Карлос Кастанеда. Сила безмолвия (engl)
Карлос Кастанеда. Сила безмолвия (engl)
Origin: http://hotmix.narod.ru
Carlos Castaneda. The Power Of Silence
Carlos Castaneda — "The Power Of Silence"
Foreword
My books are a true account of a teaching method that don Juan Matus, a
Mexican Indian sorcerer, used in order to help me understand the sorcerers'
world. In this sense, my books are the account of an on-going process which
becomes more clear to me as time goes by.
It takes years of training to teach us to deal intelligently with the
world of everyday life. Our schooling - whether In plain reasoning or formal
topics - is rigorous, because the knowledge we are trying to impart is very
complex. The same criteria apply to the sorcerers' world: their schooling,
which relies on oral instruction and the manipulation of awareness, although
different from ours, is just as rigorous, because their knowledge is as, or
perhaps more, complex
Introduction
At various times don Juan attempted to name his knowledge for my
benefit. He felt that the most appropriate name was nagualism, but that the
term was too obscure. Calling it simply "knowledge" made it too vague, and
to call it "witchcraft" was debasing. "The mastery of intent" was too
abstract, and "the search for total freedom" too long and metaphorical.
Finally, because he was unable to find a more appropriate name, he called it
"sorcery," although he admitted it was not really accurate.
Over the years, he had given me different definitions of sorcery, but
he had always maintained that definitions change as knowledge increases.
Toward the end of my apprenticeship, I felt I was in a position to
appreciate a clearer definition, so I asked him once more.
"From where the average man stands," don Juan said, "sorcery is
nonsense or an ominous mystery beyond his reach. And he is right - not
because this is an absolute fact, but because the average man lacks the
energy to deal with sorcery."
He stopped for a moment before he continued. "Human beings are born
with a finite amount of energy," don Juan said, "an energy that is
systematically deployed, beginning at the moment of birth, in order that it
may be used most advantageously by the modality of the time."
"What do you mean by the modality of the time?" I asked.
"The modality of the time is the precise bundle of energy fields being
perceived," he answered. "I believe man's perception has changed through the
ages. The actual time decides the mode; the time decides which precise
bundle of energy fields, out of an incalculable number, are to be used. And
handling the modality of the time - those few, selected energy fields -
takes all our available energy, leaving us nothing that would help us use
any of the other energy fields."
He urged me with a subtle movement of his eyebrows to consider all
this.
"This is what I mean when I say that the average man lacks the energy
needed to deal with sorcery," he went on. "If he uses only the energy he
has, he can't perceive the worlds sorcerers do. To perceive them, sorcerers
need to use a cluster of energy fields not ordinarily used. Naturally, if
the average man is to perceive those worlds and understand sorcerers'
perception he must use the same cluster they have used. And this is just not
possible, because all his energy is already deployed."
He paused as if searching for the appropriate words to make his point.
"Think of it this way," he proceeded. "It isn't that as time goes by
you're learning sorcery; rather, what you're learning is to save energy. And
this energy will enable you to handle some of the energy fields which are
inaccessible to you now. And that is sorcery: the ability to use energy
fields that are not employed in perceiving the ordinary world we know.
Sorcery is a state of awareness. Sorcery is the ability to perceive
something which ordinary perception cannot.
"Everything I've put you through," don Juan went on, "each of the
things I've shown you was only a device to convince you that there's more to
us than meets the eye.
We don't need anyone to teach us sorcery, because there is really
nothing to learn. What we need is a teacher to convince us that there is
incalculable power at our fingertips. What a strange paradox! Every warrior
on the path of knowledge thinks, at one time or another, that he's learning
sorcery, but all he's doing is allowing himself to be convinced of the power
hidden in his being, and that he can reach it."
"Is that what you're doing, don Juan - convincing me?"
"Exactly. I'm trying to convince you that you can reach that power. I
went through the same thing. And I was as hard to convince as you are."
"Once we have reached it, what exactly do we do with it, don Juan?"
"Nothing. Once we have reached it, it will, by itself, make use of
energy fields which are available to us but inaccessible. And that, as I
have said, is sorcery. We begin then to see - that is, to perceive -
something else; not as imagination, but as real and concrete. And then we
begin to know without having to use words. And what any of us does with that
increased perception, with that silent knowledge, depends on our own
temperament."
On another occasion, he gave me another kind of explanation. We were
discussing an unrelated topic when he abruptly changed the subject and began
to tell me a joke. He laughed and, very gently, patted my back between the
shoulder blades, as if he were shy and it was too forward of him to touch
me. He chuckled at my nervous reaction.
"You're skittish," he said teasingly, and slapped my back with greater
force.
My ears buzzed. For an instant I lost my breath. It felt us though he
had hurt my lungs. Every breath brought me great discomfort. Yet, after I
had coughed and choked a few times, my nasal passages opened and I found
myself
taking deep, soothing breaths. I had such a feeling of well-being that
I was not even annoyed at him for his blow, which had been hard as well as
unexpected.
Then don Juan began a most remarkable explanation. Clearly and
concisely, he gave me a different and more precise definition of sorcery.
I had entered into a wondrous state of awareness! I had such clarity of
mind that I was able to comprehend and assimilate everything don Juan was
saying. He said that in the universe there is an unmeasurable, indescribable
force which sorcerers call intent, and that absolutely everything that
exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link.
Sorcerers, or warriors, as he called them, were concerned with discussing,
understanding, and employing that connecting link. They were especially
concerned with cleaning it of the numbing effects brought about by the
ordinary concerns of their everyday lives. Sorcery at this level could be
defined as the procedure of cleaning one's connecting link to intent. Don
Juan stressed that this "cleaning procedure" was extremely difficult to
understand, or to learn to perform. Sorcerers, therefore, divided their
instruction into two categories. One was instruction for the everyday-life
state of awareness, in which the cleaning process was presented in a
disguised fashion. The other was instruction for the states of heightened
awareness, such as the one I was presently experiencing, in which sorcerers
obtained knowledge directly from intent, without the distracting
intervention of spoken language.
Don Juan explained that by using heightened awareness over thousands of
years of painful struggle, sorcerers had gained specific insights into
intent; and that they had passed these nuggets of direct knowledge on from
generation to generation to the present. He said that the task of sorcery is
to take this seemingly incomprehensible knowledge and make it understandable
by the standards of awareness of everyday life.
Then he explained the role of the guide in the lives of sorcerers. He
said that a guide is called "the nagual," and that the nagual is a man or a
woman with extraordinary energy, a teacher who has sobriety, endurance,
stability; someone seers see as a luminous sphere having four compartments,
as if four luminous balls have been compressed together. Because of their
extraordinary energy, naguals are intermediaries. Their energy allows them
to channel peace, harmony, laughter, and knowledge directly from the source,
from intent, and transmit them to their companions. Naguals are responsible
for supplying what sorcerers call "the minimal chance": the awareness of
one's connection with intent.
I told him that my mind was grasping everything he was telling me, that
the only part of his explanation still unclear to me was why two sets of
teachings were needed. I could understand everything he was saying about his
world easily, and yet he had described the process of understanding as very
difficult.
"You will need a lifetime to remember the insights you've had today,"
he said, "because most of them were silent knowledge. A few moments from now
you will have forgotten them. That's one of the unfathomable mysteries of
awareness."
Don Juan then made me shift levels of consciousness by striking me on
my left side, at the edge of my ribcage.
Instantly I lost my extraordinary clarity of mind and could not
remember having ever had it. ...
Don Juan himself set me the task of writing about the premises of
sorcery. Once, very casually in the early stages
of my apprenticeship, he suggested that I write a book in order to make
use of the notes I had always taken. I had accumulated reams of notes and
never considered what to do with them. I argued that the suggestion was
absurd because I was not a writer.
"Of course, you're not a writer," he said, "so you will have to use
sorcery. First, you must visualize your experiences as if you were reliving
them, and then you must see the text in your dreaming. For you, writing
should not be a literary exercise, but rather an exercise in sorcery."
I have written in that manner about the premises of sorcery just as don
Juan explained them to me, within the context of his teaching.
In his teaching scheme, which was developed by sorcerers of ancient
times, there were two categories of instruction. One was called "teachings
for the right side," carried out in the ordinary state of awareness. The
other was called "teachings for the left side," put into practice solely in
states of heightened awareness.
These two categories allowed teachers to school their apprentices
toward three areas of expertise: the mastery of awareness, the art of
stalking, and the mastery of intent.
These three areas of expertise are the three riddles sorcerers
encounter in their search for knowledge.
The mastery of awareness is the riddle of the mind; the perplexity
sorcerers experience when they recognize the astounding mystery and scope of
awareness and perception.
The art of stalking is the riddle of the heart; the puzzlement
sorcerers feel upon becoming aware of two things: first that the world
appears to us to be unalterably objective and factual, because of
peculiarities of our awareness and perception; second, that if different
peculiarities of perception come into play, the very things about the world
that seem so unalterably objective and factual change. The mastery of intent
is the riddle of the spirit, or the paradox of the abstract - sorcerers'
thoughts and actions projected beyond our human condition.
Don Juan's instruction on the art of stalking and the mastery of intent
depended upon his instruction on the mastery of awareness, which was the
cornerstone of his teachings, and which consist of the following basic
premises:
1. The universe is an infinite agglomeration of energy fields,
resembling threads of light.
2. These energy fields, called the Eagle's emanations, radiate from a
source of inconceivable proportions metaphorically called the Eagle.
3. Human beings are also composed of an incalculable number of the same
threadlike energy fields. These Eagle's emanations form an encased
agglomeration that manifests itself as a ball of light the size of the
person's body with the arms extended laterally, like a giant luminous egg.
4. Only a very small group of the energy fields inside this luminous
ball are lit up by a point of intense brilliance located on the ball's
surface.
5. Perception occurs when the energy fields in that small group
immediately surrounding the point of brilliance extend their light to
illuminate identical energy fields outside the ball. Since the only energy
fields perceivable are those lit by the point of brilliance, that point is
named "the point where perception is assembled" or simply "the assemblage
point."
6. The assemblage point can be moved from its usual position on the
surface of the luminous ball to another position on the surface, or into the
interior. Since the brilliance of the assemblage point can light up whatever
energy field it comes in contact with, when it moves to a new position it
immediately brightens up new energy fields, making them perceivable. This
perception is known as seeing.
7. When the assemblage point shifts, it makes possible the perception
of an entirely different world - as objective and factual as the one we
normally perceive. Sorcerers go into that other world to get energy, power,
solutions to general and particular problems, or to face the unimaginable.
8. Intent is the pervasive force that causes us to perceive. We do not
become aware because we perceive; rather, we perceive as a result of the
pressure and intrusion of intent.
9. The aim of sorcerers is to reach a state of total awareness in order
to experience all the possibilities of perception available to man. This
state of awareness even implies an alternative way of dying.
A level of practical knowledge was included as part of teaching the
mastery of awareness. On that practical level don Juan taught the procedures
necessary to move the assemblage point. The two great systems devised by the
sorcerer seers of ancient times to accomplish this were: dreaming, the
control and utilization of dreams; and stalking, the control of behavior.
Moving one's assemblage point was an essential maneuver that every
sorcerer had to learn. Some of them, the naguals, also learned to perform it
for others. They were able to dislodge the assemblage point from its
customary position by delivering a hard slap directly to the assemblage
point. This blow, which was experienced as a smack on the right shoulder
blade - although the body was never touched - resulted in a state of
heightened awareness.
In compliance with his tradition, it was exclusively in these states of
heightened awareness that don Juan carried
out the most important and dramatic part of his teachings: the
instructions for the left side. Because of the extraordinary quality of
these states, don Juan demanded that I not discuss them with others until we
had concluded everything in the sorcerers' teaching scheme. That demand was
not difficult for me to accept. In those unique states of awareness my
capabilities for understanding the instruction were unbelievably enhanced,
but at the same time my capabilities for describing or even remembering it
were impaired. I could function in those states with proficiency and
assuredness, but I could not recollect anything about them once I returned
to my normal consciousness.
It took me years to be able to make the crucial conversion of my
enhanced awareness into plain memory. My reason and common sense delayed
this moment because they were colliding head-on with the preposterous,
unthinkable reality of heightened awareness and direct knowledge. For years
the resulting cognitive disarrangement forced me to avoid the issue by not
thinking about it.
