he could  give me that hilltop.
"Why  not?" he asked as  if he  were  reading my thoughts. "I accept it, " I
said half in jest. His smile disappeared. He squinted his eyes as  he looked
at me.
     "Every rock and pebble and bush on this hill, especially on the top, is
under your care, " he said. "Every worm that lives here is your  friend. You
can use them and they can use you."
     We remained  silent  for a  few  minutes.  My  thoughts  were unusually
scarce. I vaguely felt  that his sudden change of mood was foreboding to me,
but I was not afraid or apprehensive. I just did  not want to talk any more.
Somehow, words seemed  to  be  inaccurate and their  meanings  difficult  to
pinpoint.  I had  never  felt that way about talking,  and upon realizing my
unusual mood I hurriedly began to talk.
     "But what can I do with this hill, don Juan?"
     "Fix  every feature of it  in your memory. This is the place  where you
will come in dreaming. This is  the place where  you will meet with  powers,
where secrets will someday be revealed to you.
     "You are hunting power and this is your place, the place where you will
store your resources.
     "It doesn't make sense to you now. So let it be a piece of nonsense for
the time being."
     We climbed down the rock and he led me to a small bowl like  depression
on the west side  of  the  hilltop. We sat down and ate  there.  Undoubtedly
there was something indescribably pleasant for  me on that  hilltop. Eating,
like resting, was an unknown exquisite sensation.
     The light  of  the setting sun had a rich,  almost copperish, glow, and
everything in the surroundings seemed to be dabbed with a golden  hue. I was
given totally to observing the scenery; I did not even want to think.
     Don Juan spoke to me  almost in a whisper. He  told  me  to watch every
detail  of  the surroundings,  no  matter  how small  or  seemingly trivial.
Especially  the  features  of the  scenery that  were most  prominent  in  a
westerly direction. He  said that  I should look at the sun without focusing
on it until it had disappeared over the horizon.
     The last minutes of  light, right before the  sun hit  a blanket of low
clouds or fog,  were, in a  total sense,  magnificent. It  was as if the sun
were inflaming the earth, kindling it like a bonfire. I  felt a sensation of
redness in my face.
     "Stand up!" don Juan shouted as he pulled me up. He jumped away from me
and ordered me in an imperative but urging voice to trot on the spot where I
was standing.  As  I  jogged  on the same spot, I  began  to feel  a  warmth
invading my body. It was a  copperish warmth. I felt it in my palate  and in
the "roof"  of my eyes. It was  as if  the top part of my head were  burning
with a cool fire that radiated a copperish glow.
     Something in myself made me trot  faster and faster as the sun began to
disappear.  At a given moment I truly felt I was so light that  I could have
flown  away.  Don Juan  very  firmly  grabbed my right wrist. The  sensation
caused by the  pressure of his  hand brought back  a sense  of  sobriety and
composure.
     I plunked down on the ground and he sat down by me. After a few minutes
rest he  quietly  stood  up, tapped  me on the shoulder, and signaled  me to
follow him. We climbed back again to  the  peak of igneous rock where we had
sat before. The rock shielded  us from the cold  wind. Don  Juan  broke  the
silence.
     "It was a fine omen, " he said. "How strange! It happened at the end of
the day. You and I are so different. You are more a creature of the night. I
prefer the young brilliancy of  the morning. Or rather the brilliancy of the
morning sun  seeks  me, but it shies  away from you. On the other  hand, the
dying sun bathed you. Its flames scorched you without burning you.
     How strange!"
     "Why is it strange?"
     "I've never seen  it happen. The omen, when it happens, has always been
in the realm of the young sun."
     "Why is it that way, don Juan?"
     "This is not the time to talk about it," he said cuttingly.
     "Knowledge is power. It  takes  a long time to harness enough power  to
even talk about it." I tried to insist, but he  changed  the topic abruptly.
He asked me about my progress in "dreaming."
     I had begun to dream about specific places, such as  the school and the
houses of a few friends.
     "Were you at  those places  during  the  day  or  during the night?" he
asked.
     My dreams corresponded to the time of  the day  when  I ordinarily  was
accustomed to being at  those places - in  the  school during the day, at my
friends' houses at night.
     He suggested that I should try "dreaming" while I took a nap during the
daytime and find out if I  could actually visualize  the chosen place as  it
was at the time I was "dreaming."
     If I were "dreaming" at  night, my visions  of the locale should  be of
night  time.  He said that  what  one  experiences in "dreaming"  has to  be
congruous  with the  time of  the  day  when "dreaming"  was  taking  place;
otherwise  the  visions  one  might  have were not "dreaming"  but  ordinary
dreams.
     "In  order  to help  yourself you  should pick  a  specific object that
belongs to the place  you  want to go and focus your attention on  if,  " he
went on. "On this  hilltop here, for  instance, you now have a specific bush
that you must observe until it has a place in your memory. You can come back
here while dreaming simply by recalling that bush, or by recalling this rock
where we are sitting, or by recalling  any other thing here. It is easier to
travel in dreaming when you can focus on a place of power, such as this one.
But if you don't  want to come here you may use any other place. Perhaps the
school  where you go  is a place  of  power  for you.  Use  it.  Focus  your
attention on any object there and then find it in dreaming.
     "From the specific object  you  recall, you must go back to  your hands
and then to another object and so on.
     "But  now you must  focus your attention on everything that  exists  on
this hilltop, because this is the most important place of your life."
     He  looked at  me as if  judging the effect of his words. "This  is the
place where you will die, " he said in a soft voice.
     I  fidgeted nervously,  changing  sitting positions,  and he smiled. "I
will have  to come with you over and over to this  hilltop,  " he said. "And
then you will have to come by yourself until you're saturated with it, until
the hilltop is oozing you.
     You will know the time when you are filled with it. This hilltop, as it
is now, will then be the place of your last dance."
     "What do you mean by my last dance, don Juan?"
     "This is the site  of your last stand, " he said. "You will die here no
matter  where you  are. Every  warrior has a  place to die. A place  of  his
predilection  which  is  soaked with  unforgettable memories, where powerful
events  left their mark, a  place  where  he has  witnessed  marvels,  where
secrets have been revealed to him, a place where he  has stored his personal
power.
     "A  warrior  has  the  obligation  to  go back to  that  place  of  his
predilection every time he  taps power in order to store it there. He either
goes there by means of walking or by means of dreaming.
     "And finally, one day when his time on earth is up and he feels the tap
of his death on his  left shoulder, his spirit, which is always ready, flies
to the place of his predilection and there the warrior dances to his death.
     "Every warrior has a specific  form, a specific posture of power, which
he develops  throughout his life. It  is a sort of dance. A movement that he
does under the influence of his personal power.
     "If a dying warrior has limited power, his dance is short; if his power
is grandiose,  his dance is magnificent. But regardless of whether his power
is small or magnificent, death must stop to witness his last stand on earth.
Death cannot overtake the warrior who is recounting the toil of his life for
the last time until he has finished his dance."
     Don  Juan's  words made  me shiver. The  quietness,  the  twilight, the
magnificent scenery, all seemed to have been placed there as  props for  the
image of a warrior's last dance of power.
     "Can you teach me that dance even though I am not a warrior?" I asked.
     "Any  man that hunts  power has to learn  that dance, " he said. "Yet I
cannot  teach you now. Soon you may have  a worthy  opponent and I will show
you then the first  movement of  power. You  must add  the  other  movements
yourself as  you  go on  living. Every  new  one must  be obtained during  a
struggle  of power.  So,  properly  speaking,  the  posture,  the form of  a
warrior,  is  the story  of  his life, a  dance that grows as  he  grows  in
personal power."
     "Does death really stop to see a warrior dance?"
     "A warrior is only a man. A humble man. He cannot change the designs of
his  death.  But  his  impeccable  spirit,  which  has  stored  power  after
stupendous  hardships, can  certainly hold his  death for a moment, a moment
long enough to let him rejoice for  the last time in recalling his power. We
may say that that  is a gesture which  death  has  with  those  who have  an
impeccable spirit."
     I  experienced  an overwhelming anxiety and I talked just  to alleviate
it.  I  asked  him if  he had known warriors that had died, and in  what way
their last dance had affected their dying.
     "Cut it out, " he said dryly. "Dying is a monumental affair. It is more
than kicking your legs and becoming stiff."
     "Will I too dance to my death, don Juan?"
     "Certainly. You are hunting personal  power  even though you don't live
like a warrior yet.  Today the sun gave you an omen. Your best production in
your  life's work  will  be done towards  the  end of the day. Obviously you
don't like the youthful brilliancy of early light. Journeying in the morning
doesn't appeal to you. But your cup of tea  is the dying sun, old yellowish,
and mellow. You don't like the heat, you like the glow.
     "And thus  you will dance to your  death here, on this hilltop,  at the
end of the day. And in your  last dance you will  tell of your struggle,  of
the battles you have won and of  those you have lost; you will tell of  your
joys and bewilderments upon  encountering  personal  power. Your dance  will
tell about the secrets and about the marvels you have stored. And your death
will sit here and watch you.
