Don Juan was at don Genaro's house when I got there in the late morning. I greeted him.
"Hey, what happened to you? Genaro and I waited for you all night," he said.
I knew that he was joking. I felt light and happy. I had systematically refused to dwell on whatever I had witnessed the day before. At that moment, however, my curiosity was uncontrollable and I asked him about it.
"Oh, that was a simple demonstration of all the things that you should know before you get the sorcerers' explanation," he said. "What you did yesterday made Genaro feel that you have stored enough power to go for the real thing.
You have obviously followed his suggestions. Yesterday you let the wings of your perception unfold. You were stiff but you still perceived all the comings and goings of the nagual. In other words, you saw. You also confirmed something which at this time is even more important than seeing, and that was the fact that you can now place your unwavering attention on the nagual. And that's what will decide the outcome of the last issue, the sorcerers' explanation.
"Pablito and you will go into it at the same time. It is a gift of power to be accompanied by such a fine warrior."
That seemed to be all he wanted to say. After a while I asked about don Genaro.
"He's around," he said. "He went into the bushes to make the mountains tremble."
I heard at that moment a distant rumble, like muffled thunder. Don Juan looked at me and laughed.
He made me sit down and asked if I had eaten. I had, so he handed me my notebook and led me to don Genaro's favorite spot; a large rock on the west side of the house overlooking a deep ravine.
"Now is when I need your total attention," don Juan said. "Attention in the sense that warriors understand attention; a true pause in order to allow the sorcerers' explanation to fully soak through you.
"We are at the end of our task. All the necessary instruction has been given to you and now you must stop, look back, and reconsider your steps. Sorcerers say that this is the only way to consolidate one's gains. I definitely would have preferred to tell you all this at your own place of power, but Genaro is your benefactor and his spot may be more beneficial to you in an instance like this."
What he was referring to as my 'place of power' was a hilltop in the desert of northern Mexico which he had shown me years before and had 'given' to me as my own.
"Should I just listen to you without taking notes?" I asked.
"This is indeed a tricky maneuver," he said. "On the one hand I need your total attention, and on the other you need to be calm and self-assured. The only way for you to be at ease is to write, so this is the time to bring forth all your personal power and fulfill this impossible task of being yourself without being yourself."
He slapped his thigh and laughed.
"I've already told you that I am in charge of your tonal and that Genaro is in charge of your nagual" he went on. "It has been my duty to help you in every matter concerning your tonal and everything that I've done with you or to you was done to accomplish one single task, the task of cleaning and reordering your island of the tonal. That's my job as your teacher. Genaro's task as your benefactor is to give you undeniable demonstrations of the nagual and to show how to get to it."
"What do you mean by cleaning and reordering the island of the tonal?" I asked.
"I mean the total change which I've been telling you about from the first day we met," he said. "I've told you countless times that a most drastic change was needed if you wanted to succeed in the path of knowledge. That change is not a change of mood, or attitude, or outlook. That change entails the transformation of the island of the tonal. You have accomplished that task."
"Do you think that I've changed?" I asked.
He hesitated and then laughed loudly.
"You are as idiotic as ever," he said. "And yet you're not the same. See what I mean?"
He mocked my taking notes and said that he missed don Genaro, who would have enjoyed the absurdity of my writing down the sorcerers' explanation.
"At this precise point a teacher would usually say to his disciple that they have arrived at a final crossroad," he continued. "To say such a thing is misleading, though. In my opinion there is no final crossroad, no final step to anything. And since there is no final step to anything, there shouldn't be any secrecy about any part of our lot as luminous beings. Personal power decides who can or who cannot profit by a revelation.
"My experiences with my fellow men have proven to me that very, very few of them would be willing to listen. And of those few who listen, even fewer would be willing to act on what they have listened to. And of those who are willing to act even fewer have enough personal power to profit by their acts.
"So, the matter of secrecy about the sorcerers' explanation boils down to a routine; perhaps a routine as empty as any other routine.
"At any rate, you know now about the tonal and the nagual, which are the core of the sorcerers' explanation. To know about them seems to be quite harmless. We are sitting here talking innocently about them as if they were just an ordinary topic of conversation. You are calmly writing as you've done for years. The scenery around us is a picture of calmness. It is early afternoon. The day is beautiful. The mountains around us have made a protective cocoon for us.
One doesn't have to be a sorcerer to realize that this place, which speaks of Genaro's power and impeccability, is the most appropriate background for opening the door. For that is what I'm doing today; opening the door for you. But before we venture beyond this point a fair warning is required. A teacher is supposed to speak in earnest terms and warn his disciple that the harmlessness and placidity of this moment are a mirage, that there is a bottomless abyss in front of him, and that once the door opens there is no way to close it again." He paused for a moment.
I felt light and happy. From don Genaro's place of predilection I had a breathtaking view. Don Juan was right. The day and the scenery were more than beautiful. I wanted to worry about his admonitions and warnings, but somehow the tranquility around me screened out all my attempts and I found myself hoping that perhaps he was speaking only of metaphorical dangers. Don Juan suddenly began to talk again.
"The years of hard training are only a preparation for the warrior's devastating encounter with..."
He paused again, looked at me with squinting eyes, and chuckled. "...with whatever lies out there, beyond this point," he said. I asked him to explain his ominous statements.
"The sorcerers' explanation, which doesn't seem like an explanation at all, is lethal," he said. "It seems harmless and charming, but as soon as the warrior opens himself to it, it delivers a blow that no one can parry."
He broke into a loud laugh.
"So, be prepared for the worst, hut don't hurry or panic," he proceeded. "You don't have any time, and yet you're surrounded by eternity. What a paradox for your reason!"
Don Juan stood up. He wiped off the debris on a smooth bowl-like depression, and sat there comfortably with his back against the rock; facing the northwest. He indicated another place for me where I too could sit comfortably. I was to his left, also facing the northwest. The rock was warm and gave me a feeling of serenity; of protection. It was a mild day. A soft wind made the heat of the afternoon sun very pleasant. I took off my hat but don Juan insisted that I should wear it.
"You're now facing in the direction of your own place of power," he said. "That is a prop that may protect you. Today you need all the props you can use. Your hat may be another one of them."
