Juan went on. "You can do that yourself without my help. But the forces that guide us brought you to me, and I have been endeavoring to teach you to change your stupid ways and live the strong clean life of a hunter. Then the forces guided you again and told me that you should learn to live the impeccable life of a warrior. Apparently you can't. But who can tell? We are as mysterious and as awesome as this unfathomable world, so who can tell what you're capable of?" There was an underlying tone of sadness in don Juan's voice. I wanted to apologize, but he began to talk again. "You don't have to look at your hands, " he said. "Like I've said, pick anything at all. But pick one thing in advance and find it in your dreams. I said your hands because they'll always be there. "When they begin to change shape you must move your sight away from them and pick something else, and then look at your hands again. It takes a long time to perfect this technique." I had become so involved in writing that I had not noticed that it was getting dark. The sun had already disappeared over the horizon. The sky was cloudy and the twilight was imminent. Don Juan stood up and gave furtive glances towards the south. "Let's go, " he said. "We must walk south until the spirit of the water hole shows itself." We walked for perhaps half an hour. The terrain changed abruptly and we came to a barren area. There was a large round hill where the chaparral had burnt. It looked like a bald head. We walked towards it. I thought that don Juan was going to climb the mild slope, but he stopped instead and remained in a very attentive position. His body seemed to have tensed as a single unit and shivered for an instant. Then he relaxed again and stood limply. I could not figure out how his body could remain erect while his muscles were so relaxed. At that moment a very strong gust of wind jolted me. Don Juan's body turned in the direction of the wind, towards the west. He did not use his muscles to turn, or at least he did not use them the way I would use mine to turn. Don Juan's body seemed rather to have been pulled from the outside. It was as if someone else had arranged his body to face a new direction. I kept on staring at him. He looked at me from the corner of his eye. The expression on his face was one of determination, purpose. All of his being was attentive, and I stared at him in wonder. I had never been in any situation that called for such a strange concentration. Suddenly his body shivered as though he had been splashed by a sudden shower of cold water. He had another jolt and then he started to walk as if nothing had happened. I followed him. We flanked the naked hills on the east side until we were at the middle part of it; he stopped there, turning to face the west. From where we stood, the top of the hill was not so round and smooth as it had seemed to be from the distance. There was a cave, or a hole, near the top. I looked at it fixedly because don Juan was doing the same. Another strong gust of wind sent a chill up my spine. Don Juan turned towards the south and scanned the area with his eyes. "There!" he said in a whisper and pointed to an object on the ground. I strained my eyes to see. There was something on the ground, perhaps twenty feet away. It was light brown and as I looked at it, it shivered. I focused all my attention on it. The object was almost round and seemed to be curled; in fact, it looked like a curled up dog. "What is it?" I whispered to don Juan. "I don't know, " he whispered back as he peered at the object. "What does it look like to you?" I told him that it seemed to be a dog. "Too large for a dog, " he said matter-of-factly. I took a couple of steps towards it, but don Juan stopped me gently. I stared at it again. It was definitely some animal that was either asleep or dead. I could almost see its head; its ears protruded like the ears of a wolf. By then I was definitely sure that it was a curled-up animal. I thought that it could have been a brown calf. I whispered that to don Juan. He answered that it was too compact to be a calf, besides its ears were pointed. The animal shivered again and then I noticed that it was alive. I could actually see that it was breathing, yet it did not seem to breathe rhythmically. The breaths that it took were more like irregular shivers. I had a sudden realization at that moment. "It's an animal that is dying, " I whispered to don Juan. "You're right, " he whispered back. "But what kind of an animal?" I could not make out its specific features. Don Juan took a couple of cautious steps towards it. I followed him. It was quite dark by then and we had to take two more steps in order to keep the animal in view. "Watch out, " don Juan whispered in my ear. "If it is a dying animal it may leap on us with its last strength." The animal, whatever it was, seemed to be on its last legs; its breathing was irregular, its body shook spasmodically, but it did not change its curled-up position. At a given moment, however, a tremendous spasm actually lifted the animal off the ground. I heard an inhuman shriek and the animal stretched its legs; its claws were more than frightening, they were nauseating. The animal tumbled on its side after stretching its legs and then rolled on its back. I heard a formidable growl and don Juan's voice shouting, "Run for your life!" And that was exactly what I did. I scrambled towards the top of the hill with unbelievable speed and agility. When I was halfway to the top I looked back and saw don Juan standing in the same place. He signaled me to come down. I ran down the hill. "What happened?" I asked, completely out of breath. "I think the animal is dead, " he said. We advanced cautiously towards the animal. It was sprawled on its back. As I came closer to it I nearly yelled with fright. I realized that it was not quite dead yet. Its body was still trembling. Its legs, which were sticking up in the air, shook wildly. The animal was definitely in its last gasps. I walked in front of don Juan. A new jolt moved the animal's body and I could see its head. I turned to don Juan, horrified. Judging by its body the animal was obviously a mammal, yet it had a beak, like a bird. I stared at it in complete and absolute horror. My mind refused to believe it. I was dumbfounded. I could not even articulate a word. Never in my whole existence had I witnessed anything of that nature. Something inconceivable was there in front of my very eyes. I wanted don Juan to explain that incredible animal but I could only mumble to him. He was staring at me. I glanced at him and glanced at the animal, and then something in me arranged the world and I knew at once what the animal was. I walked over to it and picked it up. It was a large branch of a bush. It had been burnt, and possibly the wind had blown some burnt debris which got caught in the dry branch and thus gave the appearance of a large bulging round animal. The color of the burnt debris made it look light brown in contrast with the green vegetation. I laughed at my idiocy and excitedly explained to don Juan that the wind blowing through it had made it look like a live animal. I thought he would be pleased with the way I had resolved the mystery, but he turned around and began walking to the top of the hill. I followed him. He crawled inside the depression that looked like a cave. It was not a hole but a shallow dent in the sandstone. Don Juan took some small branches and used them to scoop up the dirt that had accumulated in the bottom of the depression. "We have to get rid of the ticks, " he said. He signaled me to sit down and told me to make myself comfortable because we were going to spend the night there. I began to talk about the branch, but he hushed me up. "What you've done is no triumph, " he said. "You've wasted a beautiful power, a power that blew life into that dry twig." He said that a real triumph would have been for me to let go and follow the power until the world had ceased to exist. He did not seem to be angry with me or disappointed with my performance. He repeatedly stated that this was only the beginning, that it took time to handle power. He patted me on the shoulder and joked that earlier that day I was the person who knew what was real and what was not. I felt embarrassed. I began to apologize for my tendency of always being so sure of my ways. "It doesn't matter, " he said. "That branch was a real animal and it was alive at the moment the power touched it. Since what kept it alive was power, the trick was, like in dreaming, to sustain the sight of it. See what I mean?" I wanted to ask something else, but he hushed me up and said that I should remain completely silent but awake all night and that he alone was going to talk for a while. He said that the spirit, which knew his voice, might become subdued with the sound of it and leave us alone. He explained that the idea of making oneself accessible to power had serious overtones. Power was a devastating force that could easily lead to one's death and had to be treated with great care. Becoming available to power had to be done systematically, but always with great caution. It involved making one's presence obvious by a contained display of loud talk or any other type of noisy activity, and then it was mandatory to observe a prolonged and total silence. A controlled outburst and a controlled quietness were the mark of a warrior. He said that properly I should have sustained the sight of the live monster for a while longer. In a controlled fashion, without losing my mind or becoming deranged with excitation or fear, I should have striven to "stop the world." He pointed out that after I had run up the hill for dear life I was in a perfect state for "stopping the world." Combined in that state were fear, awe, power and death; he said that such a state would be pretty hard to repeat. I whispered in his ear, "What do you mean by 'stopping the world'?" He gave me a ferocious look before he answered that it was a technique practiced by those who were hunting for power, a technique by virtue of which the world as we know it was made to collapse. THE MOOD OF A WARRIOR I drove up to don Juan's house on Thursday, August 31, 1961, and before I even had a chance to greet him he stuck his head through the window of my car, smiled at me, and said, "We must drive quite a distance to a place of power and it's almost noon." He opened the door of my car, sat down next to me in the front seat, and directed me to drive south for about seventy miles; we then turned east onto a dirt road and followed it until we had reached the slopes of the mountains. I parked my car off the road in a depression don Juan picked because it was deep enough to hide the car from view. From there we went directly to the top of the low hills, crossing a vast flat desolate area. When it got dark don Juan selected a place to sleep. He demanded complete silence. The next day we ate frugally and continued our journey in an easterly direction. The vegetation was no longer desert shrubbery but thick green mountain bushes and trees. Around mid-afternoon we climbed to the top of a gigantic bluff of conglomerate rock which looked like a wall. Don Juan sat down and signaled me to sit down also. "This is a place of power, " he said after a moment's pause. "This is the place where warriors were buried a long time ago." At that instant a crow flew right above us, cawing. Don Juan followed its flight with a fixed gaze. I examined the rock and was wondering how and where the warriors had been buried when he tapped me on the shoulder. "Not here, you fool, " he said, smiling. "Down there." He pointed to the field right below us at the bottom of the bluff, towards the east; he explained that the field in question was surrounded by a natural corral of boulders. From where I was sitting I saw an area which was perhaps a hundred yards in diameter and which looked like a perfect circle. Thick bushes covered its surface, camouflaging the boulders. I would not have noticed its perfect roundness if don Juan had not pointed it out to me. He said that