     "The dying sun will glow on you without burning, as it has done  today.
The wind will be soft and mellow and your hilltop will tremble. As you reach
the end  of your  dance you will look at  the sun, for you will never see it
again in waking or in dreaming, and then your death will point to the south.
To the vastness."

     THE GAIT OF POWER

     Saturday, April 8, 1962

     "Is  death  a personage, don Juan?" I asked as I sat down on the porch.
There was an air of bewilderment in don Juan's look. He was holding a bag of
groceries I had  brought him. He carefully placed them on the ground and sat
down in  front  of me. I felt encouraged and explained that I wanted to know
if death was  a person, or like a  person, when it watched  a warrior's last
dance.
     "What difference does it make?" don Juan asked.
     I told him that the image was fascinating to  me and  I  wanted to know
how he  had  arrived  at it.  How  he knew that that was so. "It's all  very
simple, " he said. "A man of knowledge knows that  death is the last witness
because he sees."
     "Do you mean that you have witnessed a warrior's last dance yourself?"
     "No. One cannot  be such a witness.  Only death can do that. But I have
seen  my  own  death watching me and I have danced to it  as  though I  were
dying.  At  the end of my dance death did not point in any direction, and my
place of  predilection did not shiver  saying goodbye  to me. So my time  on
earth was not  up  yet and I did not die.  When  all that took  place, I had
limited power and I did not  understand the designs of my own  death, thus I
believed I was dying."
     "Was your death like a person?"
     "You're a funny bird. You  think you are going  to understand by asking
questions. I don't think you will, but who am I to say?
     "Death is not like a person. It is rather a presence. But one may  also
choose to say that it is nothing and yet it is everything. One will be right
on every count. Death is whatever one wishes.
     "I am at ease with people, so death is a person for me. I am also given
to mysteries, so death has hollow eyes for me. I can look through them. They
are  like two windows and yet  they move, like eyes move. And  so  I can say
that death with its hollow  eyes looks at a warrior while he  dances for the
last time on earth."
     "But  is that so only for you,  don  Juan, or is it the  same for other
warriors?"
     "It is the same for every warrior that has a dance of power, and yet it
is  not. Death witnesses a warrior's last dance,  but the manner  in which a
warrior sees his death is a personal matter. It could be anything-a  bird, a
light, a person, a bush, a pebble, a piece of fog, or an unknown presence."
     Don  Juan's  images of  death disturbed me.  I could not  find adequate
words  to voice my questions and I stammered. He stared at me, smiling,  and
coaxed  me to speak up. I asked him if the manner in which a warrior saw his
death depended on the way he had been brought up. I  used the Yuma and Yaqui
Indians as examples.  My  own idea was that culture determined  the  way  in
which one would envision death.
     "It doesn't matter how one was brought up, " he said.
     "What determines the way one  does anything is personal power. A man is
only the sum of his personal power, and that sum determines how he lives and
how he dies."
     "What is personal power?"
     "Personal power is  a feeling, " he said. "Something like  being lucky.
Or  one may  call it  a mood. Personal power is  something that one acquires
regardless of  one's origin. I  already have told  you  that  a warrior is a
hunter of power, and that I am teaching  you how to hunt and  store  it. The
difficulty  with  you, which  is the difficulty  with  all of  us, is to  be
convinced.
     You need  to believe  that  personal power can be  used and that  it is
possible to store it, but you haven't been convinced so far."
     I told him that he had made his  point and that I was as convinced as I
would ever be. He laughed. "That is not the type of conviction I am  talking
about," he said.
     He tapped my shoulder with  two or three  soft punches and added with a
cackle, "I don't need to be humored, you know."
     I felt obliged to assure him that I was serious.
     "I  don't doubt  it, " he said. "But to be convinced means that you can
act by yourself. It will still take you a  great deal of  effort to do that.
Much more has to be done. You have just begun."
     He was quiet for a moment. His face acquired a placid expression.
     "It's funny the way you sometimes remind me of myself," he went on.  "I
too  did not want  to take the path of  a warrior. I  believed that all that
work  was for  nothing, and  since we are  all going to die  what difference
would it make to be a warrior? I was wrong. But I had to  find that out  for
myself.
     Whenever you do realize that you are wrong, and that it certainly makes
a world  of difference, you can say that you are convinced. And then you can
proceed  by  yourself. And  by  yourself  you  may  even  become  a  man  of
knowledge."
     I asked him to explain what he meant by a man of knowledge.
     "A man of knowledge is one who has followed truthfully the hardships of
learning,  " he said. "A man who has, without  rushing or faltering, gone as
far as he can in unraveling the secrets of personal power."
     He discussed the concept in  brief terms and  then  discarded  it  as a
topic of conversation, saying that I should only be concerned with  the idea
of storing personal power. "That's incomprehensible, " I protested. "I can't
really figure out  what you are driving  at."  "Hunting power  is a peculiar
event," he said. "It first has to be an idea, then it has to be set up, step
by step, and then, bingo! It happens."
     "How does it happen?"
     Don Juan  stood up. He began stretching his arms  and  arching his back
like a cat. His bones, as usual, made  a  series of cracking  sounds. "Let's
go, " he said. "We have a long journey ahead of us."
     "But there are so many things I want to ask you, " I said.
     "We are going to a place  of power, " he said as he  stepped inside his
house. "Why don't  you save your questions for the time we are there? We may
have an opportunity to talk." I thought we were going  to drive, so  I stood
up and  walked to my car, but don Juan called me from the house and told  me
to pick  up my net with gourds.  He was waiting for  me  at the edge of  the
desert chaparral behind his house.
     "We  have to  hurry up,  "  he said. We reached the lower slopes of the
western Sierra Madre mountains around three p.m. It had been  a warm day but
towards the late afternoon the wind became cold. Don Juan sat down on a rock
and signaled me to do likewise.
     "What are we going to do here this time, don Juan?"
     "You know very well that we're here to hunt power."
     "I know that. But what are we going to do here in particular?"
     "You know that I don't have the slightest idea."
     "Do you mean that you never follow a plan?"
     "Hunting power is a very strange affair, " he said. "There is no way to
plan it  ahead of time. That's what's  exciting about it. A warrior proceeds
as  if he  had a plan though, because he trusts his personal power. He knows
for a fact that it will make him act in the most appropriate fashion."
     I  pointed  out that his statements were  somehow  contradictory. If  a
warrior already had personal power, why was he hunting for it?
     Don Juan raised his brows and made a gesture of feigned disgust.
     "You're the one who is hunting personal power, " he said.
     "And I am the warrior who already has it. You asked me if I had a  plan
and I said  that I trust my personal power to guide me and that I don't need
to have a plan."
     We remained quiet for a moment and then began walking again. The slopes
were very steep and  climbing them  was very difficult and  extremely tiring
for me. On  the other hand, there seemed to be no end to don Juan's stamina.
He did not run or hurry. His walking was steady and tireless. I noticed that
he was not even perspiring, even after having climbed an enormous and almost
vertical slope. When  I reached the top  of it, don Juan was  already there,
waiting for me. As I sat down next to him I felt that my heart  was about to
burst out of my chest. I  lay on my  back and perspiration  literally poured
from my brows.
     Don Juan laughed out loud and rolled me back and forth for a while. The
motion helped  me catch my breath. I  told him that I was simply awed by his
physical prowess.
     "I've been trying to draw your attention to it all along, " he said.
     "You're not old at all, don Juan!"
     "Of course not. I've been trying to make you notice it."
     "How do you do it?"
     "I  don't do  anything. My body feels  fine, that's all. I treat myself
very well, therefore, I have  no reason to  feel tired or ill  at  ease. The
secret is not in what you do to yourself but rather in what you don't do." I
waited  for  an  explanation. He  seemed  to  be aware of  my  incapacity to
understand. He smiled knowingly and stood up.
     "This is a place of power, " he said. "Find a place for us to camp here
on this hilltop." I began to protest. I wanted him to explain what I  should
not do to my body. He made an imperative gesture.
     "Cut the  guff, " he said softly. "This time just act for a  change. It
doesn't  matter  how long  it takes you to find a suitable place to rest. It
might take you all night. It is not important that you find the spot either;
the important issue is that you try to find it."
     I put away my writing pad and stood up. Don Juan reminded me, as he had
done countless times, whenever he had asked me to find a resting place, that
I had to look without  focusing on any particular  spot,  squinting my  eyes
until my view was blurred.
     I began to walk, scanning the ground with my half-closed eyes. Don Juan
walked a few feet to my right and a couple of steps behind me.
     I covered the  periphery of the hilltop first. My intention was to work
my way in a  spiral to the center. But once I  had covered the circumference
of the hilltop, don  Juan made me stop. He said I was letting  my preference
for routines take over.
     In  a sarcastic tone he  added that I was certainly covering  the whole
area systematically, but in such a stagnant  way that I would not be able to
perceive the suitable place. He added that he himself knew where it  was, so
there was no chance for improvisations on my part.
     "What should I be doing instead?" I asked.
     Don Juan made me sit down. He then plucked  a single leaf from a number
of bushes  and  gave them to  me. He ordered  me to lie down on  my back and
loosen my belt and place the leaves against the skin of my umbilical region.