"Why are you warning me, don Juan? What's really going to happen?" I asked.
"What will happen here today depends on whether or not you have enough personal power to focus your unwavering attention on the wings of your perception," he said.
His eyes glittered. He seemed to be more excited than I had ever seen him before. I thought that there was something unusual in his voice; perhaps an unaccustomed nervousness.
Don Juan said that the occasion required that right there on my benefactor's place of predilection he recapitulate for me every step that he had taken in his struggle to help me clean and reorder my island of the 'tonal'. His recapitulation was meticulous, and took him about five hours.
In a brilliant and clear manner he gave me a succinct account of everything he had done to me since the day we met. It was as if a dam had been broken. His revelations caught me completely off guard. I had accustomed myself to be the aggressive prober; thus, to have don Juan- who was always the reluctant party- elucidating the points of his teachings in such an academic manner was as astounding as his wearing a suit in Mexico City. His control of the language, his dramatic timing, and his choice of words were so extraordinary that I had no way to explain them rationally.
He said that at that point a teacher had to speak to the individual warrior in exclusive terms; that the way he was talking to me and the clarity of his explanation were part of his last trick; and that only at the end would everything that he was doing make sense to me. He talked without stopping, until he had finished presenting his recapitulation. And I wrote down everything he said without any conscious effort on my part.
"Let me begin by telling you that a teacher never seeks apprentices and no one can solicit the teachings," he said. "It's always an omen which points out an apprentice. A warrior who may be in the position of becoming a teacher must be alert in order to catch his cubic centimenter of chance. I saw you just before we met. You had a good tonal, like that girl we encountered in Mexico City. After I saw you I waited, very much like what we did with the girl that night in the park. The girl went by without paying attention to us. But you were brought to me by a man who ran away after babbling inanities. You were left there, facing me, also babbling inanities. I knew I had to act fast and hook you. You yourself would've had to do something of that sort if that girl would've talked to you. What I did was to grab you with my will."
Don Juan was alluding to the extraordinary way he had looked at me the day we met. He had fixed his gaze on me and I had had an inexplicable feeling of vacuity, or numbness. I could not find any logical explanation for my reaction and I have always believed that after our first meeting I went back to see him only because I had become obsessed with that look.
"That was my quickest way of hooking you," he said. "It was a direct blow to your tonal. I numbed it by focusing my will on it."
"How did you do that?" I asked.
"The warrior's gaze is placed on the right eye of the other person," he said. "and what it does is to stop the internal dialogue. Then the nagual takes over; thus, the danger of that maneuver. Whenever the nagual prevails, even if it is only for an instant, there is no way of describing the feeling that the body experiences. I know that you have spent endless hours trying to figure out what you felt, and that to this day you haven't been able to. I accomplished what I wanted, though. I hooked you."
I told him that I could still remember him staring at me.
"The gaze on the right eye is not a stare," he said. "It's rather a forceful grabbing that one does through the eye of the other person. In other words, one grabs something that is behind the eye. One has the actual physical sensation that one is holding something with the will."
He scratched his head, tilting his hat to the front, over his face.
"This is, naturally, only a way of talking," he continued. "A way of explaining weird physical sensations."
He ordered me to stop writing and look at him. He said that he was going to 'grab' my 'tonal' gently with his 'will'. The sensation I experienced was a repetition of what I had felt on that first day we had met, and on other occasions when don Juan had made me feel that his eyes were actually touching me in a physical sense.
"But, how do you make me feel you're touching me, don Juan? What do you actually do?" I asked.
"There's no way of exactly describing what one does," he said. "Something snaps forward from someplace below the stomach. That something has direction and can be focused on anything."
I again felt something like soft tweezers clasping some undefined part of me.
"It works only when the warrior learns to focus his will" don Juan explained after he moved his eyes away. "There's no way of practicing it, therefore I have not recommended or encouraged its use. At a given moment in the life of a warrior it simply happens. No one knows how."
He remained quiet for a while. I felt extremely apprehensive. Don Juan suddenly began to speak again.
"The secret is in the left eye," he said. "As a warrior progresses on the path of knowledge his left eye can clasp anything. Usually the left eye of a warrior has a strange appearance. Sometimes it becomes permanently crossed, or it becomes smaller than the other, or larger, or different in some way."
He glanced at me and in a joking manner pretended to examine my left eye. He shook his head in mock disapproval and chuckled.
"Once the apprentice has been hooked, the instruction begins," he continued. "The first act of a teacher is to introduce the idea that the world we think we see is only a view, a description of the world. Every effort of a teacher is geared to prove this point to his apprentice.
"But accepting it seems to be one of the hardest things one can do. We are complacently caught in our particular view of the world, which compels us to feel and act as if we knew everything about the world. A teacher, from the very first act he performs, aims at stopping that view. Sorcerers call it stopping the internal dialogue, and they are convinced that it is the single most important technique that an apprentice can learn.
"In order to stop the view of the world which one has held since the cradle, it is not enough to just wish or make a resolution. One needs a practical task. That practical task is called the right way of walking. It seems harmless and nonsensical. As everything else which has power in itself or by itself, the right way of walking does not attract attention. You understood it and regarded it, at least for several years, as a curious way of behaving. It didn't dawn on you until very recently that that was the most effective way to stop your internal dialogue."
"How does the right way of walking stop the internal dialogue?" I asked.
"Walking in that specific manner saturates the tonal" he said. "It floods it. You see, the attention of the tonal has to be placed on its creations. In fact, it is that attention that creates the order of the world in the first place. So the tonal must be attentive to the elements of its world in order to maintain it, and must, above all, uphold the view of the world as internal dialogue."
He said that the right way of walking was a subterfuge. [* subterfuge- something intended to misrepresent the true nature of an activity] The warrior, first by curling his fingers, draws attention to the arms. Then by looking without focusing his eyes at any point directly in front of him on the arc that starts at the tip of his feet and ends above the horizon, he literally flooded his 'tonal' with information.
The 'tonal', without its one-to-one relation with the elements of its description, was incapable of talking to itself and thus one became silent.