Whatever I have written about my sorcery apprenticeship, up to now, has
been a recounting of how don Juan taught me the mastery of awareness. I have
not yet described the art of stalking or the mastery of intent.
Don Juan taught me their principles and applications with the help of
two of his companions: a sorcerer named Vicente Medrano and another named
Silvio Manuel, but whatever I learned from them still remains clouded in
what Don Juan called the intricacies of heightened awareness. Until now it
has been impossible for me to write or even to think coherently about the
art of stalking and the mastery of intent. My mistake has been to regard
them as subjects for normal memory and recollection. They are, but at the
mime time they are not. In order to resolve this contradiction, I have not
pursued the subjects directly - a virtual impossibility - but have dealt
with them indirectly through the concluding topic of don Juan's instruction:
the stories of the sorcerers of the past.
He recounted these stories to make evident what he called the abstract
cores of his lessons. But I was incapable of grasping the nature of the
abstract cores despite his comprehensive explanations, which, I know now,
were intended more to open my mind than to explain anything in a rational
manner. His way of talking made me believe for many years that his
explanations of the abstract cores were like academic dissertations; and all
I was able to do, under these circumstances, was to take his explanations as
given. They became part of my tacit acceptance of his teachings, but without
the thorough assessment on my part that was essential to understanding them.
Don Juan presented three sets of six abstract cores each, arranged in
an increasing level of complexity. I have dealt here with the first set,
which is composed of the following: the manifestations of the spirit, the
knock of the spirit, the trickery of the spirit, the descent of the spirit,
the requirements of intent, and handling intent.
THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE SPIRIT
The First Abstract Core
Don Juan, whenever it was pertinent, used to tell me brief stories
about the sorcerers of his lineage, especially his teacher, the nagual
Julian. They were not really stories, but rather descriptions of the way
those sorcerers behaved and of aspects of their personalities. These
accounts were each designed to shed light on a specific topic in my
apprenticeship.
I had heard the same stories from the other fifteen members of don
Juan's group of sorcerers, but none of these accounts had been able to give
me a clear picture of the people they described. Since I had no way of
persuading don Juan to give me more details about those sorcerers, I had
resigned myself to the idea of never knowing about them in any depth.
One afternoon, in the mountains of southern Mexico, don Juan, after
having explained to me more about the intricacies of the mastery of
awareness, made a statement that completely baffled me.
"I think it's time for us to talk about the sorcerers of our past," he
said.
Don Juan explained that it was necessary that I begin drawing
conclusions based on a systematic view of the past,
conclusions about both the world of daily affairs and the sorcerers'
world.
"Sorcerers are vitally concerned with their past," he said. "But I
don't mean their personal past. For sorcerers their past is what other
sorcerers in bygone days have done. And what we are now going to do is
examine that past.
"The average man also examines the past. But it's mostly his personal
past he examines, and he does so for personal reasons. Sorcerers do quite
the opposite; they consult their past in order to obtain a point of
reference."
"But isn't that what everyone does? Look at the past to get a point of
reference?"
"No!" he answered emphatically. "The average man measures himself
against the past, whether his personal past or the past knowledge of his
time, in order to find justifications for his present or future behavior, or
to establish a model for himself. Only sorcerers genuinely seek a point of
reference in their past."
"Perhaps, don Juan, things would be clear to me if you tell me what a
point of reference for a sorcerer is."
"For sorcerers, establishing a point of reference means getting a
chance to examine intent" he replied. "Which is exactly the aim of this
final topic of instruction. And nothing can give sorcerers a better view of
intent than examining stories of other sorcerers battling to understand the
same force."
He explained that as they examined their past, the sorcerers of his
lineage took careful notice of the basic abstract order of their knowledge.
"In sorcery there are twenty-one abstract cores," don Juan went on.
"And then, based on those abstract cores, there are scores of sorcery
stories about the naguals of our lineage battling to understand the spirit.
It's time to tell you the abstract cores and the sorcery stories."
I waited for don Juan to begin telling me the stories, but he changed
the subject and went back to explaining awareness.
"Wait a minute," I protested. "What about the sorcery stories? Aren't
you going to tell them to me?"
"Of course I am," he said. "But they are not stories that one can tell
as if they were tales. You've got to think your way through them and then
rethink them - relive them, so to speak."
There was a long silence. I became very cautious and was afraid that if
I persisted in asking him again to tell me the stories, I could be
committing myself to something I might later regret. But my curiosity was
greater than my good sense.
"Well, let's get on with them," I croaked.
Don Juan, obviously catching the gist of my thoughts, smiled
maliciously. He stood and signaled me to follow. We had been sitting on some
dry rocks at the bottom of a gully. It was mid-afternoon. The sky was dark
and cloudy. Low, almost-black rain clouds hovered above the peaks to the
east. In comparison, the high clouds made the sky seem clear to the south.
Earlier it had rained heavily, but then the rain seemed to have retreated to
a hiding place, leaving behind only a threat.
I should have been chilled to the bone, for it was very cold. But I was
warm. As I clutched a rock don Juan had given me to hold, I realized that
this sensation of being warm in nearly freezing weather was familiar to me,
yet it amazed me each time. Whenever I seemed about to freeze, don Juan
would give me a branch to hold, or a stone, or he would put a bunch of
leaves under my shirt, on the tip of my sternum, and that would be
sufficient to raise my body temperature.
I had tried unsuccessfully to recreate, by myself, the effect of his
ministrations. He told me it was not the ministrations but his inner silence
that kept me warm, and the branches or stones or leaves were merely devices
to trap my attention and maintain it in focus.
Moving quickly, we climbed the steep west side of a mountain until we
reached a rock ledge at the very top. We were in the foothills of a higher
range of mountains. From the rock ledge I could see that fog had begun to
move onto the south end of the valley floor below us. Low, wispy clouds
seemed to be closing in on us, too, sliding down from the black-green, high
mountain peaks to the west. After the rain, under the dark cloudy sky the
valley and the mountains to the east and south appeared covered in a mantle
of black-green silence.
"This is the ideal place to have a talk," don Juan said, sitting on the
rock floor of a concealed shallow cave.
The cave was perfect for the two of us to sit side by side. Our heads
were nearly touching the roof and our backs fitted snugly against the curved
surface of the rock wall. It was as if the cave had been carved deliberately
to accommodate two persons of our size.
I noticed another strange feature of the cave: when I stood on the
ledge, I could see the entire valley and the mountain ranges to the east and
south, but when I sat down, I was boxed in by the rocks. Yet the ledge was
at the level of the cave floor, and flat.
I was about to point this strange effect out to don Juan, but he
anticipated me.
"This cave is man-made," he said. "The ledge is slanted but the eye
doesn't register the incline."
"Who made this cave, don Juan?"
"The ancient sorcerers. Perhaps thousands of years ago. And one of the
peculiarities of this cave is that animals and insects and even people stay
away from it. The ancient sorcerers seem to have infused it with an ominous
charge that makes every living thing feel ill at ease."
But strangely I felt irrationally secure and happy there. A sensation
of physical contentment made my entire body tingle. I actually felt the most
agreeable, the most delectable, sensation in my stomach. It was as if my
nerves were being tickled.
"I don't feel ill at ease," I commented.
"Neither do I," he said. "Which only means that you and I aren't that
far temperamentally from those old sorcerers of the past; something which
worries me no end."
I was afraid to pursue that subject any further, so I waited for him to
talk.
"The first sorcery story I am going to tell you is called 'The
Manifestations of the Spirit,' " don Juan began, "but don't let the title
mystify you. The manifestations of the spirit is only the first abstract
core around which the first sorcery story is built.
"That first abstract core is a story in itself," he went on. "The story
says that once upon a time there was a man, an average man without any
special attributes. He was, like everyone else, a conduit for the spirit.
And by virtue of that, like everyone else, he was part of the spirit, part
of the abstract. But he didn't know it. The world kept him so busy that he
had neither the time nor the inclination really to examine the matter.
"The spirit tried, uselessly, to reveal their connection. Using an
inner voice, the spirit disclosed its secrets, but the man was incapable of
understanding the revelations. Naturally, he heard the inner voice, but he
believed it to be his own feelings he was feeling and his own thoughts he
was thinking.
"'The spirit, in order to shake him out of his slumber, gave him three
signs, three successive manifestations. The
spirit physically crossed the man's path in the most obvious manner.
But the man was oblivious to anything but his self-concern."
Don Juan stopped and looked at me as he did whenever he was waiting for
my comments and questions. I had nothing to say. I did not understand the
point he was trying to make.
"I've just told you the first abstract core," he continued. "The only
other thing I could add is that because of the man's absolute unwillingness
to understand, the spirit was forced to use trickery. And trickery became
the essence of the sorcerers' path. But that is another story."
Don Juan explained that sorcerers understood this abstract core to be a
blueprint for events, or a recurrent pattern that appeared every time intent
was giving an indication of something meaningful. Abstract cores, then, were
blueprints of complete chains of events.
He assured me that by means beyond comprehension, every detail of every
abstract core reoccurred to every apprentice nagual. He further assured me
that he had helped intent to involve me in all the abstract cores of sorcery
in the same manner that his benefactor, the nagual Julian and all the
naguals before him, had involved their apprentices. The process by which
each apprentice nagual encountered the abstract cores created a series of
accounts woven around those abstract cores incorporating the particular
details of each apprentice's personality and circumstances.
He said, for example, that I had my own story about the manifestations
of the spirit, he had his, his benefactor had his own, so had the nagual
that preceded him, and so on, and so forth.
"What is my story about the manifestations of the spirit?" I asked,
somewhat mystified.
"If any warrior is aware of his stories it's you," he replied. "After
all, you've been writing about them for years. But you didn't notice the
abstract cores because you are a practical man. You do everything only for
the purpose of enhancing your practicality. Although you handled your
stories to exhaustion you had no idea that there was an abstract core in
them. Everything I've done appears to you, therefore, as an often-whimsical
practical activity: teaching sorcery to a reluctant and, most of the time,
stupid, apprentice. As long as you see it in those terms, the abstract cores
will elude you."
"You must forgive me, don Juan," I said, "but your statements are very
confusing. What are you saying?"
"I'm trying to introduce the sorcery stories as a subject," he replied.
"I've never talked to you specifically about this topic because
traditionally it's left hidden. It is the spirit's last artifice. It is said
that when the apprentice understands the abstract cores it's like the
placing of the stone that caps and seals a pyramid."
It was getting dark and it looked as though it was about to rain again.
I worried that if the wind blew from east to west while it was raining, we
were going to get soaked in that cave. I was sure don Juan was aware of
that, but he seemed to ignore it.
"It won't rain again until tomorrow morning," he said.
Hearing my inner thoughts being answered made me jump involuntarily and
hit the top of my head on the cave roof. It was a thud that sounded worse
than it felt.
Don Juan held his sides laughing. After a while my head really began to
hurt and I had to massage it.
"Your company is as enjoyable to me as mine must have been to my
benefactor," he said and began to laugh again.
We were quiet for a few minutes. The silence around me was ominous. I
fancied that I could hear the rustling of the low clouds as they descended
on us from the higher mountains. Then I realized that what I was hearing was
the soft wind. From my position in the shallow cave, it sounded like the
whispering of human voices.
"I had the incredible good luck to be taught by two naguals," don Juan
said and broke the mesmeric grip the wind had on me at that moment. "One
was, of course, my benefactor, the nagual Julian, and the other was his
benefactor, the nagual Elias. My case was unique."
"Why was your case unique?" I asked.
"Because for generations naguals have gathered their apprentices years
after their own teachers have left the world," he explained. "Except my
benefactor. I became the nagual Julian's apprentice eight years before his
benefactor left the world. I had eight years' grace. It was the luckiest
thing that could have happened to me, for I had the opportunity to be taught
by two opposite temperaments. It was like being reared by a powerful father
and an even more powerful grandfather who don't see eye to eye. In such a
contest, the grandfather always wins. So I'm properly the product of the
nagual Elfas's teachings. I was closer to him not only in temperament but
also in looks. I'd say that I owe him my fine tuning. However, the bulk of
the work that went into turning me from a miserable being into an impeccable
warrior I owe to my benefactor, the nagual Julian."
