last drama of don Juan's teachings for the right side was
played there by don Juan himself; don Genaro; two apprentices, Pablito and
Nestor; and me. Pablito, Nestor, and I jumped from that mountaintop into an
abyss.
For years afterward I thought that just my total trust in don Juan and
don Genaro had been sufficient to obliterate all my rational fears on facing
actual annihilation. I know now that it wasn't so; I know that the secret
was in don Juan's teachings for the left side, and that it took tremendous
discipline and perseverance for don Juan, don Genaro, and their companions
to conduct those teachings.
It has taken me nearly ten years to recollect what exactly took place
in his teachings for the left side that led me to be so willing to perform
such an incomprehensible act: jumping into an abyss.
It was in his teachings for the left side that don Juan let on what he,
don Genaro, and their companions were really doing to me. and who they were.
They were not teaching me sorcery, but how to master three aspects of an
ancient knowledge they possessed: awareness, stalking, and intent. And they
were not sorcerers; they were seers. And don Juan was not only a seer, but
also a nagual.
Don Juan had already explained to me, in his teachings for the right
side, a great deal about the nagual and about seeing. I had understood
seeing to be the capacity of human beings to enlarge their perceptual field
until they are capable of assessing not only the outer appearances but the
essence of everything. He had also explained that seers see man as a field
of energy, which looks like a luminous egg. The majority of people, he said,
have their fields of energy divided into two parts. A few men and women have
four or sometimes three parts. Because these people are more resilient than
the average man, they can become naguals after learning to see.
In his teachings for the left side, don Juan explained to me the
intricacies of seeing and of being a nagual. To be a nagual, he said, is
something more complex and far-reaching than being merely a more resilient
man who has learned to see. To be a nagual entails being a leader, being a
teacher and a guide.
As a nagual, don Juan was the leader of a group of seers known as the
nagual's party, which was composed of eight female seers, Cecilia, Delia,
Hermelinda, Carmela. Nelida, Florinda, Zuleica, and Zoila; three male seers,
Vicente, Silvio Manuel, and Genaro; and four couriers or messengers,
Emilito, John Tuma, Marta, and Teresa.
In addition to leading the nagual's party, don Juan also taught and
guided a group of apprentice seers known as the new nagual's party. It
consisted of four young men, Pablito, Nestor, Eligio, and Benigno, along
with five women, Soledad, la Gorda, Lidia, Josefina, and Rosa. I was the
nominal leader of the new nagual's party together with the nagual woman
Carol.
In order for don Juan to impart to me his teachings for the left side
it was necessary for me to enter into a unique state of perceptual clarity
known as heightened awareness. Throughout the years of my association with
him, he had me repeatedly shift into such a state by means of a blow that he
delivered with the palm of his hand on my upper back.
Don Juan explained that in a state of heightened awareness apprentices
can behave almost as naturally as in everyday life, but can bring their
minds to focus on anything with uncommon force and clarity. Yet, an inherent
quality of heightened awareness is that it is not susceptible to normal
recall. What transpires in such a state becomes part of the apprentice's
everyday awareness only through a staggering effort of recovery.
My interaction with the nagual's party was an example of this
difficulty of recall. With the exception of don Genaro, I had contact with
them only when I was in a state of heightened awareness; hence in my normal
everyday life I could not remember them, not even as vague characters in
dreams. The manner in which I met with them every time was almost a ritual.
I would drive to don Genaro's house in a small town in the southern part of
Mexico. Don Juan would join us immediately and the three of us would then
get busy with don Juan's teachings for the right side. After that, don Juan
would make me change levels of awareness and then we would drive to a
larger, nearby town where he and the other fifteen seers were living.
Every time I entered into heightened awareness I could not cease
marveling at the difference between my two sides. I always felt as if a veil
had been lifted from my eyes, as if I had been partially blind before and
now I could see. The freedom, the sheer joy that used to possess me on those
occasions cannot be compared with anything else I have ever experienced. Yet
at the same time, there was a frightening feeling of sadness and longing
that went hand in hand with that freedom and joy. Don Juan had told me that
there is no completeness without sadness and longing, for without them there
is no sobriety, no kindness. Wisdom without kindness, he said, and knowledge
without sobriety are useless.