Don Juan explained that the position of the fingers did not matter at all; that the only consideration was to draw attention to the arms by clasping the fingers in various unaccustomed ways; and that the important thing was the manner in which the eyes by being kept unfocused detected an enormous number of features of the world without being clear about them. He added that the eyes in that state were capable of picking out details which were too fleeting for normal vision.
"Together with the right way of walking," don Juan went on, "a teacher must teach his apprentice another possibility which is even more subtle; the possibility of acting without believing; without expecting rewards; acting just for the hell of it. I wouldn't be exaggerating if I told you that the success of a teacher's enterprise depends on how well and how harmoniously he guides his apprentice in this specific respect."
I told don Juan that I did not remember him ever discussing 'acting just for the hell of it' as a particular technique. All I could recollect were his constant but loose comments about it.
He laughed and said that his maneuver had been so subtle that it had bypassed me to that day. He then reminded me of all the nonsensical joking tasks that he used to give me every time I had been at his house: absurd chores such as arranging firewood in patterns, encircling his house with an unbroken chain of concentric circles drawn in the dirt with my finger, sweeping debris from one place to another, and so forth. The tasks also included acts that I had to perform by myself at home: such as wearing a black cap, or tying my left shoe first, or fastening my belt from right to left.
The reason I had never taken them in any other vein except as jokes was that he would invariably tell me to forget about them after I had established them as regular routines.
As he recapitulated all the tasks he had given me I realized that by making me perform senseless routines he had indeed implanted in me the idea of acting without really expecting anything in return.
"Stopping the internal dialogue is, however, the key to the sorcerers' world," he said. "The rest of the activities are only props. All they do is accelerate the effect of stopping the internal dialogue."
He said that there were two major activities or techniques used to accelerate the stopping of the internal dialogue: erasing personal history and 'dreaming'. He reminded me that during the early stages of my apprenticeship he had given me a number of specific methods for changing my 'personality'. I had recorded them in my notes and had forgotten about them for years until I realized their importance. Those specific methods seemed at first to be highly idiosyncratic [* idiosyncratic- peculiar to the individual] devices to coerce me into modifying my behavior.
He explained that the art of a teacher was to deviate the apprentice's attention from the main issues. A poignant example of that art was the fact that I had not realized until that day that he had actually tricked me into learning a most crucial point; to act without expecting rewards.
He said that in line with that rationale he had rallied my interest around the idea of 'seeing', which, properly understood, was the act of dealing directly with the 'nagual': an act that was an unavoidable end result of the teachings but an unattainable task as a task per se.
"What was the point of tricking me that way?" I asked.
"Sorcerers are convinced that all of us are a bunch of nincompoops," he said. "We can never relinquish our crummy control voluntarily, thus we have to be tricked."
His contention was that by making me focus my attention on a pseudo task, learning to 'see', he had successfully accomplished two things. First he had outlined the direct encounter with the 'nagual' without mentioning it, and second he had tricked me into considering the real issues of his teachings as inconsequential affairs. Erasing personal history and 'dreaming' were never as important to me as 'seeing'. I regarded them as very entertaining activities. I even thought that they were the practices for which I had the greatest facility.
"Greatest facility," he said mockingly when he heard my comments. "A teacher must not leave anything to chance. I've told you that you were correct in feeling that you were being tricked. The problem was that you were convinced that that tricking was directed at fooling your reason. For me, tricking meant to distract your attention, or to trap it as the case required."
He looked at me with squinting eyes and pointed all around us with a sweeping gesture of his arm.
"The secret of all this is one's attention," he said.
"What do you mean, don Juan?"
"All of this exists only because of our attention. This very rock where we're sitting is a rock because we have been forced to give our attention to it as a rock."
I wanted him to explain that idea. He laughed and raised an accusing finger at me.
"This is a recapitulation," he said. "We'll get to that later."
He asserted that because of his decoy maneuver I became interested in erasing personal history and 'dreaming'. He said that the effects of those two techniques were ultimately devastating if they were exercised in their totality, and that then his concern was the concern of every teacher; not to let his apprentice do anything that would plunge him into aberration and morbidity.
"Erasing personal history and dreaming should only be a help," he said. "What any apprentice needs to buffer him is temperance and strength. That's why a teacher introduces the warrior's way, or living like a warrior. This is the glue that joins together everything in a sorcerer's world. Bit by bit a teacher must forge and develop it. Without the sturdiness and level-headedness of the warrior's way there is no possibility of withstanding the path of knowledge."
Don Juan said that learning the warrior's way was an instance when the apprentice's attention had to be trapped rather than deviated, and that he had trapped my attention by pushing me out of my ordinary circumstances every time I had gone to see him. Our roaming around the desert and the mountains had been the means to accomplish that.
The maneuver of altering the context of my ordinary world by taking me for hikes and hunting was another instance of his system that had bypassed me. Context disarrangement meant that I did not know the ropes and my attention had to be focused on everything don Juan did.
"What a trick! Uh?" he said and laughed.
I laughed with awe. I had never realized that he was so aware.
He then enumerated his steps in guiding and trapping my attention. When he had finished his account he added that a teacher had to take into consideration the personality of the apprentice, and that in my case he had to be careful because I was violent and would have thought nothing of killing myself out of despair.
"What a preposterous fellow you are, don Juan," I said in jest, and he exploded in a giant laugh.
He explained that in order to help erase personal history, three other techniques were taught. They were: losing self-importance, assuming responsibility, and using death as an adviser. The idea was that without the beneficial effect of those three techniques, erasing personal history would involve the apprentice in being shifty, evasive and unnecessarily dubious about himself and his actions.
Don Juan asked me to tell him what had been the most natural reaction I had had in moments of stress, frustration and disappointment before I became an apprentice. He said that his own reaction had been wrath. I told him that mine had been self-pity.
"Although you're not aware of it, you had to work your head off to make that feeling a natural one," he said. "By now there is no way for you to recollect the immense effort that you needed to establish self-pity as a feature of your island. Self-pity bore witness to everything you did. It was just at your fingertips, ready to advise you.
"Death is considered by a warrior to be a more amenable adviser which can also be brought to bear witness on everything one does; just like self-pity, or wrath. Obviously after an untold struggle you had learned to feel sorry for yourself. But you can also learn, in the same way, to feel your impending end; and thus you can learn to have the idea of your death at your fingertips. As an adviser, self-pity is nothing in comparison to death."