"What was the nagual Julian like physically?" I asked.
"Do you know that to this day it's hard for me to visualize him?" don
Juan said. "I know that sounds absurd, but depending on his needs or the
circumstances, he could be either young or old, handsome or homely, effete
and weak or strong and virile, fat or slender, of medium height or extremely
short."
"Do you mean he was an actor acting out different roles with the aid of
props?"
"No, there were no props involved and he was not merely an actor. He
was, of course, a great actor in his own right, but that is different. The
point is that he was capable of transforming himself and becoming all those
diametrically opposed persons. Being a great actor enabled him to portray
all the minute peculiarities of behavior that made each specific being real.
Let us say that he was at ease in every change of being. As you are at ease
in every change of clothes."
Eagerly, I asked don Juan to tell me more about his benefactor's
transformations. He said that someone taught him how to elicit those
transformations, but that to explain any further would force him to overlap
into different stories.
"What did the nagual Julian look like when he wasn't transforming
himself?" I asked.
"Let's say that before he became a nagual he was very slim and
muscular," don Juan said. "His hair was black, thick, and wavy. He had a
long, fine nose, strong big white teeth, an oval face, strong jaw, and shiny
dark-brown eyes. He was about five feet eight inches tall. He was not Indian
or even a brown Mexican, but he was not Anglo white either. In fact, his
complexion seemed to be like no one else's, especially in his later years
when his ever-changing complexion shifted constantly from dark to very light
and back again to dark. When I first met him he was a light-brown old man,
then as time went by, he became a light-skinned young man, perhaps only a
few years older than me. I was twenty at that time.
"But if the changes of his outer appearance were astonishing," don Juan
went on, "the changes of mood and behavior that accompanied each
transformation were even more astonishing. For example, when he was a fat
young man, he was jolly and sensual. When he was a skinny old man, he was
petty and vindictive. When he was a fat old man, he was the greatest
imbecile there was."
"Was he ever himself?" I asked.
"Not the way I am myself," he replied. "Since I'm not interested in
transformation I am always the same. But he was not like me at all." Don
Juan looked at me as if he were assessing my inner strength. He smiled,
shook his head from side to side and broke into a belly laugh.
"What's so funny, don Juan?" I asked.
"The fact is that you're still too prudish and stiff to appreciate
fully the nature of my benefactor's transformations and their total scope,"
he said. "I only hope that when I tell you about them you don't become
morbidly obsessed."
For some reason I suddenly became quite uncomfortable and had to change
the subject.
"Why are the naguals called 'benefactors' and not simply teachers?" I
asked nervously.
"Calling a nagual a benefactor is a gesture his apprentices make," don
Juan said. "A nagual creates an overwhelming feeling of gratitude in his
disciples. After all, a nagual molds them and guides them through
unimaginable areas."
I remarked that to teach was in my opinion the greatest, most
altruistic act anyone could perform for another.
"For you, teaching is talking about patterns," he said. "For a
sorcerer, to teach is what a nagual does for his apprentices. For them he
taps the prevailing force in the universe: intent - the force that changes
and reorders things or keeps them as they are. The nagual formulates, then
guides the consequences that that force can have on his disciples. Without
the nagual's molding intent there would be no awe, no wonder for them. And
his apprentices, instead of embarking on a magical journey of discovery,
would only be learning a trade: healer, sorcerer, diviner, charlatan, or
whatever."
"Can you explain intent to me?" I asked.
"The only way to know intent" he replied, "is to know it directly
through a living connection that exists between intent and all sentient
beings. Sorcerers call intent the indescribable, the spirit, the abstract,
the nagual. I would prefer to call it nagual, but it overlaps with the name
for the leader, the benefactor, who is also called nagual, so I have opted
for calling it the spirit, intent, the abstract."
Don Juan stopped abruptly and recommended that I keep quiet and think
about what he had told me. By then it was very dark. The silence was so
profound that instead of lulling me into a restful state, it agitated me. I
could not maintain order in my thoughts. I tried to focus my attention on
the story he had told me, but instead I thought of everything else, until
finally I fell asleep.
The Impeccability Of The Nagual Elias
I had no way of telling how long I slept in that cave. Don Juan's voice
startled me and I awoke. He was saying that the first sorcery story
concerning the manifestations of the spirit was an account of the
relationship between intent and the nagual. It was the story of how the
spirit set up a lure for the nagual, a prospective disciple, and of how the
nagual had to evaluate the lure before making his decision either to accept
or reject it. It was very dark in the cave, and the small space was
confining. Ordinarily an area of that size would have made me
claustrophobic, but the cave kept soothing me, dispelling my feelings of
annoyance. Also, something in the configuration of the cave absorbed the
echoes of don Juan's words.
Don Juan explained that every act performed by sorcerers, especially by
the naguals, was either performed as a way to strengthen their link with
intent or as a response triggered by the link itself. Sorcerers, and
specifically the naguals, therefore had to be actively and permanently on
the lookout for manifestations of the spirit. Such manifestations were
called gestures of the spirit or, more simply, indications or omens.
He repeated a story he had already told me; the story of how he had met
his benefactor, the nagual Julian.
Don Juan had been cajoled by two crooked men to take a job on an
isolated hacienda. One of the men, the foreman of the hacienda, simply took
possession of don Juan and in effect made him a slave.
Desperate and with no other course of action, don Juan escaped. The
violent foreman chased him and caught him on a country road where he shot
don Juan in the chest and left him for dead.
Don Juan was lying unconscious in the road, bleeding to death, when the
nagual Julian came along. Using his healer's knowledge, he stopped the
bleeding, took don Juan, who was still unconscious, home and cured him.
The indications the spirit gave the nagual Julian about don Juan were,
first, a small cyclone that lifted a cone of dust on the road a couple of
yards from where he lay. The second omen was the thought which had crossed
the nagual Julian's mind an instant before he had heard the report of the
gun a few yards away: that it was time to have an apprentice nagual. Moments
later, the spirit gave him the third omen, when he ran to take cover and
instead collided with the gunman, putting him to flight, perhaps preventing
him from shooting don Juan a second time. A collision with someone was the
type of blunder which no sorcerer, much less a nagual, should ever make.
The nagual Julian immediately evaluated the opportunity. When he saw
don Juan he understood the reason for the spirit's manifestation: here was a
double man, a perfect candidate to be his apprentice nagual.
This brought up a nagging rational concern for me. I wanted to know if
sorcerers could interpret an omen erroneously. Don Juan replied that
although my question sounded perfectly legitimate, it was inapplicable, like
the majority of my questions, because I asked them based on my experiences
in the world of everyday life. Thus they were always about tested
procedures, steps to be followed, and rules of meticulousness, but had
nothing to do with the premises of sorcery. He pointed out that the flaw in
my reasoning was that I always failed to include my experiences in the
sorcerers' world.
I argued that very few of my experiences in the sorcerers' world had
continuity, and therefore I could not make use of those experiences in my
present day-to-day life. Very few times, and only when I was in states of
profound heightened awareness, had I remembered everything. At the level of
heightened awareness I usually reached, the only experience that had
continuity between past and present was that of knowing him.
He responded cuttingly that I was perfectly capable of engaging in
sorcerers' reasonings because I had experienced the sorcery premises in my
normal state of awareness. In a more mellow tone he added that heightened
awareness did not reveal everything until the whole edifice of sorcery
knowledge was completed.
Then he answered my question about whether or not sorcerers could
misinterpret omens. He explained that when a sorcerer interpreted an omen he
knew its exact meaning without having any notion of how he knew it. This was
one of the bewildering effects of the connecting link with intent. Sorcerers
had a sense of knowing things directly. How sure they were depended on the
strength and clarity of their connecting link.
He said that the feeling everyone knows as "intuition" is the
activation of our link with intent. And since sorcerers deliberately pursue
the understanding and strengthening of that link, it could be said that they
intuit everything unerringly and accurately. Reading omens is commonplace
for sorcerers - mistakes happen only when personal feelings intervene and
cloud the sorcerers' connecting link with intent. Otherwise their direct
knowledge is totally accurate and functional.
We remained quiet for a while.
All of a sudden he said, "I am going to tell you a story about the
nagual Elias and the manifestation of the spirit. The spirit manifests
itself to a sorcerer, especially to a nagual, at every turn. However, this
is not the entire truth. The entire truth is that the spirit reveals itself
to everyone with the same intensity and consistency, but only sorcerers, and
naguals in particular, are attuned to such revelations."
Don Juan began his story. He said that the nagual Elias had been riding
his horse to the city one day, taking him through a shortcut by some
cornfields when suddenly his horse shied, frightened by the low, fast sweep
of a falcon that missed the nagual's straw hat by only a few inches. The
nagual immediately dismounted and began to look around. He saw a strange
young man among the tall, dry cornstalks. The man was dressed in an
expensive dark suit and appeared alien there. The nagual Elias was used to
the sight of peasants or landowners in the fields, but he had never seen an
elegantly dressed city man moving through the fields with apparent disregard
for his expensive shoes and clothes.
The nagual tethered his horse and walked toward the young man. He
recognized the flight of the falcon, as well as the man's apparel, as
obvious manifestations of the spirit which he could not disregard. He got
very close to the young man and saw what was going on. The man was chasing a
peasant woman who was running a few yards ahead of him, dodging and laughing
with him.
The contradiction was quite apparent to the nagual. The two people
cavorting in the cornfield did not belong together. The nagual thought that
the man must be the landowner's son and the woman a servant in the house. He
felt embarrassed to be observing them and was about to turn and leave when
the falcon again swept over the cornfield and this time brushed the young
man's head. The falcon alarmed the couple and they stopped and looked up,
trying to anticipate another sweep. The nagual noticed that the man was thin
and handsome, and had haunting, restless eyes.
Then the couple became bored watching for the falcon, and returned to
their play. The man caught the woman, embraced her and gently laid her on
the ground. But instead of trying to make love to her, as the nagual assumed
he would do next, he removed his own clothes and paraded naked in front of
the woman.
She did not shyly close her eyes or scream with embarrassment or
fright. She giggled, mesmerized by the prancing naked man, who moved around
her like a satyr, making lewd gestures and laughing. Finally, apparently
overpowered by the sight, she uttered a wild cry, rose, and threw herself
into the young man's arms.
Don Juan said that die nagual Elias confessed to him that the
indications of the spirit on that occasion had been most baffling. It was
clearly evident that the man was insane. Otherwise, knowing how protective
peasants were of their women, he would not have considered seducing a young
peasant woman in broad daylight a few yards from the road - and naked to
boot.
Don Juan broke into a laugh and told me that in those days to take off
one's clothes and engage in a sexual act in broad daylight in such a place
meant one had to be either insane or blessed by the spirit. He added that
what the man had done might not seem remarkable nowadays. But then, nearly a
hundred years ago, people were infinitely more inhibited.
All of this convinced the nagual Elias from the moment he laid eyes on
the man that he was both insane and blessed by the spirit. He worried that
peasants might happen by, become enraged and lynch the man on the spot. But
no one did. It felt to the nagual as if time had been suspended.
When the man finished making love, he put on his clothes, took out a
handkerchief, meticulously dusted his shoes and, all the while making wild
promises to the girl, went on his way. The nagual Elias followed him. In
fact, he followed him for several days and found out that his name was
Julian and that he was an actor.
Subsequently the nagual saw him on the stage often enough to realize
that the actor had a great deal of charisma. The audience, especially the
women, loved him. And he had no scruples about making use of his charismatic
gifts to seduce female admirers. As the nagual followed the actor, he was
able to witness his seduction technique more than once. It entailed showing
himself naked to his adoring fans as soon as he got them alone, then waiting
until the women, stunned by his display, surrendered. The technique seemed
extremely effective for him. The nagual had to admit that the actor was a
great success, except on one count. He was mortally ill. The nagual had seen
the black shadow of death that followed him everywhere.
Don Juan explained again something he had told me years before - that
our death was a black spot right behind the left shoulder. He said that
sorcerers knew when a person was close to dying because they could see the
dark spot, which became a moving shadow the exact size and shape of the
person to whom it belonged.
