Don Juan and I spent the whole day in the mountains. We left at dawn. He took me to four places of power, and at each one of them he gave me specific instructions on how to proceed towards the fulfillment of the particular task that he had outlined years before as a life situation for me. We returned in the late afternoon. After eating, don Juan left don Genaro's house. He told me that I had to wait for Pablito who was bringing some kerosene for the lantern, and that I should talk to him.
I became utterly absorbed in working on my notes and did not hear Pablito come in until he was next to me. Pablito's comment was that he had been practicing the 'gait of power', and because of that I could not possibly have heard him unless I was capable of 'seeing'.
I had always liked Pablito. I had not, however, had very many opportunities in the past to be alone with him although we were good friends. Pablito had always struck me as being a most charming person. His name, of course, was Pablo, but the diminutive, Pablito, suited him better. He was small-boned but wiry. Like don Genaro he was lean, unsuspectedly muscular, and strong. He was perhaps in his late twenties, but it seemed like he was eighteen. He was dark and of medium height. His brown eyes were clear and bright, and like don Genaro he had a winning smile with a touch of devilishness in it.
I asked him about his friend Nestor; don Genaro's other apprentice. In the past I had always seen them together, and they had always given me the impression of having an excellent rapport with each other. Yet they were opposites in physical appearance and character. While Pablito was jovial and frank, Nestor was gloomy and withdrawn. Nestor was also taller, heavier, darker, and much older.
Pablito said that Nestor had finally become involved in his work with don Genaro, and that he had changed into an altogether different person since the last time I had seen him. He did not want to elaborate any further on Nestor's work or change of personality, and abruptly shifted the topic of conversation.
"I understand the nagual is biting your heels," he said.
I was surprised that he knew and I asked how he had found that out.
"Genaro tells me everything," he said.
I noticed that he did not speak of don Genaro in the same formal way I did. He simply called him Genaro in a familiar fashion. He said that don Genaro was like his brother, and that they were at ease around each other as though they were family. He openly professed that he loved don Genaro dearly. I was deeply moved by his simplicity and candor. In talking to him, I realized how close in temperament don Juan and I were. Thus our relationship was formal and strict in comparison to don Genaro and Pablito's.
I asked Pablito why he was afraid of don Juan. His eyes flickered. It was as if the mere thought of don Juan made him wince. He did not answer. He seemed to be assessing me in some mysterious way.
"You're not afraid of him?" he asked.
I told him I was afraid of don Genaro and he laughed as if that were the last thing he expected to hear. He said that the difference between don Juan and don Genaro was like the difference between day and night. Don Genaro was the day. Don Juan was the night and as such he was the most frightening being on earth. Describing his fear for don Juan led Pablito to make some comments about his own condition as an apprentice.
"I'm in a most miserable state," he said. "If you could see what's in my house, you would realize that I know too much for an ordinary man; and yet if you saw me with the nagual, you would realize that I don't know enough."
He quickly changed the subject and began to laugh at my taking notes. He said that don Genaro had provided hours of fun imitating me. He added that don Genaro liked me very much in spite of the oddities of my person, and that he had expressed his delight in my being his 'protegido'.
This was the first time I had heard that term. It was congruous with another term introduced by don Juan at the beginning of our association. He had told me that I was his 'escogido', the chosen one. The word 'protegido' meant the protected one.
I asked Pablito about his meetings with the 'nagual' and he told me the story of his first encounter with it. He said that once don Juan gave him a basket which he took to be a gift of good will. He placed it on a hook over the door of his room, and since he could not conceive any use for it at that moment he forgot about it all day. He said that his idea was that the basket was a gift of power and had to be put to use with something very special.
During the early evening, which Pablito said was his deadly hour also, he walked into his room to get his jacket. He was alone in the house and was getting ready to go visit a friend. The room was dark. He grabbed the jacket and when he was about to reach the door the basket fell in front of him and rolled near his feet. Pablito said that he laughed his fright away as soon as he saw that it had only been the basket that had fallen from the hook.
