Карлос Кастанеда. Внутренний огонь (engl)
Карлос Кастанеда. Внутренний огонь (engl)
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
warriorship is done only by seers who are also impeccable warriors and have
mastery over will. Such an interplay is a supreme maneuver that cannot be
performed on the daily human stage.
"Four attributes are all that is needed to deal with the worst of petty
tyrants," he continued. "Provided, of course, that a petty tyrant has been
found. As I said, the petty tyrant is the outside element, the one we cannot
control and the element that is perhaps the most important of them all. My
benefactor used to say that the warrior who stumbles on a petty tyrant is a
lucky one. He meant that you're fortunate if you come upon one in your path,
because if you don't, you have to go out and look for one."
He explained that one of the greatest accomplishments of the seers of
the Conquest was a construct he called the three-phase progression. By
understanding the nature of man, they were able to reach the incontestable
conclusion that if seers can hold their own in facing petty tyrants, they
can certainly face the unknown with impunity, and then they can even stand
the presence of the unknowable.
"The average man's reaction is to think that the order of that
statement should be reversed," he went on. "A seer who can hold his own in
the face of the unknown can certainly face petty tyrants. But that's not so.
What destroyed the superb seers of ancient times was that assumption. We
know better now. We know that nothing can temper the spirit of a warrior as
much as the challenge of dealing with impossible people in positions of
power. Only under those conditions can warriors acquire the sobriety and
serenity to stand the pressure of the unknowable."
I vociferously disagreed with him. I told him that in my opinion
tyrants can only render their victims helpless or make them as brutal as
they themselves are. I pointed out that countless studies had been done on
the effects of physical and psychological torture on such victims.
"The difference is in something you just said," he retorted. "They are
victims, not warriors. Once I felt just as you do. I'll tell you what made
me change, but first let's go back again to what I said about the Conquest.
The seers of that time couldn't have found a better ground. The Spaniards
were the petty tyrants who tested the seers' skills to the limit; after
dealing with the conquerors, the seers were capable of facing anything. They
were the lucky ones. At that time there were petty tyrants everywhere.
"After all those marvelous years of abundance things changed a great
deal. Petty tyrants never again had that scope; it was only during those
times that their authority was unlimited. The perfect ingredient for the
making of a superb seer is a petty tyrant with unlimited prerogatives.
"In our times, unfortunately, seers have to go to extremes to find a
worthy one. Most of the time they have to be satisfied with very small fry."
"Did you find a petty tyrant yourself, don Juan?"
"I was lucky. A king-size one found me. At the time, though, I felt
like you; I couldn't consider myself fortunate."
Don Juan said that his ordeal began a few weeks before he met his
benefactor. He was barely twenty years old at the time. He had gotten a job
at a sugar mill working as a laborer. He had always been very strong, so it
was easy for him to get jobs that required muscle. One day when he was
moving some heavy sacks of sugar a woman came by. She was very well dressed
and seemed to be a woman of means. She was perhaps in her fifties, don Juan
said, and very domineering. She looked at don Juan and then spoke to the
foreman and left. Don Juan was then approached by the foreman, who told him
that for a fee he would recommend him for a job in the boss's house. Don
Juan told the man that he had no money. The foreman smiled and said not to
worry because he would have plenty on payday. He patted don Juan's back and
assured him it was a great honor to work for the boss.
Don Juan said that being a lowly ignorant Indian living hand-to-mouth,
not only did he believe every word, he thought a good fairy had touched him.
He promised to pay the foreman anything he wished. The foreman named a large
sum, which had to be paid in installments.
Immediately thereafter the foreman himself took don Juan to the house,
which was quite a distance from the town, and left him there with another
foreman, a huge, somber, ugly man who asked a lot of questions. He wanted to
know about don Juan's family. Don Juan answered that he didn't have any. The
man was so pleased that he even smiled through his rotten teeth.
He promised don Juan that they would pay him plenty, and that he would
even be in a position to save money, because he didn't have to spend any,
for he was going to live and eat in the house.
The way the man laughed was terrifying. Don Juan knew that he had to
escape immediately. He ran for the gate, but the man cut in front of him
with a revolver in his hand. He cocked it and rammed it into don Juan's
stomach. "You're here to work yourself to the bone," he said. "And don't you
forget it." He shoved don Juan around with a billy club. Then he took him to
the side of the house and, after observing that he worked his men every day
from sunrise to sunset without a break, he put don Juan to work digging out
two enormous tree stumps. He also told don Juan that if he ever tried to
escape or went to the authorities he would shoot him dead-- and that if don
Juan should ever get away, he would swear in court that don Juan had tried
to murder the boss. "You'll work here until you die," he said. "Another
Indian will get your job then, just as you're taking a dead Indian's place."
Don Juan said that the house looked like a fortress, with armed men
with machetes everywhere. So he got busy working and tried not to think
about his predicament. At the end of the day, the man came back and kicked
him all the way to the kitchen, because he did not like the defiant look in
don Juan's eyes. He threatened to cut the tendons of don Juan's arms if he
didn't obey him.
In the kitchen an old woman brought food, but don Juan was so upset and
afraid that he couldn't eat. The old woman advised him to eat as much as he
could. He had to be strong, she said, because his work would never end. She
warned him that the man who had held his job had died just a day earlier. He
was too weak to work and had fallen from a second-story window.
Don Juan said that he worked at the boss's place for three weeks and
that the man bullied him every moment of every day. He made him work under
the most dangerous conditions, doing the heaviest work imaginable, under the
constant threat of his knife, gun, or billy club. He sent him daily to the
stables to clean the stalls while the nervous stallions were in them. At the
beginning of every day don Juan thought it would be his last one on earth.
And surviving meant only that he had to go through the same hell again the
next day.
What precipitated the end was don Juan's request to have some time off.
The pretext was that he needed to go to town to pay the foreman of the sugar
mill the money that he owed him. The other foreman retorted that don Juan
could not stop working, not even for a minute, because he was in debt up to
his ears just for the privilege of working there.
Don Juan knew that he was done for. He understood the man's maneuvers.
Both he and the other foreman were in cahoots to get lowly Indians from the
mill, work them to death, and divide their salaries. That realization
angered him so intensely that he ran through the kitchen screaming and got
inside the main house. The foreman and the other workers were caught totally
by surprise. He ran out the front door and almost got away, but the foreman
caught up with him on the road and shot him in the chest. He left him for
dead.
Don Juan said that it was not his destiny to die; his benefactor found
him there and tended him until he got well.
"When I told my benefactor the whole story," don Juan said, "he could
hardly contain his excitement. 'That foreman is really a prize,' my
benefactor said. 'He is too good to be wasted. Someday you must go back to
that house. '
"He raved about my luck in finding a one-in-a-million petty tyrant with
almost unlimited power. I thought the old man was nuts. It was years before
I fully understood what he was talking about."
"That is one of the most horrible stories I have ever heard," I said.
"Did you really go back to that house?"
"I certainly did, three years later. My benefactor was right. A petty
tyrant like that one was one in a million and couldn't be wasted."
"How did you manage to go back?"
"My benefactor developed a strategy using the four attributes of
warriorship: control, discipline, forbearance, and timing."
Don Juan said that his benefactor, in explaining to him what he had to
do to profit from facing that ogre of a man, also told him what the new
seers considered to be the four steps on the path of knowledge. The first
step is the decision to become apprentices. After the apprentices change
their views about themselves and the world they take the second step and
become warriors, which is to say, beings capable of the utmost discipline
and control over themselves. The third step, after acquiring forbearance and
timing, is to become men of knowledge. When men of knowledge learn to see
they have taken the fourth step and have become seers.
His benefactor stressed the fact that don Juan had been on the path of
knowledge long enough to have acquired a minimum of the first two
attributes: control and discipline. Don Juan emphasized that both of these
attributes refer to an inner state. A warrior is self-oriented, not in a
selfish way, but in the sense of a total and continuous examination of the
self.
"At that time, I was barred from the other two attributes," don Juan
went on. "Forbearance and timing are not quite an inner state. They are in
the domain of the man of knowledge. My benefactor showed them to me through
his strategy."
"Does this mean that you couldn't have faced the petty tyrant by
yourself?" I asked.