As he recognized the imminent presence of death the nagual was plunged
into a numbing perplexity. He wondered why the spirit was singling out such
a sick person. He had been taught that in a natural state replacement, not
repair, prevailed. And the nagual doubted that he had the ability or the
strength to heal this young man, or resist the black shadow of his death. He
even doubted if he would be able to discover why the spirit had involved him
in a display of such obvious waste.
The nagual could do nothing but stay with the actor, follow him around,
and wait for the opportunity to see in greater depth. Don Juan explained
that a nagual's first reaction, upon being faced with the manifestations of
the spirit, is to see the persons involved. The nagual Elias had been
meticulous about seeing the man the moment he laid eyes on him. He had also
seen the peasant woman who was part of the spirit's manifestation, but he
had seen nothing that, in his judgment, could have warranted the spirit's
display.
In the course of witnessing another seduction, however, the nagual's
ability to see took on a new depth. This time
the actor's adoring fan was the daughter of a rich landowner. And from
the start she was in complete control. The nagual found out about their
rendezvous because he overheard her daring the actor to meet her the next
day. The nagual was hiding across the street at dawn when the young woman
left her house, and instead of going to early mass she went to join the
actor. The actor was waiting for her and she coaxed him into following her
to the open fields. He appeared to hesitate, but she taunted him and would
not allow him to withdraw.
As the nagual watched them sneaking away, he had an absolute conviction
that something was going to happen on that day which neither of the players
was anticipating. He saw that the actor's black shadow had grown to almost
twice his height. The nagual deduced from the mysterious hard look in the
young woman's eyes that she too had felt the black shadow of death at an
intuitive level. The actor seemed preoccupied. He did not laugh as he had on
other occasions.
They walked quite a distance. At one point, they spotted the nagual
following them, but he instantly pretended to be working the land, a peasant
who belonged there. That made the couple relax and allowed the nagual to
come closer.
Then the moment came when the actor tossed off his clothes and showed
himself to the girl. But instead of swooning and falling into his arms as
his other conquests had, this girl began to hit him. She kicked and punched
him mercilessly and stepped on his bare toes, making him cry out with pain.
The nagual knew the man had not threatened or harmed the young woman.
He had not laid a finger on her. She was the only one fighting. He was
merely trying to parry the blows, and persistently, but without enthusiasm,
trying to entice her by showing her his genitals.
The nagual was filled with both revulsion and admiration. He could
perceive that the actor was an irredeemable libertine, but he could also
perceive equally easily that there was something unique, although revolting,
about him. It baffled the nagual to see that the man's connecting link with
the spirit was extraordinarily clear.
Finally the attack ended. The woman stopped beating the actor. But
then, instead of running away, she surrendered, lay down and told the actor
he could now have his way with her.
The nagual observed that the man was so exhausted he was practically
unconscious. Yet despite his fatigue he went right ahead and consummated his
seduction.
The nagual was laughing and pondering that useless man's great stamina
and determination when the woman screamed and the actor began to gasp. The
nagual saw how the black shadow struck the actor. It went like a dagger,
with pinpoint accuracy into his gap.
Don Juan made a digression at this point to elaborate on something he
had explained before: he had described the gap, an opening in our luminous
shell at the height of the navel, where the force of death ceaselessly
struck. What don Juan now explained was that when death hit healthy beings
it was with a ball-like blow - like the punch of a fist. But when beings
were dying, death struck them with a dagger-like thrust.
Thus the nagual Elias knew without any question that the actor was as
good as dead, and his death automatically finished his own interest in the
spirit's designs. There were no designs left; death had leveled everything.
He rose from his hiding place and started to leave when something made
him hesitate. It was the young woman's calmness. She was nonchalantly
putting on the few pieces of clothing she had taken off and was whistling
tunelessly as if nothing had happened.
And then the nagual saw that in relaxing to accept the presence of
death, the man's body had released a protecting veil and revealed his true
nature. He was a double man of tremendous resources, capable of creating a
screen for protection or disguise - a natural sorcerer and a perfect
candidate for a nagual apprentice, had it not been for the black shadow of
death.
The nagual was completely taken aback by that sight. He now understood
the designs of the spirit, but failed to comprehend how such a useless man
could fit in the sorcerers' scheme of things.
The woman in the meantime had stood up and without so much as a glance
at the man, whose body was contorting with death spasms, walked away.
The nagual then saw her luminosity and realized that her extreme
aggressiveness was the result of an enormous flow of superfluous energy. He
became convinced that if she did not put that energy to sober use, it would
get the best of her and there was no telling what misfortunes it would cause
her.
As the nagual watched the unconcern with which she walked away, he
realized that the spirit had given him another manifestation. He needed to
be calm, nonchalant. He needed to act as if he had nothing to lose and
intervene for the hell of it. In true nagual fashion he decided to tackle
the impossible, with no one except the spirit as witness.
Don Juan commented that it took incidents like this to test whether a
nagual is the real thing or a fake. Naguals make decisions. With no regard
for the consequences they take action or choose not to. Imposters ponder and
become paralyzed. The nagual Elias* having made his decision, walked calmly
to the side of the dying man and did the first thing his body, not his mind,
compelled him to do: he struck the man's assemblage point to cause him to
enter into heightened awareness. He struck him frantically again and again
until his assemblage point moved. Aided by the force of death itself, the
nagual's blows sent the man's assemblage point to a place where death no
longer mattered, and there he stopped dying.
By the time the actor was breathing again, the nagual had become aware
of the magnitude of his responsibility. If the man was to fend off the force
of his death, it would be necessary for him to remain in deep heightened
awareness until death had been repelled. The man's advanced physical
deterioration meant he could not be moved from the spot or he would
instantly die. The nagual did the only thing possible under the
circumstances: he built a shack around the body. There, for three months he
nursed the totally immobilized man.
My rational thoughts took over, and instead of just listening, I wanted
to know how the nagual Elias could build a shack on someone else's land. I
was aware of the rural peoples' passion about land ownership and its
accompanying feelings of territoriality.
Don Juan admitted that he had asked the same question himself. And the
nagual Elias had said that the spirit itself had made it possible. This was
the case with everything a nagual undertook, providing he followed the
spirit's manifestations.
The first thing the nagual Elias did, when the actor was breathing
again, was to run after the young woman. She was an important part of the
spirit's manifestation. He caught up with her not too far from the spot
where the actor lay barely alive. Rather than talking to her about the man's
plight and trying to convince her to help him, he again assumed total
responsibility for his actions and jumped on her like a lion, striking her
assemblage point a mighty blow. Both she and the actor were capable of
sustaining life or death blows. Her assemblage point moved, but began to
shift erratically once it was loose.
The nagual carried the young woman to where the actor lay. Then he
spent the entire day trying to keep her from losing her mind and the man
from losing his life. . When he was fairly certain he had a degree of
control he went to the woman's father and told him that lightning must have
struck his daughter and made her temporarily mad. He took the father to
where she lay and said that the young man, whoever he was, had taken the
whole charge of the lightning with his body, thus saving the girl from
certain death, but injuring himself to the point that he could not be moved.
The grateful father helped the nagual build the shack for the man who
had saved his daughter. And in three months the nagual accomplished the
impossible. He healed the young man.
When the time came for the nagual to leave, his sense of responsibility
and his duty required him both to warn the young woman about her excess
energy and the injurious consequences it would have on her life and well
being, and to ask her to join the sorcerers' world, as that would be the
only defense against her self-destructive strength.
The woman did not respond. And the nagual Elias was obliged to tell her
what every nagual has said to a prospective apprentice throughout the ages:
that sorcerers speak of sorcery as a magical, mysterious bird which has
paused in its flight for a moment in order to give man hope and purpose;
that sorcerers live under the wing of that bird, which they call the bird of
wisdom, the bird of freedom; that they nourish it with their dedication and
impeccability. He told her that sorcerers knew the flight of the bird of
freedom was always a straight line, since it had no way of making a loop, no
way of circling back and returning; and that the bird of freedom could do
only two things, take sorcerers along, or leave them behind.
The nagual Elias could not talk to the young actor, who was still
mortally ill, in the same way. The young man did not have much of a choice.
Still, the nagual told him that if he wanted to be cured, he would have to
follow the nagual unconditionally. The actor accepted the terms instantly.
The day the nagual Elias and the actor started back home, the young
woman was waiting silently at the edge of town. She carried no suitcases,
not even a basket. She seemed to have come merely to see them off. The
nagual kept walking without looking at her, but the actor, being carried on
a stretcher, strained to say goodbye to her. She laughed and wordlessly
merged into the nagual's party. She had no doubts and no problem about
leaving everything behind. She had understood perfectly that there was no
second chance for her, that the bird of freedom either took sorcerers along
or left them behind.
Don Juan commented that that was not surprising. The force of the
nagual's personality was always so overwhelming that he was practically
irresistible, and the nagual Elias had affected those two people deeply. He
had had three months of daily interaction to accustom them to his
consistency, his detachment, his objectivity. They had become enchanted by
his sobriety and, above all, by his total dedication to them. Through his
example and his actions, the nagual Elfas had given them a sustained view of
the sorcerers' world: supportive and nurturing, yet utterly demanding. It
was a world that admitted very few mistakes.
Don Juan reminded me then of something he had repeated to me often but
which I had always managed not to think about. He said that I should not
forget, even for an instant, that the bird of freedom had very little
patience with indecision, and when it flew away, it never returned.
The chilling resonance of his voice made the surroundings, which only a
second before had been peacefully dark, burst with immediacy. Don Juan
summoned the peaceful darkness back as fast as he had summoned urgency. He
punched me lightly on the arm. "That woman was so powerful that she could
dance circles around anyone," he said. "Her name was Talia."
THE KNOCK OF THE SPIRIT
The Abstract
We returned to don Juan's house in the early hours of the morning. It
took us a long time to climb down the mountain, mainly because I was afraid
of stumbling into a precipice in the dark, and don Juan had to keep stopping
to catch the breath he lost laughing at me.
I was dead tired, but I could not fall asleep. Before noon, it began to
rain. The sound of the heavy downpour on the tile roof, instead of making me
feel drowsy, removed every trace of sleepiness.
I got up and went to look for don Juan. I found him dozing in a chair.
The moment I approached him he was wide-awake. I said good morning.
"You seem to be having no trouble falling asleep," I commented.
"When you have been afraid or upset, don't lie down to sleep," he said
without looking at me. "Sleep sitting up on a soft chair as I'm doing."
He had suggested once that if I wanted to give my body healing rest I
should take long naps, lying on my stomach with my face turned to the left
and my feet over the foot of the bed. In order to avoid being cold, he
recommended I
put a soft pillow over my shoulders, away from my neck, and wear heavy
socks, or just leave my shoes on.
When I first heard his suggestion, I thought he was being funny, but
later changed my mind. Sleeping in that position helped me rest
extraordinarily well. When I commented on the surprising results, he advised
that I follow his suggestions to the letter without bothering to believe or
disbelieve him.
I suggested to don Juan that he might have told me the night before
about the sleeping in a sitting position. I explained to him that the cause
of my sleeplessness, besides my extreme fatigue, was a strange concern about
what he had told me in the sorcerer's cave.
"Cut it out!" he exclaimed. "You've seen and heard infinitely more
distressing things without losing a moment's sleep. Something else is
bothering you."
For a moment I thought he meant I was not being truthful with him about
my real preoccupation. I began to explain, but he kept talking as if I had
not spoken.
"You stated categorically last night that the cave didn't make you feel
ill at ease," he said. "Well, it obviously did. Last night I didn't pursue
the subject of the cave any further because I was waiting to observe your
reaction."
Don Juan explained that the cave had been designed by sorcerers in
ancient times to serve as a catalyst. Its shape had been carefully
constructed to accommodate two people as two fields of energy. The theory of
the sorcerers was that the nature of the rock and the manner in which it had
been carved allowed the two bodies, the two luminous balls, to intertwine
their energy.
"I took you to that cave on purpose," he continued, "not because I like
the place - I don't - but because it was created as an instrument to push
the apprentice deep into heightened awareness. But unfortunately, as it
helps, it also obscures issues. The ancient sorcerers were not given to
thought. They leaned toward action."
"You always say that your benefactor was like that," I said.
"That's my own exaggeration," he answered, "very much like when I say
you're a fool. My benefactor was a modern nagual, involved in the pursuit of
freedom, but he leaned toward action instead of thoughts. You're a modern
nagual, involved in the same quest, but you lean heavily toward the
aberrations of reason."