The organization of his teachings for the left side also required that
don Juan, together with some of his fellow seers, explain to me the three
facets of their knowledge: the mastery of awareness, the mastery of
stalking, and the mastery of intent.
This work deals with the mastery of awareness, which is part of his
total set of teachings for the left side; the set he used in order to
prepare me for performing the astonishing act of jumping into an abyss.
Due to the fact that the experiences I narrate here took place in
heightened awareness, they cannot have the texture of daily life. They are
lacking in worldly context, although I have tried my best to supply it
without fictionalizing it. In heightened awareness one is minimally
conscious of the surroundings, because one's total concentration is taken by
the details of the action at hand.
In this case the action at hand was, naturally, the elucidation of the
mastery of awareness. Don Juan understood the mastery of awareness as being
the modern-day version of an extremely old tradition, which he called the
tradition of the ancient Toltec seers.
Although he felt that he was inextricably linked to that old tradition,
he considered himself to be one of the seers of a new cycle. When I asked
him once what was the essential character of the seers of the new cycle, he
said that they are the warriors of total freedom, that they are such masters
of awareness, stalking, and intent that they are not caught by death, like
the rest of mortal men, but choose the moment and the way of their departure
from this world. At that moment they are consumed by a fire from within and
vanish from the face of the earth, free, as if they had never existed.
THE FIRE FROM WITHIN
1 The New Seers
I had arrived in the city of Oaxaca in southern Mexico on my way to the
mountains to look for don Juan. On my way out of town in the early morning,
I had the good sense to drive by the main square, and there I found him
sitting on his favorite bench, as if waiting for me to go by.
I joined him. He told me that he was in the city on business, that he
was staying at a local boardinghouse, and that I was welcome to stay with
him because he had to remain in town for two more days. We talked for a
while about my activities and problems in the academic world.
As was customary with him, he suddenly hit me on my back when I least
expected it, and the blow shifted me into a state of heightened awareness.
We sat in silence for a very long time. I anxiously waited for him to
begin talking, yet when he did, he caught me by surprise.
"Ages before the Spaniards came to Mexico," he said, "there were
extraordinary Toltec seers, men capable of inconceivable deeds. They were
the last link in a chain of knowledge that extended over thousands of years.
"The Toltec seers were extraordinary men-- powerful sorcerers, somber,
driven men who unraveled mysteries and possessed secret knowledge that they
used to influence and victimize people by fixating the awareness of their
victims on whatever they chose."
He stopped talking and looked at me intently. I felt that he was
waiting for me to ask a question, but I did not know what to ask.
"I have to emphasize an important fact," he continued, "the fact that
those sorcerers knew how to fixate the awareness of their victims. You
didn't pick up on that. When I mentioned it, it didn't mean anything to you.
That's not surprising. One of the hardest things to acknowledge is that
awareness can be manipulated."
I felt confused. I knew that he was leading me toward something. I felt
a familiar apprehension-- the same feeling I had whenever he began a new
round of his teachings.
I told him how I felt. He smiled vaguely. Usually when he smiled he
exuded happiness; this time he was definitely preoccupied. He seemed to
consider for a moment whether or not to go on talking. He stared at me
intently again, slowly moving his gaze over the entire length of my body.
Then, apparently satisfied, he nodded and said that I was ready for my final
exercise, something that all warriors go through before considering
themselves fit to be on their own. I was more mystified than ever.
"We are going to be talking about awareness," he continued. "The Toltec
seers knew the art of handling awareness. As a matter of fact, they were the
supreme masters of that art. When I say that they knew how to fixate the
awareness of their victims, I mean that their secret knowledge and secret
practices allowed them to pry open the mystery of being aware. Enough of
their practices have survived to this day, but fortunately in a modified
form. I say fortunately because those activities, as I will explain, did not
lead the ancient Toltec seers to freedom, but to their doom." "Do you know
those practices yourself?" I asked. "Why, certainly," he replied. "There is
no way for us not to know those techniques, but that doesn't mean that we
practice them ourselves. We have other views. We belong to a new cycle."
"But you don't consider yourself a sorcerer, don Juan, do you?" I
asked.
"No, I don't," he said. "I am a warrior who sees. In fact, all of us
are los nuevos videntes-- the new seers. The old seers were the sorcerers.