Don Juan pointed out then that there was seemingly a contradiction in the idea of change. On the one hand, the sorcerers' world called for a drastic transformation, and on the other, the sorcerers' explanation said that the island of the 'tonal' was complete and not a single element of it could be removed. Change, then, did not mean obliterating anything, but rather altering the use assigned to those elements.
"Take self-pity for instance," he said. "There is no way to get rid of it for good; it has a definite place and character in your island, a definite facade which is recognizable. Thus, every time the occasion arises, self-pity becomes active. It has history. If you then change the facade of self-pity, you would have shifted its place of prominence."
I asked him to explain the meaning of his metaphors, especially the idea of changing facades. I understood it as perhaps the act of more than one role at the same time.
"One changes the facade by altering the use of the elements of the island," he replied. "Take self-pity again. It was useful to you because you either felt important and deserving of better conditions, better treatment; or because you were unwilling to assume responsibility for the acts that brought you to the state that elicited self-pity; or because you were incapable of bringing the idea of your impending death to witness your acts and advise you.
"Erasing personal history and its three companion techniques are the sorcerers' means for changing the facade of the elements of the island. For instance, by erasing your personal history, you have denied use to self-pity. In order for self-pity to work you had to feel important, irresponsible, and immortal. When those feelings were altered in some way, it was no longer possible for you to feel sorry for yourself.
"The same was true with all the other elements which you've changed on your island. Without using those four techniques you never could've succeeded in changing them. But changing facades means only that one has assigned a secondary place to a formerly important element. Your self-pity is still a feature of your island; it will be there in the back in the same way that the idea of your impending death, or your humbleness, or your responsibility for your acts were there without ever being used."
Don Juan said that once all those techniques had been presented, the apprentice arrived at a crossroad. Depending on his sensibility, the apprentice did one of two things. He either took the recommendations and suggestions made by his teacher at their face value and acted without expecting rewards, or he took everything as a joke or an aberration.
I remarked that in my own case I was confused by the word 'techniques'. I always expected a set of precise directions, but he had given me only vague suggestions; and I was incapable of taking them seriously or acting in accordance with his stipulations.
"That was your mistake," he said. "I had to decide then whether or not to use power plants. You could've used those four techniques to clean and reorder your island of the tonal. They would've led you to the nagual. But not all of us are capable of reacting to simple recommendations. You, and I for that matter, needed something else to shake us. We needed those power plants."
It had indeed taken me years to realize the importance of those early suggestions made by don Juan. The extraordinary effect that psychotropic plants had had on me was what gave me the bias that their use was the key feature of the teachings. I held on to that conviction and it was only in the later years of my apprenticeship that I realized that the meaningful transformations and findings of sorcerers were always done in states of sober consciousness.
"What would have happened if I had taken your recommendations seriously?" I asked.
"You would have gotten to the nagual" he replied.
"But would I have gotten to the nagual without a benefactor?"
"Power provides according to your impeccability," he said. "If you had seriously used those four techniques, you would've stored enough personal power to find a benefactor. You would've been impeccable and power would have opened all the necessary avenues. That is the rule."
"Why didn't you give me more time?" I asked.
"You had all the time you needed," he said. "Power showed me the way. One night I gave you a riddle to work out. You had to find your beneficial spot in front of the door of my house. That night you performed marvelously under pressure and in the morning you fell asleep over a very special rock that I had put there. Power showed me that you had to be pushed mercilessly or you wouldn't do a thing."
"Did the power plants help me?" I asked.
"Certainly," he said. "They opened you up by stopping your view of the world. In this respect power plants have the same effect on the tonal as the right way of walking. Both flood it with information and force the internal dialogue to come to a stop. The plants are excellent for that, but very costly. They cause untold damage to the body. This is their drawback, especially with the devil's weed."
"If you knew that they were so dangerous, why did you give me so many of them, so many times?" I asked.
He assured me that the details of the procedure were decided by power itself. He said that although the teachings were supposed to cover the same issues with all apprentices, the order was different for each one, and that he had gotten repeated indications that I needed a great deal of coercion in order to bother with anything.
"I was dealing with a sassy immortal being that had no respect for his life or his death," he said, laughing.
I brought up the fact that he had described and discussed those plants in terms of anthropomorphic [* anthropomorphic- suggesting human characteristics for animals or inanimate things] qualities. His references to them were always as if the plants had personalities. He replied that that was a prescribed means for deviating the apprentice's attention away from the real issue, which was stopping the internal dialogue.
"If they are used only to stop the internal dialogue, what's their connection with the ally?" I asked.
"That's a difficult point to explain," he said. "Those plants lead the apprentice directly to the nagual, and the ally is an aspect of it. We function at the center reason exclusively, regardless of who we are or where we come from. Reason can naturally account in one way or another for everything that happens within its view of the world.
"The ally is something which is outside of that view; outside the realm of reason. It can be witnessed only at the center of will at times when our ordinary view has stopped, therefore it is properly the nagual. Sorcerers, however, can learn to perceive the ally in a most intricate way, and in doing so they get too deeply immersed in a new view.
"So, in order to protect you from that fate, I did not emphasize the ally as sorcerers usually do. Sorcerers have learned after generations of using power plants to account in their views for everything that is accountable about them. I would say that sorcerers, by using their will, have succeeded in enlarging their views of the world. My teacher and benefactor were the clearest examples of that. They were men of great power, but they were not men of knowledge.
"They never broke the bounds of their enormous views and thus never arrived at the totality of themselves, yet they knew about it. It wasn't that they lived aberrant lives, claiming things beyond their reach; they knew that they had missed the boat and that only at their death would the total mystery be revealed to them. Sorcery had given them only a glimpse but never the real means to get to that evasive totality of oneself.
"I gave you enough of the sorcerers' view without letting you get hooked by it. I said that only if one pits two views against each other can one weasel between them to arrive at the real world. I meant that one can arrive at the totality of oneself only when one fully understands that the world is merely a view, regardless of whether that view belongs to an ordinary man or to a sorcerer.