"I'm sure that I could have done it myself, although I have always
doubted that I would have carried it off with flair and joyfulness. My
benefactor was simply enjoying the encounter by directing it. The idea of
using a petty tyrant is not only for perfecting the warrior's spirit, but
also for enjoyment and happiness."
"How could anyone enjoy the monster you described?"
"He was nothing in comparison to the real monsters that the new seers
faced during the Conquest. By all indications those seers enjoyed themselves
blue dealing with them. They proved that even the worst tyrants can bring
delight, provided, of course, that one is a warrior."
Don Juan explained that the mistake average men make in confronting
petty tyrants is not to have a strategy to fall back on; the fatal flaw is
that average men take themselves too seriously; their actions and feelings,
as well as those of the petty tyrants, are allimportant. Warriors, on the
other hand, not only have a well-thought-out strategy, but are free from
self-importance. What restrains their self-importance is that they have
understood that reality is an interpretation we make. That knowledge was the
definitive advantage that the new seers had over the simple-minded
Spaniards.
He said that he became convinced he could defeat the foreman using only
the single realization that petty tyrants take themselves with deadly
seriousness while warriors do not.
Following his benefactor's strategic plan, therefore, don Juan got a
job in the same sugar mill as before. Nobody remembered that he had worked
there in the past; peons came to that sugar mill and left it without leaving
a trace.
His benefactor's strategy specified that don Juan had to be solicitous
of whoever came to look for another victim. As it happened, the same woman
came and spotted him, as she had done years ago. This time he was physically
even stronger than before.
The same routine took place. The strategy, however, called for refusing
payment to the foreman from the outset. The man had never been turned down
and was taken aback. He threatened to fire don Juan from the job. Don Juan
threatened him back, saying that he would go directly to the lady's house
and see her. Don Juan knew that the woman, who was the wife of the owner of
the mill, did not know what the two foremen were up to. He told the foreman
that he knew where she lived, because he had worked in the surrounding
fields cutting sugar cane. The man began to haggle, and don Juan demanded
money from him before he would accept going to the lady's house. The foreman
gave in and handed him a few bills. Don Juan was perfectly aware that the
foreman's acquiescence was just a ruse to get him to go to the house.
"He himself once again took me to the house," don Juan said. "It was an
old hacienda owned by the people of the sugar mill-- rich men who either
knew what was going on and didn't care, or were too indifferent even to
notice.
"As soon as we got there, I ran into the house to look for the lady. I
found her and dropped to my knees and kissed her hand to thank her. The two
foremen were livid.
"The foreman at the house followed the same pattern as before. But I
had the proper equipment to deal with him; I had control, discipline,
forbearance, and timing. It turned out as my benefactor had planned it. My
control made me fulfill the man's most asinine demands. What usually
exhausts us in a situation like that is the wear and tear on our
self-importance. Any man who has an iota of pride is ripped apart by being
made to feel worthless.
"I gladly did everything he asked of me. I was joyful and strong. And I
didn't give a fig about my pride or my fear. I was there as an impeccable
warrior. To tune the spirit when someone is trampling on you is called
control."
Don Juan explained that his benefactor's strategy required that instead
of feeling sorry for himself as he had done before, he immediately go to
work mapping the man's strong points, his weaknesses, his quirks of
behavior.
He found that the foreman's strongest points were his violent nature
and his daring. He had shot don Juan in broad daylight and in sight of
scores of onlookers. His great weakness was that he liked his job and did
not want to endanger it. Under no circumstances could he attempt to kill don
Juan inside the compound in the daytime. His other weakness was that he was
a family man. He had a wife and children who lived in a shack near the
house.
"To gather all this information while they are beating you up is called
discipline," don Juan said. "The man was a regular fiend. He had no saving
grace. According to the new seers, a perfect petty tyrant has no redeeming
feature."
Don Juan said that the other two attributes of warriorship, forbearance
and timing, which he did not yet have, had been automatically included in
his benefactor's strategy. Forbearance is to wait patiently-- no rush, no
anxiety-- a simple, joyful holding back of what is due.
"I groveled daily," don Juan continued, "sometimes crying under the
man's whip. And yet I was happy. My benefactor's strategy was what made me
go from day to day without hating the man's guts. I was a warrior. I knew
that I was waiting and I knew what I was waiting for. Right there is the
great joy of warriorship."
He added that his benefactor's strategy called for a systematic
harassment of the man by taking cover with a higher order, just as the seers
of the new cycle had done during the Conquest by shielding themselves with
the Catholic church. A lowly priest was sometimes more powerful than a
nobleman.
Don Juan's shield was the lady who got him the job. He kneeled in front
of her and called her a saint every time he saw her. He begged her to give
him the medallion of her patron saint so he could pray to him for her health
and well-being.
"She gave me one," don Juan went on, "and that rattled the foreman to
pieces. And when I got the servants to pray at night he nearly had a heart
attack. I think he decided then to kill me. He couldn't afford to let me go
on.
"As a countermeasure I organized a rosary among all the servants of the
house. The lady thought I had the makings of a most pious man.
"I didn't sleep soundly after that, nor did I sleep in my bed. I
climbed to the roof every night. From there I saw the man twice looking for
me in the middle of the night with murder in his eyes.
"Daily he shoved me into the stallions' stalls hoping that I would be
crushed to death, but I had a plank of heavy boards that I braced against
one of the corners and protected myself behind it. The man never knew
because he was nauseated by the horses-- another of his weaknesses, the
deadliest of all, as things turned out."
Don Juan said that timing is the quality that governs the release of
all that is held back. Control, discipline, and forbearance are like a dam
behind which everything is pooled. Timing is the gate in the dam.
The man knew only violence, with which he terrorized. If his violence
was neutralized he was rendered nearly helpless. Don Juan knew that the man
would not dare to kill him in view of the house, so one day, in the presence
of the other workers but in sight of his lady as well, don Juan insulted the
man. He called him a coward, who was mortally afraid of the boss's wife.
His benefactor's strategy had called for being on the alert for a
moment like that and using it to turn the tables on the petty tyrant.
Unexpected things always happen that way. The lowest of the slaves suddenly
makes fun of the tyrant, taunts him, makes him feel ridiculous in front of
significant witnesses, and then rushes away without giving the tyrant time
to retaliate.
"A moment later, the man went crazy with rage, but I was already
solicitously kneeling in front of the lady," he continued.
Don Juan said that when the lady went inside the house, the man and his
friends called him to the back, allegedly to do some work. The man was very
pale, white with anger. From the sound of his voice don Juan knew what the
man was really planning to do. Don Juan pretended to acquiesce, but instead
of heading for the back, he ran for the stables. He trusted that the horses
would make such a racket the owners would come out to see what was wrong. He
knew that the man would not dare shoot him. That would have been too noisy
and the man's fear of endangering his job was too overpowering. Don Juan
also knew that the man would not go where the horses were-- that is, unless
he had been pushed beyond his endurance.
"I jumped inside the stall of the wildest stallion," don Juan said,
"and the petty tyrant, blinded by rage, took out his knife and jumped in
after me. I went instantly behind my planks. The horse kicked him once and
it was all over.
"I had spent six months in that house and in that period of time I had
exercised the four attributes of warriorship. Thanks to them, I had
succeeded. Not once had I felt sorry for myself or wept in impotence. I had
been joyful and serene. My control and discipline were as keen as they'd
ever been, and I had had a firsthand view of what forbearance and timing did
for impeccable warriors. And I had not once wished the man to die.
"My benefactor explained something very interesting. Forbearance means
holding back with the spirit something that the warrior knows is rightfully
due. It doesn't mean that a warrior goes around plotting to do anybody
mischief, or planning to settle past scores. Forbearance is something
independent. As long as the warrior has control, discipline, and timing,
forbearance assures giving whatever is due to whoever deserves it."
"Do petty tyrants sometimes win, and destroy the warrior facing them?"
I asked.
"Of course. There was a time when warriors died like flies at the
beginning of the Conquest. Their ranks were decimated. The petty tyrants
could put anyone to death, simply acting on a whim. Under that kind of
pressure seers reached sublime states."
Don Juan said that that was the time when the surviving seers had to
exert themselves to the limit to find new ways.