He leaned over to pick it up and got the jolt of his life. The basket jumped out of his reach and began to shake and squeak as if someone were twisting and pressing down on it. Pablito said that there was enough light coming from the kitchen to clearly distinguish everything in the room. He stared at the basket for a moment although he felt he should not do that. The basket began to convulse in the midst of some heavy, rasping, and difficult breathing.
Pablito maintained in recounting his experience, that he actually saw and heard the basket breathing, and that it was alive and chased him around the room, blocking his exit. He said that the basket then began to swell. All the strips of bamboo came loose and turned into a giant ball, like a dry tumbleweed, that rolled towards him. He fell backwards on the floor and the ball began to crawl onto his feet. Pablito said that by that time he was out of his mind, screaming hysterically. The ball had him trapped and moved on his legs like pins going through him. He tried to push it away and then noticed that the ball was the face of don Juan with his mouth open ready to devour him. At that point he could not stand the terror and lost consciousness.
Pablito, in a very frank and open manner, told me a series of terrifying encounters that he and other members of his household had had with the 'nagual'. We spent hours talking. He seemed to be in very much the same quandary that I was in but he was definitely more sensitive than I in handling himself within the sorcerers' frame of reference.
At one moment he got up and said that he felt don Juan was coming, and he did not want to be found there. He took off with incredible speed. It was as if something had pulled him out of the room. He left me in the middle of saying good-by.
Don Juan and don Genaro came back shortly. They were laughing.
"Pablito was running down the road like a soul chased by the devil," don Juan said. "I wonder why?"
"I think he got frightened when he saw Carlitos working his fingers to the bone," don Genaro said, mocking my writing.
He came closer to me.
"Hey! I've got an idea," he said almost in a whisper. "Since you like to write so much, why don't you learn to write with your finger instead of a pencil. That'll be a blast."
Don Juan and don Genaro sat by my side and laughed while they speculated about the possibility of writing with one's finger. Don Juan, in a serious tone, made a strange comment. He said, "There is no doubt that he could write with his finger, but would he be able to read it?"
Don Genaro doubled up with laughter and added, "I am confident that he can read anything." And then he began to tell a most disconcerting tale about a country bumpkin who became an important official during a time of political upheaval. Don Genaro said that the hero of his story was appointed minister, or governor, or perhaps even president because there was no way of telling what people would do in their folly. Because of this appointment, he came to believe that he was indeed important and learned to put on an act.
Don Genaro paused and examined me with the air of a ham actor overplaying his part. He winked at me and moved his eyebrows up and down. He said that the hero of the story was very good at public appearances and could whip up a speech with no difficulty at all, but that his position required that he read his speeches, and the man was illiterate.
So he used his wits to outsmart everybody. He had a sheet of paper with something written on it and flashed it around whenever he gave a speech. And thus his efficiency and other good qualities were undeniable to all the country bumpkins. But one day a literate stranger came along and noticed that the hero was reading his speech while holding the sheet upside down. He began to laugh and pointed out the lie to everyone.
Don Genaro again paused for a moment and looked at me, squinting his eyes, and asked, "Do you think that the hero was caught? Not a chance. He faced everyone calmly and said, 'Upside down? Why should the position of the sheet matter if you know how to read?' And the bumpkins agreed with him."
Don Juan and don Genaro both exploded into laughter. Don Genaro patted me gently on the back. It was as if I were the hero of the story. I felt embarrassed and laughed nervously. I thought that perhaps there was a hidden meaning to it, but I did not dare ask.
Don Juan moved closer to me. He leaned over and whispered in my right ear, "Don't you think it's funny?"
Don Genaro also leaned over towards me and whispered in my left ear, "What did he say?" I had an automatic reaction to both questions and made an involuntary synthesis.
"Yes. I thought he asked it's funny," I said.