there were scores of such places scattered in the old world of the Indians. They were not exactly places of power, like certain hills or land formations which were the abode of spirits, but rather places of enlightenment where one could be taught, where one could find solutions to dilemmas. "All you have to do is come here, " he said. "Or spend the night on this rock in order to rearrange your feelings." "Are we going to spend the night here?" "I thought so, but a little crow just told me not to do that." I tried to find out more about the crow but he hushed me up with an impatient movement of his hand. "Look at that circle of boulders, " he said. "Fix it in your memory and then someday a crow will lead you to another one of these places. The more perfect its roundness is, the greater its power." "Are the warriors' bones still buried here?" Don Juan made a comical gesture of puzzlement and then smiled broadly. "This is not a cemetery, " he said. "Nobody is buried here. I said warriors were once buried here. I meant they used to come here to bury themselves for a night, or for two days, or for whatever length of time they needed to. I did not mean dead people's bones are buried here. I'm not concerned with cemeteries. There is no power in them. There is power in the bones of a warrior, though, but they are never in cemeteries. And there is even more power in the bones of a man of knowledge, yet it would be practically impossible to find them." "Who is a man of knowledge, don Juan?" "Any warrior could become a man of knowledge. As I told you, a warrior is an impeccable hunter that hunts power. If he succeeds in his hunting he can be a man of knowledge." "What do you . . ." He stopped my question with a movement of his hand. He stood up, signaled me to follow, and began descending on the steep east side of the bluff. There was a definite trail in the almost perpendicular face, leading to the round area. We slowly worked our way down the perilous path, and when we reached the bottom floor don Juan, without stopping at all, led me through the thick chaparral to the middle of the circle. There he used some thick dry branches to sweep a clean spot for us to sit. The spot was also perfectly round. "I intended to bury you here all night, " he said. "But I know now that it is not time yet. You don't have power. I'm going to bury you only for a short while." I became very nervous with the idea of being enclosed and asked how he was planning to bury me. He giggled like a child and began collecting dry branches. He did not let me help him and said I should sit down and wait. He threw the branches he was collecting inside the clean circle. Then he made me lie down with my head towards the east, put my jacket under my head, and made a cage around my body. He constructed it by sticking pieces of branches about two and a half feet in length in the soft dirt; the branches, which ended in forks, served as supports for some long sticks that gave the cage a frame and the appearance of an open coffin. He closed the box like cage by placing small branches and leaves over the long sticks, encasing me from the shoulders down. He let my head stick out with my jacket as a pillow. He then took a thick piece of dry wood and, using it as a digging stick, he loosened the dirt around me and covered the cage with it. The frame was so solid and the leaves were so well placed that no dirt came inside. I could move my legs freely and could actually slide in and out. Don Juan said that ordinarily a warrior would construct the cage and then slip into it and seal it from the inside. "How about the animals?" I asked. "Can they scratch the surface dirt and sneak into the cage and hurt the man?" "No, that's not a worry for a warrior. It's a worry for you because you have no power. A warrior, on the other hand, is guided by his unbending purpose and can fend off anything. No rat, or snake, or mountain lion could bother him." "What do they bury themselves for, don Juan?" "For enlightenment and for power." I experienced an extremely pleasant feeling of peace and satisfaction; the world at that moment seemed at ease. The quietness was exquisite and at the same time unnerving. I was not accustomed to that kind of silence. I tried to talk but he hushed me. After a while the tranquility of the place affected my mood. I began to think of my life and my personal history and experienced a familiar sensation of sadness and remorse. I told him that I did not deserve to be there, that his world was strong and fair and I was weak, and that my spirit had been distorted by the circumstances of my life. He laughed and threatened to cover my head with dirt if I kept on talking in that vein. He said that I was a man. And like any man I deserved everything that was a man's-lot-joy, pain, sadness and struggle-and that the nature of one's acts was unimportant as long as one acted as a warrior. Lowering his voice to almost a whisper, he said that if I really felt that my spirit was distorted I should simply fix it purge it, make it perfect-because there was no other task in our entire lives which was more worthwhile. Not to fix the spirit was to seek death, and that was the same as to seek nothing, since death was going to overtake us regardless of anything. He paused for a long time and then he said with a tone of profound conviction, "To seek the perfection of the warrior's spirit is the only task worthy of our manhood." His words acted as a catalyst. I felt the weight of my past actions as an unbearable and hindering load. I admitted that there was no hope for me. I began to weep, talking about my life. I said that I had been roaming for such a long time that I had become callous to pain and sadness, except on certain occasions when I would realize my aloneness and my helplessness. He did not say anything. He grabbed me by the armpits and pulled me out of the cage. I sat up when he let go of me. He also sat down. An uneasy silence set in between us. I thought he was giving me time to compose myself. I took my notebook and scribbled out of nervousness. "You feel like a leaf at the mercy of the wind, don't you?" he finally said, staring at me. That was exactly the way I felt. He seemed to empathize with me. He said that my mood reminded him of a song and began to sing in a low tone; his singing voice was very pleasing and the lyrics carried me away: "I'm so far away from the sky where I was born. Immense nostalgia invades my thoughts. Now that I am so alone and sad like a leaf in the wind, sometimes I want to weep, sometimes I want to laugh with longing." (Que lejos estoy del cielo donde he nacido. Inmensa nostalgia invade mi pensamiento. Ahora que estoy tan solo y triste cual hoja al viento, quisiera llorar, quisiera reir de sentimiento.) We did not speak for a long while. He finally broke the silence. "Since the day you were born, one way or another, someone has been doing something to you, " he said. "That's correct, " I said. "And they have been doing something to you against your will." "True." "And by now you're helpless, like a leaf in the wind." "That's correct. That's the way it is." I said that the circumstances of my life had sometimes been devastating. He listened attentively but I could not figure out whether he was just being agreeable or genuinely concerned until I noticed that he was trying to hide a smile. "No matter how much you like to feel sorry for yourself, you have to change that, " he said in a soft tone. "It doesn't jibe with the life of a warrior." He laughed and sang the song again but contorted the intonation of certain words; the result was a ludicrous lament. He pointed out that the reason I had liked the song was because in my own life I had done nothing else but find flaws with everything and lament. I could not argue with him. He was correct. Yet I believed I had sufficient reasons to justify my feeling of being like a leaf in the "wind. "The hardest thing in the world is to assume the mood of a warrior, " he said. "It is of no use to be sad and complain and feel justified in doing so, believing that someone is always doing something to us. Nobody is doing anything to anybody, much less to a warrior. "You are here, with me, because you want to be here. You should have assumed full responsibility by now, so the idea that you are at the mercy of the wind would be inadmissible." He stood up and began to disassemble the cage. He scooped the dirt back to where he had gotten it from and carefully scattered all the sticks in the chaparral. Then he covered the clean circle with debris, leaving the area as if nothing had ever touched it. I commented on his proficiency. He said that a good hunter would know that we had been there no matter how careful he had been, because the tracks of men could not be completely erased. He sat cross-legged and told me to sit down as comfortably as possible, facing the spot where he had buried me, and stay put until my mood of sadness had dissipated. "A warrior buries himself in order to find power, not to weep with self-pity, " he said. I attempted to explain but he made me stop with an impatient movement of his head. He said that he had to pull me out of the cage in a hurry because my mood was intolerable and he was afraid that the place would resent my softness and injure me. "Self-pity doesn't jibe with power, " he said. "The mood of a warrior calls for control over himself and at the same time it calls for abandoning himself." "How can that be?" I asked. "How can he control and abandon himself at the same time?" "It is a difficult technique, " he said. He seemed to deliberate whether or not to continue talking. Twice he was on the verge of saying something but he checked himself and smiled. "You're not over your sadness yet, " he said. "You still feel weak and there is no point in talking about the mood of a warrior now." Almost an hour went by in complete silence. Then he abruptly asked me if I had succeeded in learning the "dreaming" techniques he had taught me. I had been practicing assiduously and had been able, after a monumental effort, to obtain a degree of control over my dreams. Don Juan was very right in saying that one could interpret the exercises as being entertainment. For the first time in my life I had been looking forward to going to sleep. I gave him a detailed report of my progress. It had been relatively easy for me to learn to sustain the image of my hands after I had learned to command myself to look at them. My visions, although not always of my own hands, would last a seemingly long time, until I would finally lose control and would become immersed in ordinary unpredictable dreams. I had no volition whatsoever over when I would give myself the command to look at my hands, or to look at other items of the dreams. It would just happen. At a given moment I would remember that I had to look at my hands and then at the surroundings. There were nights, however, when I could not recall having done it at all. He seemed to be satisfied and wanted to know what were the usual items I had been finding in my visions. I could not think of anything in particular and started elaborating on a nightmarish dream I had had the night before. "Don't get so fancy, " he said dryly. I told him that I had been recording all the details of my dreams. Since I had begun to practice looking at my hands my dreams had become very compelling and my sense of recall had increased to the point that I could remember minute details. He said that to follow them was a waste of time, because details and vividness were in no way important. "Ordinary dreams get very vivid as soon as you begin to set up dreaming" he said. "That vividness and clarity is a formidable barrier and you are worse off than anyone I have ever met in my life. You have the worst mania. You write down everything you can." In all fairness, I believed what I was doing was appropriate. Keeping a meticulous record of my dreams was giving me a degree of clarity about the nature of the visions I had while sleeping. "Drop it!" he said imperatively. "It's not helping anything. All you're