He must have thought his comparison was very funny; his laughter echoed
in the empty room.
When I brought the conversation back to the subject of the cave, he
pretended not to hear me. I knew he was pretending because of the glint in
his eyes and the way he smiled.
"Last night, I deliberately told you the first abstract core," he said,
"in the hope that by reflecting on the way I have acted with you over the
years you'll get an idea about the other cores. You've been with me for a
long time so you know me very well. During every minute of our association I
have tried to adjust my actions and thoughts to the patterns of the abstract
cores.
"The nagual Elias's story is another matter. Although it seems to be a
story about people, it is really a story about intent. Intent creates
edifices before us and invites us to enter them. This is the way sorcerers
understand what is happening around them."
Don Juan reminded me that I had always insisted on trying to discover
the underlying order in everything he said to me. I thought he was
criticizing me for my attempt to turn whatever he was teaching me into a
social science problem. I began to tell him that my outlook had changed
under his influence. He stopped me and smiled.
"You really don't think too well," he said and sighed. "I want you to
understand the underlying order of what I teach you. My objection is to what
you think is the underlying order. To you, it means secret procedures or a
hidden consistency. To me, it means two things: both the edifice that intent
manufactures in the blink of an eye and places in front of us to enter, and
the signs it gives us so we won't get lost once we are inside.
"As you can see, the story of the nagual Elias was more than merely an
account of the sequential details that made up the event," he went on.
"Underneath all that was the edifice of intent. And the story was meant to
give you an idea of what the naguals of the past were like, so that you
would recognize how they acted in order to adjust their thoughts and actions
to the edifices of intent"
There was a prolonged silence. I did not have anything to say. Rather
than let the conversation die, I said the first thing that came into my
mind. I said that from the stories I had heard about the nagual Elfas I had
formed a very positive opinion of him. I liked the nagual Elfas, but for
unknown reasons, everything don Juan had told me about the nagual Julian
bothered me.
The mere mention of my discomfort delighted don Juan beyond measure. He
had to stand up from his chair lest he choke on his laughter. He put his arm
on my shoulder and said that we either loved or hated those who were
reflections of ourselves.
Again a silly self-consciousness prevented me from asking him what he
meant. Don Juan kept on laughing, obviously aware of my mood. He finally
commented that the nagual Julian was like a child whose sobriety and
moderation came always from without. He had no inner discipline beyond his
training as an apprentice in sorcery.
I had an irrational urge to defend myself. I told don Juan that my
discipline came from within me.
"Of course," he said patronizingly. "You just can't expect to be
exactly like him." And began to laugh again.
Sometimes don Juan exasperated me so that I was ready to yell. But my
mood did not last. It dissipated so rapidly that another concern began to
loom. I asked don Juan if it Was possible that I had entered into heightened
awareness Without being conscious of it? Or maybe I had remained in it for
days?
"At this stage you enter into heightened awareness all by yourself," he
said. "Heightened awareness is a mystery Only for our reason. In practice,
it's very simple. As with everything else, we complicate matters by trying
to make the immensity that surrounds us reasonable."
He remarked that I should be thinking about the abstract core he had
given me instead of arguing uselessly about my person.
I told him that I had been thinking about it all morning and had come
to realize that the metaphorical theme of the story was the manifestations
of the spirit. What I could not discern, however, was the abstract core he
was talking
about. It had to be something unstated.
"I repeat," he said, as if he were a schoolteacher drilling his
students, "the Manifestations of the Spirit is the name for the first
abstract core in the sorcery stories. Obviously, what sorcerers recognize as
an abstract core is something that bypasses you at this moment. That part
Which escapes you sorcerers know as the edifice of intent, or the silent
voice of the spirit, or the ulterior arrangement of the abstract."
I said I understood ulterior to mean something not Overtly revealed, as
in "ulterior motive." And he replied that in this case ulterior meant more;
it meant knowledge without words, outside our immediate comprehension -
especially mine. He allowed that the comprehension he was referring to was
merely beyond my aptitudes of the moment, not beyond my ultimate
possibilities for understanding.
"If the abstract cores are beyond my comprehension what's the point of
talking about them?" I asked.
"The rule says that the abstract cores and the sorcery stories must be
told at this point," he replied. "And some day the ulterior arrangement of
the abstract, which is knowledge without words or the edifice of intent
inherent in the stories, will be revealed to you by the stories themselves."
I still did not understand.
"The ulterior arrangement of the abstract is not merely the order in
which the abstract cores were presented to you," he explained, "or what they
have in common either, nor even the web that joins them. Rather it's to know
the abstract directly, without the intervention of language."
He scrutinized me in silence from head to toe with the obvious purpose
of seeing me.
"It's not evident to you yet," he declared.
He made a gesture of impatience, even short temper, as though he were
annoyed at my slowness. And that worried me. Don Juan was not given to
expressions of psychological displeasure.
"It has nothing to do with you or your actions," he said when I asked
if he was angry or disappointed with me. "It was a thought that crossed my
mind the moment I saw you. There is a feature in your luminous being that
the old sorcerers would have given anything to have."
"Tell me what it is," I demanded.
"I'll remind you of this some other time," he said.
"Meanwhile, let's continue with the element that propels us: the
abstract. The element without which there could be no warrior's path, nor
any warriors in search of knowledge."
He said that the difficulties I was experiencing were nothing new to
him. He himself had gone through agonies in order to understand the ulterior
order of the abstract. And had it not been for the helping hand of the
nagual Elias, he would have wound up just like his benefactor, all action
and very little understanding.
"What was the nagual Elias like?" I asked, to change the subject.
"He was not like his disciple at all," don Juan said. "He was an
Indian. Very dark and massive. He had rough features, big mouth, strong
nose, small black eyes, thick black hair with no gray in it. He was shorter
than the nagual Julian and had big hands and feet. He was very humble and
very wise, but he had no flare. Compared with my benefactor, he was dull.
Always all by himself, pondering questions. The nagual Julian used to joke
that his teacher imparted wisdom by the ton. Behind his back he used to call
him the nagual Tonnage.
"I never saw the reason for his jokes," don Juan went on. "To me the
nagual Elias was like a breath of fresh air. He would patiently explain
everything to me. Very much as I explain things to you, but perhaps with a
bit more of something. I wouldn't call it compassion, but rather, empathy.
Warriors are incapable of feeling compassion because they no longer feel
sorry for themselves. Without the driving force of self-pity, compassion is
meaningless."
"Are you saying, don Juan, that a warrior is all for himself?"
"In a way, yes. For a warrior everything begins and ends with himself.
However, his contact with the abstract causes him to overcome his feeling of
self-importance. Then the self becomes abstract and impersonal.
"The nagual Elias felt that our lives and our personalities were quite
similar," don Juan continued. "For this reason, he felt obliged to help me.
I don't feel that similarity with you, so I suppose I regard you very much
the way the nagual Julian used to regard me."
Don Juan said that the nagual Elias took him under his wing from the
very first day he arrived at his benefactor's house to start his
apprenticeship and began to explain what was taking place in his training,
regardless of whether don Juan was capable of understanding. His urge to
help don Juan was so intense that he practically held him prisoner. He
protected him in this manner from the nagual Julian's harsh onslaughts.
"At the beginning, I used to stay at the nagual Elfas's house all the
time," don Juan continued. "And I loved it. In my benefactor's house I was
always on the lookout, on guard, afraid of what he was going to do to me
next. But in the Nagual Elias's home I felt confident, at ease.
"My benefactor used to press me mercilessly. And I couldn't figure out
why he was pressuring me so hard. I thought that the man was plain crazy."
Don Juan said that the nagual Elias was an Indian from the state of
Oaxaca, who had been taught by another nagual named Rosendo, who came from
the same area. Don Juan described the nagual Elias as being a very
conservative man who cherished his privacy. And yet he was a famous healer
and sorcerer, not only in Oaxaca, but in all of southern Mexico.
Nonetheless, in spite of his occupation and notoriety, he lived in complete
isolation at the opposite end of the country, in northern Mexico.
Don Juan stopped talking. Raising his eyebrows, he fixed me with a
questioning look. But all I wanted was for him to continue his story.
"Every single time I think you should ask questions, you don't," he
said. "I'm sure you heard me say that the nagual Elias was a famous sorcerer
who dealt with people daily in southern Mexico, and at the same time he was
a hermit in northern Mexico. Doesn't that arouse your curiosity?"
I felt abysmally stupid. I told him that the thought had crossed my
mind, as he was telling me those facts, that the man must have had terrible
difficulty commuting.
Don Juan laughed, and, since he had made me aware of the question, I
asked how it had been possible for the nagual Elias to be in two places at
once.
"Dreaming is a sorcerer's jet plane," he said. The nagual Elias was a
dreamer as my benefactor was a stalker. He was able to create and project
what sorcerers know as the dreaming body, or the Other, and to be in two
distant places at the same time. With his dreaming body, he could carry on
his business as a sorcerer, and with his natural self be a recluse."
I remarked that it amazed me that I could accept so easily the premise
that the nagual Elias had the ability to project a solid three-dimensional
image of himself, and yet could not for the life of me understand the
explanations about the abstract cores.
Don Juan said that I could accept the idea of the nagual Elfas's dual
life because the spirit was making final adjustments in my capacity for
awareness. And I exploded into a barrage of protests at the obscurity of his
statement.
"It isn't obscure," he said. "It's a statement of fact. You could say
that it's an incomprehensible fact for the moment, but the moment will
change."
Before I could reply, he began to talk again about the nagual Elias. He
said that the nagual Elias had a very inquisitive mind and could work well
with his hands. In his journeys as a dreamer he saw many objects, which he
copied in wood and forged iron. Don Juan assured me that some of those
models were of a haunting, exquisite beauty.
"What kind of objects were the originals?" I asked.
"There's no way of knowing," don Juan said. "You've got to consider
that because he was an Indian the nagual Elias went into his dreaming
journeys the way a wild animal prowls for food. An animal never shows up at
a site when there are signs of activity. He comes only when no one is
around. The nagual Elias, as a solitary dreamer, visited, let's say, the
junkyard of infinity, when no one was around - and copied whatever he saw,
but never knew what those things were used for, or their source."
Again, I had no trouble accepting what he was saying. The idea did not
appear to me farfetched in any way. I was about to comment when he
interrupted me with a gesture of his eyebrows. He then continued his account
about the nagual Elias.
"Visiting him was for me the ultimate treat," he said, "and
simultaneously, a source of strange guilt. I used to get bored to death
there. Not because die nagual Elfas was boring, but because the nagual
Julian had no peers and he spoiled anyone for life."
"But I thought you were confident and at ease in the nagual Elias's
house," I said.
"I was, and that was the source of my guilt and my imagined problem.
Like you, I loved to torment myself. I think at the very beginning I found
peace in the nagual Elias's company, but later on, when I understood the
nagual Julian better, I went his way."
He told me that the nagual Elias's house had an open, roofed section in
the front, where he had a forge and a
carpentry bench and tools. The tiled-roof adobe house consisted of a
huge room with a dirt floor where he lived with five women seers, who were
actually his wives. There were also four men, sorcerer-seers of his party
who lived in small houses around the nagual's house. They were all Indians
from different parts of the country who had migrated to northern Mexico.
"The nagual Elias had great respect for sexual energy," don Juan said.
"He believed it has been given to us so we can use it in dreaming. He
believed dreaming had fallen into disuse because it can upset the precarious
mental balance of susceptible people.
"I've taught you dreaming the same way he taught me," he continued. "He
taught me that while we dream the assemblage point moves very gently and
naturally. Mental balance is nothing but the fixing of the assemblage point
on one spot we're accustomed to. If dreams make that point move, and
dreaming is used to control that natural movement, and sexual energy is
needed for dreaming, the result is sometimes disastrous when sexual energy
is dissipated in sex instead of dreaming. Then dreamers move their
assemblage point erratically and lose their minds."
"What are you trying to tell me, don Juan?" I asked because I felt that
the subject of dreaming had not been a natural drift in the conversation.