They were obviously aware of the effect of their maneuvers. They laughed until tears rolled down their cheeks. Don Genaro, as usual, was more exaggerated than don Juan. He fell backwards and rolled on his back a few yards away from me. He lay on his stomach, extended his arms and legs out, and whirled around on the ground as though he were lying on a swivel. He whirled until he got close to me and his foot touched mine. He sat up abruptly and smiled sheepishly.
Don Juan was holding his sides. He was laughing very hard and it seemed that his stomach hurt.
After a while they both leaned over and kept on whispering into my ears. I tried to memorize the sequence of their utterances but after a futile effort I gave up. There were too many.
They whispered in my ears until I again had the sensation that I had been split in two. I became a mist like the day before; a yellow glow that sensed everything directly. That is, I could 'know' things. There were no thoughts involved. There were only certainties.
And when I came into contact with a soft, spongy, bouncy feeling, which was outside of me and yet was part of me, I 'knew' it was a tree. I sensed it was a tree by its odor. It did not smell like any specific tree I could remember, nonetheless something in me 'knew' that that peculiar odor was the 'essence' of tree. I did not have just the feeling that I knew, nor did I reason my knowledge out, nor shuffle clues around. I simply knew that there was something there in contact with me, all around me, a friendly, warm, compelling smell emanating from something which was neither solid nor liquid but an undefined something else, which I 'knew' was a tree. I felt that by 'knowing' it in that manner I was tapping its essence. I was not repelled by it. It rather invited me to melt with it. It engulfed me or I engulfed it. There was a bond between us which was neither exquisite nor displeasing.
The next sensation I could recollect with clarity was a wave of wonder and exultation. All of me vibrated. It was as if charges of electricity were going through me. They were not painful. They were pleasing, but in such an undetermined form that there was no way of categorizing them. I knew, nevertheless, that whatever I was in contact with was the ground. Some part of me acknowledged with concise certainty that it was the ground. But the instant I tried to discern the infinitude of direct perceptions I was having, I lost all capacity to differentiate my perceptions.
Then all of a sudden I was myself again. I was thinking. It was such an abrupt transition that I thought I had woken up. Yet there was something in the way I felt that was not quite myself. I knew that there was indeed something missing before I fully opened my eyes. I looked around. I was still in a dream, or having a vision of some sort.
My thought processes, however, were not only unimpaired but extraordinarily clear. I made a quick assessment. I had no doubt that don Juan and don Genaro had induced my dreamlike state for a specific purpose. I seemed to be on the verge of understanding what that purpose was when something extraneous to me forced me to pay attention to my surroundings.
It took me a long moment to orient myself. I was actually lying on my stomach and what I was lying on was a most spectacular floor. As I examined it, I could not avoid a feeling of awe and wonder. I could not conceive what it was made of. Irregular slabs of some unknown substance had been placed in a most intricate yet simple fashion. They had been put together but were not stuck to the ground or to each other. They were elastic and gave when I attempted to pry them apart with my fingers, but once I released the tension they went right back to their original position.
I tried to get up and was seized by the most outlandish sensory distortion. I had no control over my body. In fact my body did not seem to be my own. It was inert. I had no connection to any of its parts and when I tried to stand up I could not move my arms and I wobbled helplessly on my stomach; rolling on my side. The momentum of my wobbling almost made me do a complete turn onto my stomach again. My outstretched arms and legs prevented me from turning over and I came to rest on my back.
In that position I caught a glimpse of two strangely shaped legs and the most distorted feet I had ever seen. It was my body! I seemed to be wrapped up in a tunic. The thought that came to my mind was that I was experiencing a scene of myself as a cripple or an invalid of some sort. I tried to curve my back and look at my legs but I could only jerk my body. I was looking directly at a yellow sky, a deep, rich lemon-yellow sky. It had grooves or canals of a deeper yellow tone and an endless number of protuberances that hung like drops of water. The total effect of that incredible sky was staggering. I could not determine if the protuberances were clouds. There were also areas of shadows and areas of different tones of yellow which I discovered as I moved my head from side to side.