doing is distracting yourself from the purpose of dreaming, which is control and power." He lay down and covered his eyes with his hat and talked without looking at me. "I'm going to remind you of all the techniques you must practice, " he said. "First you must focus your gaze on your hands as the starting point. Then shift your gaze to other items and look at them in brief glances. Focus your gaze on as many things as you can. Remember that if you only glance briefly the images do not shift. Then go back to your hands. "Every time you look at your hands you renew the power needed for dreaming, so in the beginning don't look at too many things. Four items will suffice every time. Later on, you may enlarge the scope until you can cover all you want, but as soon as the images begin to shift and you feel you are losing control go back to your hands. "When you feel you can gaze at things indefinitely you will be ready for a new technique. I'm going to teach you this new technique now, but I expect you to put it to use only when you are ready." He was quiet for about fifteen minutes. Finally he sat up and looked at me. "The next step in setting up dreaming is to learn to travel, " he said. "The same way you have learned to look at your hands you can will yourself to move, to go places. First you have to establish a place you want to go to. Pick a well known spot-perhaps your school, or a park, or a friend's house then, will yourself to go there. "This technique is very difficult. You must perform two tasks: You must will yourself to go to the specific locale; and then, when you have mastered that technique, you have to learn to control the exact time of your traveling." As I wrote down his statements I had the feeling that I was really nuts. I was actually taking down insane instructions, knocking myself out in order to follow them. I experienced a surge of remorse and embarrassment. "What are you doing to me, don Juan?" I asked, not really meaning it. He seemed surprised. He stared at me for an instant and then smiled. "You've been asking me the same question over and over. I'm not doing anything to you. You are making yourself accessible to power; you're hunting it and I'm just guiding you." He tilted his head to the side and studied me. He held my chin with one hand and the back of my head with the other and then moved my head back and forth. The muscles of my neck were very tense and moving my head reduced the tension. Don Juan looked up to the sky for a moment and seemed to examine something in it. "It's time to leave, " he said dryly and stood up. We walked in an easterly direction until we came upon a patch of small trees in a valley between two large hills. It was almost five p.m. by then. He casually said that we might have to spend the night in that place. He pointed to the trees and said that there was water around there. He tensed his body and began sniffing the air like an animal. I could see the muscles of his stomach contracting in very fast short spasms as he blew and inhaled through his nose in rapid succession. He urged me to do the same and find out by myself where the water was. I reluctantly tried to imitate him. After five or six minutes of fast breathing I was dizzy, but my nostrils had cleared out in an extraordinary way and I could actually detect the smell of river willows. I could not tell where they were, however. Don Juan told me to rest for a few minutes and then he started me sniffing again. The second round was more intense. I could actually distinguish a whiff of river willow coming from my right. We headed in that direction and found, a good quarter of a mile away, a swamp like spot with stagnant water. We walked around it to a slightly higher flat mesa. Above and around the mesa the chaparral was very thick. "This place is crawling with mountain lions and other smaller cats, " don Juan said casually, as if it were a commonplace observation. I ran to his side and he broke out laughing. "Usually I wouldn't come here at all, " he said. "But the crow pointed out this direction. There must be something special about it." "Do we really have to be here, don Juan?" "We do. Otherwise I would avoid this place." I had become extremely nervous. He told me to listen attentively to what he had to say. "The only thing one can do in this place is hunt lions, " he said. "So I'm going to teach you how to do that. "There is a special way of constructing a trap for water rats that live around water holes. They serve as bait. The sides of the cage are made to collapse and very sharp spikes are put along the sides. The spikes are hidden when the trap is up and they do not affect anything unless something falls on the cage, in which case the sides collapse and the spikes pierce whatever hits the trap." I could not understand what he meant but he made a diagram on the ground and showed me that if the side sticks of the cage were placed on pivot like hollow spots on the frame, the cage would collapse onto either side if something pushed its top. The spikes were pointed sharp slivers of hard wood, which were placed all around the frame and fixed to it. Don Juan said that usually a heavy load of rocks was placed over a net of sticks, which were connected to the cage and hung way above it. When the mountain lion came upon the trap baited with the water rats, it would usually try to break it by pawing it with all its might; then the slivers would go through its paws and the cat, in a frenzy, would jump up, unleashing an avalanche of rocks on top of him. "Someday you might need to catch a mountain lion, " he said. "They have special powers. They are terribly smart and the only way to catch them is by fooling them with pain and with the smell of river willows." With astounding speed and skill he assembled a trap and after a long wait he caught three chubby squirrel like rodents. He told me to pick a handful of willows from the edge of the swamp and made me rub my clothes with them. He did the same. Then, quickly and skillfully, he wove two simple carrying nets out of reeds, scooped up a large clump of green plants and mud from the swamp, and carried it back to the mesa, where he concealed himself. In the meantime the squirrel-like rodents had begun to squeak very loudly. Don Juan spoke to me from his hiding place and told me to use the other carrying net, gather a good chunk of mud and plants, and climb to the lower branches of a tree near the trap where the rodents were. Don Juan said that he did not want to hurt the cat or the rodents, so he was going to hurl the mud at the lion if it came to the trap. He told me to be on the alert and hit the cat with my bundle after he had, in order to scare it away. He recommended I should be extremely careful not to fall out of the tree. His final instructions were to be so still that I would merge with the branches. I could not see where don Juan was. The squealing of the rodents became extremely loud and finally was so dark that I could hardly distinguish the general features of the terrain. I heard a sudden and close sound of soft steps and a muffled catlike exhalation, then a very soft growl and the squirrel-like rodents ceased to squeak. It was right then that I saw the dark mass of an animal right under the tree where I was. Before I could even be sure that it was a mountain lion it charged against the trap, but before it reached it something hit it and made it recoil. I hurled my bundle, as don Juan had told me to do. I missed, yet it made a very loud noise. At that instant don Juan let out a series of penetrating yells that sent chills through my spine, and the cat, with extraordinary agility, leaped to the mesa and disappeared. Don Juan kept on making the penetrating noises a while longer and then he told me to come down from the tree, pick up the cage with the squirrels, run up to the mesa, and get to where he was as fast as I could. In an incredibly short period of time I was standing next to don Juan. He told me to imitate his yelling as close as possible in order to keep the lion off while he dismantled the cage and let the rodents free. I began to yell but could not produce the same effect. My voice was raspy because of the excitation. He said I had to abandon myself and yell with real feeling, because the lion was still around. Suddenly I fully realized the situation. The lion was real. I let out a magnificent series of piercing yells. Don Juan roared with laughter. He let me yell for a moment and then he said we had to leave the place as quietly as possible, because the lion was no fool and was probably retracing its steps back to where we were. "He'll follow us for sure, " he said. "No matter how careful we are we'll leave a trail as wide as the Pan American highway." I walked very close to don Juan. From time to time he would stop for an instant and listen. At one moment he began to run in the dark and I followed him with my hands extended in front of my eyes to protect myself from the branches. We finally got to the base of the bluff where we had been earlier. Don Juan said that if we succeeded in climbing to the top without being mauled by the lion we were safe. He went up first to show me the way. We started to climb in the dark. I did not know how, but I followed him with dead sure steps. When we were near the top I heard a peculiar animal cry. It was almost like the mooing of a cow, except that it was a bit longer and coarser. "Up! Up! "don Juan yelled. I scrambled to the top in total darkness ahead of don Juan. When he reached the flat top of the bluff I was already sitting catching my breath. He rolled on the ground. I thought for a second that the exertion had been too great for him, but he was laughing at my speedy climb. We sat in complete silence for a couple of hours and then we started back to my car. Sunday, September 3, 1961 Don Juan was not in the house when I woke up. I worked over my notes and had time to get some firewood from the surrounding chaparral before he returned. I was eating when he walked into the house. He began to laugh at what he called my routine of eating at noon, but he helped himself to my sandwiches. I told him that what had happened with the mountain lion was baffling to me. In retrospect, it all seemed unreal. It was as if everything had been staged for my benefit. The succession of events had been so rapid that I really had not had time to be afraid. I had had enough time to act, but not to deliberate upon my circumstances. In writing my notes the question of whether I had really seen the mountain lion came to mind. The dry branch was still fresh in my memory. "It was a mountain lion, " don Juan said imperatively. "Was it a real flesh and blood animal?" "Of course." I told him that my suspicions had been roused because of the easiness of the total event. It was as if the lion had been waiting out there and had been trained to do exactly what don Juan had planned. He was unruffled by my barrage of skeptical remarks. He laughed at me. "You're a funny fellow, " he said. "You saw and heard the cat. It was right under the tree where you were. He didn't smell you and jump at you because of the river willows. They kill any other smell, even for cats. You had a batch of them in your lap." I said that it was not that I doubted him, but that everything that had happened that night was extremely foreign to the events of my everyday life. For a while, as I was writing my notes, I even had had the feeling that don Juan may have been playing the role of the lion. However, I had to discard the idea because I had really seen the dark shape of a four legged animal charging at the cage and then leaping to the mesa. "Why do you make such a fuss?" he said. "It was just a big cat. There must be thousands of cats in those mountains. Big deal. As usual, you are focusing your attention on the wrong item. It makes no difference whatsoever whether it was a lion or my pants. Your feelings at that moment were what counted." In my entire life I had never seen or heard a big wildcat on the prowl. When I thought of it, I could not get over the fact that I had been only a