"You are a dreamer" he said. "If you're not careful with your sexual
energy, you might as well get used to the idea of erratic shifts of your
assemblage point. A moment ago you were bewildered by your reactions. Well,
your assemblage point moves almost erratically, because your sexual energy
is not in balance." I made a stupid and inappropriate comment about the sex
life of adult males.
"Our sexual energy is what governs dreaming," he explained. "The nagual
Elfas taught me - and I taught you - that you either make love with your
sexual energy or you dream with it. There is no other way. The reason I
mention it at all is because you are having great difficulty shifting your
assemblage point to grasp our last topic: the abstract.
"The same thing happened to me," don Juan went on. "It was only when my
sexual energy was freed from the world that everything fit into place. That
is the rule for dreamers. Stalkers are the opposite. My benefactor was, you
could say, a sexual libertine both as an average man and as a nagual."
Don Juan seemed to be on the verge of revealing his benefactor's
doings, but he obviously changed his mind. He shook his head and said that I
was way too stiff for such revelations. I did not insist.
He said that the nagual Elfas had the sobriety that only dreamers
acquired after inconceivable battles with themselves. He used his sobriety
to plunge himself into the task of answering don Juan's questions.
"The nagual Elfas explained that my difficulty in understanding the
spirit was the same as his own," don Juan continued. "He thought there were
two different issues. One, the need to understand indirectly what the spirit
is, and the other, to understand the spirit directly.
"You're having problems with the first. Once you understand what the
spirit is, the second issue will be resolved automatically, and vice versa.
If the spirit speaks to you, using its silent words, you will certainly know
immediately what the spirit is."
He said that the nagual Elfas believed that the difficulty was our
reluctance to accept the idea that knowledge could exist without words to
explain it.
"But I have no difficulty accepting that," I said.
"Accepting this proposition is not as easy as saying you accept it,"
don Juan said. "The nagual Elfas used to tell me that the whole of humanity
has moved away from the abstract, although at one time we must have been
close to it. It must have been our sustaining force. And then something
happened and pulled us away from the abstract. Now we can't get back to it.
He used to say that it takes years for an apprentice to be able to go back
to the abstract, that is, to know that knowledge and language can exist
independent of each other."
Don Juan repeated that the crux of our difficulty in going back to the
abstract was our refusal to accept that we could know without words or even
without thoughts.
I was going to argue that he was talking nonsense when I got the strong
feeling I was missing something and that his point was of crucial importance
to me. He was really trying to tell me something, something I either could
not grasp or which could not be told completely.
"Knowledge and language are separate," he repeated softly.
And I was just about to say, "I know it," as if indeed I knew it, when
I caught myself.
"I told you there is no way to talk about the spirit," he continued,
"because the spirit can only be experienced. Sorcerers try to explain this
condition when they say that the spirit is nothing you can see or feel. But
it's there looming over us always. Sometimes it comes to some of us. Most of
the time it seems indifferent."
I kept quiet. And he continued to explain. He said that the spirit in
many ways was a sort of wild animal. It kept its distance from us until a
moment when something enticed it forward. It was then that the spirit
manifested itself.
I raised the point that if the spirit wasn't an entity, or a presence,
and had no essence, how could anyone entice it?
"Your problem," he said, "is that you consider only your own idea of
what's abstract. For instance, the inner essence of man, or the fundamental
principle, are abstracts for you. Or perhaps something a bit less vague,
such as character, volition, courage, dignity, honor. The spirit, of course,
can be described in terms of all of these. And that's what's so confusing -
that it's all these and none of them."
He added that what I considered abstractions were either the opposites
of all the practicalities I could think of or things I had decided did not
have concrete existence.
"Whereas for a sorcerer an abstract is something with no parallel in
the human condition," he said.
"But they're the same thing," I shouted. "Don't you see that we're both
talking about the same thing?"
"We are not," he insisted. "For a sorcerer, the spirit is an abstract
simply because he knows it without words or even thoughts. It's an abstract
because he can't conceive what the spirit is. Yet without the slightest
chance or desire to understand it, a sorcerer handles the spirit. He
recognizes it, beckons it, entices it, becomes familiar with it, and
expresses it with his acts."
I shook my head in despair. I could not see the difference.
"The root of your misconception is that I have used the term 'abstract'
to describe the spirit," he said. "For you, abstracts are words which
describe states of intuition. An example is the word 'spirit,' which doesn't
describe reason or pragmatic experience, and which, of course, is of no use
to you other than to tickle your fancy."
I was furious with don Juan. I called him obstinate and he laughed at
me. He suggested that if I would think about the proposition that knowledge
might be independent of language, without bothering to understand it,
perhaps I could see the light.
"Consider this," he said. "It was not the act of meeting me that
mattered to you. The day I met you, you met the abstract. But since you
couldn't talk about it, you didn't notice it. Sorcerers meet the abstract
without thinking about it or seeing it or touching it or feeling its
presence."
I remained quiet because I did not enjoy arguing with him. At times I
considered him to be quite willfully abstruse. But don Juan seemed to be
enjoying himself immensely.
The Last Seduction Of Nagual Julian
It was as cool and quiet in the patio of don Juan's house as in the
cloister of a convent. There were a number of large fruit trees planted
extremely close together, which seemed to regulate the temperature and
absorb all noises. When I first came to his house, I had made critical
remarks about the illogical way the fruit trees had been planted. I would
have given them more space. His answer was that those trees were not his
property, they were free and independent warrior trees that had joined his
party of warriors, and that my comments - which applied to regular trees -
were not relevant. His reply sounded metaphorical to me. What I didn't know
then was that don Juan meant everything he said literally.
Don Juan and I were sitting in cane armchairs facing the fruit trees
now. The trees were all bearing fruit. I commented that it was not only a
beautiful sight but an extremely intriguing one, for it was not the fruit
season.
"There is an interesting story about it," he admitted. "As you know,
these trees are warriors of my party. They are bearing now because all the
members of my party have been talking and expressing feelings about our
definitive journey, here in front of them. And the trees know now that when
we embark on our definitive journey, they will accompany us."
I looked at him, astonished.
"I can't leave them behind," he explained. "They are warriors too. They
have thrown their lot in with the nagual's party. And they know how I feel
about them. The assemblage point of trees is located very low in their
enormous luminous shell, and that permits them to know our feelings, for
instance, the feelings we are having now as we discuss my definitive
journey."
I remained quiet, for I did not want to dwell on the subject. Don Juan
spoke and dispelled my mood.
"The second abstract core of the sorcery stories is called the Knock of
the Spirit," he said. "The first core, the Manifestations of the Spirit, is
the edifice that intent builds and places before a sorcerer, then invites
him to enter. It is the edifice of intent seen by a sorcerer. The Knock of
the Spirit is the same edifice seen by the beginner who is invited - or
rather forced - to enter.
"This second abstract core could be a story in itself. The story says
that after the spirit had manifested itself to that man we have talked about
and had gotten no response, the spirit laid a trap for the man. It was a
final subterfuge, not because the man was special, but because the
incomprehensible chain of events of the spirit made that man available at
the very moment that the spirit knocked on the door.
"It goes without saying that whatever the spirit revealed to that man
made no sense to him. In fact, it went against everything the man knew,
everything he was. The man, of course, refused on the spot, and in no
uncertain terms, to have anything to do with the spirit. He wasn't going to
fall for such preposterous nonsense. He knew better. The result was a total
stalemate.
"I can say that this is an idiotic story," he continued. "I can say
that what I've given you is the pacifier for those who are uncomfortable
with the silence of the abstract."
He peered at me for a moment and then smiled.
"You like words," he said accusingly. "The mere idea of silent
knowledge scares you. But stories, no matter how stupid, delight you and
make you feel secure."
His smile was so mischievous that I couldn't help laughing.
Then he reminded me that I had already heard his detailed account of
the first time the spirit had knocked on his door. For a moment I could not
figure out what he was talking about.
"It was not just my benefactor who stumbled upon me as I was dying from
the gunshot," he explained. "The spirit also found me and knocked on my door
that day. My benefactor understood that he was there to be a conduit for the
spirit. Without the spirit's intervention, meeting my benefactor would have
meant nothing."
He said that a nagual can be a conduit only after the spirit has
manifested its willingness to be used - either almost imperceptibly or with
outright commands. It was therefore not possible for a nagual to choose his
apprentices according to his own volition, or his own calculations. But once
the- willingness of the spirit was revealed through omens, the nagual spared
no effort to satisfy it.
"After a lifetime of practice," he continued, "sorcerers, naguals in
particular, know if the spirit is inviting them to enter the edifice being
flaunted before them. They have learned to discipline their connecting links
to intent. So they are always forewarned, always know what the spirit has in
store for them."
Don Juan said that progress along the sorcerers' path was, in general,
a drastic process the purpose of which was to bring this connecting link to
order. The average man's connecting link with intent is practically dead,
and sorcerers begin with a link that is useless, because it does not respond
voluntarily.
He stressed that in order to revive that link sorcerers needed a
rigorous, fierce purpose - a special state of mind called unbending intent.
Accepting that the nagual was the only being capable of supplying unbending
intent was the most difficult part of the sorcerer's apprenticeship. I
argued that I could not see the difficulty.
"An apprentice is someone who is striving to clear and revive his
connecting link with the spirit," he explained. "Once the link is revived,
he is no longer an apprentice, but until that time, in order to keep going
he needs a fierce purpose, which, of course, he doesn't have. So he allows
the nagual to provide the purpose and to do that he has to relinquish his
individuality. That's the difficult part."
He reminded me of something he had told me often: that volunteers were
not welcome in the sorcerers' world, because they already had a purpose of
their own, which made it particularly hard for them to relinquish their
individuality. If the sorcerers' world demanded ideas and actions contrary
to the volunteers' purpose, the volunteers simply refused to change.
"Reviving an apprentice's link is a nagual's most challenging and
intriguing work," don Juan continued, "and one of his biggest headaches too.
Depending, of course, on the apprentice's personality, the designs of the
spirit are either sublimely simple or the most complex labyrinths."
Don Juan assured me that, although I might have had notions to the
contrary, my apprenticeship had not been as onerous to him as his must have
been to his benefactor. He admitted that I had a modicum of self-discipline
that came in very handy, while he had had none whatever. And his benefactor,
in turn, had had even less.
"The difference is discernible in the manifestations of the spirit," he
continued. "In some cases, they are barely noticeable; in my case, they were
commands. I had been shot. Blood was pouring out of a hole in my chest. My
benefactor had to act with speed and sureness, just as his own benefactor
had for him. Sorcerers know that the more difficult the command is, the more
difficult the disciple turns out to be."
Don Juan explained that one of the most advantageous aspects of his
association with two naguals was that he could hear the same stories from
two opposite points of view. For instance, the story about the nagual Elias
and the manifestations of the spirit, from the apprentice's perspective, was
the story of the spirit's difficult knock on his benefactor's door.
"Everything connected with my benefactor was very difficult," he said
and began to laugh. "When he was twenty-four years old, the spirit didn't
just knock on his door, it nearly banged it down."
He said that the story had really begun years earlier, when his
benefactor had been a handsome adolescent from a good family in Mexico City.
He was wealthy, educated, charming, and had a charismatic personality. Women
fell in love-with him at first sight. But he was already self-indulgent and
undisciplined, lazy about anything that did not give him immediate
gratification.
Don Juan said that with that personality and his type of upbringing -
he was the only son of a wealthy widow who,
together with his four adoring sisters, doted on him - he could only
behave one way. He indulged in every impropriety he could think of. Even
among his equally self-indulgent friends, he was seen as a moral delinquent
who lived to do anything that the world considered morally wrong.
In the long run, his excesses weakened him physically and he fell
mortally ill with tuberculosis - the dreaded disease of the time. But his
illness, instead of restraining him, 'created a physical condition in which
he felt more sensual than ever. Since he did not have one iota of
self-control, he gave himself over fully to debauchery, and his health
deteriorated until there was no hope.
The saying that it never rains but it pours was certainly true for don
Juan's benefactor then. As his health declined, his mother, who was his only
source of support and the only restraint on him, died. She left him a
sizable inheritance, which should have supported him adequately for life,
but undisciplined as he was, in a few months he had spent every cent. With
no profession or trade to fall back on, he was left to scrounge for a
living.