He supervised my movements and instructed me to  press the leaves against my
body with both hands. He then ordered me to close my eyes and warned me that
if I wanted perfect results I should not lose hold of the leaves, or open my
eyes, or try to sit up when he shifted my body to a position of power.
     He  grabbed me  by the right  armpit  and  swirled me around. I  had an
invincible desire to  peek through my half-closed  eyelids, but don Juan put
his  hand over  my  eyes.  He commanded  me  to concern myself only with the
feeling of warmth that was going to come from the leaves.
     I lay motionless for a moment and then I began  to  feel a strange heat
emanating  from the leaves. I first sensed it with  the palms  of  my hands,
then the warmth extended  to my abdomen, and finally it literally invaded my
entire body. In a matter of minutes my feet were burning up with a heat that
reminded me of times when I had had a high temperature.
     I  told  don Juan about the unpleasant sensation and  my desire to take
off my shoes. He said  that he was  going to help me stand up, that I should
not  open my eyes until he told me  to, and that I  should keep pressing the
leaves to my stomach until I had found the suitable spot to rest.
     When I was  on  my feet  he whispered in my  ear that I  should open my
eyes, and that I should walk without a plan, letting the power of the leaves
pull me and guide me.
     I  began  to walk aimlessly. The heat of my  body was  uncomfortable. I
believed I was  running a high temperature, and I became absorbed  in trying
to conceive by what  means don Juan had  produced it. Don Juan walked behind
me.  He  suddenly let out a  scream that nearly paralyzed me. He  explained,
laughing, that abrupt noises scare away unpleasant  spirits.  I squinted  my
eyes  and walked back  and forth  for about half an  hour. In that time  the
uncomfortable  heat  of  my  body  turned  into  a   pleasurable  warmth.  I
experienced a sensation of lightness as  I paced up and  down the hilltop. I
felt  disappointed,  however; I had somehow expected to detect  some kind of
visual phenomenon,  but there were no changes whatsoever in the periphery of
my field of vision, no unusual colors, or glare, or dark masses.
     I  finally became  tired of squinting my  eyes and opened  them.  I was
standing in front of  a  small ledge of sandstone, which was one  of the few
barren rocky places on the hilltop;  the  rest was  dirt with widely  spaced
small  bushes. It  seemed that the vegetation had burned sometime before and
the new growth was not fully mature yet.  For some  unknown reason I thought
that  the sandstone ledge was beautiful. I stood in front  of it  for a long
time.  And then I simply sat  down  on it.  "Good! Good!" don Juan  said and
patted me on the back.
     He then told me  to carefully pull the leaves from under my clothes and
place them on the rock.
     As soon as  I had taken the leaves away from  my skin  I  began to cool
off. I took my pulse. It seemed to be normal.
     Don Juan laughed and  called me "doctor Carlos" and asked me if I could
also take his  pulse.  He said  that  what I had felt was the  power  of the
leaves, and that that  power had cleared me and had enabled me to fulfill my
task.
     I asserted in all sincerity that I had done nothing in particular,  and
that I  sat down on that place because  I  was tired and because I found the
color of the sandstone very appealing.
     Don Juan did not say anything. He was standing a few feet away from me.
Suddenly he jumped back and with incredible agility ran and leaped over some
bushes to a high crest of rocks some distance away.
     "What's the matter?" I asked, alarmed.
     "Watch the  direction in  which the wind will blow  your leaves,  "  he
said.  "Count them quickly. The  wind is coming. Keep half  of them and  put
them back against your belly."
     I counted  twenty leaves. I stuck ten under my shirt  and then a strong
gust  of wind scattered the other  ten in a  westerly direction.  I  had the
eerie feeling as I  saw the leaves being blown  off that  a real  entity was
deliberately sweeping them into the amorphous mass of green shrubbery.
     Don  Juan  walked back to where I was  and sat down next  to me,  to my
left, facing the south.
     We did not speak  a word for a long time. I did not know what to say. I
was exhausted.  I wanted to close my eyes, but I did not dare. Don Juan must
have noticed my state and said that it was all right to fall asleep. He told
me to place my hands on my abdomen, over the leaves, and try to feel that  I
was lying suspended on the  bed  of "strings" that he had made for me on the
"place of my  predilection. "I  closed my eyes and a memory of the peace and
plenitude I had experienced while sleeping on that other hilltop invaded me.
I wanted to find out  if I could actually feel I  was suspended  but  I fell
asleep. I  woke up  just  before  the sunset.  Sleeping  had  refreshed  and
invigorated me.  Don Juan had also fallen asleep. He opened his  eyes at the
same  time I did. It was  windy but I did  not  feel cold. The  leaves on my
stomach seemed to have acted as a furnace, a heater of some sort.
     I examined the surroundings.  The place I had selected to rest was like
a small basin. One could actually sit on it as on  a  long couch;  there was
enough of a rock wall to serve as a backrest. I also found out that don Juan
had  brought my writing pads and placed them underneath my head. "You  found
the right place, " he said, smiling. "And the whole operation took  place as
I had  told you it would. Power guided you here without  any  plan  on  your
part."
     "What kind of leaves did you give me?" I asked.
     The warmth that had radiated from the leaves and had  kept me in such a
comfortable  state, without any blankets or extra thick clothing, was indeed
an absorbing phenomenon for me.
     "They were just leaves, " don Juan said.
     "Do  you mean  that  I  could grab leaves from  any bush and they would
produce the same effect on me?"
     "No. I don't mean that you  yourself can do that. You  have no personal
power. I mean  that any kind of leaves would  help  you,  providing that the
person who  gives them to you has power.  What helped you today was  not the
leaves but power."
     "Your power, don Juan?"
     "I  suppose  you could say that it was my  power, although that  is not
really accurate. Power does not belong to anyone.
     Some of us may gather it and then it could be given directly to someone
else. You see, the key to stored power is that  it can be used only to  help
someone else store power."
     I asked him if that  meant that his power was limited  only  to helping
others. Don Juan patiently explained that he could  use  his personal  power
however  he  pleased, in anything  he  himself wanted,  but  when it came to
giving  it directly  to  another person,  it was useless unless  that person
utilized it for his own search of personal power.
     "Everything a man does hinges on his personal power," don Juan went on.
"Therefore,  for one who doesn't have any, the  deeds of a powerful man  are
incredible. It  takes power to even conceive what power is. This  is  what I
have been trying to tell you all along. But I know you don't understand, not
because you don't want to but because you have very little personal power."
     "What should I do, don Juan?"
     "Nothing. Just proceed as you are now. Power will find a way."
     He  stood  up and  turned  around  in  a  complete  circle,  staring at
everything in  the surroundings. His body  moved at the  same  time his eyes
moved; the total effect was that of a hieratic mechanical toy that turned in
a complete circle in a precise and unaltered movement.
     I looked at  him  with  my mouth open. He hid a smile, cognizant of  my
surprise.
     "Today you are going to hunt power in the darkness of the day," he said
and sat down.
     "I beg your pardon?"
     "Tonight you'll venture into those unknown hills.  In the darkness they
are not hills."
     "What are they?"
     "They are something else. Something unthinkable for you, since you have
never witnessed their existence."
     "What  do  you  mean,  don Juan?  You always scare me with  that spooky
talk."
     He laughed and kicked my calf softly.
     "The world  is  a  mystery, "  he  said. "And it  is not at all  as you
picture it."
     He seemed to  reflect for a moment. His  head bobbed up and down with a
rhythmical shake, then he smiled and added, "Well, it is also as you picture
it, but that's not all there is to the world; there is  much more to it. You
have been  finding that out all along,  and perhaps tonight you will add one
more piece."
     His tone sent a chill through my body. "What are you planning to do?" I
asked.
     "I don't  plan anything. All  is decided by the same power that allowed
you to find this spot."
     Don  Juan  got up  and  pointed to something in the distance. I assumed
that he  wanted  me to  stand  up and look. I  tried to jump to my feet, but
before I had fully stood up, don Juan pushed me down with great force.
     "I didn't  ask you to follow  me,  " he said in a severe voice. Then he
softened his tone and added, "You're going to have a difficult time tonight,
and you will need all the personal power you can muster. Stay where you  are
and save yourself for later."
     He explained that he was not pointing at anything  but just making sure
that  certain things were out there. He  assured me that  everything was all
right and said that I should sit quietly and  get busy, because I had  a lot
of time to write before total darkness  had set in  the land. His smile  was
contagious and very comforting.
     "But what are we going to do, don Juan?"
     He  shook his  head  from side to side  in  an  exaggerated gesture  of
disbelief.
     "Write!" he commanded me and turned his back to me.
     There was nothing else for me to  do. I worked on my notes until it was
too dark to write.
     Don  Juan maintained the  same position all the time I  was working. He
seemed to  be absorbed in staring into the distance towards the west. But as
soon  as  I  stopped he turned to me and said in a joking tone that the only
ways to shut  me up were to give me  something to eat,  or make me write, or
put me to sleep.
     He took a small bundle from his knapsack and ceremoniously  opened  it.