Then something else attracted my attention. A sun at the very zenith of the yellow sky, right over my head; a mild sun judging by the fact that I could stare into it; that cast a soothing uniform whitish light.
Before I had had time to ponder upon all these unearthly sights, I was violently shaken. My head jerked and bobbed back and forth. I felt I was being lifted. I heard a shrill voice and giggling, and I was confronted by a most astounding sight; a giant barefoot female. Her face was round and enormous. Her black hair was cut in pageboy fashion. Her arms and legs were gigantic. She picked me up and lifted me to her shoulders as if I were a doll. My body hung limp. I was looking down her strong back. She had a fine fuzz around her shoulders and down her spine. Looking down from her shoulder, I saw the magnificent floor again. I could hear it giving elastically under her enormous weight and I could see the pressure marks that her feet left on it.
She put me down on my stomach in front of a structure; some sort of building. I noticed then that there was something wrong with my depth perception. I could not figure out the size of the building by looking at it. At moments it seemed ridiculously small, but then after I seemingly adjusted my perception I truly marveled at its monumental proportions.
The giant girl sat next to me and made the floor squeak. I was touching her enormous knee. She smelled like candy or strawberries. She talked to me and I understood everything she said. Pointing to the structure, she told me that I was going to live there.
My prowess of observation seemed to increase as I got over the initial shock of finding myself there. I noticed then that the building had four exquisite dysfunctional columns. They did not support anything. They were on top of the building. Their shape was simplicity itself. They were long and graceful projections that seemed to be reaching for that awesome incredibly yellow sky. The effect of those inverted columns was sheer beauty to me. I had a seizure of aesthetic rapture.
The columns seemed to have been made in one piece. I could not even conceive how. The two columns in front were joined by a slender beam, a monumentally long rod that I thought may have served as a railing of some sort, or a veranda overlooking the front.
The giant girl made me slide on my back into the structure. The roof was black and flat, and was covered with symmetric holes that let the yellowish glare of the sky show through, creating the most intricate patterns. I was truly awed with the utter simplicity and beauty that had been achieved by those dots of yellow sky showing through those precise holes in the roof, and the patterns of shadows that they created on that magnificent and intricate floor. The structure was square, and outside of its poignant beauty it was incomprehensible to me.
My state of exultation was so intense at that moment that I wanted to weep, or stay there forever. But some force, or tension, or something undefinable began to pull me. Suddenly I found myself out of the structure, still lying on my back. The giant girl was there, but there was another being with her, a woman so big that she reached to the sky and eclipsed the sun. Compared to her the giant girl was just a little girl. The big woman was angry. She grabbed the structure by one of its columns, lifted it up, turned it upside down, and set it on the floor. It was a chair!
That realization was like a catalyst. It triggered some overwhelming perceptions. I went through a series of images that were disconnected but could be made to stand as a sequence. In successive flashes I saw or realized that the magnificent and incomprehensible floor was a straw mat. The yellow sky was the stucco ceiling of a room. The sun was a light bulb. The structure that had evoked such rapture in me was a chair that a child had turned upside down to play house.
I had one more coherent and sequential vision of another mysterious architectural structure of monumental proportions. It stood by itself. It looked almost like a shell of a pointed snail standing with its tail up. The walls were made of concave and convex plates of some strange purple material; each plate had grooves that seemed more functional than ornamental.
I examined the structure meticulously and in detail, and found that it was, like in the case of the previous one, thoroughly incomprehensible. I expected to suddenly adjust my perception to disclose the 'true' nature of the structure. But nothing of the sort happened. I then had a conglomerate of alien and inextricable 'awarenesses', or 'findings', about the building and its function which did not make sense because I had no frame of reference for them.
I regained my normal awareness all of a sudden. Don Juan and don Genaro were next to me. I was tired. I looked for my watch. It was gone. Don Juan and don Genaro giggled in unison. Don Juan said that I should not worry about time and that I should concentrate on following certain recommendations that don Genaro had made to me.