Without money he no longer had friends; and even the women who once
loved him turned their backs. For the first time in his life, he found
himself confronting a harsh reality. Considering the state of his health, it
should have been the end. But he was resilient. He decided to work for a
living.
His sensual habits, however, could not be changed, and they forced him
to seek work in the only place he felt comfortable: the theater. His
qualifications were that he was a born ham and had spent most of his adult
life in the company of actresses. He joined a theatrical troupe in the
provinces, away from his familiar circle of friends and
acquaintances, and became a very intense actor, the consumptive hero in
religious and morality plays.
Don Juan commented on the strange irony that had always marked his
benefactor's life. There he was, a perfect reprobate, dying as a result of
his dissolute ways and playing the roles of saints and mystics. He even
played Jesus in the Passion Play during Holy Week.
His health lasted through one theatrical tour of the northern states.
Then two things happened in the city of Durango: his life came to an end and
the spirit knocked on his door.
Both his death and the spirit's knock came at the same time - in broad
daylight in the bushes. His death caught him in the act of seducing a young
woman. He was already extremely weak, and that day he overexerted himself.
The young woman, who was vivacious and strong and madly infatuated, had by
promising to make love induced him to walk to a secluded spot miles from
nowhere. And there she had fought him off for hours. When she finally
submitted, he was completely worn out, and coughing so badly that he could
hardly breathe.
During his last passionate outburst he felt a searing pain in his
shoulder. His chest felt as if it were being ripped apart and a coughing
spell made him retch uncontrollably. Hut his compulsion to seek pleasure
kept him going until his death came in the form of a hemorrhage. It was then
that the spirit made its entry, borne by an Indian who came to his aid.
Earlier he had noticed the Indian following them around, but had not given
him a second thought, absorbed as he was in the seduction.
He saw, as in a dream, the girl. She was not scared nor did she lose
her composure. Quietly and efficiently she put her clothes back on and took
off as fast as a rabbit chased by hounds.
He also saw the Indian rushing to him trying to make him sit up. He
heard him saying idiotic things. He heard him pledging himself to the spirit
and mumbling incomprehensible words in a foreign language. Then the Indian
acted very quickly. Standing behind him, he gave him a smacking blow on the
back.
Very rationally, the dying man deduced that the Indian was trying
either to dislodge the blood clot or to kill him.
As the Indian struck him repeatedly on the back, the dying man became
convinced that the Indian was the woman's lover or husband and was murdering
him. But seeing the intensely brilliant eyes of that Indian, he changed his
mind. He knew that the Indian was simply crazy and was not connected with
the woman. With his last bit of consciousness, he focused his attention on
the man's mumblings. What he was saying was that the power of man was
incalculable, that death existed only because we had intended it since the
moment of our birth, that the intent of death could be suspended by making
the assemblage point change positions.
He then knew that the Indian was totally insane. His situation was so
theatrical - dying at the hands of a crazy Indian mumbling gibberish - that
he vowed he would be a ham actor to the bitter end, and he promised himself
not to die of either the hemorrhaging or the blows, but to die of laughter.
And he laughed until he was dead.
Don Juan remarked that naturally his benefactor could not possibly have
taken the Indian seriously. No one could take such a person seriously,
especially not a prospective apprentice who was not supposed to be
volunteering for the sorcery task.
Don Juan then said that he had given me different versions of what that
sorcery task consisted. He said it would not be presumptuous of him to
disclose that, from the spirit's point of view, the task consisted of
clearing our connecting link with it. The edifice that intent flaunts before
us is, then, a clearinghouse, within which we find not so much the
procedures to clear our connecting link as the silent knowledge that allows
the clearing process to take place. Without that silent knowledge no process
could work, and all we would have would be an indefinite sense of needing
something.
He explained that the events unleashed by sorcerers as a result of
silent knowledge were so simple and yet so abstract that sorcerers had
decided long ago to speak of those events only in symbolic terms. The
manifestations and the knock of the spirit were examples.
Don Juan said that, for instance, a description of what took place
during the initial meeting between a nagual and a prospective apprentice
from the sorcerers' point of view, would be absolutely incomprehensible. It
would be nonsense to explain that the nagual, by virtue of his lifelong
experience, was focusing something we couldn't imagine, his second attention
- the increased awareness gained through sorcery training - on his invisible
connection with some indefinable abstract. He was doing this to emphasize
and clarify someone else's invisible connection with that indefinable
abstract.
He remarked that each of us was barred from silent knowledge by natural
barriers, specific to each individual; and that the most impregnable of my
barriers was the drive to disguise my complacency as independence.
I challenged him to give me a concrete example. I reminded .him that he
had once warned me that a favorite debating ploy was to raise general
criticisms that could not be supported by concrete examples. Don Juan looked
at me and beamed.
"In the past, I used to give you power plants," he said.
"At first, you went to extremes to convince yourself that what you were
experiencing were hallucinations. Then you wanted them to be special
hallucinations. I remember I made fun of your insistence on calling them
didactic hallucinatory experiences."
He said that my need to prove my illusory independence forced me into a
position where I could not accept what he had told me was happening,
although it was what I silently knew for myself. I knew he was employing
power plants, as the very limited tools they were, to make me enter partial
or temporary states of heightened awareness by moving my assemblage point
away from its habitual location.
"You used your barrier of independence to get you over that
obstruction," he went on. "The same barrier has continued to work to this
day, so you still retain that sense of indefinite anguish, perhaps not so
pronounced. Now the question is, how are you arranging your conclusions so
that your current experiences fit into your scheme of complacency?"
I confessed that the only way I could maintain my independence was not
to think about my experiences at all.
Don Juan's hearty laugh nearly made him fall out of his cane chair. He
stood and walked around to catch his breath. He sat down again and composed
himself. He pushed his chair back and crossed his legs.
He said that we, as average men did not know, nor would we ever know,
that it was something utterly real and functional - our connecting link with
intent - which gave us our hereditary preoccupation with fate. He asserted
that during our active lives we never have the chance to go beyond the level
of mere preoccupation, because since time immemorial the lull of daily
affairs has made us drowsy. It is only when our lives are nearly over that
our hereditary
preoccupation with fate begins to take on a different character. It
begins to make us see through the fog of daily affairs. Unfortunately, this
awakening always comes hand in hand with loss of energy caused by aging,
when we have no more strength left to turn our preoccupation into a
pragmatic and positive discovery. At this point, all there is left is an
amorphous, piercing anguish, a longing for something indescribable, and
simple anger at having missed out.
"I like poems for many reasons," he said. "One reason is that they
catch the mood of warriors and explain what can hardly be explained."
He conceded that poets were keenly aware of our connecting link with
the spirit, but that they were aware of it intuitively, not in the
deliberate, pragmatic way of sorcerers.
"Poets have no firsthand knowledge of the spirit," he went on. "That is
why their poems cannot really hit the center of true gestures for the
spirit. They hit pretty close to it, though."
He picked up one of my poetry books from a chair next to him, a
collection by Juan Ramon Jimenez. He opened it to where he had placed a
marker, handed it to me and signaled me to read.
Is it I who walks tonight in my room or is it the beggar who was
prowling in my garden at nightfall?
I look around and find that everything is the same and it is not the
same
Was the window open?
Had I not already fallen asleep?
Was not the garden pale green? . . .
The sly was clear and blue . . .
And there are clouds
and it is windy
and the garden is dark and gloomy.
I think that my hair was black . . .
I was dressed in grey . . .
And my hair is grey
and I am wearing black . . .
Is this my gait?
Does this voice, which now resounds in me,
have the rhythms of the voice I used to have?
Am I myself or am I the beggar
who was prowling in my garden
at nightfall?
I look around . . .
There are clouds and it is windy . . .
The garden is dark and gloomy . . .
I come and go . . . Is it not true that I had already fallen asleep? My
hair is grey . . . And everything is the same and it is not the same . . .
I reread the poem to myself and I caught the poet's mood of impotence
and bewilderment. I asked don Juan if he felt the same.
"I think the poet senses the pressure of aging and the anxiety that
that realization produces," don Juan said. "But that is only one part of it.
The other part, which interests me, is that the poet, although he never
moves his assemblage point, intuits that something extraordinary is at
stake. He intuits with great certainty that there is some unnamed factor,
awesome because of its simplicity, that is determining our fate."
THE TRICKERY OF THE SPIRIT
Dusting The Link With The Spirit
The sun had not yet risen from behind the eastern peaks, but the day
was already hot. As we reached the first steep slope, a couple of miles
along the road from the outskirts of town, don Juan stopped walking and
moved to the side of the paved highway. He sat down by some huge boulders
that had been dynamited from the face of the mountain when they cut the road
and signaled me to join him. We usually stopped there to talk or rest on our
way to the nearby mountains. Don Juan announced that this trip was going to
be long and that we might be in the mountains for days.
"We are going to talk now about the third abstract core," don Juan
said. "It is called the trickery of the spirit, or the trickery of the
abstract, or stalking oneself, or dusting the link."
I was surprised at the variety of names, but said nothing. I waited for
him to continue his explanation.
"And again, as with the first and second core," he went on, "it could
be a story in itself. The story says that after knocking on the door of that
man we've been talking about, and having no success with him, the spirit
used the only means available: trickery. After all, the spirit had resolved
previous impasses with trickery. It was obvious that if it wanted to make an
impact on this man it had to cajole him. So the spirit began to instruct the
man on the mysteries of Sorcery. And the sorcery apprenticeship became what
it is: a route of artifice and subterfuge.
"The story says that the spirit cajoled the man by making him shift
back and forth between levels of awareness to show him how to save energy
needed to strengthen his connecting link."
Don Juan told me that if we apply his story to a modern netting we had
the case of the nagual, the living conduit of the spirit, repeating the
structure of this abstract core and resorting to artifice and subterfuge in
order to teach.
Suddenly he stood and started to walk toward the mountain range. I
followed him and we started our climb, side by side.
In the very late afternoon we reached the top of the high mountains.
Even at that altitude it was still very warm. All day we had followed a
nearly invisible trail. Finally we reached a small clearing, an ancient
lookout post commanding the north and west.
We sat there and don Juan returned our conversation to the sorcery
stories. He said that now I knew the story of intent manifesting itself to
the nagual Elias and the story of the spirit knocking on the nagual Julian's
door. And I knew how he had met the spirit, and I certainly could not forget
how I had met it. All these stories, he declared, had the same structure;
only the characters differed. Each story was an abstract tragicomedy with
one abstract player, intent, and two human actors, the nagual and his
apprentice. The script was the abstract core.
I thought I had finally understood what he meant, but I could not quite
explain even to myself what it was I understood, nor could I explain it to
don Juan. When I tried to put my thoughts into words I found myself
babbling.
Don Juan seemed to recognize my state of mind. He suggested that I
relax and listen. He told me his next story was about the process of
bringing an apprentice into the realm of the spirit, a process sorcerers
called the trickery of the spirit, or dusting the connecting link to intent.
"I've already told you the story of how the nagual Julian took me to
his house after I was shot and tended my wound until I recovered," don Juan
continued. "But I didn't tell you how he dusted my link, how he taught me to
stalk myself.
"The first thing a nagual does with his prospective apprentice is to
trick him. That is, he gives him a jolt on his connecting link to the
spirit. There are two ways of doing this. One is through seminormal
channels, which I used with you, and the other is by means of outright
sorcery, which my benefactor used on me."
Don Juan again told me the story of how his benefactor had convinced
the people who had gathered at the road that the wounded man was his son.
Then he had paid some men to carry don Juan, unconscious from shock and loss
of blood, to his own house. Don Juan woke there, days later, and found a
kind old man and his fat wife tending his wound.
The old man said his name was Belisario and that his wife was a famous
healer and that both of them were healing his wound. Don Juan told them he
had no money, and Belisario suggested that when he recovered, payment of
some sort could be arranged.
Don Juan said that he was thoroughly confused, which was nothing new to
him. He was just a muscular, reckless twenty-year-old Indian, with no
brains, no formal education, and a terrible temper. He had no conception of
gratitude. He thought it was very kind of the old man and his wife to have
helped him, but his intention was to wait for his wound to heal and then
simply vanish in the middle of the night.