It contained pieces of dry meat.  He handed me a piece and took  another for
himself  and began to chew on it. He casually informed me that  it was power
food, which  both of us needed on that occasion. I  was too hungry to  think
about the possibility that  the dry meat may have  contained  a psychotropic
substance. We  ate  in complete silence until there was no more meat, and by
that time it was quite dark.
     Don  Juan stood up  and  stretched his  arms and  back. He  suggested I
should do  the same. He said it  was  a  good practice to stretch the entire
body after sleeping, sitting, or walking.  I followed his advice and some of
the  leaves I  had kept under my shirt slid through the legs of  my pants. I
wondered  if  I should try to pick them up, but he  said to forget about it,
that  there was no longer  any need for them and that I should let them fall
as they might.
     Then don Juan came very close to me and whispered in my right  ear that
I was supposed to follow him at  very close range and  imitate everything he
did. He said  that we were safe on the spot where we stood, because we were,
so to speak, at the edge of the night.
     "This  is not the night,  " he whispered, stomping on the rock where we
were standing. "The night is out there."
     He pointed to the darkness all around us.
     He then  checked my carrying  net to  see  if  the food gourds  and  my
writing pads were  secured and in a soft  voice said that a  warrior  always
made sure  that everything was in proper order, not because he believed that
he  was going to survive the ordeal he  was  about to undertake, but because
that was part of his impeccable behavior.
     Instead  of  making  me  feel  relieved,  his admonitions  created  the
complete certainty that my doom was approaching. I  wanted to weep. Don Juan
was, I was sure, completely aware of the effect of his words.
     "Trust your personal power, " he said in my ear. "That's all one has in
this whole mysterious world."
     He  pulled me  gently and we started to walk. He took the lead a couple
of steps  ahead  of me. I  followed  him with my eyes  fixed on  the ground.
Somehow I did not dare to look around,  and focusing my sight on the  ground
made me feel strangely calm; it almost mesmerized me. After a short walk don
Juan  stopped. He  whispered  that  total darkness was near  and that he was
going to get ahead of me, but was going to give me his position by imitating
the cry of a specific small owl. He reminded me that I already knew that his
particular imitation was raspy at the beginning and then it became as mellow
as the cry of a real owl. He warned me to be deadly aware of other owl cries
which did not bear that mark.
     By the  time don Juan finished  giving me all those  instructions I was
practically panic stricken. I grabbed him by  the arm and would not  let go.
It  took  two  or  three minutes for  me to calm myself  enough  so  I could
articulate  my words. A nervous ripple ran along  my stomach and abdomen and
kept me from talking coherently.
     In a calm  soft voice he urged me  to  get  hold of myself, because the
darkness was like the  wind, an unknown  entity at large that could trick me
if  I was not careful. And I had to  be perfectly calm in order to deal with
it.
     "You must  let yourself  go so your personal  power will merge with the
power of the night, " he said in my ear.
     He said he was  going to move ahead  of me and I  had another attack of
irrational fear.
     "This  is  insane,  "  I  protested. Don  Juan  did  not get  angry  or
impatient. He laughed quietly and said something  in my ear  which I did not
quite understand.
     "What did you say?" I said loudly through chattering teeth.
     Don Juan put his hand over my mouth and whispered  that a warrior acted
as if he knew what he was doing, when in effect he knew nothing. He repeated
one  statement three  or  four times, as if he wanted me to memorize it.  He
said, "A warrior  is impeccable when he trusts his personal power regardless
of whether it is small or enormous."
     After a short wait he asked me if I was all right. I nodded and he went
swiftly out of sight with hardly a sound.
     I tried to  look around. I  seemed to be standing in an  area of  thick
vegetation.  All I could distinguish was the dark mass of shrubs, or perhaps
small  trees.  I  concentrated  my attention  on  sounds,  but  nothing  was
outstanding. The whizzing of the wind muffled every other  sound except  the
sporadic piercing cries of large owls and the whistling of other birds.
     I waited for a while  in a state of utmost attention. And then came the
raspy prolonged cry of a small owl.  I had no doubt it was don Juan. It came
from a place behind me. I turned around and began to walk in that direction.
I moved slowly because I felt inextricably encumbered by the darkness.
     I  walked for  perhaps ten  minutes. Suddenly some  dark mass jumped in
front of me. I screamed and fell backward on my seat. My ears began buzzing.
The fright  was  so great  that it  cut  my wind. I had to open my  mouth to
breathe.
     "Stand up, " don Juan said softly. "I  didn't mean to scare you. I just
came to  meet  you."  He said that he had been watching  my  crappy  way  of
walking and that when I moved in the darkness  I  looked like a crippled old
lady trying  to tiptoe  between  mud  puddles. He found this image funny and
laughed out loud.
     He  then  proceeded  to  demonstrate a  special way of walking  in  the
darkness,  a way which  he called "the  gait of power."  He  stooped over in
front of me and  made me run my hands  over his  back and knees, in order to
get an  idea of the position of his body. Don Juan's trunk was slightly bent
forward,  but his spine was straight. His knees were  also slightly bent. He
walked slowly in front of me so I could take notice that he raised his knees
almost to his chest every time he took a  step. And then he actually ran out
of sight and came back again. I could not conceive how he could run in total
darkness.
     "The gait of power is for running at night, " he whispered in my ear.
     He urged me to try it myself. I told him  that I was sure I would break
my legs falling into a crevice or against a rock.
     Don Juan very calmly said that the "gait of power" was completely safe.
     I pointed out  that the only way I  could  understand his acts  was  by
assuming  he  knew  those hills  to perfection  and  thus  could  avoid  the
pitfalls.
     Don Juan took my head in  his  hands and whispered forcefully, "This is
the night! And it is power!"
     He let go of my head and then added in a soft voice that  at night  the
world was different, and that his ability to run in the darkness had nothing
to do with his knowledge  of  those hills. He said that the key to it was to
let one's personal power flow out freely, so  it could merge with  the power
of the night, and that  once that  power took over there was no chance for a
slip-up. He added, in a tone of utmost seriousness,  that if I doubted it  I
should consider for a moment what was taking place. For  a man of his age to
run in those hills at  that hour would be suicidal if the power of the night
was not guiding him.
     "Look!"  he said and ran swiftly out  into  the darkness and  came back
again.
     The way his body moved  was so extraordinary  that  I could not believe
what I  was seeing.  He sort of jogged on the same spot  for a  moment.  The
manner  in  which he  lifted  his  legs reminded  me  of  a  sprinter  doing
preliminary warm-up exercises.
     He  then told me to  follow  him. I  did it with  utter constraint  and
uneasiness.  With extreme care I tried to look where I  was  stepping but it
was impossible to judge distance.
     Don Juan came back  and jogged by my  side. He whispered that I  had to
abandon  myself to  the  power of  the  night  and trust the  little  bit of
personal power that I  had, or I  would never be able to move with  freedom,
and that the darkness  was encumbering only because I relied on my sight for
everything I did, not knowing that another way to move was to let  power  be
the guide.
     I tried various times without any success. I simply  could not let  go.
The fear  of injuring my legs was overpowering. Don  Juan ordered me to keep
on moving in the same  spot and  to try  to feel as if I were actually using
the "gait of power."
     He then said that he was going to run ahead and  that I should wait for
his owl's cry. He disappeared in the darkness before I could say anything. I
closed my  eyes at times and jogged on the same spot with my knees and trunk
bent for perhaps an hour. Little by little my tension began to ease up until
I was fairly comfortable. Then I heard don Juan's cry.
     I ran five  or  six yards  in the  direction where the cry  came  from;
trying to "abandon myself, " as don Juan had suggested. But stumbling into a
bush immediately brought back my feelings of insecurity.
     Don Juan was waiting  for me and  corrected  my posture. He  insisted I
should first  curl my fingers against my palms, stretching out the thumb and
index of each hand. Then he said that in his  opinion  I was just  indulging
myself in my feelings of inadequacy, since  I knew for a fact I could always
see fairly  well, no matter how dark the night was, if  I did not  focus  on
anything but kept scanning the ground right in front of me.
     The "gait of power" was similar to finding a place to rest.
     Both  entailed a sense of abandon, and a sense  of trust. The  "gait of
power"  required that one keep  the eyes  on  the ground  directly in front,
because even a glance to either side would produce an alteration in the flow
of  movement. He  explained that  bending the trunk forward was necessary in
order to  lower the eyes, and the reason for lifting the  knees  up  to  the
chest was because the steps had to be very short and safe. He warned me that
I was going to stumble a great deal  at  first but  he assured me that  with
practice I could run as swiftly and as safely as I could in the daytime.
     For hours I  tried to imitate his movements and  get into  the mood  he
recommended. He would very patiently jog on the same spot in front of me, or
he would take  off in a short run and return to where I was, so I could  see
how he moved. He would even push me and make me run a few yards.