"For the average man," he continued, "sorcery is a negative business,
but it is fascinating all the same. That's why I encouraged you, in your
normal awareness, to think of us as sorcerers. It's advisable to do so. It
serves to attract interest. But for us to be sorcerers would be like
entering a dead-end street."
I wanted to know what he meant by that, but he refused to talk about
it. He said that he would elaborate on the subject as he proceeded with his
explanation of awareness.
I asked him then about the origin of the Toltecs' knowledge.
"The way the Toltecs first started on the path of knowledge was by
eating power plants," he replied. "Whether prompted by curiosity, or hunger,
or error, they ate them. Once the power plants had produced their effects on
them, it was only a matter of time before some of them began to analyze
their experiences. In my opinion, the first men on the path of knowledge
were very daring, but very mistaken."
"Isn't all this a conjecture on your part, don Juan?"
"No, this is no conjecture of mine. I am a seer, and when I focus my
seeing on that time I know everything that took place."
"Can you see the details of things of the past?" I asked.
"Seeing is a peculiar feeling of knowing," he replied, "of knowing
something without a shadow of doubt. In this case, I know what those men
did, not only because of my seeing, but because we are so closely bound
together."
Don Juan explained then that his use of the term "Toltec" did not
correspond to what I understood it to mean. To me it meant a culture, the
Toltec Empire. To him, the term "Toltec" meant "man of knowledge."
He said that in the time he was referring to, centuries or perhaps even
millennia before the Spanish Conquest, all such men of knowledge lived
within a vast geographical area, north and south of the valley of Mexico,
and were employed in specific lines of work: curing, bewitching,
storytelling, dancing, being an oracle, preparing food and drink. Those
lines of work fostered specific wisdom, wisdom that distinguished them from
average men. These Toltecs, moreover, were also people who fitted into the
structure of everyday life, very much as doctors, artists, teachers,
priests, and merchants in our own time do. They practiced their professions
under the strict control of organized brotherhoods and became proficient and
influential, to such an extent that they even dominated groups of people who
lived outside the Toltecs' geographical regions.
Don Juan said that after some of these men had finally learned to see--
after centuries of dealing with power plants-- the most enterprising of them
then began to teach other men of knowledge how to see. And that was the
beginning of their end. As time passed, the number of seers increased, but
their obsession with what they saw, which filled them with reverence and
fear, became so intense that they ceased to be men of knowledge. They became
extraordinarily proficient in seeing and could exert great control over the
strange worlds they were witnessing. But it was to no avail. Seeing had
undermined their strength and forced them to be obsessed with what they saw.
"There were seers, however, who escaped that fate," don Juan continued,
"great men who, in spite of their seeing, never ceased to be men of
knowledge. Some of them endeavored to use seeing positively and to teach it
to their fellow men. I'm convinced that under their direction, the
populations of entire cities went into other worlds and never came back.
"But the seers who could only see were fiascos, and when the land where
they lived was invaded by a conquering people they were as defenseless as
everyone else.
"Those conquerors," he went on, "took over the Toltec world-- they
appropriated everything-- but they never learned to see."'
"Why do you think they never learned to see?" I asked.
"Because they copied the procedures of the Toltec seers without having
the Toltecs' inner knowledge. To this day there are scores of sorcerers all
over Mexico, descendants of those conquerors, who follow the Toltec ways but
don't know what they're doing, or what they're talking about, because
they're not seers."
"Who were those conquerors, don Juan?"
"Other Indians," he said. "When the Spaniards came, the old seers had
been gone for centuries, but there was a new breed of seers who were
starting to secure their place in a new cycle."
"What do you mean. a new breed of seers?"
"After the world of the first Toltecs was destroyed, the surviving
seers retreated and began a serious examination of their practices. The
first thing they did was to establish stalking, dreaming, and intent as the
key procedures and to deemphasize the use of power plants; perhaps that
gives us a hint as to what really happened to them with power plants.
"The new cycle was just beginning to take hold when the Spanish
conquerors swept the land. Fortunately, by that time the new seers were
thoroughly prepared to face that danger. They were already consummate
practitioners of the art of stalking."
Don Juan said that the subsequent centuries of subjugation provided for
these new seers the ideal circumstances in which to perfect their skills.