When he had recovered enough and was ready to flee, old Belisario took
him into a room and in trembling whispers disclosed that the house where
they were staying belonged to a monstrous man who was holding him and his
wife prisoner. He asked don Juan to help them to regain their freedom, to
escape from their captor and tormentor. Before don Juan could reply, a
monstrous fish-faced man right out of a horror tale burst into the room, as
if he had been listening behind the door. He was greenish-gray, had only one
unblinking eye in the middle of his forehead, and was as big as a door. He
lurched at don Juan, hissing like a serpent, ready to tear him apart, and
frightened him so greatly that he fainted.
"His way of giving me a jolt on my connecting link with the spirit was
masterful." Don Juan laughed. "My benefactor, of course, had shifted me into
heightened awareness prior to the monster's entrance, so that what I
actually saw as a monstrous man was what sorcerers call an inorganic being,
a formless energy field."
Don Juan said that he knew countless cases in which his benefactor's
devilishness created hilariously embarrassing situations for all his
apprentices, especially for don Juan himself, whose seriousness and
stiffness made him the perfect subject for his benefactor's didactic jokes.
He added as an afterthought that it went without saying that these jokes
entertained his benefactor immensely.
"If you think I laugh at you - which I do - it's nothing compared with
how he laughed at me," don Juan continued. "My devilish benefactor had
learned to weep to hide his laughter. You just can't imagine how he used to
cry when I first began my apprenticeship."
Continuing with his story, don Juan stated that his life was never the
same after the shock of seeing that monstrous man. His benefactor made sure
of it. Don Juan explained that once a nagual has introduced his prospective
disciple, especially his nagual disciple, to trickery he must struggle to
assure his compliance. This compliance could be of two different kinds.
Either the prospective disciple is so disciplined and tuned that only his
decision to join the nagual is needed, as had been the case with young
Talfa. Or the prospective disciple is someone with little or no discipline,
in which case a nagual has to expend time and a great deal of labor to
convince his disciple.
In don Juan's case, because he was a wild young peasant without a
thought in his head, the process of reeling him in took bizarre turns.
Soon after the first jolt, his benefactor gave him a second one by
showing don Juan his ability to transform himself. One day his benefactor
became a young man. Don Juan was incapable of conceiving of this
transformation as anything but an example of a consummate actor's art. "How
did he accomplish those changes?" I asked. "He was both a magician and an
artist," don Juan replied. "His magic was that he transformed himself by
moving his assemblage point into the position that would bring on whatever
particular change he desired. And his art was the perfection of his
transformations."
"I don't quite understand what you're telling me," I said. Don Juan
said that perception is the hinge for everything man is or does, and that
perception is ruled by the location of the assemblage point. Therefore, if
that point changes positions, man's perception of the world changes
accordingly. The sorcerer who knew exactly where to place his assemblage
point could become anything he wanted.
"The nagual Julian's proficiency in moving his assemblage point was so
magnificent that he could elicit the subtlest transformations," don Juan
continued. "When a sorcerer becomes a crow, for instance, it is definitely a
great accomplishment. But it entails a vast and therefore a gross shift of
the assemblage point. However, moving it to the position of a fat man, or an
old man, requires the minutest shift and the keenest knowledge of human
nature."
"I'd rather avoid thinking or talking about those things as facts," I
said.
Don Juan laughed as if I had said the funniest thing imaginable.
"Was there a reason for your benefactor's transformations?" I asked.
"Or was he just amusing himself?"
"Don't be stupid. Warriors don't do anything just to amuse themselves,"
he replied. "His transformations were strategical. They were dictated by
need, like his transformation from old to young. Now and then there were
funny consequences, but that's another matter."
I reminded him that I had asked before how his benefactor learned those
transformations. He had told me then that his benefactor had a teacher, but
would not tell me who.
"That very mysterious sorcerer who is our ward taught him," don Juan
replied curtly.
"What mysterious sorcerer is that?" I asked.
"The death defier," he said and looked at me questioningly.
For all the sorcerers of don Juan's party the death defier was a most
vivid character. According to them, the death defier was a sorcerer of
ancient times. He had succeeded in surviving to the present day by
manipulating his assemblage point, making it move in specific ways to
specific locations within his total energy field. Such maneuvers had
permitted his awareness and life force to persist.
Don Juan had told me about the agreement that the seers of his lineage
had entered into with the death defier centuries before. He made gifts to
them in exchange for vital energy. Because of this agreement, they
considered him their ward and called him "the tenant."
Don Juan had explained that sorcerers of ancient times were expert at
making the assemblage point move. In doing so they had discovered
extraordinary things about perception, but they had also discovered how easy
it was to get lost in aberration. The death defier's situation was for don
Juan a classic example of an aberration.
Don Juan used to repeat every chance he could that if the assemblage
point was pushed by someone who not only saw it but also had enough energy
to move it, it slid, within the luminous ball, to whatever location the
pusher directed. Its brilliance was enough to light up the threadlike energy
fields it touched. The resulting perception of the world was as complete as,
but not the same as, our normal perception of everyday life, therefore,
sobriety was crucial to dealing with the moving of the assemblage point.
Continuing his story, don Juan said that he quickly became accustomed
to thinking of the old man who had saved his life as really a young man
masquerading as old. But one day the young man was again the old Belisario
don Juan had first met. He and the woman don Juan thought was his wife
packed their bags, and two smiling men with a team of mules appeared out of
nowhere.
Don Juan laughed, savoring his story. He said that while the muleteers
packed the mules, Belisario pulled him aside and pointed out that he and his
wife were again disguised.
He was again an old man, and his beautiful wife was a fat irascible
Indian.
"I was so young and stupid that only the obvious had value for me," don
Juan continued. "Just a couple of days before, I had seen his incredible
transformation from a feeble man in his seventies to a vigorous young man in
his mid-twenties, and I took his word that old age was just a disguise. His
wife had also changed from a sour, fat Indian to a beautiful slender young
woman. The woman, of course, hadn't transformed herself the way my
benefactor had. He had simply changed the woman. Of course, I could have
seen everything at that time, but wisdom always comes to us painfully and in
driblets."
Don Juan said that the old man assured him that his wound was healed
although he did not feel quite well yet. He then embraced don Juan and in a
truly sad voice whispered, "the monster has liked you so much that he has
released me and my wife from bondage and taken you as his sole servant."
"I would have laughed at him," don Juan went on, "had it not been for a
deep animal growling and a frightening rattle that came from the monster's
rooms."
Don Juan's eyes were shining with inner delight. I wanted to remain
serious, but could not help laughing.
Belisario, aware of don Juan's fright, apologized profusely for the
twist of fate that had liberated him and imprisoned don Juan. He clicked his
tongue in disgust and cursed the monster. He had tears in his eyes when he
listed all the chores the monster wanted done daily. And when don Juan
protested, he confided, in low tones, that there was no way to escape,
because the monster's knowledge of witchcraft was unequaled.
Don Juan asked Belisario to recommend some line of action. And
Belisario went into a long explanation about plans of action being
appropriate only if one were dealing with average human beings. In the human
context, we can plan and plot and, depending on luck, plus our cunning and
dedication, can succeed. But in the face of the unknown, specifically don
Juan's situation, the only hope of survival was to acquiesce and understand.
Belisario confessed to don Juan in a barely audible murmur that to make
sure the monster never came after him, he was going to the state of Durango
to learn sorcery. He asked don Juan if he, too, would consider learning
sorcery. And don Juan, horrified at the thought, said that he would have
nothing to do with witches.
Don Juan held his sides laughing and admitted that he enjoyed thinking
about how his benefactor must have relished their interplay. Especially when
he himself, in a frenzy of fear and passion, rejected the bona fide
invitation to learn sorcery, saying, "I am an Indian. I was born to hate and
fear witches."
Belisario exchanged looks with his wife and his body began to convulse.
Don Juan realized he was weeping silently, obviously hurt by the rejection.
His wife had to prop him up until he regained his composure.
As Belisario and his wife were walking away, he turned and gave don
Juan one more piece of advice. He said that the monster abhorred women, and
don Juan should be on the lookout for a male replacement on the off chance
that the monster would like him enough to switch slaves. But he should not
raise his hopes, because it was going to be years before he could even leave
the house. The monster liked to make sure his slaves were loyal or at least
obedient. Don Juan could stand it no longer. He broke down, began to weep,
and told Belisario that no one was going to enslave him. He could always
kill himself. The old man was very moved by don Juan's outburst and
confessed that he had had the same idea, but, alas, the monster was able to
read his thoughts and had prevented him from taking his own life every time
he had tried.
Belisario made another offer to take don Juan with him to Durango to
learn sorcery. He said it was the only possible solution. And don Juan told
him his solution was like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
Belisario began to weep loudly and embraced don Juan. He cursed the
moment he had saved the other man's life and swore that he had no idea they
would trade places. He blew his nose, and looking at don Juan with burning
eyes, said, "Disguise is the only way to survive. If you don't behave
properly, the monster can steal your soul and turn you into an idiot who
does his chores, and nothing more. Too bad I don't have time to teach you
acting." Then he wept even more.
Don Juan, choking with tears asked him to describe how he could
disguise himself. Belisario confided that the monster had terrible eyesight,
and recommended that don Juan experiment with various clothes that suited
his fancy. He had, after all, years ahead of him to try different disguises.
He embraced don Juan at the door, weeping openly. His wife touched don
Juan's hand shyly. And then they were gone.
"Never in my life, before or after, have I felt such terror and
despair," don Juan said. "The monster rattled things inside the house as if
he were waiting impatiently for me. I sat down by the door and whined like a
dog in pain. Then I vomited from sheer fear."
Don Juan sat for hours incapable of moving. He dared not leave, nor did
he dare go inside. It was no exaggeration to say that he was actually about
to die when he saw Belisario waving his arms, frantically trying to catch
his
attention from the other side of the street. Just seeing him again gave
don Juan instantaneous relief. Belisario was squatting by the sidewalk
watching the house. He signaled don Juan to stay put.
After an excruciatingly long time, Belisario crawled a few feet on his
hands and knees toward don Juan, then squatted again, totally immobile.
Crawling in that fashion, he advanced until he was at don Juan's side. It
took him hours. A lot of people had passed by, but no one seemed to have
noticed don Juan's despair or the old man's actions. When the two of them
were side by side, Belisario whispered that he had not felt right leaving
don Juan like a dog tied to a post. His wife had objected, but he had
returned to attempt to rescue him. After all, it was thanks to don Juan that
he had gained his freedom.
He asked don Juan in a commanding whisper whether he was ready and
willing to do anything to escape this. And don Juan assured him that he
would do anything. In the most surreptitious manner, Belisario handed don
Juan a bundle of clothes. Then he outlined his plan. Don Juan was to go to
the area of the house farthest from the monster's rooms and slowly change
his clothes, taking off one item of clothing at a time, starting with his
hat, leaving the shoes for last. Then he was to put all his clothes on a
wooden frame, a mannequin-like structure he was to build, efficiently and
quickly, as soon as he was inside the house. The next step of the plan was
for don Juan to put on the only disguise that could fool the monster: the
clothes in the
bundle.
Don Juan ran into the house and got everything ready. He built a
scarecrow-like frame with poles he found in the back of the house, took off
his clothes and put them on it. But when he opened the bundle he got the
surprise of his life. The bundle consisted of women's clothes!
"I felt stupid and lost," don Juan said, "and was just about to put my
own clothes back on when I heard the inhuman growls of that monstrous man. I
had been reared to despise women, to believe their only function was to take
care of men. Putting on women's clothes to me was tantamount to becoming a
woman. But my fear of the monster was so intense that I closed my eyes and
put on the damned clothes."
I looked at don Juan, imagining him in women's clothes. It was an image
so utterly ridiculous that against my will I broke into a belly laugh.
Don Juan said that when old Belisario, waiting for him across the
street, saw don Juan in disguise, he began to weep uncontrollably. Weeping,
he guided don Juan to the outskirts of town where his wife was waiting with
the two muleteers. One of them very daringly asked Belisario if he was
stealing the weird girl to sell her to a whorehouse. The old man wept so
hard he seemed on the verge of fainting. 'he young muleteers did not know
what to do, but Belisario's wife, instead of commiserating, began to scream
with laughter. And don Juan could not understand why.
The party began to move in the dark. They took little-t raveled trails
and moved steadily north. Belisario did not speak much. He seemed to be
frightened