     Then he took  off  and  called me with a  series of owl cries. In  some
inexplicable way I moved with an unexpected degree of self confidence. To my
knowledge I had done nothing to warrant that  feeling, but my body seemed to
be cognizant of things without thinking about them. For example, I could not
really see the jagged rocks in my way, but my body always managed to step on
the edges and never in the crevices, except for a few mishaps when I lost my
balance because I  became distracted. The degree  of concentration needed to
keep scanning the  area directly  in front had to be total. As don  Juan had
warned me, any slight glance to the side or too far ahead altered the flow.
     I  located don Juan after  a  long search. He was sitting  by some dark
shapes that seemed to be trees. He came towards me and said that I was doing
very  well, but  it was time to quit because  he had  been using his whistle
long enough and was sure that by then it could be imitated by others.
     I  agreed that  it  was time  to stop. I  was  nearly exhausted  by  my
attempts. I felt relieved and asked him who would imitate his cry.
     "Powers,  allies,  spirits,  who  knows?"  he  said in  a  whisper.  He
explained that  those  "entities  of the night" usually  made very melodious
sounds but were  at a  great disadvantage  in reproducing the  raspiness  of
human  cries or bird  whistlings. He cautioned me to always stop moving if I
ever heard such a sound and to keep in mind all he had said, because at some
other  time I might need to  make the proper identification. In a reassuring
tone he said that I had a very good idea what the "gait of  power" was like,
and that in order  to master it  I needed only a slight  push, which I could
get on another occasion when we  ventured again into the night. He patted me
on the shoulder and announced that he was ready to leave.
     "Let's get out of here, " he said and began running.
     "Wait! Wait!" I screamed frantically. "Let's walk."
     Don Juan stopped and took off his hat.
     "Golly!"  he said in a tone  of perplexity. "We're in a  fix. You  know
that I  cannot walk  in the  dark. I can only  run.  I'll break my legs if I
walk."
     I had the feeling he  was grinning when he said that, although  I could
not see his face.
     He added in a confidential tone  that he  was  too old to walk  and the
little  bit of the "gait  of power" that  I had learned that night had to be
stretched to meet the occasion.
     "If  we don't use the 'gait of power' we will be mowed down like grass,
" he whispered in my ear.
     "By whom?"
     "There are things in the night  that act on people, " he whispered in a
tone  that sent chills through my body. He  said  that it was not  important
that I keep up with him, because  he  was going to give  repeated signals of
four owl cries at a time so I could follow him.  I  suggested that we should
stay  in those  hills  until dawn and  then leave.  He  retorted in  a  very
dramatic tone that to stay there would  be suicidal; and even if we came out
alive, the  night would have drained our personal power to the point that we
could not avoid being the victims of the first hazard of the day.
     "Let's not waste any more time, " he said with a note of urgency in his
voice. "Let's get out of here."
     He reassured  me  that he would try  to go as slowly as  possible.  His
final instructions were  that I should try not to utter a  sound, not even a
gasp, no  matter what happened. He  gave me  the general direction  we  were
going to go in and  began running at a markedly slower pace. I followed him,
but no matter how slow he  moved  I could not keep up with him, and he  soon
disappeared in the darkness ahead of me.
     After I was alone I became aware that I  had adopted a fairly fast walk
without realizing it. And that came as  a shock  to me. I tried  to maintain
that pace for a long while and then I heard don  Juan's call a little bit to
my right. He whistled four times in succession.
     After a very short while I again heard his owl cry, this time to my far
right. In order to follow it I had to make a forty five degree turn. I began
to move in the  new direction, expecting that the  other three  cries of the
set would give me a better orientation.
     I heard a new whistle,  which placed don Juan almost  in the  direction
where we had started. I  stopped and listened. I heard  a very sharp noise a
short distance  away. Something like  the  sound  of two rocks  being struck
against each  other.  I strained  to listen  and detected a  series  of soft
noises,  as if two rocks were being  struck  gently. There was another owl's
cry  and then I  knew  what don Juan  had meant. There was  something  truly
melodious  about it. It was  definitely longer and even  more mellow than  a
real  owl's. I felt a strange sensation of fright.  My stomach contracted as
if  something were pulling me down from the middle part of my body. I turned
around and started to semi-jog in the opposite direction.
     I heard a faint owl cry  in the distance. There was  a rapid succession
of three more cries.  They were don Juan's. I ran in their direction. I felt
that he must have  then been a good quarter of a mile away and if he kept up
that pace  I  would soon be inextricably alone in those hills.  I  could not
understand why don Juan would run ahead, when  he could have run  around me,
if he needed to keep that pace.
     I noticed then that there  seemed to be something moving with me  to my
left. I could almost  see it  in the extreme periphery of my visual field. I
was about to panic,  but  a  sobering thought crossed  my mind. I could  not
possibly see anything in the dark. I wanted to stare in that direction but I
was afraid to lose my momentum.
     Another  owl cry  jolted me out  of my  deliberations. It  came from my
left. I did not follow it because it was without  a doubt the most sweet and
melodious cry I  had ever heard.  It did not frighten  me  though. There was
something very appealing, or perhaps haunting, or even sad about it.  Then a
very swift dark mass crossed from left to  right ahead of me. The suddenness
of its movements made me look ahead, I lost  my  balance and crashed noisily
against some shrubs. I fell down on my  side  and then I heard the melodious
cry  a few steps to my left.  I  stood up,  but before I could  start moving
forward again there was another cry, more demanding and  compelling than the
first. It was as if something there wanted  me to stop and listen. The sound
of  the owl cry was so prolonged and gentle that it eased my  fears. I would
have actually stopped had I not heard at that precise moment don Juan's four
raspy  cries. They seemed to  be nearer.  I  jumped  and took  off  in  that
direction.
     After a  moment  I  noticed  again  a certain flicker or a wave in  the
darkness  to my left. It was  not a sight proper, but rather a  feeling, and
yet I was almost sure I was perceiving it with my eyes. It moved faster than
I did, and again  it crossed from left to right, making  me lose my balance.
This time I did not fall down, and strangely enough not falling down annoyed
me. I suddenly became angry  and  the incongruency of  my feelings threw  me
into true  panic. I tried to accelerate my pace. I wanted to give out an owl
cry myself to let don Juan know where I was, but  I did not dare to  disobey
his instructions.
     At  that  moment some  gruesome thing came  to my attention. There  was
actually something like  an animal to my left, almost touching  me. I jumped
involuntarily and veered to my right. The fright almost suffocated me. I was
so intensely gripped  by  fear that there  were  no thoughts in my mind as I
moved  in the darkness  as fast as  I could. My fear seemed to be  a  bodily
sensation that had nothing to do with my thoughts.
     I found that condition very unusual. In the course of my life, my fears
had always been mounted on an intellectual matrix and had been engendered by
threatening social situations, or by people behaving towards me in dangerous
ways. This  time, however, my  fear  was  a  true novelty. It came  from  an
unknown part of the world and hit me in an unknown part of myself.
     I  heard  an  owl cry very close and slightly  to my left.  I could not
catch the  details of its pitch, but it seemed to be don Juan's.  It was not
melodious. I slowed down. Another cry  followed. The raspiness of don Juan's
whistles was  there, so I  moved faster. A  third  whistle  came from a very
short distance away. I  could distinguish a  dark  mass of rocks or  perhaps
trees. I heard another owl's cry and I thought that don Juan was waiting for
me  because we were out of the field of danger. I  was almost at the edge of
the  darker area when  a fifth cry  froze me on the spot. I  strained to see
ahead into  the  dark  area, but a sudden rustling sound to  my left made me
turn around in time to notice a black object, blacker than the surroundings,
rolling or sliding by  my side. I gasped and jumped away. I heard a clicking
sound, as if someone were smacking his lips, and then a very large dark mass
lurched out of the darker area. It was square, like a door, perhaps eight to
ten feet high.
     The suddenness of its appearance made me scream. For a moment my fright
was all out of proportion, but a second later I found myself awesomely calm,
staring at  the dark  shape. My reactions were, as far  as I  was concerned,
another total novelty. Some part  of myself seemed  to  pull  me towards the
dark area with an eerie insistence, while another  part  of me resisted.  It
was as if I wanted to find out for sure on the one hand, and on the  other I
wanted to run hysterically out of there.
     I barely heard don Juan's  owl  cries. They seemed to  be very close by
and they seemed to  be  frantic; they were longer and raspier,  as though he
was whistling while lie ran towards me. Suddenly I  seemed to regain control
of  myself  and was able  to turn around  and for a moment I ran just as don
Juan had been wanting me to.
     "Don Juan!" I shouted when I found him.
     He put  his hand on my mouth and  signaled  me  to  follow and  we both
jogged at a very comfortable pace until we came to the sandstone ledge where
we had been  before. We sat in  absolute  silence on the ledge  for about an
hour,  until  dawn. Then we ate food from the gourds.  Don Juan said that we
had to remain on the ledge until midday, and that we were not going to sleep
at all but were going to talk as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
     He asked me to relate in detail everything that had happened to me from
the moment he had left me. When I concluded my narration he stayed quiet for
a long time. He seemed to be immersed in deep thought.
     "It  doesn't look  too good, " he finally said.  "What happened to  you
last night was  very serious,  so serious  that  you cannot venture into the
night alone any more.  From now on the entities of the night won't leave you
alone."