"Here is where I varied from the tradition. After a lifelong struggle I know that what matters is not to learn a new description, but to arrive at the totality of oneself. One should get to the nagual without maligning the tonal, and above all, without injuring one's body. You took those plants following the exact steps I followed myself. The only difference was that instead of plunging you into them I stopped when I judged that you had stored enough views of the nagual. That is the reason why I never wanted to discuss your encounters with power plants, or let you talk obsessively about them. There was no point in elaborating about the unspeakable. Those were true excursions into the nagual, the unknown."
I mentioned that my need to talk about my perceptions under the influence of psychotropic plants was due to an interest in elucidating a hypothesis of my own. I was convinced that with the aid of such plants he had provided me with memories of inconceivable ways of perceiving. Those memories, which at the time I experienced them may have seemed idiosyncratic and disconnected from anything meaningful, were later assembled into units of meaning. I knew that don Juan had artfully guided me each time, and that any assembling of meaning was made under his guidance.
"I don't want to emphasize those events, or explain them," he said dryly. "The act of dwelling on explanations will put us right back where we don't want to be. That is, we'll be thrown back into a view of the world; this time a much larger view."
Don Juan said that after the apprentice's internal dialogue has been stopped by the effect of power plants, an unavoidable impasse develops. The apprentice begins to have second thoughts about his whole apprenticeship. In don Juan's opinion, even the most willing apprentice at that point would suffer a serious loss of interest.
"Power plants shake the tonal and threaten the solidity of the whole island," he said. "It is at this time that the apprentice retreats, and wisely so. He wants to get out of the whole mess. It is also at this time that the teacher sets up his most artful trap, the worthy opponent.
"This trap has two purposes. First, it enables the teacher to hold his apprentice, and second, it enables the apprentice to have a point of reference for further use. The trap is a maneuver that brings forth a worthy opponent into the arena. Without the aid of a worthy opponent, who is not really an enemy but a thoroughly dedicated adversary, the apprentice has no possibility of continuing on the path of knowledge. The best of men would quit at this point if it were left up to them to decide. I brought to you as a worthy opponent the finest warrior one can find, la Catalina."
Don Juan was talking about a time, years before, when he had led me into a long-range battle with an Indian sorceress.
"I put you in bodily contact with her," he proceeded. "I chose a woman because you trust women. To disarrange that trust was very difficult for her. She confessed to me years later that she would've liked to quit because she liked you. But she's a great warrior and in spite of her feelings she nearly blasted you off the planet.
"She disarranged your tonal so intensely that it was never the same again. She actually changed features on the face of your island so deeply that her acts sent you into another realm. One may say that she could've become your benefactor herself, had it not been that you were not cut out to be a sorcerer like she is.
"There was something amiss between you two. You were incapable of being afraid of her. You nearly lost your marbles one night when she accosted you, but in spite of that you were attracted to her. She was a desirable woman to you no matter how scared you were. She knew that. I caught you one day in town looking at her, shaking in your boots with fear and yet drooling at her.
"Because of the acts of a worthy opponent, then, an apprentice can be either blasted to pieces or changed radically. La Catalina's actions with you, since they did not kill you- not because she did not try hard enough, but because you were durable- had a beneficial effect on you, and also provided you with a decision.
"The teacher uses the worthy opponent to force the apprentice into the choice of his life. The apprentice must choose between the warrior's world and his ordinary world. But no decision is possible unless the apprentice understands the choice. Thus a teacher must have a thoroughly patient and understanding attitude, and must lead his man with a sure hand to that choice; and above all he must make sure that his apprentice chooses the world and the life of a warrior. I accomplished this by asking you to help me overcome la Catalina. I told you she was about to kill me and that I needed your help to get rid of her. I gave you fair warning about the consequences of your choice and plenty of time to decide whether or not to make it."
I clearly remembered that don Juan had set me loose that day. He told me that if I did not want to help him I was free to leave and never come back. I felt at that moment that I was at liberty to choose my own course and had no further obligation to him.
I left his house and drove away with a mixture of sadness and happiness. I was sad to leave don Juan and yet I was happy to be through with all his disconcerting activities. I thought of Los Angeles and my friends and all the routines of my daily life which were waiting for me; those little routines that had always given me so much pleasure. For a while I felt euphoric. The weirdness of don Juan and his life was behind me and I was free.
My happy mood did not last long, however. My desire to leave don Juan's world was untenable. My routines had lost their power. I tried to think of something I wanted to do in Los Angeles, but there was nothing. Don Juan had once told me that I was afraid of people and had learned to defend myself by not wanting anything. He said that not wanting anything was a warrior's finest attainment. In my stupidity, however, I had enlarged the sensation of not wanting anything and made it lapse into not liking anything. Thus, my life was boring and empty.
He was right, and as I zoomed north on the highway the full impact of my own unsuspected madness finally hit me. I began to realize the scope of my choice. I was actually leaving a magical world of continual renewal for my soft, boring life in Los Angeles. I began to recollect my empty days. I remembered one Sunday in particular. I had felt restless all day with nothing to do. No friends had come to visit me. No one had invited me to a party. The people I wanted to see were not home, and worst of all, I had seen all the movies in town. In the late afternoon, in ultimate despair, I searched the list of movies again and found one I had never wanted to see. It was being shown in a town thirty-five miles away. I went to see it, and hated it, but even that was better than having nothing to do.
Under the impact of don Juan's world, I had changed. For one thing, since I had met him I had not had time to be bored. That in itself was enough for me. Don Juan had indeed made sure I would choose the warrior's world. I turned around and drove back to his house.
"What would have happened if I had chosen to go back to Los Angeles?" I asked.
"That would have been an impossibility," he said. "That choice didn't exist. All that was required of you was to allow your tonal to become aware of having decided to join the world of sorcerers. The tonal doesn't know that decisions are in the realm of the nagual. When we think we decide, all we're doing is acknowledging that something beyond our understanding has set up the frame of our so-called decision, and all we do is to acquiesce.
"In the life of a warrior there is only one thing- one issue alone which is really undecided: how far one can go on the path of knowledge and power. That is an issue which is open and no one can predict its outcome. I once told you that the freedom a warrior has is either to act impeccably or to act like a nincompoop. Impeccability is indeed the only act which is free and thus the true measure of a warrior's spirit."