Oddly enough, it was the extreme rigor and coercion of that period that gave
them the impetus to refine their new principles. And, owing to the fact that
they never divulged their activities, they were left alone to map their
findings.
"Were there a great many new seers during the Conquest?" I asked.
"At the beginning there were. Near the end there were only a handful.
The rest had been exterminated."
"What about in our day, don Juan?" I asked.
"There are a few. They are scattered all over, you understand."
"Do you know them?" I asked.
"Such a simple question is the hardest one to answer," he replied.
"There are some we know very well. But they are not exactly like us because
they have concentrated on other specific aspects of knowledge, such as
dancing, curing, bewitching, talking, instead of what the new seers
recommend, stalking, dreaming, and intent. Those who are exactly like us
would not cross our path. The seers who lived during the Conquest set it up
that way so as to avoid being exterminated in the confrontation with the
Spaniards. Each of those seers founded a lineage. And not all of them had
descendants, so the lines are few."
"Do you know any who are exactly like us?" I asked.
"A few," he replied laconically.
I asked him then to give me all the information he could, for I was
vitally interested in the topic; to me it was of crucial importance to know
names and addresses for purposes of validation and corroboration.
Don Juan did not seem inclined to oblige me. "The new seers went
through that bit of corroboration," he said. "Half of them left their bones
in the corroborating room. So now they are solitary birds. Let's leave it
that way. All we can talk about is our line. About that, you and I can say
as much as we please."
He explained that all the lines of seers were started at the same time
and in the same fashion. Around the end of the sixteenth century every
nagual deliberately isolated himself and his group of seers from any overt
contact with other seers. The consequence of that drastic segregation, he
said, was the formation of the individual lineages. Our lineage consisted of
fourteen naguals and one hundred and twenty-six seers, he said. Some of
those fourteen naguals had as few as seven seers with them. others had
eleven, and some up to fifteen.
He told me that his teacher-- or his benefactor, as he called him-- was
the nagual Julian, and the one who came before Julian was the nagual Ellas.
I asked him if he knew the names of all fourteen naguals. He named and
enumerated them for me, so I could learn who they were. He also said that he
had personally known the fifteen seers who formed his benefactor's group and
that he had also known his benefactor's teacher, the nagual Ellas, and the
eleven seers of his party.
Don Juan assured me that our line was quite exceptional, because it
underwent a drastic change in the year 1723 as a result of an outside
influence that came to bear on us and inexorably altered our course. He did
not want to discuss the event itself at the moment, but he said that a new
beginning is counted from that time; and that the eight naguals who have
ruled the line since then are considered intrinsically different from the
six who preceded them.
Don Juan must have had business to take care of the next day, for I did
not see him until around noon. in the meantime, three of his apprentices had
come to town, Pablito, Nestor, and la Gorda. They were shopping for tools
and materials for Pablito's carpentry business. I accompanied them and
helped them to complete all their errands. Then all of us went back to the
boardinghouse.
All four of us were sitting around talking when don Juan came into my
room. He announced that we were leaving after lunch, but that before we went
to eat he still had something to discuss with me, in private. He wanted the
two of us to take a stroll around the main square and then all of us would
meet at a restaurant.
Pablito and Nestor stood up and said that they had some errands to run
before meeting us. La Gorda seemed very displeased.
"What are you going to talk about?" she blurted out, but quickly
realized her mistake and giggled.
Don Juan gave her a strange look but did not say anything.
Encouraged by his silence, la Gorda proposed that we take her along.
She assured us that she would not bother us in the least.
"I'm sure you won't bother us," don Juan said to her, "but I really
don't want you to hear anything of what I have to say to him."
La Gorda's anger was very obvious. She blushed and, as don Juan and I
walked out of the room, her entire face clouded with anxiety and tension,
becoming instantly distorted. Her mouth was open and her lips were dry.
La Gorda's mood made me very apprehensive. I felt an actual discomfort.
I didn't say anything, but don Juan seemed to notice my feelings.
"You should thank la Gorda day and night," he said all of a sudden.
"She's helping you destroy your selfimportance. She's the petty tyrant in
your life, but you still haven't caught on to that."
We strolled around the plaza until all my nervousness had vanished.
Then we sat down on his favorite bench again.
"The ancient seers were very fortunate indeed," don Juan began,
"because they had plenty of time to learn marvelous things. Let me tell you,
they knew wonders that we can't even imagine today."