"The new seers used petty tyrants," don Juan said, staring at me
fixedly, "not only to get rid of their self-importance, but to accomplish
the very sophisticated maneuver of moving themselves out of this world.
You'll understand that maneuver as we keep on discussing the mastery of
awareness."
I explained to don Juan that what I had wanted to know was whether, in
the present, in our times, the petty tyrants he had called small fry could
ever defeat a warrior.
"All the time," he replied. "The consequences aren't as dire as those
in the remote past. Today it goes without saying that warriors always have a
chance to recuperate or to retrieve and come back later. But there is
another side to this problem. To be defeated by a small-fry petty tyrant is
not deadly, but devastating. The degree of mortality, in a figurative sense,
is almost as high. By that I mean that warriors who succumb to a small-fry
petty tyrant are obliterated by their own sense of failure and unworthiness.
That spells high mortality to me."
"How do you measure defeat?"
"Anyone who joins the petty tyrant is defeated. To act in anger,
without control and discipline, to have no forbearance, is to be defeated."
"What happens after warriors are defeated?"
"They either regroup themselves or they abandon the quest for knowledge
and join the ranks of the petty tyrants for life."
3 The Eagle's Emanations
The next day, don Juan and I went for a walk along the road to the city
of Oaxaca. The road was deserted at that hour. It was 2: 00 p. m.
As we strolled leisurely, don Juan suddenly began to talk. He said that
our discussion about the petty tyrants had been merely an introduction to
the topic of awareness. I remarked that it had opened a new view for me. He
asked me to explain what I meant.
I told him that it had to do with an argument we had had some years
before about the Yaqui Indians. In the course of his teachings for the right
side, he had tried to tell me about the advantages that the Yaquis could
find in being oppressed. I had passionately argued that there were no
possible advantages in the wretched conditions in which they lived. And I
had told him that I could not understand how, being a Yaqui himself, he did
not react against such a flagrant injustice.
He had listened attentively. Then, when I was sure he was going to
defend his point, he agreed that the conditions of the Yaqui Indians were
indeed wretched. But he pointed out that it was useless to single out the
Yaquis when life conditions of man in general were horrendous.
"Don't just feel sorry for the poor Yaqui Indians," he had said. "Feel
sorry for mankind. In the case of the Yaqui Indians, I can even say they're
the lucky ones. They are oppressed, and because of that, some of them may
come out triumphant in the end. But the oppressors, the petty tyrants that
tread upon them, they don't have a chance in hell."
I had immediately answered him with a barrage of political slogans. I
had not understood his point at all. He again tried to explain to me the
concept of petty tyrants, but the whole idea bypassed me. It was only now
that everything fit into place.
"Nothing has fit into place yet," he said, laughing at what I had told
him. "Tomorrow, when you are in your normal state of awareness, you won't
even remember what you've realized now."
I felt utterly depressed, for I knew he was right.
"What's going to happen to you is what happened to me," he continued.
"My benefactor, the nagual Julian, made me realize in heightened awareness
what you have realized yourself about petty tyrants. And I ended up, in my
daily life, changing my opinions without knowing why.
"I had always been oppressed, so I had real venom toward my oppressors,
imagine my surprise when I found myself seeking the company of petty
tyrants. I thought I had lost my mind."
We came to a place, on the side of the road, where some large boulders
were half buried by an old landslide; don Juan headed for them and sat down
on a flat rock. He signaled me to sit down, facing him. And then without
further preliminaries, he started his explanation of the mastery of
awareness.
He said that there were a series of truths that seers, old and new, had
discovered about awareness, and that such truths had been arranged in a
specific sequence for purposes of comprehension.
He explained that the mastery of awareness consisted in internalizing
the total sequence of such truths. The first truth, he said, was that our
familiarity with the world we perceive compels us to believe that we are
surrounded by objects, existing by themselves and as themselves, just as we
perceive them, whereas, in fact, there is no world of objects, but a
universe of the Eagle's emanations.
He told me then that before he could explain the Eagle's emanations, he
had to talk about the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. Most of the
truths about awareness were discovered by the old seers, he said. But the
order in which they were arranged had been worked out by the new seers. And
without that order those truths were nearly incomprehensible.
He said that not to seek order was one of the great mistakes that the
ancient seers made. A deadly consequence of that mistake was their
assumption that the unknown and the unknowable are the same thing. It was up
to the new seers to correct that error. They set up boundaries and defined
the unknown as something that is veiled from man, shrouded perhaps by a
terrifying context, but which, nonetheless, is within man's reach. The
unknown becomes the known at a given time. The unknowable, on the other
hand, is the indescribable, the unthinkable, the unrealizable. It is
something that will never be known to us, and yet it is there, dazzling and
at the same time horrifying in its vastness.
"How can seers make the distinction between the two?" I asked.
"There is a simple rule of thumb," he said. "In the face of the
unknown, man is adventurous. It is a quality of the unknown to give us a
sense of hope and happiness. Man feels robust, exhilarated. Even the
apprehension that it arouses is very fulfilling. The new seers saw that man
is at his best in the face of the unknown."
He said that whenever what is taken to be the unknown turns out to be
the unknowable the results are disastrous. Seers feel drained, confused. A
terrible oppression takes possession of them. Their bodies lose tone, their
reasoning and sobriety wander away aimlessly, for the unknowable has no
energizing effects whatsoever. It is not within human reach; therefore, it
should not be intruded upon foolishly or even prudently. The new seers
realized that they had to be prepared to pay exorbitant prices for the
faintest contact with it.
Don Juan explained that the new seers had had formidable barriers of
tradition to overcome. At the time when the new cycle began, none of them
knew for certain which procedures of their immense tradition were the right
ones and which were not. Obviously, something had gone wrong with the
ancient seers, but the new seers did not know what. They began by assuming
that everything their predecessors had done was erroneous. Those ancient
seers had been the masters of conjecture. They had, for one thing, assumed
that their proficiency in seeing was a safeguard. They thought that they
were untouchable-- that is, until the invaders smashed them, and put most of
them to horrendous deaths. The ancient seers had no protection whatsoever,
despite their total certainty that they were invulnerable.
The new seers did not waste their time in speculations about what went
wrong. Instead, they began to map the unknown in order to separate it from
the unknowable.
"How did they map the unknown, don Juan?" I asked.
"Through the controlled use of seeing," he replied.
I said that what I had meant to ask was, what was entailed in mapping
the unknown?
He answered that mapping the unknown means making it available to our
perception. By steadily practicing seeing, the new seers found that the
unknown and the known are really on the same footing, because both are
within the reach of human perception. Seers, in fact, can leave the known at
a given moment and enter into the unknown.
Whatever is beyond our capacity to perceive is the unknowable. And the
distinction between it and the knowable is crucial. Confusing the two would
put seers in a most precarious position whenever they are confronted with
the unknowable.
"When this happened to the ancient seers," don Juan went on, "they
thought their procedures had gone haywire. It never occurred to them that
most of what's out there is beyond our comprehension. It was a terrifying
error of judgment on their part, for which they paid dearly."
"What happened after the distinction between the unknown and the
unknowable was realized?" I asked.
"The new cycle began," he replied. "That distinction is the frontier
between the old and the new. Everything that the new seers have done stems
from understanding that distinction."
Don Juan said that seeing was the crucial element in both the
destruction of the ancient seers' world and in the reconstruction of the new
view. It was through seeing that the new seers discovered certain undeniable
facts, which they used to arrive at certain conclusions, revolutionary to
them, about the nature of man and the world. These conclusions, which made
the new cycle possible, were the truths about awareness he was explaining to
me.
Don Juan asked me to accompany him to the center of town for a stroll
around the square. On our way, we began to talk about machines and delicate
instruments. He said that instruments are extensions of our senses, and I
maintained that there are instruments that are not in that category, because
they perform functions that we are not physiologically capable of
performing.
"Our senses are capable of everything," he asserted.
"I can tell you offhand that there are instruments that can detect
radio waves that come from outer space," I said. "Our senses cannot detect
radio waves."
"I have a different idea," he said. "I think our senses can detect
everything we are surrounded by."
"What about the case of ultrasonic sounds?" I insisted. "We don't have
the organic equipment to hear them."