few feet away from one. Don Juan listened patiently while I went over the entire experience. "Why the awe for the big cat?" he asked with an inquisitive expression. "You've been close to most of the animals that live around here and you've never been so awed by them. Do you like cats?" "No, I don't." "Well, forget about it then. The lesson was not on how to hunt lions, anyway." "What was it about?" "The little crow pointed out that specific spot to me, and at that spot I saw the opportunity of making you understand how one acts while one is in the mood of a warrior. "Everything you did last night was done within a proper mood. You were controlled and at the same time abandoned when you jumped down from the tree to pick up the cage and run up to me. You were not paralyzed with fear. And then, near the top of the bluff, when the lion let out a scream, you moved very well. I'm sure you wouldn't believe what you did if you looked at the bluff during the daytime. You had a degree of abandon, and at the same time you had a degree of control over yourself. You did not let go and wet your pants, and yet you let go and climbed that wall in complete darkness. You could have missed the trail and killed yourself. To climb that wall in darkness required that you had to hold on to yourself and let go of yourself at the same time. That's what I call the mood of a warrior." I said that whatever I had done that night was the product of my fear and not the result of any mood of control and abandon. "I know that, " he said, smiling. "And I wanted to show you that you can spur yourself beyond your limits if you are in the proper mood. A warrior makes his own mood. You didn't know that. Fear got you into the mood of a warrior, but now that you know about it, anything can serve to get you into it." I wanted to argue with him, but my reasons were not clear. I felt an inexplicable sense of annoyance. "It's convenient to always act in such a mood, " he continued. "It cuts through the crap and leaves one purified. It was a great feeling when you reached the top of the bluff. Wasn't it?" I told him that I understood what he meant, yet I felt it would be idiotic to try to apply what he was teaching me to my everyday life. "One needs the mood of a warrior for every single act, " he said. "Otherwise one becomes distorted and ugly. There is no power in a life that lacks this mood. Look at yourself. Everything offends and upsets you. You whine and complain and feel that everyone is making you dance to their tune. You are a leaf at the mercy of the wind. There is no power in your life. What an ugly feeling that must be! "A warrior, on the other hand, is a hunter. He calculates everything. That's control. But once his . calculations are over, he acts. He lets go. That's abandon. A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No one can push him; no one can make him do things against himself or against his better judgment. A warrior is tuned to survive, and he survives in the best of all possible fashions." I liked his stance although I thought it was unrealistic. It seemed too simplistic for the complex world in which I lived. He laughed at my arguments and I insisted that the mood of a warrior could not possibly help me overcome the feeling of being offended or actually being injured by the actions of my fellow men, as in the hypothetical case of being physically harassed by a cruel and malicious person placed in a position of authority. He roared with laughter and admitted the example was apropos. "A warrior could be injured but not offended, " he said. "For a warrior there is nothing offensive about the acts of his fellow men as long as he himself is acting within the proper mood. "The other night you were not offended by the lion. The fact that it chased us did not anger you. I did not hear you cursing it, nor did I hear you say that he had no right to follow us. It could have been a cruel and malicious lion for all you know. But that was not a consideration while you struggled to avoid it. The only thing that was pertinent was to survive. And that you did very well. "If you would have been alone and the lion had caught up with you and mauled you to death, you would have never even considered complaining or feeling offended by its acts. "The mood of a warrior is not so far-fetched for yours or anybody's world. You need it in order to cut through all the-guff." I explained my way of reasoning. The lion and my fellow men were not on a par, because I knew the intimate quirks of men while I knew nothing about the lion. What offended me about my fellow men was that they acted maliciously and knowingly. "I know, I know, " don Juan said patiently. "To achieve the mood of a warrior is not a simple matter. It is a revolution. To regard the lion and the water rats and our fellow men as equals is a magnificent act of the warrior's spirit. It takes power to do that." A BATTLE OF POWER Thursday, December 28, 1961 We started on a journey very early in the morning. We drove south and then east to the mountains. Don Juan had brought gourds with food and water. We ate in my car before we started walking. "Stick close to me, " he said. "This is an unknown region to you and there is no need to take chances. You are going in search of power and everything you do counts. Watch the wind, especially towards the end of the day. Watch when it changes directions, and shift your position so that I always shield you from it." "What are we going to do in these mountains, don Juan?" "You're hunting power." "I mean what are we going to do in particular?" "There's no plan when it comes to hunting power. Hunting power or hunting game is the same. A hunter hunts whatever presents itself to him. Thus he must always be in a state of readiness. "You know about the wind, and now you may hunt power in the wind by yourself. But there are other things you don't know about which are, like the wind, the center of power at certain times and at certain places. "Power is a very peculiar affair, " he said. "It is impossible to pin it down and say what it really is. It is a feeling that one has about certain things. Power is personal. It belongs to oneself alone. My benefactor, for instance, could make a person mortally ill by merely looking at him. Women would wane away after he had set eyes on them. Yet he did not make people sick all the time but only when his personal power was involved." "How did he choose who to make sick?" "I don't know that. He didn't know it himself. Power is like that. It commands you and yet it obeys you. "A hunter of power entraps it and then stores it away as his personal finding. Thus, personal power grows, and you may have the case of a warrior who has so much personal power that he becomes a man of knowledge." "How does one store power, don Juan?" "That again is another feeling. It depends on what kind of a person the warrior is. My benefactor was a man of violent nature. He stored power through that feeling. Everything he did was strong and direct. He left me a memory of something crushing through things. And everything that happened to him took place in that manner." I told him I could not understand how power was stored through a feeling. "There's no way to explain it, " he said after a long pause. "You have to do it yourself." He picked up the gourds with food and fastened them to his back. He handed me a string with eight pieces of dry meat strung on it and made me hang it from my neck. "This is power food, " he said. "What makes it power food, don Juan?" "It is the meat of an animal that had power. A deer, a unique deer. My personal power brought it to me. This meat will sustain us for weeks, months if need be. Chew little bits of it at a time, and chew it thoroughly. Let the power sink slowly into your body." We began to walk. It was almost eleven a.m. Don Juan reminded me once more of the procedure to follow. "Watch the wind, " he said. "Don't let it trip you. And don't let it make you tired. Chew your power food and hide from the wind behind my body. The wind won't hurt me; we know each other very well." He led me to a trail that went straight to the high mountains. The day was cloudy and it was about to rain. I could see low rain clouds and fog up above in the mountains descending into the area where we were. We hiked in complete silence until about three o'clock in the afternoon. Chewing the dry meat was indeed invigorating. And watching for sudden changes in the direction of the wind became a mysterious affair, to the point that my entire body seemed to sense changes before they actually happened. I had the feeling that I could detect waves of wind as a sort of pressure on my upper chest, on my bronchial tubes. Every time I was about to feel a gust of wind my chest and throat would itch. Don Juan stopped for a moment and looked around. He appeared to be orienting himself and then he turned to the right. I noticed that he was also chewing dry meat. I felt very fresh and was not tired at all. The task of being aware of shifts in the wind had been so consuming that I had not been aware of time. We walked into a deep ravine and then up one side to a small plateau on the sheer side of an enormous mountain. We were quite high, almost to the top of the mountain. Don Juan climbed a huge rock at the end of the plateau and helped me up to it. The rock was placed in such a way as to look like a dome on top of precipitous walls. We slowly walked around it. Finally I had to move around the rock on my seat, holding on to the surface with my heels and hands. I was soaked in perspiration and had to dry my hands repeatedly. From the other side I could see a very large shallow cave near the top of the mountain. It looked like a hall that had been carved out of the rock. It was sandstone which had been weathered into a sort of balcony with two pillars. Don Juan said that we were going to camp there, that it was a very safe place because it was too shallow to be a den for lions or any other predators, too open to be a nest for rats, and too windy for insects. He laughed and said that it was an ideal place for men, since no other living creatures could stand it. He climbed up to it like a mountain goat. I marveled at his stupendous agility. I slowly dragged myself down the rock on my seat and then tried to run up the side of the mountain in order to reach the ledge. The last few yards completely exhausted me. I kiddingly asked don Juan how old he really was. I thought that in order to reach the ledge the way he had done it one had to be extremely fit and young. "I'm as young as I want to be, " he said. "This again is a matter of personal power. If you store power your body can perform unbelievable feats. On the other hand, if you dissipate power you'll be a fat old man in no time at all." The length of the ledge was oriented along an east-west line. The open side of the balcony-like formation was to the south. I walked to the west end. The view was superb. The rain had circumvented us. It looked like a sheet of transparent material hung over the low land. Don Juan said that we had enough time to build a shelter. He told me to make a pile of as many rocks as I could carry onto the ledge while he gathered some branches for a roof. In an hour he had built a wall about a foot thick on the east end of the ledge. It was about two feet long and three feet high. He wove and tied some bundles of branches he had collected and made a roof, securing it onto two long poles that ended in forks. There was another pole of the same length that was affixed to the roof itself and which supported it on the opposite side of the wall. The structure looked like a high table with three legs. Don Juan sat cross-legged under it, on the very edge of the balcony. He told me to sit next to him, to his right. We remained quiet for a while. Don Juan broke the silence. He said in a whisper that we had to act as if nothing was out of the ordinary. I asked if there was something in particular that I should do. He said that I should get busy writing and do it in such a way that it would be as if I were at my desk