"Who taught them all that?" I asked.
"They learned everything by themselves through seeing," he replied.
"Most of the things we know in our lineage were figured out by them. The new
seers corrected the mistakes of the old seers, but the basis of what we know
and do is lost in Toltec time."
He explained. One of the simplest and yet most important findings, from
the point of view of instruction, he said, is the knowledge that man has two
types of awareness. The old seers called them the right and the left side of
man.
"The old seers figured out," he went on, "that the best way to teach
their knowledge was to make their apprentices shift to their left side, to a
state of heightened awareness. Real learning takes place there.
"Very young children were given to the old seers as apprentices," don
Juan continued, "so that they wouldn't know any other way of life. Those
children, in turn, when they came of age took other children as apprentices.
Imagine the things they must have uncovered in their shifts to the left and
to the right, after centuries of that kind of concentration."
I remarked how disconcerting those shifts were to me. He said that my
experience was similar to his own. His benefactor, the nagual Julian, had
created a profound schism in him, by making him shift back and forth from
one type of awareness to the other. He said that the clarity and freedom he
experienced in heightened awareness were in total contrast to the
rationalizations, the defenses, the anger, and the fear of his normal state
of awareness.
The old seers used to create this polarity to suit their own particular
purposes; with it, they forced their apprentices to achieve the
concentration needed to learn sorcery techniques. But the new seers, he
said, use it to lead their apprentices to the conviction that there are
unrealized possibilities in man.
"The best effort of the new seers," don Juan continued, "is their
explanation of the mystery of awareness. They condensed it all into some
concepts and actions which are taught while the apprentices are in
heightened awareness."
He said that the value of the new seers' method of teaching is that it
takes advantage of the fact that no one can remember anything that happens
while being in a state of heightened awareness. This inability to remember
sets up an almost insurmountable barrier for warriors, who have to recollect
all the instruction given to them if they are to go on. Only after years of
struggle and discipline can warriors recollect their instruction. By then
the concepts and the procedures that were taught to them have been
internalized and have thus acquired the force the new seers meant them to
have.
2 Petty Tyrants
Don Juan did not discuss the mastery of awareness with me until months
later. We were at that time in the house where the nagual's party lived.
"Let's go for a walk," don Juan said to me, placing his hand on my
shoulder. "Or better yet, let's go to the town's square, where there are a
lot of people, and sit down and talk."
I was surprised when he spoke to me, as I had been in the house for a
couple of days then and he had not said so much as hello.
As don Juan and I were leaving the house, la Gorda intercepted us and
demanded that we take her along. She seemed determined not to take no for an
answer. Don Juan in a very stern voice told her that he had to discuss
something in private with me.
"You're going to talk about me," la Gorda said, her tone and gestures
betraying both suspicion and annoyance.
"You're right," don Juan replied dryly. He moved past her without
turning to look at her.
I followed him, and we walked in silence to the town's square. When we
sat down I asked him what on earth we would find to discuss about la Gorda.
I was still smarting from her look of menace when we left the house.
"We have nothing to discuss about la Gorda or anybody else," he said.
"I told her that just to provoke her enormous self-importance. And it
worked. She is furious with us. If I know her, by now she will have talked
to herself long enough to have built up her confidence and her righteous
indignation at having been refused and made to look like a fool. I wouldn't
be surprised if she barges in on us here, at the park bench."
"If we're not going to talk about la Gorda, what are we going to
discuss?" I asked.
"We're going to continue the discussion we started in Oaxaca," he
replied. "To understand the explanation of awareness will require your
utmost effort and your willingness to shift back and forth between levels of
awareness. While we are involved in our discussion I will demand your total
concentration and patience."
Half-complaining, I told him that he had made me feel very
uncomfortable by refusing to talk to me for the past two days. He looked at
me and arched his brows. A smile played on his lips and vanished. I realized
that he was letting me know I was no better than la Gorda.
"I was provoking your self-importance," he said with a frown.
"Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it-- what weakens us is
feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our
self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by
someone.
"The new seers recommended that every effort should be made to
eradicate self-importance from the lives of warriors. I have followed that
recommendation, and much of my endeavors with you has been geared to show
you that without self-importance we are invulnerable."