"It is the seers' conviction that we've tapped a very small portion of
ourselves," he replied.
He immersed himself in thought for a while as if he were trying to
decide what to say next. Then he smiled.
"The first truth about awareness, as I have already told you," he
began, "is that the world out there is not really as we think it is. We
think it is a world of objects and it's not."
He paused as if to measure the effect of his words. I told him that I
agreed with his premise, because everything could be reduced to being a
field of energy. He said that I was merely intuiting a truth, and that to
reason it out was not to verify it. He was not interested in my agreement or
disagreement, he said, but in my attempt to comprehend what was involved in
that truth.
"You cannot witness fields of energy," he went on. "Not as an average
man, that is. Now, if you were able to see them, you would be a seer, in
which case you would be explaining the truths about awareness. Do you
understand what I mean?"
He went on to say that conclusions arrived at through reasoning had
very little or no influence in altering the course of our lives. Hence, the
countless examples of people who have the clearest convictions and yet act
diametrically against them time and time again; and have as the only
explanation for their behavior the idea that to err is human.
"The first truth is that the world is as it looks and yet it isn't," he
went on. "It's not as solid and real as our perception has been led to
believe, but it isn't a mirage either. The world is not an illusion, as it
has been said to be; it's real on the one hand, and unreal on the other. Pay
close attention to this, for it must be understood, not just accepted. We
perceive. This is a hard fact. But what we perceive is not a fact of the
same kind, because we learn what to perceive.
"Something out there is affecting our senses. This is the part that is
real. The unreal part is what our senses tell us is there. Take a mountain,
for instance. Our senses tell us that it is an object. It has size, color,
form. We even have categories of mountains, and they are downright accurate.
Nothing wrong with that; the flaw is simply that it has never occurred to us
that our senses play only a superficial role. Our senses perceive the way
they do because a specific feature of our awareness forces them to do so."
I began to agree with him again, but not because I wanted to, for I had
not quite understood his point. Rather, I was reacting to a threatening
situation. He made me stop.
"I've used the term 'the world, ' " don Juan went on, "to mean
everything that surrounds us. I have a better term, of course, but it would
be quite incomprehensible to you. Seers say that we think there is a world
of objects out there only because of our awareness. But what's really out
there are the Eagle's emanations, fluid, forever in motion, and yet
unchanged, eternal."
He stopped me with a gesture of his hand just as I was about to ask him
what the Eagle's emanations were. He explained that one of the most dramatic
legacies the old seers had left us was their discovery that the reason for
the existence of all sentient beings is to enhance awareness. Don Juan
called it a colossal discovery.
In a half-serious tone he asked me if I knew of a better answer to the
question that has always haunted man: the reason for our existence. I
immediately took a defensive position and began to argue about the
meaninglessness of the question because it cannot be logically answered. I
told him that in order to discuss that subject we would have to talk about
religious beliefs and turn it all into a matter of faith.
"The old seers were not just talking about faith," he said. "They were
not as practical as the new seers, but they were practical enough to know
what they were seeing. What I was trying to point out to you with that
question, which has rattled you so badly, is that our rationality alone
cannot come up with an answer about the reason for our existence. Every time
it tries, the answer turns into a matter of beliefs. The old seers took
another road, and they did find an answer which doesn't involve faith
alone."
He said that the old seers, risking untold dangers, actually saw the
indescribable force which is the source of all sentient beings. They called
it the Eagle, because in the few glimpses that they could sustain, they saw
it as something that resembled a black-andwhite eagle of infinite size.
They saw that it is the Eagle who bestows awareness. The Eagle creates
sentient beings so that they will live and enrich the awareness it gives
them with life. They also saw that it is the Eagle who devours that same
enriched awareness after making sentient beings relinquish it at the moment
of death.
"For the old seers," don Juan went on, "to say that the reason for
existence is to enhance awareness is not a matter of faith or deduction.
They saw it.
"They saw that the awareness of sentient beings flies away at the
moment of death and floats like a luminous cotton puff right into the
Eagle's beak to be consumed. For the old seers that was the evidence that
sentient beings live only to enrich the awareness that is the Eagle's food."
Don Juan's elucidation was interrupted because he had to leave on a
short business trip. Nestor drove him to Oaxaca. As I saw them off, I
remembered that at the beginning of my association with don Juan, every time
he mentioned a business trip I thought he was employing a euphemism for
something else. I eventually realized that he meant what he said. Whenever
such a trip was about to take place, he would put on one of his many
immaculately tailored three-piece suits and would look like anything but the
old Indian I knew. I had commented to him about the sophistication of his
metamorphosis.
"A nagual is someone flexible enough to be anything," he had said. "To
be a nagual, among other things, means to have no points to defend. Remember
this-- we'll come back to it over and over."
We had come back to it over and over, in every possible way; he did
indeed seem to have no points to defend, but during his absence in Oaxaca I
was given to just a shadow of doubt. Suddenly I realized that a nagual did
have one point to defend-- the description of the Eagle and what it does
required, in my opinion, a passionate defense.
I tried to pose that question to some of don Juan's companions, but
they eluded my probings. They told me that I was in quarantine from that
kind of discussion until don Juan had finished his explanation.
The moment he returned, we sat down to talk and I asked him about it.
"Those truths are not something to defend passionately," he replied.
"If you think that I'm trying to defend them, you are mistaken. Those truths
were put together for the delight and enlightenment of warriors, not to
engage any proprietary sentiments. When I told you that a nagual has no
points to defend, I meant, among other things, that a nagual has no
obsessions."
I told him that I was not following his teachings, for I had become
obsessed with his description of the Eagle and what it does. I remarked over
and over about the awesomeness of such an idea.
"It is not just an idea," he said. "It is a fact. And a damn scary one
if you ask me. The new seers were not simply playing with ideas."
"But what kind of a force would the Eagle be?"
"I wouldn't know how to answer that. The Eagle is as real for the seers
as gravity and time are for you, and just as abstract and incomprehensible."
"Wait a minute, don Juan. Those are abstract concepts, but they do
refer to real phenomena that can be corroborated. There are whole
disciplines dedicated to that."
"The Eagle and its emanations are equally corroboratable," don Juan
retorted. "And the discipline of the new seers is dedicated to doing just
that."
I asked him to explain what the Eagle's emanations are.
He said that the Eagle's emanations are an immutable thing-in-itself,
which engulfs everything that exists, the knowable and the unknowable.
"There is no way to describe in words what the Eagle's emanations
really are," don Juan continued. "A seer must witness them."
"Have you witnessed them yourself, don Juan?"
"Of course I have, and yet I can't tell you what they are. They are a
presence, almost a mass of sorts, a pressure that creates a dazzling
sensation. One can catch only a glimpse of them, as one can catch only a
glimpse of the Eagle itself."
"Would you say, don Juan, that the Eagle is the source of the
emanations?"
"It goes without saying that the Eagle is the source of its
emanations."
"I meant to ask if that is so visually."
"There is nothing visual about the Eagle. The entire body of a seer
senses the Eagle. There is something in all of us that can make us witness
with our entire body. Seers explain the act of seeing the Eagle in very
simple terms: because man is composed of the Eagle's emanations, man need
only revert back to his components. The problem arises with man's awareness;
it is his awareness that becomes entangled and confused. At the crucial
moment when it should be a simple case of the emanations acknowledging
themselves, man's awareness is compelled to interpret. The result is a
vision of the Eagle and the Eagle's emanations. But there is no Eagle and no
Eagle's emanations. What is out there is something that no living creature
can grasp."
I asked him if the source of the emanations was called the Eagle
because eagles in general have important attributes.
"This is simply the case of something unknowable vaguely resembling
something known," he replied. "On account of that, there have certainly been
attempts to imbue eagles with attributes they don't have. But that always
happens when impressionable people learn to perform acts that require great
sobriety. Seers come in all sizes and shapes."
"Do you mean to say that there are different kinds of seers?"
"No. I mean that there are scores of imbeciles who become seers. Seers
are human beings full of foibles, or rather, human beings full of foibles
are capable of becoming seers. Just as in the case of miserable people who
become superb scientists.