with no worries in the world except writing. At a given moment he was going to nudge me and then I should look where he was pointing with his eyes. He warned me that no matter what I saw I should not utter a single word. Only he could talk with impunity because he was known to all the powers in those mountains. I followed his instructions and wrote for over an hour. I became immersed in my task. Suddenly I felt a soft tap on my arm and saw don Juan's eyes and head move to point out a bank of fog about two hundred yards away which was descending from the top of the mountain. Don Juan whispered in my ear with a tone barely audible even at that close range. "Move your eyes back and forth along the bank of fog, " he said. "But don't look at it directly. Blink your eyes and don't focus them on the fog. When you see a green spot on the bank of fog, point it out to me with your eyes." I moved my eyes from left to right along the bank of fog that was slowly coming down to us. Perhaps half an hour went by. It was getting dark. The fog moved extremely slowly. At one moment I had the sudden feeling that I had detected a faint glow to my right. At first I thought that I had seen a patch of green shrubbery through the fog. When I looked at it directly I did not notice anything, but when I looked without focusing I could detect a vague greenish area. I pointed it out to don Juan. He squinted his eyes and stared at it. "Focus your eyes on that spot, " he whispered in my ear. "Look without blinking until you see." I wanted to ask what I was supposed to see but he glared at me as if to remind me that I should not talk. I stared again. The bit of fog that had come down from above hung as if it were a piece of solid matter. It was lined up right at the spot where I had noticed the green tint. As my eyes became tired again and I squinted, I saw at first the bit of fog superimposed on the fog bank, and then I saw a thin strip of fog in between that looked like a thin unsupported structure, a bridge joining the mountain above me and the bank of fog in front of me. For a moment I thought I could see the transparent fog, which was being blown down from the top of the mountain, going by the bridge without disturbing it. It was as if the bridge were actually solid. At one instant the mirage became so complete that I could actually distinguish the darkness of the part under the bridge proper, as opposed to the light sandstone color of its side. I stared at the bridge, dumbfounded. And then I either lifted myself to its level, or the bridge lowered itself to mine. Suddenly I was looking at a straight beam in front of me. It was an immensely long, solid beam, narrow and without railings, but wide enough to walk on. Don Juan shook me by the arm vigorously. I felt my head bobbing up and down and then I noticed that my eyes itched terribly. I rubbed them quite unconsciously. Don Juan kept on shaking me until I opened my eyes again. He poured some water from his gourd into the hollow of his hand and sprinkled my face with it. The sensation was very unpleasant. The coldness of the water was so extreme that the drops felt like sores on my skin. I noticed then that my body was very warm. I was feverish. Don Juan hurriedly gave me some water to drink and then splashed water on my ears and neck. I heard a very loud, eerie and-prolonged bird cry. Don Juan listened attentively for an instant and then pushed the rocks of the wall with his foot and collapsed the roof. He threw the roof into the shrubs and tossed all the rocks, one by one, over the side. He whispered in my ear, "Drink some water and chew your dry meat. We cannot stay here. That cry was not a bird." We climbed down the ledge and began to walk in an easterly direction. In no time at all it was so dark that it was as if there were a curtain in front of my eyes. The fog was like an impenetrable barrier. I had never realized how crippling the fog was at night. I could not conceive how don Juan walked. I held oh to his arm as if I were blind. Somehow I had the feeling I was walking on the edge of a precipice. My legs refused to move on. My reason trusted don Juan and I was rationally willing to go on, but my body was not, and don Juan had to drag me in total darkness. He must have known the terrain to ultimate perfection. He stopped at a certain point and made me sit down. I did not dare let go of his arm. My body felt, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I was sitting on a barren dome like mountain and if I moved an inch to my right I would fall beyond the tolerance point into an abysm. I was absolutely sure I was sitting on a curved mountainside, because my body moved unconsciously to the right. I thought it did so in order to keep its verticality, so I tried to compensate by leaning to the left against don Juan, as far as I could. Don Juan suddenly moved away from me and without the support of his body I fell on the ground. Touching the ground restored my sense of equilibrium. I was lying on a flat area. I began to reconnoiter my immediate surroundings by touch. I recognized dry leaves and twigs. There was a sudden flash of lightning that illuminated the whole area and tremendous thunder. I saw don Juan standing to my left. I saw huge trees and a cave a few feet behind him. Don Juan told me to get into the hole. I crawled into it and sat down with my back against the rock. I felt don Juan leaning over to whisper that I had to be totally silent. There were three flashes of lightning, one after the other. In a glance I saw don Juan sitting cross legged to my left. The cave was a concave formation big enough for two or three persons to sit in. The hole seemed to have been carved at the bottom of a boulder. I felt that it had indeed been wise of me to have crawled into it, because if I had been walking I would have knocked my head against the rock. The brilliancy of the lightning gave me an idea of how thick the bank of fog was. I noticed the trunks of enormous trees as dark silhouettes against the opaque light gray mass of the fog. Don Juan whispered that the fog and the lightning were in cahoots with each other and I had to keep an exhausting vigil because I was engaged in a battle of power. At that moment a stupendous flash of lightning rendered the whole scenery phantasmagorical. The fog was like a white filter that frosted the light of the electrical discharge and diffused it uniformly; the fog was like a dense whitish substance hanging between the tall trees, but right in front of me at the ground level the fog was thinning out. I plainly distinguished the features of the terrain. We were in a pine forest. Very tall trees surrounded us. They were so extremely big that I could have sworn we were in the redwoods if I had not previously known our whereabouts. There was a barrage of lightning that lasted several minutes. Each flash made the features I had already observed more discernible. Right in front of me I saw a definite trail. There was no vegetation on it. It seemed to end in an area clear of trees. There were so many flashes of lightning that I could not keep track of where they were coming from. The scenery, however, had been so profusely illuminated that I felt much more at ease. My fears and uncertainties had vanished as soon as there had been enough light to lift the heavy curtain of darkness. So when there was a long pause between the flashes of lightning I was no longer disoriented by the blackness around me. Don Juan whispered that I had probably done enough watching, and that I had to focus my attention on the sound of thunder. I realized to my amazement that I had not paid any attention to thunder at all, in spite of the fact that it had really been tremendous. Don Juan added that I should follow the sound and look in the direction where I thought it came from. There were no longer barrages of lightning and thunder but only sporadic flashes of intense light and sound. The thunder seemed to always come from my right. The fog was lifting and I, already being accustomed to the pitch black, could distinguish masses of vegetation. The lightning and thunder continued and suddenly the whole right side opened up and I could see the sky. The electrical storm seemed to be moving towards my right. There was another flash of lightning and I saw a distant mountain to my extreme right. The light illuminated the back ground, silhouetting the bulky mass of the mountain. I saw trees on top of it; they looked like neat black cutouts superimposed on the brilliantly white sky. I even saw cumulus clouds over the mountains. The fog had cleared completely around us. There was a steady wind and I could hear the rustling of leaves in the big trees to my left. The electrical storm was too distant to illuminate the trees, but their dark masses remained discernible. The light of the storm allowed me to establish, however, that there was a range of distant mountains to my right and that the forest was limited to the left side. It seemed that I was looking down into a dark valley, which I could not see at all. The range over which the electrical storm was taking place was on the opposite side of the valley. Then it began to rain. I pressed back against the rock as far as I could. My hat served as a good protection. I was sitting with my knees to my chest and only my calves and shoes got wet. It rained for a long time. The rain was lukewarm. I felt it on my feet. And then I fell asleep. The noises of birds woke me up. I looked around for don Juan. He was not there; ordinarily I would have wondered whether he had left me there alone, but the shock of seeing the surroundings nearly paralyzed me. I stood up. My legs were soaking wet, the brim of my hat was soggy and there was still some water in it that spilled over me. I was not in a cave at all, but under some thick bushes. I experienced a moment of unparalleled confusion. I was standing on a flat piece of land between two small dirt hills covered with bushes. There were no trees to my left and no valley to my right. Right in front of me, where I had seen the path in the forest, there was a gigantic bush. I refused to believe what I was witnessing. The incongruency of my two versions of reality made me grapple for any kind of explanation. It occurred to me that it was perfectly possible that I had slept so soundly that don Juan might have "carried me on his back to another place without waking me. I examined the spot where I had been sleeping. The ground there was dry, and so was the ground on the spot next to it, where don Juan had been. I called him a couple of times and then had an attack of anxiety and bellowed his name as loud as I could. He came out from behind some bushes. I immediately became aware that he knew what was going on. His smile was so mischievous that I ended up smiling myself. I did not want to waste any time in playing games with him. I blurted out what was the matter with me. I explained as carefully as possible every detail of my night long hallucinations. He listened without interrupting. He could not, however, keep a serious face and started to laugh a couple of times, but he regained his composure right away. I asked for his comments three or four times; he only shook his head as if the whole affair was also incomprehensible to him. When I ended my account he looked at me and said, "You look awful. Maybe you need to go to the bushes." He cackled for a moment and then added that I should take off my clothes and wring them out so they would dry. The sunlight was brilliant. There were very few clouds. It was a windy brisk day. Don Juan walked away, telling me that he was going to look for some plants and that I should compose myself and eat something and not call him until I was calm and strong. My clothes were really wet. I sat down in the sun to dry. I felt that the only way for me to relax was to get out my notebook and write. I ate while I worked on my notes. After a couple of hours I was more relaxed and I called don Juan. He answered from a place near the top of the mountain. He told me to gather the gourds and climb up to where he