Don Juan said that after the apprentice had made his decision to join the world of sorcerers, the teacher gave him a pragmatic chore; a task that he had to fulfill in his day-to-day life. He explained that the task, which is designed to fit the apprentice's personality, is usually a sort of farfetched life situation which the apprentice is supposed to get into as a means of permanently affecting his view of the world.
In my own case, I understood the task more as a lively joke than a serious life situation. As time passed, however, it finally dawned on me that I had to be earnest about it.
"After the apprentice has been given his sorcery task he's ready for another type of instruction," he proceeded. "He is a warrior then. In your case, since you were no longer an apprentice, I taught you the three techniques that help dreaming: disrupting the routines of life, the gait of power, and not-doing. You were very consistent, dumb as an apprentice and dumb as a warrior. You dutifully wrote down everything I said and everything that happened to you, but you did not act exactly as I had told you to. So I still had to blast you with power plants."
Don Juan then gave me a step-by-step rendition of how he had driven my attention away from 'dreaming', making me believe that the important problem was a very difficult activity he had called not-doing which consisted of a perceptual game of focusing attention on features of the world that were ordinarily overlooked such as the shadows of things. Don Juan said that his strategy had been to set not-doing apart by imposing the most strict secrecy on it.
"Not-doing, like everything else, is a very important technique, but it was not the main issue," he said. "You fell for the secrecy. You, a blabbermouth, having to keep a secret!"
He laughed and said that he could imagine the troubles I must have gone through to keep my mouth shut.
He explained that disrupting routines, the gait of power, and not-doing were avenues for learning new ways of perceiving the world, and that they gave a warrior an inkling of incredible possibilities of action. Don Juan's idea was that the knowledge of a separate and pragmatic world of 'dreaming' was made possible through the use of those three techniques.
"Dreaming is a practical aid devised by sorcerers," he said. "They were not fools. They knew what they were doing and sought the usefulness of the nagual by training their tonal to let go for a moment, so to speak, and then grab again. This statement doesn't make sense to you. But that's what you've been doing all along; training yourself to let go without losing your marbles. Dreaming, of course, is the crown of the sorcerers' efforts; the ultimate use of the nagual"
He went through all the exercises of not-doing that he had made me perform, the routines of my daily life that he had isolated for disrupting, and all the occasions when he had forced me to engage in the gait of power.
"We're coming to the end of my recapitulation," he said. "Now we have to talk about Genaro."
Don Juan said that there had been a very important omen the day I met don Genaro. I told him that I could not remember anything out of the ordinary. He reminded me that on that day we had been sitting on a bench in a park. He said that he had mentioned earlier to me that he was going to wait for a friend I had never met before. Then when his friend appeared, I singled him out without any hesitation in the midst of a huge crowd. That was the omen that made them realize that don Genaro was my benefactor.
I remembered when he mentioned it that as we sat talking I had turned around and seen a small lean man who radiated an extraordinary vitality, or grace, or simple gusto. He had just turned a corner into the park. In a joking mood I told don Juan that his friend was approaching us, and that he was most certainly a sorcerer judging by the way he looked.
"Genaro recommended what to do with you from that day on," don Juan proceeded. "As your guide into the nagual he gave you impeccable demonstrations, and every time he performed an act as a nagual you were left with a knowledge that defied and bypassed your reason. He disassembled your view of the world although you are not aware of that yet.
"Again in this instance, you behaved just like in the case of the power plants. You needed more than was necessary. A few of the nagual's onslaughts should be enough to dismantle one's view. But even to this day, after all the nagual's barrages, your view seems invulnerable. Oddly enough, that's your best feature.
"All in all then, Genaro's job has been to lead you into the nagual. But here we have a strange question. What was being led into the nagual?"
He urged me with a movement of his eyes to answer the question. "My reason?" I asked.
"No, reason is meaningless there," he replied. "Reason craps out in an instant when it is out of its safe narrow bounds."
"Then it was my tonal" I said.
"No, the tonal and the nagual are the two inherent parts of ourselves," he said dryly. "They cannot be led into each other."
"My perception?" I asked.
"You've got it," he yelled as if I were a child giving the right answer. "We're coming now to the sorcerers' explanation. I've warned you already that it won't explain anything and yet..." He paused and looked at me with shiny eyes. "This is another of the sorcerers' tricks," he said.
"What do you mean? What's the trick?" I asked with a touch of alarm.
"The sorcerers' explanation, of course," he replied. "You'll see that for yourself. But let's continue with it. Sorcerers say that we are 'inside a bubble'. It is a bubble into which we are placed at the moment of our birth. At first the bubble is open, but then it begins to close until it has sealed us in. That bubble is our perception. We live inside that bubble all of our lives. And what we witness on its round walls is our own reflection."
He lowered his head and looked at me askance. He giggled.
"You're goofing," he said. "You're supposed to raise a point here."
I laughed. Somehow his warnings about the sorcerers' explanation- plus the realization of the awesome range of his awareness- had finally begun to take their toll on me.
"What was the point I was supposed to raise?" I asked.
"If what we witness on the walls is our own reflection, then the thing that's being reflected must be the real thing," he said, smiling.
"That's a good point," I said in a joking tone.
My reason could easily follow that argument.
"The thing reflected is our view of the world," he said. "That view is first a description, which is given to us from the moment of our birth until all our attention is caught by it and the description becomes a view.
"The teacher's task is to rearrange the view, to prepare the luminous being for the time when the benefactor opens the bubble from the outside."
He went into another studied pause and made another remark about my lack of attention judged by my incapacity to make an appropriate comment or question.
"What should've been my question?" I asked.
"Why should the bubble be opened?" he replied. He laughed loudly and patted my back when I said, "That's a good question."
"Of course!" he exclaimed. "It has to be a good question for you, it's one of your own.
"The bubble is opened in order to allow the luminous being a view of his totality," he went on. "Naturally this business of calling it a bubble is only a way of talking, but in this case it is an accurate way.