"The characteristic of miserable seers is that they are willing to
forget the wonder of the world. They become overwhelmed by the fact that
they see and believe that it's their genius that counts. A seer must be a
paragon in order to override the nearly invincible laxness of our human
condition. More important than seeing itself is what seers do with what they
see."
"What do you mean by that, don Juan?"
"Look at what some seers have done to us. We are stuck with their
vision of an Eagle that rules us and devours us at the moment of our death."
He said that there is a definite laxness in that version, and that
personally he did not appreciate the idea of something devouring us. For
him, it would be more accurate to say that there is a force that attracts
our consciousness, much as a magnet attracts iron shavings. At the moment of
dying, all of our being disintegrates under the attraction of that immense
force.
That such an event was interpreted as the Eagle devouring us he found
grotesque, because it turns an indescribable act into something as mundane
as eating.
"I'm a very average man," I said. "The description of an Eagle that
devours us had a great impact on me."
"The real impact can't be measured until the moment when you see it
yourself," he said. "But you must bear in mind that our flaws remain with us
even after we become seers. So when you see that force, you may very well
agree with the lax seers who called it the Eagle, as I did myself. On the
other hand, you may not. You may resist the temptation to ascribe human
attributes to what is incomprehensible, and actually improvise a new name
for it, a more accurate one."
"Seers who see the Eagle's emanations often call them commands," don
Juan said. "I wouldn't mind calling them commands myself if I hadn't got
used to calling them emanations. It was a reaction to my benefactor's
preference; for him they were commands. I thought that term was more in
keeping with his forceful personality than with mine. I wanted something
impersonal. 'Commands' sounds too human to me, but that's what they really
are, commands."
Don Juan said that to see the Eagle's emanations is to court disaster.
The new seers soon discovered the tremendous difficulties involved, and only
after great tribulations in trying to map the unknown and separate it from
the unknowable did they realize that everything is made out of the Eagle's
emanations. Only a small portion of those emanations is within reach of
human awareness, and that small portion is still further reduced, to a
minute fraction, by the constraints of our daily lives. That minute fraction
of the Eagle's emanations is the known; the small portion within possible
reach of human awareness is the unknown, and the incalculable rest is the
unknowable.
He went on to say that the new seers, being pragmatically oriented,
became immediately cognizant of the compelling power of the emanations. They
realized that all living creatures are forced to employ the Eagle's
emanations without ever knowing what they are. They also realized that
organisms are constructed to grasp a certain range of those emanations and
that every species has a definite range. The emanations exert great pressure
on organisms, and through that pressure organisms construct their
perceivable world.
"In our case, as human beings," don Juan said, "we employ those
emanations and interpret them as reality. But what man senses is such a
small portion of the Eagle's emanations that it's ridiculous to put much
stock in our perceptions, and yet it isn't possible for us to disregard our
perceptions. The new seers found this out the hard way-- after courting
tremendous dangers."
Don Juan was sitting where he usually sat in the large room. Ordinarily
there was no furniture in that room-- people sat on mats on the floor-- but
Carol, the nagual woman, had managed to furnish it with very comfortable
armchairs for the sessions when she and I took turns reading to him from the
works of Spanish-speaking poets.
"I want you to be very aware of what we are doing," he said as soon as
I sat down. "We are discussing the mastery of awareness. The truths we're
discussing are the principles of that mastery."
He added that in his teachings for the right side he had demonstrated
those principles to my normal awareness with the help of one of his seer
companions, Genaro, and that Genaro had played around with my awareness with
all the humor and irreverence for which the new seers were known.
"Genaro is the one who should be here telling you about the Eagle," he
said, "except that his versions are too irreverent. He thinks that the seers
who called that force the Eagle were either very stupid or were making a
grand joke, because eagles not only lay eggs, they also lay turds."
Don Juan laughed and said that he found Genaro's comments so
appropriate that he couldn't resist laughter. He added that if the new seers
had been the ones to describe the Eagle the description would certainly have
been made half in fun.
I told don Juan that on one level I took the Eagle as a poetic image,
and as such it delighted me, but on another level I took it literally, and
that terrified me.
"One of the greatest forces in the lives of warriors is fear," he said.
"It spurs them to learn."
He reminded me that the description of the Eagle came from the ancient
seers. The new seers were through with description, comparison, and
conjecture of any sort. They wanted to get directly to the source of things
and consequently risked unlimited danger to get to it. They did see the
Eagle's emanations. But they never tampered with the description of the
Eagle. They felt that it took too much energy to see the Eagle, and that the
ancient seers had already paid heavily for their scant glimpse of the
unknowable.
"How did the old seers come around to describing the Eagle?" I asked.
"They needed a minimal set of guidelines about the unknowable for
purposes of instruction," he replied. "They resolved it with a sketchy
description of the force that rules all there is, but not of its emanations,
because the emanations cannot be rendered at all in a language of
comparisons. Individual seers may feel the urge to make comments about
certain emanations, but that will remain personal, in other words, there is
no pat version of the emanations, as there is of the Eagle."
"The new seers seem to have been very abstract," I commented. "They
sound like modern-day philosophers."
"No. The new seers were terribly practical men," he replied. "They
weren't involved in concocting rational theories."
He said that the ancient seers were the ones who were the abstract
thinkers. They built monumental edifices of abstractions proper to them and
their time. And just like the modern-day philosophers, they were not at all
in control of their concatenations. The new seers, on the other hand, imbued
with practicality, were able to see a flux of emanations and to see how man
and other living beings utilize them to construct their perceivable world.
"How are those emanations utilized by man, don Juan?"
"It's so simple it sounds idiotic. For a seer, men are luminous beings.
Our luminosity is made up of that portion of the Eagle's emanations which is
encased in our egglike cocoon. That particular portion, that handful of
emanations that is encased, is what makes us men. To perceive is to match
the emanations contained inside our cocoon with those that are outside.
"Seers can see, for instance, the emanations inside any living creature
and can tell which of the outside emanations would match them."
"Are the emanations like beams of light?" I asked.
"No. Not at all. That would be too simple. They are something
indescribable. And yet, my personal comment would be to say that they are
like filaments of light. What's incomprehensible to normal awareness is that
the filaments are aware. I can't tell you what that means, because I don't
know what I am saying. All I can tell you with my personal comments is that
the filaments are aware of themselves, alive and vibrating, that there are
so many of them that numbers have no meaning and that each of them is an
eternity in itself."
4 The Glow of Awareness
Don Juan, don Genaro, and I had just returned from gathering plants in
the surrounding mountains. We were at don Genaro's house, sitting around the
table, when don Juan made me change levels of awareness. Don Genaro had been
staring at me and began to chuckle. He remarked how odd he thought it was
that I had two completely different standards for dealing with the two sides
of awareness. My relation with him was the most obvious example. On my right
side, he was the respected and feared sorcerer don Genaro, a man whose
incomprehensible acts delighted me and at the same time filled me with
mortal terror. On my left side, he was plain Genaro, or Genarito, with no
don attached to his name, a charming and kind seer whose acts were
thoroughly comprehensible and coherent with what I myself did or tried to
do.
I agreed with him and added that on my left side, the man whose mere
presence made me shake like a leaf was Silvio Manuel, the most mysterious of
don Juan's companions. I also said that don Juan, being a true nagual,
transcended arbitrary standards and was respected and admired by me in both
states.
"But is he feared?" Genaro asked in a quivering voice.
"Very feared," don Juan interjected in a falsetto voice.
We all laughed, but don Juan and Genaro laughed with such abandon that
I immediately suspected they knew something they were holding back.
Don Juan was reading me like a book. He explained that in the
intermediate stage, before one enters fully into the left-side awareness,
one is capable of tremendous concentration, but one is also susceptible to
every conceivable influence. I was being influenced by suspicion.
"La Gorda is always in this stage," he said. "She learns beautifully,
but she's a royal pain in the neck. She can't help being driven by anything
that comes her way, including, of corse, very good things, like keen
concentration."
Don Juan explained that the new seers discovered that the transition
period is the time when the deepest learning takes place, and that it is
also the time when warriors must be supervised and explanations must be
given to them so they can evaluate them properly. If no explanations are
given to them before they enter into the left side, they will be great
sorcerers but poor seers, as the ancient Toltecs were.