was. When I reached the spot, I found him sitting on a smooth rock. He opened the gourds and served himself some food. He handed me two big pieces of meat. I did not know where to begin. There were so many things I wanted to ask. He seemed to be aware of my mood and laughed with sheer delight. "How do you feel?" he asked in a facetious tone. I did not want to say anything. I was still upset. Don Juan urged me to sit down on the flat slab. He said that the stone was a power object and that I would be renewed after being there for a while. "Sit down, " he commanded me dryly. He did not smile. His eyes were piercing. I automatically sat down. He said that I was being careless with power by acting morosely, and that I had to put an end to it or power would turn against both of us and we would never leave those desolate hills alive. After a moment's pause he casually asked, "How is your dreaming?" I explained to him how difficult it had become for me to give myself the command to look at my hands. At first it had been relatively easy, perhaps because of the newness of the concept. I had had no trouble at all in reminding myself that I had to look at my hands. But the excitation had worn off and some nights I could not do it at all. "You must wear a headband to sleep, " he said. "Getting a headband is a tricky maneuver. I cannot give you one, because you yourself have to make it from scratch. But you cannot make one until you have had a vision of it in dreaming. See what I mean? The headband has to be made according to the specific vision. And it must have a strip across it that fits tightly on top of the head. Or it may very well be like a tight cap. Dreaming is easier when one wears a power object on top of the head. You could wear your hat or put on a cowl, like a friar, and go to sleep, but those items would only cause intense dreams, not dreaming." He was silent for a moment and then proceeded to tell me in a fast barrage of words that the vision of the headband did not have to occur only in "dreaming" but could happen in states of wakefulness and as a result of any far-fetched and totally unrelated event, such as watching the flight of birds, the movement of water, the clouds, and so on. "A hunter of power watches everything, " he went on. "And everything tells him some secret." "But how can one be sure that things are telling secrets?" I asked. I thought he may have had a specific formula that allowed him to make "correct" interpretations. "The only way to be sure is by following all the instructions I have been giving you, starting from the first day you came to see me, " he said. "In order to have power one must live with power." He smiled benevolently. He seemed to have lost his fierceness; he even nudged me lightly on the arm. "Eat your power food, " he urged me. I began to chew some dry meat and at that moment I had the sudden realization that perhaps the dry meat contained a psychotropic substance, hence the hallucinations. For a moment I felt almost relieved. If he had put something in the meat my mirages were perfectly understandable. I asked him to tell me if there was anything at all in the "power meat." He laughed but did not answer me directly. I insisted, assuring him that I was not angry or even annoyed, but that I had to know so I could explain the events of the previous night to my own satisfaction. I urged him, coaxed him, and finally begged him to tell me the truth. "You are quite cracked, " he said, shaking his head in a gesture of disbelief. "You have an insidious tendency. You persist in trying to explain everything to your satisfaction. There is nothing in the meat except power. The power was not put there by me or by any other man but by power itself. It is the dry meat of a deer and that deer was a gift to me in the same way a certain rabbit was a gift to you not too long ago. Neither you nor I put anything in the rabbit. I didn't ask you to dry the rabbit's meat, because that act required more power than you had. However, I did tell you to eat the meat. You didn't eat much of it, because of your own stupidity. "What happened to you last night was neither a joke nor a prank. You had an encounter with power. The fog, the darkness, the lightning, the thunder and the rain were all part of a great battle of power. You had the luck of a fool. A warrior would give anything to have such a battle." My argument was that the whole event could not be a battle of power because it had not been real. "And what is real?" don Juan asked me very calmly. "This, what we're looking at is real, " I said, pointing to the surroundings. "But so was the bridge you saw last night, and so was the forest and everything else." "But if they were real where are they now?" "They are here. If you had enough power you could call them back. Right now you cannot do that because you think it is very helpful to keep on doubting and nagging. It isn't, my friend. It isn't. There are worlds upon worlds, right here in front of us. And they are nothing to laugh at. Last night if I hadn't grabbed your arm you would have walked on that bridge whether you wanted to or not. And earlier I had to protect you from the wind that was seeking you out." "What would have happened if you hadn't protected me?" "Since you don't have enough power, the wind would have made you lose your way and perhaps even killed you by pushing you into a ravine. But the fog was the real thing last night. Two things could have happened to you in the fog. You could have walked across the bridge to the other side, or you could have fallen to your death." Either would have depended on power. One thing, however, would have been for sure. If I had not protected you, you would have had to walk on that bridge regardless of anything. That is the nature of power. As I told you before, it commands you and yet it is at your command. Last night, for instance, the power would have forced you to walk across the bridge and then it would have been at your command to sustain you while you were walking. I stopped you because I know you don't have the means to use power, and without power the bridge would have collapsed." "Did you see the bridge yourself, don Juan?" "No. I just saw power. It may have been anything. Power for you, this time, was a bridge. I don't know why a bridge. We are most mysterious creatures." "Have you ever seen a bridge in the fog, don Juan?" "Never. But that's because I'm not like you. I saw other things. My battles of power are very different than yours." "What did you see, don Juan? Can you tell me?" "I saw my enemies during my first battle of power in the fog. You have no enemies. You don't hate people. I did at that time. I indulged in hating people. I don't do that any more. I have vanquished my hate, but at that time my hate nearly destroyed me. "Your battle of power, on the other hand, was neat. It didn't consume you. You are consuming yourself now with your own crappy thoughts and doubts. That's your way of indulging yourself." "The fog was impeccable with you. You have an affinity with it. It gave you a stupendous bridge, and that bridge will be there in the fog from now on. It will reveal itself to you over and over, until someday you will have to cross it. "I strongly recommend that from this day on you don't walk into foggy areas by yourself until you know what you're doing. "Power is a very weird affair. In order to have it and command it one must have power to begin with. It's possible, however, to store it, little by little, until one has enough to sustain oneself in a battle of power." "What is a battle of power?" "What happened to you last night was the beginning of a battle of power. The scenes that you beheld were the seat of power. Someday they will make sense to you; those scenes are most meaningful." "Can you tell me their meaning yourself, don Juan?" "No. Those scenes are your own personal conquest which you cannot share with anyone. But what happened last night was only the beginning, a skirmish. The real battle will take place when you cross that bridge. What's on the other side? Only you will know that. And only you will know what's at the end of that trail through the forest. But all that is some thing that may or may not happen to you. In order to journey through those unknown trails and bridges one must have enough power of one's own." "What happens if one doesn't have enough power?" "Death is always waiting, and when the warrior's power wanes death simply taps him. Thus, to venture into the unknown without any power is stupid. One will only find death." I was not really listening. I kept on playing with the idea that the dry meat may have been the agent that had caused the hallucinations. It appeased me to indulge in that thought. "Don't tax yourself trying to figure it out, " he said as if he were reading my thoughts. "The world is a mystery. This, what you're looking at, is not all there is to it. There is much more to the world, so much more, in fact, that it is endless. So when you're trying to figure it out, all you're really doing is trying to make the world familiar. You and I are right here, in the world that you call real, simply because we both know it. You don't know the world of power, therefore you cannot make it into a familiar scene." "You know that I really can't argue your point, " I said. "But my mind can't accept it either." He laughed and touched my head lightly. "You're really crazy, " he said. "But that's all right. I know how difficult it is to live like a warrior. If you would have followed my instructions and performed all the acts I have taught you, you would by now have enough power to cross that bridge. Enough power to see and to stop the world." "But why should I want power, don Juan?" "You can't think of a reason now. However, if you would store enough power, the power itself will find you a good reason. Sounds crazy, doesn't it?" "Why did you want power yourself, don Juan?" "I'm like you. I didn't want it. I couldn't find a reason to have it. I had all the doubts that you have and never followed the instructions I was given, or I never thought I did; yet in spite of my stupidity I stored enough power, and one day my personal power made the world collapse." "But why would anyone wish to stop the world?" "Nobody does, that's the point. It just happens. And once you know what it is like to stop the world you realize there is a reason for it. You see, one of the arts of the warrior is to collapse the world for a specific reason and then restore it again in order to keep on living." I told him that perhaps the surest way to help me would be to give me an example of a specific reason for collapsing the world. He remained silent for some time. He seemed to be thinking what to say. "I can't tell you that, " he said. "It takes too much power to know that. Someday you will live like a warrior, in spite of yourself; then perhaps you will have stored enough personal power to answer that question yourself. "I have taught you nearly everything a warrior needs to know in order to start off in the world, storing power by himself. Yet I know that you can't do that and I have to be patient with you. I know for a fact that it takes a lifelong struggle to be by oneself in the world of power." Don Juan looked at the sky and the mountains. The sun was already on its descent towards the west and rain clouds were rapidly forming on the mountains. I did not know the time; I had forgotten to wind my watch. I asked if he could tell the time of the day and he had such an attack of laughter that he rolled off the slab into the bushes. He stood up and stretched his arms, yawning. "It is early, " he said. "We must wait until the fog gathers on top of the mountain and then you must stand alone on this slab and thank the fog for its favors. Let it come and envelop you. I'll be nearby to assist, if need be." Somehow the prospect of staying alone in the fog terrified me. I felt idiotic for reacting in such an irrational manner. "You cannot leave these desolate mountains without saying your thanks, " he said in a firm tone. "A warrior never turns his back