     "What happened to me last night, don Juan?"
     "You stumbled on some entities which are in the world, and which act on
people. You know nothing about them because you have never encountered them.
Perhaps it would be more proper to call them entities of the mountains; they
don't really belong to the night. I call them entities of the  night because
one can  perceive  them  in the darkness  with greater ease.  They are here,
around us  at  all  times. In daylight, however, it  is  more  difficult  to
perceive them, simply because the world is familiar to us, and that which is
familiar takes precedence. In the darkness, on the other hand, everything is
equally  strange  and  very few  things  take  precedence,  so  we  are more
susceptible to those entities at night."
     "But are they real, don Juan?"
     "Of  course!  They  are  so  real  that  ordinarily  they kill  people,
especially those who stray into the wilderness and have no personal power."
     "If you knew they were so dangerous, why did you leave me alone there?"
     "There  is only  one way  to  learn, and that  way  is to  get  down to
business.  To only  talk about power is useless. If  you want  to know  what
power is, and if you want to store it, you must tackle everything yourself.
     "The road of knowledge and power  is very difficult and very  long. You
may have noticed  that I  have  not let  you  venture into the  darkness  by
yourself until last night. You did not have enough power to do that. Now you
do have enough  to wage a good battle, but not enough to stay in the dark by
yourself."
     "What would happen if I did?"
     "You'll die. The entities of the night will crush you like a bug."
     "Does that mean that I cannot spend a night by myself?"
     "You can  spend the  night  by  yourself  in  your  bed, but not in the
mountains."
     "What about the flatlands?"
     "It applies only to the wilderness, where  there are no  people around,
especially the wilderness in high mountains. Since the natural abodes of the
entities of the night are rocks and crevices, you cannot go to the mountains
from now on unless you have stored enough personal power."
     "But how can I store personal power?"
     "You are doing  it  by  living  the  way I have  recommended. Little by
little you are  plugging all  your points of drainage. You don't have  to be
deliberate about it,  because  power  always  finds  a way.  Take  me  as an
example. I didn't know I was storing  power when I  first began to learn the
ways of a
     warrior.  Just  like   you,  I  thought  I  wasn't  doing  anything  in
particular,  but  that was  not  so.  Power  has  the  peculiarity  of being
unnoticeable when  it is being stored." I asked  him to  explain how  he had
arrived at the conclusion that it was  dangerous for me to stay by myself in
the darkness.
     "The entities of the night moved along your left, " he said. "They were
trying to merge with your death. Especially the door that you saw. It was an
opening, you know, and it would have pulled you until you had been forced to
cross it. And that would have been your end."
     I  mentioned,  in  the best way I  could, that I thought  it  was  very
strange that things always happened when he  was around, and that  it was as
if he had been concocting all the events himself. The times I had been alone
in the wilderness at night had always been perfectly normal  and uneventful.
I had never experienced shadows or strange noises. In fact, I had never been
frightened by anything.
     Don  Juan  chuckled  softly and said  that everything  was proof he had
enough personal power to call a myriad of things to his aid.
     I had the feeling he perhaps was hinting that he actually had called on
some  people as his confederates. Don Juan seemed to  have read my  thoughts
and laughed out loud.
     "Don't tax yourself with explanations, " he said. "What I said makes no
sense to you, simply because you still don't have enough personal power. Yet
you have more than when you  started, so things have begun to happen to you.
You already had a powerful encounter with the fog and lightning.
     It  is  not  important that  you understand what happened  to you  that
night. What's  important is that you  have acquired the  memory  of it.  The
bridge and everything else you saw that night will be repeated someday  when
you have enough personal power."
     "For what purpose would all that be repeated, don Juan?"
     "I don't know. I  am not you.  Only  you  can answer  that. We  are all
different. That's why I had to leave you by yourself last night, although  I
knew it  was  mortally dangerous; you  had  to  test yourself against  those
entities.  The  reason  I  chose  the  owl's cry  was  because owls  are the
entities'  messengers. To  imitate  the  cry of an owl brings them out. They
became  dangerous  to  you not  because  they are naturally  malevolent  but
because  you  were not impeccable. There  is something in you that  is  very
chintzy  and I know  what it is.  You  arc just humoring  me.  You have been
humoring  everybody all along and,  of course, that places you automatically
above everyone and everything. But you know yourself that that cannot be so.
You are only a man, and  your life is too brief to encompass all the wonders
and  all the horrors of this marvelous  world. Therefore,  your humoring  is
chintzy; it cuts you down to a crappy size."
     I wanted to protest. Don Juan  had nailed me,  as he had done dozens of
times before. For a  moment I became angry. But, as it had happened  before,
writing detached me enough so I could remain impassive.
     "I  think  I have  a cure  for it,  " don Juan  went on  after  a  long
interval. "Even you  would agree with me  if you could remember what you did
last night. You ran as fast  as any sorcerer only when  your opponent became
unbearable. We  both  know that and I believe I have already found a  worthy
opponent for you."
     "What are you going to do, don Juan?"
     He did  not  answer.  He stood up and stretched his body. He seemed  to
contract every muscle. He ordered me to do the same.
     "You must stretch your body many times during the day,"
     he said. "The  more times  the better, but only after a  long period of
work or a long period of rest."
     "What kind of opponent are you going to find for me?" I asked.
     "Unfortunately only our fellow men are our worthy opponents, " he said.
"Other entities have no volition of  their own  and one must go to meet them
and lure them out. Our fellow men, on the contrary, are relentless.
     "We have talked  long enough,  "  don Juan  said in  an abrupt tone and
turned  to  me.  "Before  we  leave  you must do  one more thing,  the  most
important of all. I am  going  to  tell  you something right now to set your
mind at ease about why you are here. The reason you keep on coming to see me
is very simple; every time you have seen  me your  body  has learned certain
things, even against  your desire.  And finally  your body now needs to come
back to me to learn more. Let's say that your body knows that it is going to
die, even  though you never think about it. So  I've been telling your  body
that I too am going to die and before I do  I  would like to show  your body
certain  things,  things which you cannot give to  your  body  yourself. For
example, your body needs  fright.  It likes it. Your body needs the darkness
and the wind. Your  body now knows the  gait of power and can't  wait to try
it. Your body needs personal power and  can't wait to  have it. So let's say
then that your body returns to see me because I am its friend."
     Don Juan remained  silent for a long while. He seemed to be  struggling
with his thoughts.
     "I've told you that  the secret of a  strong body is not in what you do
to it but in what you don't do, " he finally said.
     "Now it is time for you not to do what you always do. Sit here until we
leave and not-do."
     "I don't follow you, don Juan."
     He put his hands over my notes and took them away from me. He carefully
closed the  pages of my notebook, secured it with  its rubber band, and then
threw it like a disk far into the chaparral.
     I was  shocked and began to protest but he put his hand over  my mouth.
He pointed to a large bush and told me to fix my attention not on the leaves
but on the shadows of the leaves.
     He said that running in the darkness did not have to be spurred by fear
but could be a very natural  reaction  of  a jubilant body that knew how "to
not do." He repeated over and over in a whisper in my right ear that "to not
do what I knew  how to do" was the key to power. In the case of looking at a
tree, what I knew  how  to  do was to focus immediately on  the foliage. The
shadows  of the  leaves or the spaces  in between the  leaves were never  my
concern. His last admonitions were to start focusing on the  shadows  of the
leaves on one  single  branch and  then eventually work my way to  the whole
tree,  and  not to let my  eyes go  back  to the  leaves, because the  first
deliberate step to storing personal power was to allow the body to "not-do."
     Perhaps it was because of my fatigue or my  nervous excitation,  but  I
became so immersed in  the  shadows of  the leaves that by the time don Juan
stood up I could almost group the dark masses of shadows as effectively as I
normally  grouped  the foliage. The total  effect was startling. I  told don
Juan that I would like to stay longer. He laughed and patted me on my hat.
     "I've told you, " he  said. "The body likes things  like this." He then
said that I should  let  my stored  power  guide me through the bushes to my
notebook. He gently pushed  me into the chaparral. I walked  aimlessly for a
moment and  then I came upon it. I thought that  I  must  have unconsciously
memorized the direction  in which don Juan had thrown  it.  He explained the
event, saying that I went directly to the notebook because my body had  been
soaked for hours in "not-doing."

     NOT-DOING

     Wednesday, April 12, 1962

     Upon returning to his house,  don Juan recommended  that  I work on  my
notes  as if  nothing had  happened to me,  and not to  mention or  even  be
concerned with  any of the events I had  experienced. After a day's rest  he
announced that we  had to leave the area  for  a  few days  because  it  was
advisable to put distance between us and those "entities." He said that they
had affected me deeply, although I was not noticing their effect yet because
my  body was not  sensitive  enough. In a short while, however, I would fall
seriously ill if I did not go  to my "place of predilection" to  be cleansed
and restored.