As I listened his eyes suddenly became very shiny. I was thinking to
myself that he seemed to be on the verge of laughter and there was no reason
for it when I was startled by an abrupt, painful slap on the right side of
my face.
I jumped up from the bench. La Gorda was standing behind me, her hand
still raised. Her face was flushed with anger.
"Now you can say what you like about me and with more justification,"
she shouted. "If you have anything to say, however, say it to my face!"
Her outburst appeared to have exhausted her, because she sat down on
the cement and began to weep. Don Juan was transfixed with inexpressible
glee. I was frozen with sheer fury. La Gorda glared at me and then turned to
don Juan and meekly told him that we had no right to criticize her.
Don Juan laughed so hard he doubled over almost to the ground. He
couldn't even speak. He tried two or three times to say something to me,
then finally got up and walked away, his body still shaking with spasms of
laughter.
I was about to run after him, still glowering at la Gorda-- at that
moment I found her despicable -- when something extraordinary happened to
me. I realized what don Juan had found so hilarious. La Gorda and I were
horrendously alike. Our self-importance was monumental. My surprise and fury
at being slapped were just like la Gorda's feelings of anger and suspicion.
Don Juan was right. The burden of selfimportance is a terrible encumbrance.
I ran after him then, elated, the tears flowing down my cheeks. I
caught up with him and told him what I had realized. His eyes were shining
with mischievousness and delight.
"What should I do about la Gorda?" I asked.
"Nothing," he replied. "Realizations are always personal."
He changed the subject and said that the omens were telling us to
continue our discussion back at his house, either in a large room with
comfortable chairs or in the back patio, which had a roofed corridor around
it. He said that whenever he conducted his explanation inside the house
those two areas would be off limits to everyone else.
We went back to the house. Don Juan told everyone what la Gorda had
done. The delight all the seers showed in taunting her made la Gorda's
position extremely uncomfortable.
"Self-importance can't be fought with niceties," don Juan commented
when I expressed my concern about la Gorda.
He then asked everyone to leave the room. We sat down and don Juan
began his explanations.
He said that seers, old and new, are divided into two categories. The
first one is made up of those who are willing to exercise self-restraint and
can channel their activities toward pragmatic goals, which would benefit
other seers and man in general. The other category consists of those who
don't care about self-restraint or about any pragmatic goals. It is the
consensus among seers that the latter have failed to resolve the problem of
self-importance.
"Self-importance is not something simple and naive," he explained. "On
the one hand, it is the core of everything that is good in us, and on the
other hand, the core of everything that is rotten. To get rid of the
self-importance that is rotten requires a masterpiece of strategy. Seers,
through the ages, have given the highest praise to those who have
accomplished it."
I complained that the idea of eradicating self-importance, although
very appealing to me at times, was really incomprehensible; I told him that
I found his directives for getting rid of it so vague I could not follow
them.
"I've said to you many times," he said, "that in order to follow the
path of knowledge one has to be very imaginative. You see, in the path of
knowledge nothing is as clear as we'd like it to be."
My discomfort made me argue that his admonitions about self-importance
reminded me of Catholic dieturns. After a lifetime of being told about the
evils of sin, I had become callous.
"Warriors fight self-importance as a matter of strategy, not
principle," he replied. "Your mistake is to understand what I say in terms
of morality."
"I see you as a highly moral man, don Juan," I insisted.
"You've noticed my impeccability, that's all," he said.
"Impeccability, as well as getting rid of self-importance, is too vague
a concept to be of any value to me," I remarked.
Don Juan choked with laughter, and I challenged him to explain
impeccability.
"Impeccability is nothing else but the proper use of energy," he said.
"My statements have no inkling of morality. I've saved energy and that makes
me impeccable. To understand this, you have to save enough energy yourself."
We were quiet for a long time. I wanted to think about what he had
said. Suddenly, he started talking again.
"Warriors take strategic inventories," he said. "They list everything
they do. Then they decide which of those things can be changed in order to
allow themselves a respite, in terms of expending their energy."
I argued that their list would have to include everything under the
sun. He patiently answered that the strategic inventory he was talking about
covered only behavioral patterns that were not essential to our survival and
well-being.