to power without atoning for the favors received." He lay down on his back with his hands behind his head and covered his face with his hat. "How should I wait for the fog?" I asked. "What should I do?" "Write!" he said through his hat. "But don't close your eyes or turn your back to it." I tried to write but I could not concentrate. I stood up and moved around restlessly. Don Juan lifted his hat and looked at me with an air of annoyance. "Sit down!" he ordered me. He said that the battle of power had not yet ended, and that I had to teach my spirit to be impassive. Nothing of what I did should betray my feelings, unless I wanted to remain trapped in those mountains. He sat up and moved his hand in a gesture of urgency. He said that I had to act as if nothing was out of the ordinary, because places of power, such as the one in which we were, had the potential of draining people who were disturbed. And thus one could develop strange and injurious ties with a locale. "Those ties anchor a man to a place of power, sometimes for a lifetime, " he said. "And this is not the place for you. You did not find it yourself. So tighten your belt and don't lose your pants." His admonitions worked liked a spell on me. I wrote for hours without interruption. Don Juan went back to sleep and did not wake up until the fog was perhaps a hundred yards away, descending from the top of the mountain. He stood up and examined the surroundings. I looked around without turning my back. The fog had already invaded the lowlands, descending from the mountains to my right. On my left side the scenery was clear; the wind, however, seemed to be coming from my right and was pushing the fog into the lowlands as if to surround us. Don Juan whispered that I should remain impassive, standing where I was without closing my eyes, and that I should not turn around until I was completely surrounded by the fog; only then was it possible to start our descent. He took cover at the foot of some rocks a few feet behind me. The silence in those mountains was something magnificent and at the same time awesome. The soft wind that was carrying the fog gave me the sensation that the fog was hissing in my ears. Big chunks of fog came downhill like solid clumps of whitish matter rolling down on me. I smelled the fog. It was a peculiar mixture of a pungent and fragrant smell. And then I was enveloped in it. I had the impression the fog was working on my eyelids. They felt heavy and I wanted to close my eyes. I was cold. My throat itched and I wanted to cough but I did not dare. I lifted my chin up and stretched my neck to ease the cough, and as I looked up I had the sensation I could actually see the thickness of the fog bank. It was as if my eyes could assess the thickness by going through it. My eyes began to close and I could not fight off the desire to fall asleep. I felt I was going to collapse on the ground any moment. At that instant don Juan jumped up and grabbed me by the arms and shook me. The jolt was enough to restore my lucidity. He whispered in my ear that I had to run downhill as fast as I could. He was going to follow behind because he did not want to get smashed by the rocks that I might turn over in my path. He said that I was the leader, since it was my battle of power, and that I had to be clear headed and abandoned in order to guide us safely out of there. "This is it, " he said in a loud voice. "If you don't have the mood of a warrior, we may never leave the fog." I hesitated for a moment. I was not sure I could find my way down from those mountains. "Run, rabbit, run!" don Juan yelled and shoved me gently down the slope. A WARRIOR'S LAST STAND Sunday, January 28, 1962 Around ten a.m. don Juan walked into his house. He had left at the crack of dawn. I greeted him. He chuckled and in a clowning mood he shook hands with me and greeted me ceremoniously. "We're going to go on a little trip, " he said. "You're going to drive us to a very special place in search of power." He unfolded two carrying nets and placed two gourds filled with food in each of them, tied them with a thin rope, and handed me a net. We leisurely drove north some four hundred miles and then we left the Pan American highway and took a gravel road towards the west. My car seemed to have been the only car on the road for hours. As we kept on driving I noticed that I could not see through my windshield. I strained desperately to look at the surroundings but it was too dark and my windshield was overlaid with crushed insects and dust. I told don Juan that I had to stop to clean my windshield. He ordered me to go on driving even if I had to crawl at two miles an hour, sticking my head out of the window to see ahead. He said that we could not stop until we had reached our destination. At a certain place he told me to turn to the right. It was so dark and dusty that even the headlights did not help much. I drove off the road with great trepidation. I was afraid of the soft shoulders, but the dirt was packed. I drove for about one hundred yards at the lowest possible speed, holding the door open to look out. Finally don Juan told me to stop. He said that I had parked right behind a huge rock that would shield my car from view. I got out of the car and walked around, guided by the headlights. I wanted to examine the surroundings because I had no idea where I was. But don Juan turned off the lights. He said loudly that there was no time to waste, that I should lock my car so we could start on our way. He handed me my net with gourds. It was so dark that I stumbled and nearly dropped them. Don Juan ordered me in a soft firm tone to sit down until my eyes were accustomed to the darkness. But my eyes were not the problem. Once I got out of my car I could see fairly well. What was wrong was a peculiar nervousness that made me act as if I were absent minded. I was glossing over everything. "Where are we going?" I asked. "We're going to hike in total darkness to a special place, " he said. "What for?" "To find out for sure whether or not you're capable of continuing to hunt power." I asked him if what he was proposing was a test, and if I failed the test would he still talk to me and tell me about his knowledge. He listened without interrupting. He said that what we were doing was not a test, that we were waiting for an omen, and if the omen did not come the conclusion would be that I had not succeeded in hunting power, in which case I would be free from any further imposition, free to be as stupid as I wanted. He said that no matter what happened he was my friend and he would always talk to me. Somehow I knew I was going to fail. "The omen will not come, " I said jokingly. "I know it. I have a little power." He laughed and patted me on the back gently. "Don't you worry," he retorted. "The omen will come. I know it. I have more power than you." He found his statement hilarious. He slapped his thighs and clapped his hands and roared with laughter. Don Juan tied my carrying net to my back and said that I should walk one step behind him and step in his tracks as much as possible. In a very dramatic tone he whispered, "This is a walk for power, so everything counts." He said that if I would walk in his footsteps the power that he was dissipating as he walked would be transmitted to me. I looked at my watch; it was eleven p.m. He made me line up like a soldier at attention. Then he pushed my right leg to the front and made me stand as if I had just taken a step forward. He lined up in front of me in the same position and then began to walk, after repeating the instructions that I should try to match his footsteps to perfection. He said in a clear whisper that I should not concern myself with anything else except stepping in his tracks; I should not look ahead or to the side but at the ground where he was walking. He started off at a very relaxed pace. I had no trouble at all following him; we were walking on relatively hard ground. For about thirty yards I maintained his pace and I matched his steps perfectly; then I glanced to the side for an instant and the next thing I knew I had bumped into him. He giggled and assured me that I had not injured his ankle at all when I had stepped on it with my big shoes, but if I were going to keep on blundering one of us would be a cripple by morning. He said, laughing, in a very low but firm voice, that he did not intend to get hurt by my stupidity and lack of concentration and that if I stepped on him again I would have to walk barefoot. "I can't walk without shoes, " I said in a loud raspy voice. Don Juan doubled up with laughter and we had to wait until he had stopped. He assured me again that he had meant what he said. We were journeying to tap power and things had to be perfect. The prospect of walking in the desert without shoes scared me beyond belief. Don Juan joked that my family were probably the type of farmers that did not take off their shoes even to go to bed. He was right, of course. I had never walked barefoot and to walk in the desert without shoes would have been suicidal for me. "This desert is oozing power, " don Juan whispered in my ear. "There is no time for being timid." We started walking again. Don Juan kept an easy pace. After a while I noticed that we had left the hard ground and were walking on soft sand. Don Juan's feet sank into it and left deep tracks. We walked for hours before don Juan came to a halt. He did not stop suddenly but warned me ahead of time that he was going to stop so I would not bump into him. The terrain had become hard again and it seemed that we were going up an incline. Don Juan said that if I needed to go to the bushes I should do it, because from then on we had a solid stretch without a single pause. I looked at my watch; it was one a.m. After a ten- or fifteen-minute rest don Juan made me line up and we began to walk again. He was right, it was a dreadful stretch. I had never done anything that demanded so much concentration. Don Juan's pace was so fast and the tension of watching every step mounted to such heights that at a given moment I could not feel that I was walking any more. I could not feel my feet or my legs. It was as if I were walking on air and some force were carrying me on and on. My concentration had been so total that I did not notice the gradual change in light. Suddenly I became aware that I could see don Juan in front of me. I could see his feet and his tracks instead of half guessing as I had done most of the night. At a given moment he unexpectedly jumped to the side and my momentum carried me for about twenty yards further. As I slowed down my legs became weak and started to shake until finally I collapsed on the ground. I looked up at don Juan, who was calmly examining me. He did not seem to be tired. I was panting for breath and soaked in cold perspiration. Don Juan twirled me around in my lying position by pulling me by the arm. He said that if I wanted to regain my strength I had to lie with my head towards the east. Little by little I relaxed and rested my aching body. Finally I had enough energy to stand up. I wanted to look at my watch, but he prevented me by putting his hand over my wrist. He very gently turned me around to face the east and said that there was no need for my confounded timepiece, that we were on magical time, and that we were going to find out for sure whether or not I was capable of pursuing power. I looked around. We were on top of a very large high hill. I wanted to walk towards something that looked like an edge or a crevice in the rock, but don Juan jumped and held me down. He ordered me imperatively to stay on the place I had fallen until the sun had come out from behind some black mountain peaks a short distance away. He pointed to the east and called my attention to a heavy bank of clouds over the horizon. He said that it would be a proper omen if the wind blew the clouds away in time for the first rays of the sun to hit my body on the hilltop. He told me to stand still with my right leg in front, as if I were walking, and not to look directly at the horizon but look without