"What awareness of the objective of (he party does each member have?"
"Full awareness. Each one of them knows the tales of power pertinent to their specialty, and they know that their function is part of a purpose that transcends them.
"The relationship between the Rule and the party is expressed in their tasks. For example, when the female warriors of a group receive the command of tracking energy in space until they find possible candidates for a new generation of sorcerers, they concentrate on that (ask as their avenue to freedom. They're not interested in anything else. If the discipline of that intent cracks, the result can be chaotic."
He gave me an example of the effect of a personal concern slipped inside a sorcerer's task.
"Soon after I started my apprenticeship, and although nobody asked me to do it, I offered to help Don Juan establish the new party. Every time a beautiful girl paid attention to me, I saw in her my complementary energetic being, and tried to 'sell her' to Don Juan, eulogizing her qualities.
"At first, the warriors took it as a joke. But little by little they got pissed off, and one day when I brought my new 'nagual woman' to introduce to them, I couldn't find them. They had all moved out of the house. To feel lonely helped me to recover my sobriety.
"The party is a self-conscious being that overcomes us thoroughly. To participate in its intent is something so exceptional that as soon as an apprentice glimpses its totality, his ego position just melts. That does not imply that he automatically becomes impeccable; for years, he will still have to make an effort to temper his character and to extinguish his self-importance, as well as the obsession of power.
"Only the nagual man and woman have a total vision of the functioning of the party. Continuing the analogy, they would tell you that they are the nerve cells of the party; the units which direct the process of perpetuation. The other members serve as support, and they carry out the concrete tasks of duplicating the group.
"The work of the nagual is exhausting. He has to have perfect control of the arts of stalking and dreaming, he has to learn to see and to develop his capacity of manipulation to the maximum, and he has to serve as an example of sobriety in order to maintain the cohesion of the group. If they are allowed to be carried away by their emotions, the result is disintegration."
I asked him why.
"Because the party is an organism of critical mass. If any one of its components goes astray from the goal, the resulting dysfunction causes a collapse, and everything would have to be restarted. That is why the nagual is obliged to demand from his warriors that they give all of themselves, and he must distribute their tasks so that ail of them can participate with optimism and trust, The oil of the party is the impeccability of its members, and its fuel the yearning for total freedom."