Female warriors in particular fall prey to the lure of the left side,
he said. They are so nimble that they can go into the left side with no
effort, often too soon for their own good.
After a long silence, Genaro fell asleep. Don Juan began to speak. He
said that the new seers had had to invent a number of terms in order to
explain the second truth about awareness. His benefactor had changed some of
those terms to suit himself, and he himself had done the same, guided by the
seers' belief that it does not make any difference what terms are used as
long as the truths have been verified by seeing.
I was curious to know what terms he had changed, but I didn't know
quite how to word my question. He took it that I was doubting his right or
his ability to change them and explained that if the terms we propose
originate in our reason they can only communicate the mundane agreement of
everyday life. When seers propose a term, on the other hand, it is never a
figure of speech because it stems from seeing and embraces everything that
seers can attain.
I asked him why he had changed the terms.
"It's a nagual's duty always to look for better ways to explain," he
replied. "Time changes everything, and every new nagual has to incorporate
new words, new ideas, to describe his seeing. '"
"Do you mean that a nagual takes ideas from the world of every day
life?" I asked.
"No. I mean that a nagual talks about seeing in ever new ways," he
said. "For instance, as the new nagual, you'd have to say that awareness
gives rise to perception. You'd be saying the same thing my benefactor said,
but in a different way."
"What do the new seers say perception is, don Juan?"
"They say that perception is a condition of alignment; the emanations
inside the cocoon become aligned with those outside that fit them. Alignment
is what allows awareness to be cultivated by every living creature. Seers
make these statements because they see living creatures as they really are:
luminous beings that look like bubbles of whitish light."
I asked him how the emanations inside the cocoon fit those outside so
as to accomplish perception.
"The emanations inside and the emanations outside," he said, "are the
same filaments of light. Sentient beings are minute bubbles made out of
those filaments, microscopic points of light, attached to the infinite
emanations."
He went on to explain that the luminosity of living beings is made by
the particular portion of the Eagle's emanations they happen to have inside
their luminous cocoons. When seers see perception, they witness that the
luminosity of the Eagle's emanations outside those creatures' cocoons
brightens the luminosity of the emanations inside their cocoons. The outside
luminosity attracts the inside one; it traps it, so to speak, and fixes it.
That fixation is the awareness of every specific being.
Seers can also see how the emanations outside the cocoon exert a
particular pressure on the portion of emanations inside. This pressure
determines the degree of awareness that every living being has.
I asked him to clarify how the Eagle's emanations outside the cocoon
exert pressure on those inside.
"The Eagle's emanations are more than filaments of light," he replied.
"Each one of them is a source of boundless energy. Think of it this way:
since some of the emanations outside the cocoon are the same as the
emanations inside, their energies are like a continuous pressure. But the
cocoon isolates the emanations that are inside its web and thereby directs
the pressure.
"I've mentioned to you that the old seers were masters of the art of
handling awareness," he went on. "What I can add now is that they were the
masters of that art because they learned to manipulate the structure of
man's cocoon. I've said to you that they unraveled the mystery of being
aware. By that I meant that they saw and realized that awareness is a glow
in the cocoon of living beings. They rightly called it the glow of
awareness."
He explained that the old seers saw that man's awareness is a glow of
amber luminosity more intense than the rest of the cocoon. That glow is on a
narrow, vertical band on the extreme right side of the cocoon, running along
its entire length. The mastery of the old seers was to move that glow, to
make it spread from its original setting on the surface of the cocoon inward
across its width.
He stopped talking and looked at Genaro, who was still sound asleep.
"Genaro doesn't give a fig about explanations," he said. "He's a doer.
My benefactor pushed him constantly to face insoluble problems. So he
entered into the left side proper and never had a chance to ponder and
wonder."
"Is it better to be that way, don Juan?"
"It depends. For him, it's perfect. For you and for me, it wouldn't be
satisfactory, because in one way or another we are called upon to explain.
Genaro or my benefactor are more like the old than the new seers: they can
control and do what they want with the glow of awareness."
He stood up from the mat where we were sitting and stretched his arms
and legs. I pressed him to continue talking. He smiled and said that I
needed to rest, that my concentration was waning.
There was a knock at the door. I woke up. It was dark. For a moment I
could not remember where I was. There was something in me that was far away,
as if part of me were still asleep, yet I was fully awake. Enough moonlight
came through the open window so that I could see.
I saw don Genaro get up and go to the door. I realized then that I was
at his house. Don Juan was sound asleep on a mat on the floor. I had the
distinct impression that the three of us had fallen asleep after returning
dead tired from a trip to the mountains.
Don Genaro lit his kerosene lantern. I followed him into the kitchen.
Someone had brought him a pot of hot stew and a stack of tortillas.
"Who brought you food?" I asked him. "Do you have a woman around here
that cooks for you?"
Don Juan had come into the kitchen. Both of them looked at me, smiling.
For some reason their smiles were terrifying to me. I was about to scream in
terror, in fact, when don Juan hit me on the back and made me shift into a
state of heightened awareness. I realized then that perhaps during my sleep,
or as I woke up, I had drifted back to everyday awareness.
The sensation I experienced then, once I was back in heightened
awareness, was a mixture of relief and anger and the most acute sadness. I
was relieved that I was myself again, for I had come to regard those
incomprehensible states as being my true self. There was one simple reason
for that-- in those states I felt complete; nothing was missing from me. The
anger and the sadness were a reaction to impotence. I was more aware than
ever of the limitations of my being.
I asked don Juan to explain to me how it was possible for me to do what
I was doing. In states of heightened awareness I could look back and
remember everything about myself; I could give an account of everything I
had done in either state; I could even remember my incapacity to recollect.
But once I had returned to my normal, everyday level of awareness I could
not recall anything I had done in heightened awareness, even if my life
depended on it.
"Hold it, hold it there," he said. "You haven't remembered anything
yet. Heightened awareness is only an intermediate state. There is infinitely
more beyond that, and you have been there many, many times. Right now you
can't remember, even if your life depends on it."
He was right. I had no idea what he was talking about. I pleaded for an
explanation.
"The explanation is coming," he said. "It's a slow process, but we'll
get to it. It is slow because I am just like you: I like to understand. I am
the opposite of my benefactor, who was not given to explaining. For him
there was only action. He used to put us squarely against incomprehensible
problems and let us resolve them for ourselves. Some of us never did resolve
anything, and we ended up very much in the same boat with the old seers: all
action and no real knowledge."
"Are those memories trapped in my mind?" I asked.
"No. That would make it too simple," he replied. "The actions of seers
are more complex than dividing a man into mind and body. You have forgotten
what you've done, or what you've witnessed, because when you were performing
what you've forgotten you were seeing."
I asked don Juan to reinterpret what he had just said.
Patiently, he explained that everything I had forgotten had taken place
in states in which my everyday awareness had been enhanced, intensified, a
condition that meant that other areas of my total being were used.
"Whatever you've forgotten is trapped in those areas of your total
being," he said. "To be using those other areas is to see."
"I'm more confused than ever, don Juan," I said.
"I don't blame you," he said. "Seeing is to lay bare the core of
everything, to witness the unknown and to glimpse into the unknowable. As
such, it doesn't bring one solace. Seers ordinarily go to pieces on finding
out that existence is incomprehensibly complex and that our normal awareness
maligns it with its limitations."
He reiterated that my concentration had to be total, that to understand
was of crucial importance, that the new seers placed the highest value on
deep, unemotional realizations.
"For instance, the other day," he went on, "when you understood about
la Gorda's and your self-importance, you didn't understand anything really.
You had an emotional outburst, that was all. I say this because the next day
you were back on your high horse of selfimportance as if you never had
realized anything.
"The same thing happened to the old seers. They were given to emotional
reactions. But when the time came for them to understand what they had seen,
they couldn't do it. To understand one needs sobriety, not emotionality.
Beware of those who weep with realization, for they have realized nothing.
"There are untold dangers in the path of knowledge for those without
sober understanding," he continued. "I am outlining the order in which the
new seers arranged the truths about awareness, so it will serve you as a
map. a map that you have to corroborate with your seeing, but not with your
eyes."
There was a long pause. He stared at me. He was definitely waiting for
me to ask him a question.