"The delicate maneuver of leading a luminous being into the totality of himself requires that the teacher work from inside the bubble and the benefactor from outside.
"The teacher reorders the view of the world. I have called that view the island of the tonal. I've said that everything that we are is on that island. The sorcerers' explanation says that the island of the tonal is made by our perception which has been trained to focus on certain elements. Each of those elements and all of them together form our view of the world.
"The job of a teacher, insofar as the apprentice's perception is concerned, consists of reordering all the elements of the island on one half of the bubble. By now you must have realized that cleaning and reordering the island of the tonal means regrouping all its elements on the side of reason. My task has been to disarrange your ordinary view, not to destroy it but to force it to rally on the side of reason. You've done that better than anyone I know."
He drew an imaginary circle on the rock and divided it in two along a vertical diameter. He said that the art of a teacher was to force his disciple to group his view of the world on the right half of the buhble.
"Why the right half?" I asked.
"That's the side of the tonal" he said. "The teacher always addresses himself to that side, and by presenting his apprentice on the one hand with the warrior's way he forces him into reasonableness, and sobriety, and strength of character and body.
"And by presenting him on the other hand with unthinkable but real situations which the apprentice cannot cope with, he forces him to realize that his reason, although it is a most wonderful affair, can only cover a small area.
"Once the warrior is confronted with his incapacity to reason everything out, he will go out of his way to bolster and defend his defeated reason, and to that effect he will rally everything he's got around it. The teacher sees to that by hammering him mercilessly until all his view of the world is on one half of the bubble. The other half of the bubble, the one that has been cleared, can then be claimed by something sorcerers call will.
"We can better explain this by saying that the task of the teacher is to wipe clean one half of the bubble and to reorder every thing on the other half. The benefactor's task then is to open the bubble on the side that has been cleaned. Once the seal is broken, the warrior is never the same. He has then the command of his totality.
"Half of the bubble is the ultimate center of reason; the tonal. The other half is the ultimate center of will; the nagual. That is the order that should prevail. Any other arrangement is nonsensical and petty because it goes against our nature. It robs us of our magical heritage and reduces us to nothing."
End of Explanation.Don Juan stood up and stretched his arms and back, and walked around to loosen up his muscles. It was a bit cold by then.
I asked him if we were through.
"Why, the show hasn't even started yet!" he exclaimed and laughed. "That was only the beginning."
He looked at the sky and pointed to the west with a casual movement of his hand.
"In about an hour the nagual will be here," he said and smiled.
He sat down again.
"We have one single issue left," he continued. "Sorcerers call it the secret of the luminous beings, and that is the fact that we are perceivers. We men and all the other luminous beings on earth are perceivers. That is our bubble, the bubble of perception. Our mistake is to believe that the only perception worthy of acknowledgment is what goes through our reason. Sorcerers believe that reason is only one center and that it shouldn't take so much for granted.
"Genaro and I have taught you about the eight points that make the totality of our bubble of perception. You know six points. Today Genaro and I will further clean your bubble of perception and after that you will know the two remaining points."
He abruptly changed the topic and asked me to give him a detailed account of my perceptions of the day before, starting from the point where I saw don Genaro sitting on a rock by the road. He did not make any comments or interrupt me at all.
When I had finished, I added an observation of my own. I had talked to Nestor and Pablito in the morning and they had given me accounts of their perceptions, which were similar to mine. My point was that he himself had told me that the nagual was an individual experience which only the observer can witness. The day before there were three observers and all of us had witnessed more or less the same thing. The differences were expressed only in terms of how each of us felt or reacted to any specific instance of the whole phenomenon.
"What happened yesterday was a demonstration of the nagual for you, and for Nestor and Pablito. I'm their benefactor. Between Genaro and myself, we canceled out the center of reason in all three of you. Genaro and I had enough power to make you agree on what you were witnessing. Several years ago, you and I were with a bunch of apprentices one night, but I didn't have enough power by myself alone to make all of you witness the same thing."
He said that, judging by what I had told him I had perceived the day before and from what he had 'seen' about me, his conclusion was that I was ready for the sorcerers' explanation. He added that so was Pablito, but he was uncertain about Nestor.
"To be ready for the sorcerers' explanation is a very difficult accomplishment," he said. "It shouldn't be, but we insist on indulging in our lifelong view of the world. In this respect you and Nestor and Pablito are alike. Nestor hides behind his shyness and gloom; Pablito behind his disarming charm. You hide behind your cockiness and words. All are views that seem to be unchallengeable; and as long as you three persist in using them, your bubbles of perception have not been cleared and the sorcerers' explanation will have no meaning."
In a spirit of jest I said that I had been obsessed with the famous sorcerers' explanation for a very long time, but the closer I got to it the further it seemed to be. I was going to add a joking comment when he took the words right out of my mouth.
"Wouldn't it be something if the sorcerers' explanation turns out to be a dud?" he asked in the midst of loud laughter.
He patted me on the back and seemed to be delighted, like a child anticipating a pleasant event.
"Genaro is a stickler for the rule," he said in a confiding tone. "There's nothing to this confounded explanation. If it would've been up to me I would have given it to you years ago. Don't put too much stock in it."
He looked up and examined the sky.
"Now you are ready," he said in a dramatic and solemn tone. "It's time to go. But before we leave this place I have to tell you one last thing. The mystery- or the secret of the sorcerers' explanation is that it deals with unfolding the wings of perception."
He put his hand over my writing pad and said that I should go to the bushes and take care of my bodily functions, and after that I should take off my clothes and leave them in a bundle right where we were. I looked at him questioningly and he explained that I had to be naked, but that I could keep my shoes and my hat on.
I insisted on knowing why I had to be naked. Don Juan laughed and said that the reason was rather personal and had to do with my own comfort, and that I myself had told him that that was the way I wanted it. His explanation baffled me. I felt that he was playing a joke on me; or that in conformity with what he had revealed to me, he was simply displacing my attention. I wanted to know why he was doing that.
He began to talk about an incident that had happened to me years before while we had been in the mountains of northern Mexico with don Genaro. On that occasion they were explaining to me that 'reason' could not possibly account for everything that took place in the world. In order to give me an undeniable demonstration of it don Genaro performed a magnificent leap as a 'nagual', and 'elongated' himself to reach the top of some peaks ten or fifteen miles away.