     We left before dawn and drove north, and after  an exhausting drive and
a fast hike we arrived at the hilltop in the late afternoon. Don Juan, as he
had done before, covered the spot where I had once slept with small branches
and leaves.  Then he gave me a handful of leaves to put against the  skin of
my abdomen  and  told me to  lie down and rest. He fixed  another place  for
himself slightly to my left, about five feet away from my head, and also lay
down.
     In a matter of minutes I began to feel an exquisite warmth and a  sense
of  supreme well-being. It was  a sense  of physical comfort, a sensation of
being  suspended in mid-air. I could fully  agree  with don Juan's statement
that  the  "bed  of strings"  would  keep  me floating.  I commented  on the
unbelievable  quality of my sensory experience. Don Juan  said in a  factual
tone that the "bed" was made for that purpose.
     "I can't believe that this is possible!" I  exclaimed. Don Juan took my
statement  literally and scolded me. He said he was tired of my acting as an
ultimately important being that has to be given proof over and over that the
world is unknown and marvelous.
     I  tried to explain that a rhetorical exclamation  had no significance.
He retorted  that if that were so I could have chosen another  statement. It
seemed that he was seriously annoyed with me.  I sat up halfway and began to
apologize, but he laughed and, imitating my manner of speaking, suggested  a
series of hilarious  rhetorical  exclamations I could  have  used instead. I
ended  up  laughing at  the  calculated absurdity of some  of  his  proposed
alternatives.  He  giggled  and in a soft tone  reminded  me  that I  should
abandon myself to the sensation of floating.
     The soothing feeling of peace and plenitude  that I experienced in that
mysterious place aroused some deeply buried emotions in  me. I began to talk
about my life. I confessed that I had never respected or liked anybody,  not
even myself, and that I  had always  felt I was inherently evil, and thus my
attitude towards others was always veiled with a certain bravado and daring.
     "True, " don  Juan  said. "You don't like yourself at  all." He cackled
and told me that he had been "seeing" while I talked. His recommendation was
that I should not have remorse for anything I  had done, because to  isolate
one's  acts  as being  mean,  or  ugly, or evil was to place  an unwarranted
importance on the self.
     I moved nervously and the bed of leaves made a rustling sound. Don Juan
said that if I wanted to rest I should not make my leaves feel agitated, and
that I should imitate him and lie without making a single movement. He added
that in his "seeing" he had come across one  of my moods. He struggled for a
moment, seemingly to find a  proper word, and said that the mood in question
was a frame of mind I continually lapsed  into. He described it as a sort of
trap door that opened at unexpected times and swallowed me.
     I  asked him to be more specific. He replied that it was  impossible to
be  specific about "seeing." Before I could say anything else  he told me  I
should relax, but not fall  asleep,  and be in a state  of  awareness for as
long as I could. He said that  the "bed of strings" was  made exclusively to
allow a warrior to arrive at  a certain state of peace and well-being. In  a
dramatic  tone don Juan  stated that well-being was a  condition one  had to
groom, a condition one had to become acquainted with in order to seek it.
     "You don't  know what well-being is, because you have never experienced
it, " he  said. I  disagreed  with him. But  he continued arguing  that well
being was an achievement one had to deliberately seek. He said that the only
thing  I  knew  how  to  seek was a sense of  disorientation, ill-being, and
confusion.
     He  laughed mockingly  and  assured me that  in order to accomplish the
feat of making myself miserable I had to work in a most intense fashion, and
that it was absurd I had never realized I could work just the same in making
myself  complete and strong. "The trick is in what one emphasizes," he said.
"We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount
of work is the same."
     I closed my eyes  and relaxed again and  began to feel I was  floating;
for a short while it was as if I were actually moving  through space, like a
leaf. Although it was utterly pleasurable,  the  feeling somehow reminded me
of times when I had  become sick  and dizzy and would experience a sensation
of spinning. I  thought  perhaps I had eaten something bad. I heard don Juan
talking to me but I did not really make an effort to listen. I was trying to
make a mental inventory of all  the things I had eaten that day, but I could
not become interested in it. It did not seem to matter.
     "Watch the way the sunlight changes," he said.
     His voice was clear. I thought it was like water, fluid and warm.
     The sky was totally  free  of clouds towards the  west and the sunlight
was  spectacular. Perhaps the fact  that  don Juan  was cueing  me made  the
yellowish glow of the afternoon sun truly magnificent.
     "Let that glow kindle you,  " don Juan said.  "Before the sun goes down
today you must be perfectly calm and restored, because  tomorrow or  the day
after, you are going to learn not-doing."
     "Learn not doing what?" I asked.
     "Never  mind  now,  " he  said.  "Wait  until  we  are  in  those  lava
mountains."
     He pointed to some distant jagged, dark, menacing-looking peaks towards
the north.

     Thursday, April 13, 1962

     We reached  the  high  desert  around  the lava  mountains in  the late
afternoon.  In  the distance the  dark brown  lava  mountains  looked almost
sinister.  The sun was very low on the horizon and shone on the western face
of the solidified lava, tinting its  dark brownness with a dazzling array of
yellow reflections. I  could not keep my eyes away.  Those  peaks were truly
mesmerizing.
     By the end of the day the bottom slopes of the mountains were in sight.
There was very  little vegetation on the high  desert; all  I could see were
cacti and a kind of tall grass that grew in tufts.
     Don  Juan stopped to  rest.  He sat down,  carefully propped  his  food
gourds against a rock, and said that we  were going to camp on that spot for
the night. He had picked a relatively high place. From where I stood I could
see quite a distance away, all around us.
     It was a  cloudy day and  the twilight quickly  enveloped  the area.  I
became involved in watching the speed with which the  crimson  clouds on the
west faded into a uniform thick dark gray. Don Juan  got up and  went to the
bushes. By the time he  came back the silhouette of the lava mountains was a
dark mass. He sat down next to me and called my attention to  what seemed to
be a natural formation on the mountains towards the northeast. It was a spot
which had a  color much lighter than its surroundings. While the whole range
of lava mountains looked  uniformly dark brown in the  twilight, the spot he
was pointing at was actually yellowish or dark beige. I could not figure out
what it could be. I stared at it for a long time. It  seemed to be moving; I
fancied it to be pulsating.
     When I squinted my eyes it actually rippled as  if the wind were moving
it.
     "Look at it fixedly!" don Juan commanded me.
     At  one moment,  after  I had maintained my stare for  quite a while, I
felt that the whole  range of mountains was moving towards  me. That feeling
was  accompanied by an unusual  agitation  in  the  pit  of  my stomach. The
discomfort became so acute that I stood up.
     "Sit down!" don Juan yelled, but  I was already on my feet. From my new
point  of  view  the  yellowish  formation was  lower on  the  side  of  the
mountains, I sat down again, without taking my eyes away,  and the formation
shifted to  a  higher  place. I stared  at it for  an instant and suddenly I
arranged everything into the correct perspective. I realized that what I had
been  looking at was not in the  mountains at all  but was really a piece of
yellowish green cloth hanging from a tall cactus in front of me.
     I  laughed  out loud and  explained to  don  Juan that the twilight had
helped  to  create  an  optical illusion. He got up and  walked to the place
where the piece  of cloth was hanging, took  it down,  folded it, and put it
inside his pouch. "What are you doing that for?" I asked.
     "Because  this piece  of  cloth has power, " he  said casually.  "For a
moment you were doing fine with it and  there  is no way of knowing what may
have happened if you had remained seated."

     Friday, April 14, 1962

     At  the  crack  of  dawn  we   headed  for  the  mountains.  They  were
surprisingly far  away. By midday we  walked  into one of the canyons. There
was  some water in shallow pools. We sat to  rest in  the shade of a hanging
cliff. The mountains  were clumps of  a monumental lava flow. The solidified
lava had weathered over the millennia into a porous dark brown rock. Only  a
few sturdy weeds grew between the rocks and in the cracks.
     Looking  up at  the  almost perpendicular walls of the canyon,  I had a
weird  sensation in  the pit of my stomach. The walls were hundreds  of feet
high  and gave me the  feeling that they were closing in on me. The  sun was
almost overhead, slightly towards the southwest. "Stand up here, "  don Juan
said  and maneuvered my body until I was looking towards the sun. He told me
to look fixedly  at the mountain  walls above me. The sight was  stupendous.
The magnificent height of the lava flow staggered my imagination. I began to
wonder what a volcanic upheaval it must have been. I  looked up and down the
sides of  the  canyon  various  times. I became immersed  in the richness of
color  in the rock wall.  There were specks  of every conceivable hue. There
were patches of  light  gray moss  or lichen in  every rock.  I looked right
above my head and noticed that the sunlight was producing the most exquisite
reflections when it hit the brilliant specks of the solidified lava.
     I stared at an  area  in the mountains  where  the  sunlight  was being
reflected.  As  the  sun  moved,  the  intensity diminished,  then it  faded
completely. I  looked across  the canyon and  saw another  area of the  same
exquisite light refractions. I told don  Juan what was happening, and then I
spotted another  area of  light, and then another in a different  place, and
another, until the whole canyon was blotched with big patches of light.