"Everybody falls prey to the mistake that seeing is done with the
eyes," he continued. "But don't be surprised that after so many years you
haven't realized yet that seeing is not a matter of the eyes. It's quite
normal to make that mistake."
"What is seeing, then?" I asked.
He replied that seeing is alignment. And I reminded him that he had
said that perception is alignment. He explained then that the alignment of
emanations used routinely is the perception of the day-to-day world, but the
alignment of emanations that are never used ordinarily is seeing. When such
an alignment occurs one sees. Seeing, therefore, being produced by alignment
out of the ordinary, cannot be something one could merely look at. He said
that in spite of the fact that I had seen countless times, it had not
occurred to me to disregard my eyes. I had succumbed to the way seeing is
labeled and described.
"When seers see, something explains everything as the new alignment
takes place," he continued. "It's a voice that tells them in their ear
what's what. If that voice is not present, what the seer is engaged in isn't
seeing. "
After a moment's pause, he continued explaining the voice of seeing. He
said that it was equally fallacious to say that seeing was hearing, because
it was infinitely more than that, but that seers had opted for using sound
as a gauge of a new alignment.
He called the voice of seeing a most mysterious inexplicable thing. "My
personal conclusion is that the voice of seeing belongs only to man," he
said. "It may happen because talking is something that no one else besides
man does. The old seers believed it was the voice of an overpowering entity
intimately related to mankind, a protector of man. The new seers found out
that that entity, which they called the mold of man, doesn't have a voice.
The voice of seeing for the new seers is something quite Incomprehensible;
they say it's the glow of awareness playing on the Eagle's emanations as a
harpist plays on a harp."
He refused to explain it any further, arguing that later on, as he
proceeded with his explanation, everything would become clear to me.
My concentration had been so total while don Juan spoke that I actually
did not remember sitting down at the table to eat. When don Juan stopped
talking, I noticed that his plate of stew was nearly finished.
Genaro was staring at me with a beaming smile. My plate was in front of
me on the table, and it too was empty. There was only a tiny residue of stew
left in it, as if I had just finished eating. I did not remember eating it
at all, but neither did I remember walking to the table or sitting down.
"Did you like the stew?" Genaro asked me and looked away.
I said I did, because I did not want to admit that I was having
problems recollecting.
"It had too much chile for my taste," Genaro said. "You never eat hot
food yourself, so I'm sort of worried about what it will do to you. You
shouldn't have eaten two servings. I suppose you're a little more piggish
when you're in heightened awareness, eh?"
I admitted that he was probably right. He handed me a large pitcher of
water to quench my thirst and soothe my throat. When I eagerly drank all of
it, both of them broke into howling laughter.
Suddenly, I realized what was going on. My realization was physical. It
was a flash of yellowish light that hit me as if a match had been struck
right between my eyes. I knew then that Genaro was joking. I had not eaten.
I had been so absorbed in don Juan's explanation that I had forgotten about
everything else. The plate in front of me was Genaro's.
After dinner don Juan went on with his explanation about the glow of
awareness. Genaro sat by me, listening as if he had never heard the
explanation before.
Don Juan said that the pressure that the emanations outside the cocoon,
which are called emanations at large, exert on the emanations inside the
cocoon is the same in all sentient beings. Yet the results of that pressure
are vastly different among them, because their cocoons react to that
pressure in every conceivable way. There are, however, degrees of uniformity
within certain boundaries.
"Now," he went on, "when seers see that the pressure of the emanations
at large bears down on the emanations inside, which are always in motion,
and makes them stop moving, they know that the luminous being at that moment
is fixated by awareness.
"To say that the emanations at large bear down on those inside the
cocoon and make them stop moving means that seers see something
indescribable, the meaning of which they know without a shadow of doubt. It
means that the voice of seeing has told them that the emanations inside the
cocoon are completely at rest and match some of those which are outside."
He said that seers maintain, naturally, that awareness always comes
from outside ourselves, that the real mystery is not inside us. Since by
nature the emanations at large are made to fixate what is inside the cocoon,
the trick of awareness is to let the fixating emanations merge with what is
inside us. Seers believe that if we let that happen we become what we really
are-- fluid, forever in motion, eternal.
There was a long pause. Don Juan's eyes had an intense shine. They
seemed to be looking at me from a great depth. I had the feeling that each
of his eyes was an independent point of brilliance. For an instant he
appeared to be struggling against an invisible force, a fire from within
that intended to consume him. It passed and he went on talking.
"The degree of awareness of every individual sentient being," he
continued, "depends on the degree to which it is capable of letting the
pressure of the emanations at large carry it."
After a long interruption, don Juan continued explaining. He said that
seers saw that from the moment of conception awareness is enhanced,
enriched, by the process of being alive. He said that seers saw, for
instance, that the awareness of an individual insect or that of an
individual man grows from the moment of conception in astoundingly different
ways, but with equal consistency.
"Is it from the moment of conception or from the moment of birth that
awareness develops?" I asked.
"Awareness develops from the moment of conception," he replied. "I have
always told you that sexual energy is something of ultimate importance and
that it has to be controlled and used with great care. But you have always
resented what I said, because you thought I was speaking of control in terms
of morality; I always meant it in terms of saving and rechanneling energy."
Don Juan looked at Genaro. Genaro nodded his head in approval.
"Genaro is going to tell you what our benefactor, the nagual Julian,
used to say about saving and rechanneling sexual energy," don Juan said to
me.
"The nagual Julian used to say that to have sex is a matter of energy,"
Genaro began. "For instance, he never had any problems having sex, because
he had bushels of energy. But he took one look at me and prescribed right
away that my peter was just for peeing. He told me that I didn't have enough
energy to have sex. He said that my parents were too bored and too tired
when they made me; he said that I was the result of very boring sex, cojida
aburrida. I was born like that, bored and tired. The nagual Julian
recommended that people like me should never have sex; this way we can store
the little energy we have.
"He said the same thing to Silvio Manuel and to Emilito. He saw that
the others had enough energy. They were not the result of bored sex. He told
them that they could do anything they wanted with their sexual energy, but
he recommended that they control themselves and understand the Eagle's
command that sex is for bestowing the glow of awareness. We all said we had
understood.
"One day, without any warning at all, he opened the curtain of the
other world with the help of his own benefactor, the nagual Ellas, and
pushed all of us inside, with no hesitation whatsoever. All of us, except
Silvio Manuel, nearly died in there. We had no energy to withstand the
impact of the other world. None of us, except Silvio Manuel, had followed
the nagual's recommendation."
"What is the curtain of the other world?" I asked don Juan.
"What Genaro said-- it is a curtain," don Juan replied. "But you're
getting off the subject. You always do. We're talking about the Eagle's
command about sex. It is the Eagle's command that sexual energy be used for
creating life. Through sexual energy, the eagle bestows awareness. So when
sentient beings are engaged in sexual intercourse, the emanations inside
their cocoons do their best to bestow awareness to the new sentient being
they are creating."
He said that during the sexual act, the emanations encased inside the
cocoon of both partners undergo a profound agitation, the culminating point
of which is a merging, a fusing of two pieces of the glow of awareness, one
from each partner, that separate from their cocoons.
"Sexual intercourse is always a bestowal of awareness even though the
bestowal may not be consolidated," he went on. "The emanations inside the
cocoon of human beings don't know of intercourse for fun."
Genaro leaned over toward me from his chair across the table and talked
to me in a low voice, shaking his head for emphasis.
"The nagual is telling you the truth," he said and winked at me. "Those
emanations really don't know."
Don Juan fought not to laugh and added that the fallacy of man is to
act with total disregard for the mystery of existence and to believe that
such a sublime act of bestowing life and awareness is merely a physical
drive that one can twist at will.
Genaro made obscene sexual gestures, twisting his pelvis around, on and
on. Don Juan nodded and said that that was exactly what he meant. Genaro
thanked him for acknowledging his one and only contribution to the
explanation of awareness.
Both of them laughed like idiots, saying that if I had known how
serious their benefactor was about the explanation of awareness, I would be
laughing with them.
I earnestly asked don Juan what all this meant for an average man in
the day-to-day world.
"You mean what Genaro is doing?" he asked me in mock seriousness.