Don Juan said that I missed the issue, and that as far as convincing my 'reason' was concerned, don Genaro's demonstration was a failure; but from the point of view of my bodily reaction it was a riot.
The bodily reaction that don Juan was referring to was something which was very vivid in my mind. I saw don Genaro disappear in front of my very eyes as if a wind had swished him away. His leap or whatever he had done had had such a profound effect on me that I felt as if his movement had ripped something in my intestines. My bowels became loose and I had to throw away my pants and shirt. My discomfort and embarrassment knew no limits. I had to walk naked wearing only a hat on a heavily trafficked highway until I got to my car. Don Juan reminded me that it was then that I had told him not to let me ruin my clothes again.
After I had taken my clothes off we walked a few hundred feet to a very large rock overlooking the same ravine. He made me look down. There was a drop of over a hundred feet. He then told me to turn off my internal dialogue and listen to the sounds around us.
After a few moments I heard the sound of a pebble bouncing from rock to rock on its way down to the bottom of the ravine. I heard every single bounce of the pebble with inconceivable clarity. Then I heard another pebble being thrown, and another one yet. I lifted my head to align my left ear to the direction of the sound and saw don Genaro sitting on top of the rock, twelve to fifteen feet from where we were. He was casually tossing pebbles down into the ravine.
He yelled and cackled when I saw him and he said that he had been hiding there waiting for me to discover him. I had a moment of bafflement. Don Juan whispered in my ear repeatedly that my 'reason' was not invited to that event, and that I should give up the nagging desire to control everything. He said that the 'nagual' was a perception only for me, and that that was the reason Pablito had not seen the 'nagual' in my car.
He added, as if reading my unvoiced feelings, that although the 'nagual' was for me alone to witness, it still was don Genaro himself.
Don Juan took me by the arm and in a playful manner led me to where don Genaro was sitting. Don Genaro stood up and came closer to me. His body radiated a heat that I could see, a glow which dazzled me. He came to my side and without touching me he put his mouth close to my left ear and began to whisper. Don Juan also began whispering in my other ear. Their voices were synchronized. They were both repeating the same statements.
They said that I should not be afraid, and that I had long powerful fibers, which were not there to protect me, for there was nothing to protect, or to be protected from; but that they were there to guide my 'nagual's' perception in very much the same way my eyes guided my normal 'tonal's' perception. They told me that my fibers were all around me, that through them I could perceive everything at once, and that one single fiber was enough for a leap from the rock into the ravine, or up from the ravine to the rock.
I had listened to everything they had whispered. Every word seemed to have had a unique connotation for me. I could retain every utterance and then play it back as if I were a tape recorder.
They both urged me to leap to the bottom of the ravine. They said that I should first feel my fibers, then isolate one that went all the way down to the bottom of the ravine and follow it. As they spoke their commands I actually could match their words with adequate feelings. I sensed an itching all over me, especially a most peculiar sensation which was indiscernible in itself but approximated the sensation of a 'long itching'. My body could actually feel the bottom of the ravine and I sensed that feeling as an itching in some undefined area of my body.
Don Juan and don Genaro kept on coaxing me to slide through that feeling, but I did not know how. I then heard don Genaro's voice alone.
He said that he was going to jump with me. He grabbed me, or pushed me, or embraced me, and plunged with me into the abyss. I had the ultimate sensation of physical anguish. It was as if my stomach was being chewed and devoured. It was a mixture of pain and pleasure of such intensity and duration that all I could do was to yell and yell at the top of my lungs.
When the sensation subsided I saw an inextricable cluster of sparks and dark masses, beams of light and cloudlike formations. I could not tell whether my eyes were open or closed, or where my eyes were, or where my body was for that matter. Then I sensed the same physical anguish, although not as pronounced as the first time, and next I had the impression I had woken up and I found myself standing on the rock with don Juan and don Genaro.
Don Juan said that I had goofed again, that it was useless to leap if the perception of the leap was going to be chaotic. Both of them repeated countless times in my ears that the 'nagual' by itself was of no use, that it had to be tempered by the 'tonal'. They said that I had to leap willingly and be aware of my act.
I hesitated, not so much because I was afraid but because I was reluctant. I felt my vacillation [* vacillation- changing location by moving back and forth.] as if my body were swinging from side to side like a pendulum. Then some strange mood overtook me and I leaped with all my corporealness. I wanted to think as I took the plunge but I could not.
I saw as if through a fog the walls of the narrow gorge and the jutting rocks at the bottom of the ravine. I did not have a sequential perception of my descent. I had instead the sensation that I was actually on the ground at the bottom. I distinguished every feature of the rocks in a short circle around me. I noticed that my view was not unidirectional and stereoscopic from the level of the eyes, but flat and all around me. After a moment I panicked and something pulled me up like a yo-yo.
Don Juan and don Genaro made me perform the leap over and over. After every jump don Juan urged me to be less reticent [* reticent- formal in manner] and unwilling. He said, time and time again, that the sorcerers' secret in using the "nagual" was in our perception; that leaping was simply an exercise in perception, and that it would end only after I had succeeded in perceiving, as a perfect "tonal', what was at the bottom of the ravine.
At one moment I had an inconceivable sensation. I was fully and soberly aware that I was standing on the edge of the rock with don Juan and don Genaro whispering in my ears, and then in the next instant I was looking at the bottom of the ravine.
Everything was perfectly normal. It was almost dark by then, but there was still enough light to make everything absolutely recognizable as in the world of my everyday life. I was watching some bushes when I heard a sudden noise, a rock rolling down. I saw instantly a good size rock tumbling down the wall of the ravine towards me. In a flash I also saw don Genaro throwing it. I had an attack of panic and an instant later I had been pulled back to the site on top of the rock. I looked around. Don Genaro was not there any more.
Don Juan began to laugh and said that don Genaro had left because he could not stand my stench. I then had the embarrassing realization that I was truly a mess. Don Juan had been right in making me take my clothes off. He walked me to a stream nearby and washed me like a horse; scooping water with my hat and throwing it at me while he made hilarious comments about having saved my pants.