focusing. My legs became very stiff and my calves hurt. It was an agonizing position and my leg muscles were too sore to support me. I held on as long as I could. I was about to collapse. My legs were shivering uncontrollably when don Juan called the whole thing off. He helped me to sit down. The bank of clouds had not moved and we had not seen the sun rising over the horizon. Don Juan's only comment was, "Too bad." I did not want to ask right off what the real implications of my failure were, but knowing don Juan, I was sure he had to follow the dictum of his omens. And there had been no omen that morning. The pain in my calves vanished and I felt a wave of. wellbeing. I began to trot in order to loosen up my muscles. Don Juan told me very softly to run up an adjacent hill and gather some leaves from a specific bush and rub my legs in order to alleviate the muscular pain. From where I stood I could very plainly see a large lush green bush. The leaves seemed to be very moist. I had used them before. I never felt that they had helped me, but don Juan had always maintained that the effect of really friendly plants was so subtle that one could hardly notice it, yet they always produced the results they were supposed to. I ran down the hill and up the other. When I got to the top I realized that the exertion had almost been too much for me. I had a hard time catching my breath and my stomach was upset. I squatted and then crouched over for a moment until I felt relaxed. Then I stood up and reached over to pick the leaves he had asked me to. But I could not find the bush. I looked around. I was sure I was on the right spot, but there was nothing in that area of the hilltop that even vaguely resembled that particular plant. Yet that had to be the spot where I had seen it. Any other place would have been out of range for anyone looking from where don Juan was standing. I gave up the search and walked to the other hill. Don Juan smiled benevolently as I explained my mistake. "Why do you call it a mistake?" he asked. "Obviously the bush is not there, " I said. "But you saw it, didn't you?" "I thought I did." "What do you see in its place now?" "Nothing." There was absolutely no vegetation on the spot where I thought I had seen the plant. I attempted to explain what I had seen as a visual distortion, a sort of mirage. I had really been exhausted, and because of my exhaustion I may have easily believed I was seeing something that I expected to be there but which was not there at all. Don Juan chuckled softly and stared at me for a brief moment. "I see no mistake, " he said. "The plant is there on that hilltop." It was my turn to laugh. I scanned the whole area carefully. There were no such plants in view and what I had experienced was, to the best of my knowledge, a hallucination. Don Juan very calmly began to descend the hill and signaled me to follow. We climbed together to the other hilltop and stood right where I thought I had seen the bush. I chuckled with the absolute certainty I was right. Don Juan also chuckled. "Walk to the other side of the hill, " don Juan said. "You'll find the plant there." I brought up the point that the other side of the hill had been outside my field of vision, that a plant may be there, but that that did not mean anything. Don Juan signaled me with a movement of his head to follow him. He walked around the top of the hill instead of going directly across, and dramatically stood by a green bush without looking at it. He turned and looked at me. It was a peculiarly piercing glance. "There must be hundreds of such plants around here, " I said. Don Juan very patiently descended the other side of the hill, with me trailing along. We looked everywhere for a similar bush. But there was none in sight. We covered about a quarter of a mile before we came upon another plant. Without saying a word, don Juan led me back to the first hilltop. We stood there for a moment and then he guided me on another excursion to look for the plant but in the opposite direction. We combed the area and found two more bushes, perhaps a mile away. They had grown together and stuck out as a patch of intense rich green, more lush than all the other surrounding bushes. Don Juan looked at me with a serious expression. I did not know what to think of it. "This is a very strange omen, " he said. We returned to the first hilltop, making a wide detour in order to approach it from a new direction. He seemed to be going out of his way to prove to me that there were very few such plants around there. We did not find any of them on our way. When we reached the hilltop we sat down in complete silence. Don Juan untied his gourds. "You'll feel better after eating, " he said. He could not hide his delight. He had a beaming grin as he patted me on the head. I felt disoriented. The new developments were disturbing, but I was too hungry and tired to really ponder upon them. After eating I felt very sleepy. Don Juan urged me to use the technique of looking without focusing in order to find a suitable spot to sleep on the hilltop where I had seen the bush. I selected one. He picked up the debris from the spot and made a circle with it the size of my body. Very gently he pulled some fresh branches from the bushes and swept the area inside the circle. He only went through the motions of sweeping, he did not really touch the ground with the branches. He then removed all the surface rocks from the area inside the circle and placed them in the center after meticulously sorting them by size into two piles of equal number. "What are you doing with those rocks?" I asked. "They are not rocks, " he said. "They are strings. They will hold your spot suspended." He took the smaller rocks and marked the circumference of the circle with them. He spaced them evenly and with the aid of a stick he secured each rock firmly in the ground as if he were a mason. He did not let me come inside the circle but told me to walk around and watch what he did. He counted eighteen rocks, following a counterclockwise direction. "Now run down to the bottom of the hill and wait, " he said. "And I will come to the edge and see if you are standing in the appropriate spot." "What are you going to do?" "I'm going to toss each of these strings to you, " he said, pointing to the pile of bigger rocks. "And you have to place them in the ground at the spot I will indicate in the same manner I have placed the other ones. "You must be infinitely careful. When one is dealing with power, one has to be perfect. Mistakes are deadly here. Each of these is a string, a string that could kill us if we leave it around loose; so you simply can't make any mistakes. You must fix your gaze on the spot where I, will throw the string. If you get distracted by anything at all, the string will become an ordinary rock and you won't be able to tell it apart from the other rocks lying around." I suggested that it would be easier if I carried the "strings" downhill one at a time. Don Juan laughed and shook his head negatively. "These are strings, " he insisted. "And they have to be tossed by me and have to be picked up by you." It took hours to fulfill the task. The degree of concentration needed was excruciating. Don Juan reminded me every time to be attentive and focus my gaze. He was right in doing so. To pick out a specific rock that came hurtling downhill, displacing other rocks in its way, was indeed a maddening affair. When I had completely closed the circle and walked to the top, I thought I was about to drop dead. Don Juan had picked some small branches and had matted the circle. He handed me some leaves and told me to put them inside my pants, against the skin of my umbilical region. He said that they would keep me warm and I would not need a blanket to sleep. I tumbled down inside the circle. The branches made a fairly soft bed and I fell asleep instantly. It was late afternoon when I woke up. It was windy and cloudy. The clouds overhead were compact cumulus clouds, but towards the west they were thin cirrus clouds and the sun shone on the land from time to time. Sleeping had renewed me. I felt invigorated and happy. The wind did not bother me. I was not cold. I propped my head up with my arms and looked around. I had not noticed before but the hilltop was quite high. The view towards the west was impressive. I could see a vast area of low hills and then the desert. There was a range of dark brown mountain peaks towards the north and east, and towards the south an endless expanse of land and hills and distant blue mountains. I sat up. Don Juan was not anywhere in sight. I had a sudden attack of fear. I thought he may have left me there alone, and I did not know the way back to my car. I lay down again on the mat of branches and strangely enough my apprehension vanished. I again experienced a sense of quietness, an exquisite sense of well being. It was an extremely new sensation to me; my thoughts seemed to have been turned off. I was happy. I felt healthy. A very quiet ebullience filled me. A soft wind was blowing from the west and swept over my entire body without making me cold. I felt it on my face and around my ears, like a gentle wave of warm water that bathed me and then receded and bathed me again. It was a strange state of being that had no parallel in my busy and dislocated life. I began to weep, not out of sadness or self-pity but out of some ineffable, inexplicable joy. I wanted to stay in that spot forever and I may have, had don Juan not come and yanked me out of the place. "You've had enough rest, " he said as he pulled me up. He led me very calmly on a walk around the periphery of the hilltop. We walked slowly and in complete silence. He seemed to be interested in making me observe the scenery all around us. He pointed to clouds and mountains with a movement of his eyes or with a movement of his chin. The scenery in the late afternoon was superb. It evoked sensations of awe and despair in me. It reminded me of sights in my childhood. We climbed to the highest point of the hilltop, a peak of igneous rock, and sat down comfortably with our backs against the rock, facing the south. The endless expanse of land towards the south was truly majestic. "Fix all this in your memory, " don Juan whispered in my ear. "This spot is yours. This morning you saw, and that was the omen. You found this spot by seeing. The omen was unexpected, but it happened. You are going to hunt power whether you like it or not. It is not a human decision, not yours or mine. "Now, properly speaking, this hilltop is your place, your beloved place; all that is around you is under your care. You must look after everything here and everything will in turn look after you." In a joking way I asked if everything was mine. He said yes in a very serious tone. I laughed and told him that what we were doing reminded me of the story of how the Spaniards that conquered the New World had divided the land in the name of their king. They used to climb to the top of a mountain and claim all the land they could see in any specific direction. "That's a good idea, " he said. "I'm going to give you all the land you can see, not in one direction but all around you." He stood up and pointed with his extended hand, turning his body around to cover a complete circle. "All this land is yours, " he said. I laughed out loud. He giggled and asked me, "Why not? Why can't I give you this land?" "You don't own this land, " I said. "So what? The Spaniards didn't own it either and yet they divided it and gave it away. So why can't you take possession of it in the same vein?" I scrutinized him to see if I could detect the real mood behind his smile. He had an explosion of laughter and nearly fell of the rock. "All this land, as far as you can see, is yours, " he went on, still smiling. "Not to use but to remember. This hilltop, however, is yours to use for the rest of your life. I am giving it to you because you have found it yourself. It is yours. Accept it." I laughed, but don Juan seemed to be very serious. Except for his funny smile, he appeared to actually believe that