Their glee was always contagious. It took a long time for them to calm
down. Their level of energy was so high that next to them, I seemed old and
decrepit.
"I really don't know," don Juan finally answered me. "All I know is
what it means to warriors. They know that the only real energy we possess is
a lifebestowing sexual energy. This knowledge makes them permanently
conscious of their responsibility.
"If warriors want to have enough energy to see, they must become misers
with their sexual energy. That was the lesson the nagual Julian gave us. He
pushed us into the unknown, and we all nearly died. Since everyone of us
wanted to see, we, of course, abstained from wasting our glow of awareness."
I had heard him voice that belief before. Every time he did, we got
into an argument. I always felt compelled to protest and raise objections to
what I thought was a puritanical attitude toward sex.
I again raised my objections. Both of them laughed to tears.
"What can be done with man's natural sensuality?" I asked don Juan.
"Nothing," he replied. "There is nothing wrong with man's sensuality,
it's man's ignorance of and disregard for his magical nature that is wrong.
It's a mistake to waste recklessly the life-bestowing force of sex and not
have children, but it's also a mistake not to know that in having children
one taxes the glow of awareness."
"How do seers know that having children taxes the glow of awareness?" I
asked.
"They see that on having a child, the parents' glow of awareness
diminishes and the child's increases. In some supersensitive, frail parents,
the glow of awareness almost disappears. As children enhance their
awareness, a big dark spot develops in the luminous cocoon of the parents,
on the very place from which the glow was taken away. It is usually on the
midsection of the cocoon. Sometimes those spots can even be seen
superimposed on the body itself."
I asked him if there was anything that could be done to give people a
more balanced understanding of the glow of awareness.
"Nothing," he said. "At least, there is nothing that seers can do.
Seers aim to be free, to be unbiased witnesses incapable of passing
judgment; otherwise they would have to assume the responsibility for
bringing about a more adjusted cycle. No one can do that. The new cycle, if
it is to come, must come of itself."
5 The First Attention
The following day we ate breakfast at dawn, then don Juan made me shift
levels of awareness.
"Today, let's go to an original setting," don Juan said to Genaro.
"By all means," Genaro said gravely. He glanced at me and then added in
a low voice, as if not wanting me to overhear him, "Does he have to. . .
perhaps it's too much. . ."
In a matter of seconds my fear and suspicion escalated to unbearable
heights. I was sweating and panting. Don Juan came to my side and, with an
expression of almost uncontrollable amusement, assured me that Genaro was
just entertaining himself at my expense, and that we were going to a place
where the original seers had lived thousands of years ago.
As don Juan was speaking to me, I happened to glance at Genaro. He
slowly shook his head from side to side. It was an almost imperceptible
gesture, as if he were letting me know that don Juan was not telling the
truth. I went into a state of nervous frenzy, near hysteria-- and stopped
only when Genaro burst into laughter.
I marveled how easily my emotional states could escalate to nearly
unmanageable heights or drop to nothing.
Don Juan, Genaro, and I left Genaro's house in the early morning and
traveled a short distance into the surrounding eroded hills. Presently we
stopped and sat down on top of an enormous flat rock, on a gradual slope, in
a corn field that seemed to have been recently harvested.
"This is the original setting," don Juan said to me. "We'll come back
here a couple more times, during the course of my explanation."
"Very weird things happen here at night," Genaro said. "The nagual
Julian actually caught an ally here. Or rather, the ally ..."
Don Juan made a noticeable gesture with his eyebrows and Genaro stopped
in midsentence. He smiled at me.
"It's too early in the day for scary stories," Genaro said. "Let's wait
until dark."
He stood up and began creeping all around the rock, tiptoeing with his
spine arched backward.
"What was he saying about your benefactor's catching an ally here?" I
asked don Juan.
He did not answer right away. He was ecstatic, watching Genaro's
antics.
"He was referring to some sophisticated use of awareness," he finally
replied, still staring at Genaro.
Genaro completed a circle around the rock and came back and sat down by
me. He was panting heavily, almost wheezing, out of breath.
Don Juan seemed fascinated by what Genaro had done. Again I had the
feeling that they were amusing themselves at my expense, that both of them
were up to something I knew nothing about.
Suddenly, don Juan began his explanation. His voice soothed me. He said
that after much toiling, seers arrived at the conclusion that the
consciousness of adult human beings, matured by the process of growth, can
no longer be called awareness, because it has been modified into something
more intense and complex, which seers call attention.
"How do seers know that man's awareness is being cultivated and that it
grows?" I asked.
He said that at a given time in the growth of human beings a band of
the emanations inside their cocoons becomes very bright; as human beings
accumulate experience, it begins to glow. In some instances, the glow of
this band of emanations increases so dramatically that it fuses with the
emanations from the outside. Seers, witnessing an enhancement of this kind,
had to surmise that awareness is the raw material and attention the end
product of maturation.
"How do seers describe attention?" I asked.
"They say that attention is the harnessing and enhancing of awareness
through the process of being alive," he replied.
He said that the danger of definitions is that they simplify matters to
make them understandable; in this case, in defining attention, one runs the
risk of transforming a magical, miraculous accomplishment into something
commonplace. Attention is man's greatest single accomplishment. It develops
from raw animal awareness until it covers the entire gamut of human
alternatives. Seers perfect it even further until it covers the whole scope
of human possibilities.
I wanted to know if there was a special significance to alternatives
and possibilities in the seers' view.
Don Juan replied that human alternatives are everything we are capable
of choosing as persons. They have to do with the level of our day-to-day
range, the known; and owing to that fact, they are quite limited in number
and scope. Human possibilities belong to the unknown. They are not what we
are capable of choosing but what we are capable of attaining. He said that
an example of human alternatives is our choice to believe that the human
body is an object among objects. An example of human possibilities is the
seers' achievement in viewing man as an egglike luminous being. With the
body as an object one tackles the known, with the body as a luminous egg one
tackles the unknown; human possibilities have, therefore, nearly an
inexhaustible scope.
"Seers say that there are three types of attention," don Juan went on.
"When they say that, they mean it just for human beings, not for all the
sentient beings in existence. But the three are not just types of attention,
they are rather three levels of attainment. They are the first, second, and
third attention, each of them an independent domain, complete in itself."
He explained that the first attention in man is animal awareness, which
has been developed, through the process of experience, into a complex,
intricate, and extremely fragile faculty that takes care of the day-today
world in all its innumerable aspects, in other words, everything that one
can think about is part of the first attention.
"The first attention is everything we are as average men," he
continued. "By virtue of such an absolute rule over our lives, the first
attention is the most valuable asset that the average man has. Perhaps it is
even our only asset.
"Taking into account its true value, the new seers started a rigorous
examination of the first attention through seeing. Their findings molded
their total outlook and the outlook of all their descendants, even though
most of them do not understand what those seers really saw."
He emphatically warned me that the conclusions of the new seers'
rigorous examination had very little to do with reason or rationality,
because in order to examine and explain the first attention, one must see
it. Only seers can do that. But to examine what seers see in the first
attention is essential. It allows the first attention the only opportunity
it will ever have to realize its own workings.
"In terms of what seers see, the first attention is the glow of
awareness developed to an ultra shine," he continued. "But it is a glow
fixed on the surface of the cocoon, so to speak. It is a glow that covers
the known.
"The second attention, on the other hand, is a more complex and
specialized state of the glow of awareness. It has to do with the unknown.
It comes about when unused emanations inside man's cocoon are utilized.
"The reason I called the second attention specialized is that in order
to utilize those unused emanations, one needs uncommon, elaborate tactics
that require supreme discipline and concentration."
He said that he had told me before, when he was teaching me the art of
dreaming, that the concentration needed to be aware that one is having a
dream is the forerunner of the second attention. That concentration is a
form of consciousness that is not in the same category as the consciousness
needed to deal with the daily world.
He said that the second attention is also called the left-side
awareness; and it is the vastest field that one can imagine, so vast in fact
that it seems limitless.
"I wouldn't stray into it for anything in this world," he went on. "It
is a quagmire so complex and bizarre that sober seers go into it only under
the strictest conditions.
"The great difficulty is that the entrance into the second attention is
utterly easy and its lure nearly irresistible."
He said that the old seers, being the