I turned to don Genaro and he made a joke. He said that the most important recommendation was that I should learn to write with my finger to save on pencils and to show off.
They teased me about my notes for a while longer and then I went to sleep.
Don Juan and don Genaro listened to the detailed account of my experience which I gave them at don Juan's request after I woke up the next day.
"Genaro feels that you've got enough for the time being," don Juan said after I finished talking.
Don Genaro assented with a nod.
"What was the meaning of what I experienced last night?" I asked.
"You caught a glimpse of the most important issue of sorcery," don Juan said. "Last night you peeked into the totality of yourself. But that's of course a meaningless statement for you at this moment. Obviously arriving at the totality of oneself is not a matter of one's desire to agree, or of one's willingness to learn. Genaro thinks that your body needs time to let the whispering of the nagual sink into you."
Don Genaro nodded again.
"Plenty of time," he said, shaking his head up and down. "Twenty or thirty years perhaps."
I did not know how to react. I looked at don Juan for clues. They both had serious expressions.
"Do I really have twenty or thirty years?" I asked.
"Of course not!" don Genaro yelled and they broke into laughter.
Don Juan said that I should return whenever my inner voice told me to, and that in the meantime I should try to assemble all the suggestions that they had made while I was split.
"How do I do that?" I asked.
"By turning off your internal dialogue and letting something in you flow out and expand," don Juan said. "That something is your perception, but don't try to figure out what I mean. Just let the whispering of the nagual guide you."
Then he said that the night before I had had two sets of intrinsically different views. One was inexplicable; the other was perfectly natural; and the order in which they had happened pointed to a condition that was intrinsic to all of us.
"One view was the nagual, the other the tonal" don Genaro added.
I wanted him to explain his statement. He looked at me and patted me on the back.
Don Juan stepped in and said that the first two views were the 'nagual', and that don Genaro had selected a tree and the ground as the points for emphasis. The other two were views of the 'tonal' that he himself had selected; one of them was my perception of the world as an infant.
"It appeared to be an alien world to you, because your perception had not been trimmed yet to fit the desired mold," he said.
"Was that the way I really saw the world?" I asked.
"Certainly," he said. "That was your memory."
I asked don Juan whether the feeling of aesthetic appreciation that had enraptured me was also part of my memory.
"We go into those views as we are today," he said. "You were seeing that scene as you would see it now. Yet the exercise was one of perception. That was the scene of a time when the world became for you what it is now. A time when a chair became a chair."
He did not want to discuss the other scene.
"That wasn't a memory of my childhood," I said.
"That's right," he said. "It was something else."
"Was it something I will see in the future?" I asked.
"There's no future!" he exclaimed cuttingly. "The future is only a way of talking. For a sorcerer there is only the here and now."
He said that there was essentially nothing to say about it because the purpose of the exercise had been to open the wings of my perception; and that although I had not flown on those wings, I had nonetheless touched four points which would be inconceivable to reach from the point of view of my ordinary perception.
I began to gather my things to leave. Don Genaro helped me pack my notebook. He put it in the bottom of my briefcase.
"It'll be warm and cozy there," he said and winked. "You can rest assured that it won't catch cold."
Then don Juan seemed to change his mind about my leaving and started to talk about my experience. I automatically tried to grab my briefcase from don Genaro's hands but he dropped it to the floor before I touched it. Don Juan was talking with his back turned to me. I scooped up the briefcase and hurriedly searched for my notebook. Don Genaro had really packed it so tightly that I had a hellish time getting to it. Finally I took it out and began to write. Don Juan and don Genaro were staring at me.
"You're in terrible shape," don Juan said, laughing. "You reach for your notebook as a drunkard reaches for the bottle."
"As a loving mother reaches for her child," don Genaro snapped.
"As a priest reaches for his crucifix," don Juan added.
"As a woman reaches for her panties," don Genaro yelled.
They went on and on presenting similes and howling with laughter as they walked me to my car.