I jumped at the opportunity to point out that survival and well-being
were categories that could be interpreted in endless ways, hence, there was
no way of agreeing what was or was not essential to survival and well-being.
As I kept on talking I began to lose momentum. Finally, I stopped
because I realized the futility of my arguments.
Don Juan said then that in the strategic inventories of warriors,
self-importance figures as the activity that consumes the greatest amount of
energy, hence, their effort to eradicate it.
"One of the first concerns of warriors is to free that energy in order
to face the unknown with it," don Juan went on. "The action of rechanneling
that energy is impeccability."
He said that the most effective strategy was worked out by the seers of
the Conquest, the unquestionable masters of stalking. It consists of six
elements that interplay with one another. Five of them are called the
attributes of warriorship: control, discipline, forbearance, timing, and
will. They pertain to the world of the warrior who is fighting to lose
self-importance. The sixth element, which is perhaps the most important of
all, pertains to the outside world and is called the petty tyrant.
He looked at me as if silently asking me whether or not I had
understood.
"I'm really mystified," I said. "You keep on saying that la Gorda is
the petty tyrant of my life. Just what is a petty tyrant?"
"A petty tyrant is a tormentor," he replied. "Someone who either holds
the power of life and death over warriors or simply annoys them to
distraction."
Don Juan had a beaming smile as he spoke to me. He said that the new
seers developed their own classification of petty tyrants; although the
concept is one of their most serious and important findings, the new seers
had a sense of humor about it. He assured me that there was a tinge of
malicious humor in every one of their classifications, because humor was the
only means of counteracting the compulsion of human awareness to take
inventories and to make cumbersome classifications.
The new seers, in accordance with their practice, saw fit to head their
classification with the primal source of energy, the one and only ruler in
the universe, and they called it simply the tyrant. The rest of the despots
and authoritarians were found to be, naturally, infinitely below the
category of tyrant. Compared to the source of everything, the most fearsome,
tyrannical men are buffoons; consequently, they were classified as petty
tyrants, pinches tiranos.
He said that there were two subclasses of minor petty tyrants. The
first subclass consisted of the petty tyrants who persecute and inflict
misery but without actually causing anybody's death. They were called little
petty tyrants, pinches tiranitos. The second consisted of the petty tyrants
who are only exasperating and bothersome to no end. They were called
small-fry petty tyrants, repinches tiranitos, or teensy-weensy petty
tyrants, pinches tiranitos chiquititos.
I thought his classifications were ludicrous. I was sure that he was
improvising the Spanish terms. I asked him if that was so.
"Not at all," he replied with an amused expression. "The new seers were
great ones for classifications. Genaro is doubtless one of the greatest; if
you'd observe him carefully, you'd realize exactly how the new seers feel
about their classifications."
He laughed uproariously at my confusion when I asked him if he was
pulling my leg.
"I wouldn't dream of doing that," he said, smiling. "Genaro may do
that, but not I, especially when I know how you feel about classifications.
It's just that the new seers were terribly irreverent."
He added that the little petty tyrants are further divided into four
categories. One that torments with brutality and violence. Another that does
it by creating unbearable apprehension through deviousness. Another which
oppresses with sadness. And the last, which torments by making warriors
rage.
"La Gorda is in a class of her own," he added. "She is an acting,
small-fry petty tyrant. She annoys you to pieces and makes you rage. She
even slaps you. With all that she is teaching you detachment."
"That's not possible!" I protested.
"You haven't yet put together all the ingredients of the new seers'
strategy," he said. "Once you do that, you'll know how efficient and clever
is the device of using a petty tyrant. I would certainly say that the
strategy not only gets rid of self-importance; it also prepares warriors for
the final realization that impeccability is the only thing that counts in
the path of knowledge."
He said that what the new seers had in mind was a deadly maneuver in
which the petty tyrant is like a mountain peak and the attributes of
warriorship are like climbers who meet at the summit.
"Usually, only four attributes are played," he went on. "The fifth,
will, is always saved for an ultimate confrontation, when warriors are
facing the firing squad, so to speak."
"Why is it done that way?"
"Because wilt belongs to another sphere, the unknown. The other four
belong to the known, exactly where the petty tyrants are lodged. In fact,
what turns human beings into petty tyrants is precisely the obsessive
manipulation of the known."
Don Juan explained that the interplay of all the five attributes of