     I felt dizzy; even if  I closed my eyes I could still see the brilliant
lights. I held my  head in my  hands and tried  to crawl  under  the hanging
cliff,  but don Juan grabbed my  arm firmly and imperatively told me to look
at the walls of the mountains and try to figure out spots  of heavy darkness
in the midst of the fields of light.
     I did not want to look, because the glare bothered my eyes. I said that
what was happening to  me was similar to staring into a sunny street through
a window  and then seeing the  window frame  as a dark silhouette everywhere
else. Don Juan shook his head from side to side and began to chuckle. He let
go of my arm and we sat down again under the hanging cliff.
     I  was jotting  down my impressions of the surroundings when  don Juan,
after a long silence, suddenly spoke in a dramatic tone. "I have brought you
here to  teach you one thing, " he said and paused.  "You are going to learn
not-doing. We might as well talk about it  because there is no other way for
you to proceed. I thought  you might catch on to not-doing without my having
to say anything. I was wrong."
     "I don't know what you're talking about, don Juan."
     "It doesn't matter, " he said. "I am going  to tell you about something
that is very simple but very difficult to perform; I am going to talk to you
about not-doing, in spite of the fact that there is no way to talk about it,
because it is the body that does it."
     He  stared  at me in glances and then said that I had to pay the utmost
attention to what  he was  going to say.  I closed  my notebook, but  to  my
amazement he insisted that I should keep on writing.
     "Not-doing is so difficult and  so powerful that you should not mention
it, "  he went on. "Not until you have stopped  the world; only then can you
talk about it freely, if that's what you'd want to do."
     Don  Juan looked around  and then pointed  to a  large rock. "That rock
over there is a rock because of doing" he said.
     We looked at each other  and he smiled. I waited for an explanation but
he remained silent. Finally I had  to say that I had  not understood what he
meant.
     "That's doing!" he exclaimed.
     "Pardon me?"
     "That's also doing."
     "What are you talking about, don Juan?"
     "Doing is what  makes that  rock a rock and that  bush a bush. Doing is
what makes you yourself and me myself."
     I told him that  his explanation did  not explain  anything. He laughed
and scratched his temples.
     "That's  the  problem  with talking,  "  he said.  "It always makes one
confuse  the issues. If one starts  talking  about doing, one always ends up
talking about something else. It is better to just act.
     "Take that rock for instance. To look at it is doing, but  to see it is
not-doing"
     I  had  to confess that his words were not making sense to me. "Oh  yes
they do!" he exclaimed. "But you are convinced that they don't  because that
is your doing. That is the way you act towards me and the world."
     He again pointed  to the rock. "That rock is a rock because  of all the
things  you know  how  to do to it, " he said. "I call  that doing. A man of
knowledge, for  instance,  knows  that the rock is  a  rock  only because of
doing, so  if he  doesn't  want  the  rock to be a  rock all he has to do is
not-doing. See what I mean?"
     I did not understand him at all. He laughed and made another attempt at
explaining.
     "The world is the world because you know the  doing involved in  making
it  so, "  he  said. "If  you didn't know  its  doing, the  world  would  be
different."
     He examined me  with  curiosity.  I  stopped writing. I  just wanted to
listen to him. He went on explaining that without that certain "doing" there
would be nothing familiar in the  surroundings. He leaned over and picked up
a small rock  between the thumb and  index of  his left  hand and held it in
front of my eyes.
     "This is a pebble because you know the doing involved in making it into
a pebble, " he said.
     "What are you saying?" I asked with a feeling of bona fide confusion.
     Don Juan smiled. He seemed to be trying to hide a mischievous delight.
     "I  don't  know why  you are so confused,  " he  said.  "Words are your
predilection. You should be in heaven."
     He gave me a mysterious look  and raised his brows two or three  times.
Then he pointed again to the small rock he was holding in front of my eyes.
     "I say  that  you  are  making this  into a pebble because you know the
doing involved in it, "  he said. "Now, in  order to stop the world you must
stop doing." He  seemed to know that I still had not understood  and smiled,
shaking his head. He then took a twig  and pointed to the uneven edge of the
pebble.
     "In the case of this little rock, " he went  on, "the first thing which
doing does to it is to shrink  it to this  size. So the proper thing  to do,
which a  warrior does if he wants to stop  the world, is to enlarge a little
rock, or any other thing, by not-doing."
     He stood up  and placed the pebble  on a boulder and then  asked  me to
come closer and examine it. He  told me to look at the holes and depressions
in the pebble and try to pick out the minute detail in them. He said that if
I could pick out the detail, the holes and depressions would disappear and I
would understand what "not-doing" meant.
     "This damn pebble is going to drive you crazy today, " he said.
     I must have had a look  of bewilderment on my face. He looked at me and
laughed uproariously. Then he pretended to get angry with the pebble and hit
it two or three times with his hat.
     I urged him to clarify his point. I argued that it was possible for him
to explain anything he wanted to if he made an effort.
     He  gave me a  sly glance  and  shook his head as if the situation were
hopeless.
     "Sure  I can explain  anything,  "  he said, laughing. "But  could  you
understand  it?"  I was taken  aback by  his insinuation.  "Doing  makes you
separate the pebble from the larger boulder, " he continued. "If you want to
learn not-doing, let's say that you have to join them."
     He pointed to the small shadow that the pebble cast on the  boulder and
said that it  was not a shadow but a glue which bound them together. He then
turned around and walked away, saying that he was coming back to check on me
later.  I stared  at  the  pebble for a  long  time. I could  not  focus  my
attention on the minute detail  in the holes and  depressions, but  the tiny
shadow that the pebble cast on the boulder became a  most interesting point.
Don Juan was right; it was like a  glue.  It moved  and shifted. I  had  the
impression it was being squeezed from underneath the pebble.
     When don Juan returned I related to him what I had  observed about  the
shadow.
     "That's  a good beginning, " he said. "A warrior can  tell all kinds of
things from  the shadows."  He then suggested  that I should take the pebble
and bury it somewhere.
     "Why?" I asked.
     "You've been watching it for a long time,"  he  said. "It has something
of you  now. A warrior always tries to affect the force of doing by changing
it into not-doing. Doing would be to leave the pebble  lying around  because
it is merely a small rock. Not-doing would be to proceed with that pebble as
if it were something far beyond  a mere rock.  In this case, that pebble has
soaked in you for  a  long time and now  it is you,  and as such, you cannot
leave  it lying  around but must bury it. If you would have personal  power,
however, not-doing would be to change that pebble into a power object."
     "Can I do that now?"
     "Your life is not tight  enough to do that. If you would see, you would
know  that your heavy  concern has changed that  pebble into something quite
unappealing,  therefore the best thing you can do is  to dig a hole and bury
it and let the earth absorb its heaviness."
     "Is all this true, don Juan?"
     "To say yes or no to your question is doing. But since you are learning
not-doing  I have to  tell you that it  really doesn't matter whether or not
all this is true.  It is  here that a warrior has a point of  advantage over
the average man. An average man cares that  things are either true or false,
but a warrior doesn't. An average man proceeds in a specific way with things
that he knows are true, and in a different way with things that he knows are
not true. If  things are  said to be true,  he acts and  believes in what he
does. But if things are said to  be untrue, he doesn't care to  act,  or  he
doesn't believe in what he does. A warrior, on the other hand,  acts in both
instances. If things are said to be true, he would act in order to do doing.
     If things  are  said to be  untrue, he still would  act in order  to do
not-doing. See what I mean?"
     "No, I don't see what you mean at all, "  I said. Don Juan's statements
put me in a belligerent mood. I could not make sense of what he  was saying.
I told him it  was  gibberish, and he mocked me and said that I did not even
have an impeccable spirit in what I liked to do the most, talking.
     He  actually made fun  of  my  verbal command and found  it faulty  and
inadequate.
     "If you are going  to be  all mouth,  be a mouth warrior, " he said and
roared with laughter. I felt  dejected. My ears were buzzing.  I experienced
an uncomfortable heat in  my head. I was actually embarrassed and presumably
red  in  the face.  I  stood  up  and went into the chaparral and buried the
pebble.
     "I was  teasing  you a little bit, "  don Juan said when I returned and
sat down again. "And yet I know that if you don't talk you don't understand.
Talking is doing for you,  but talking is not appropriate and if you want to
know what I mean by not-doing you have to do a simple exercise. Since we are
concerned with not-doing it doesn't matter whether  you do the exercise  now
or ten years from now."
     He made me lie down and took my right arm and bent it at my elbow. Then
he turned my  hand until the palm was facing the front; he curved my fingers
so my hand looked as if I were holding a doorknob, and then he began to move
my  arm back and forth with a  circular  motion  that resembled  the act  of
pushing and pulling a lever attached to a wheel.
     Don  Juan  said  that a warrior executed that  movement every  time  he
wanted to  push something out of his body,  something  like a disease  or an
unwelcome feeling. The idea was to push and pull an imaginary opposing force
until one felt a heavy  object, a solid body, stopping the free movements of
the hand. In the case of the exercise, "not-doing" consisted in repeating it
until one felt the heavy body with the hand,  in  spite of the fact that one
could never believe it was possible to feel it. I began moving my arm and in
a short  while  my  hand  became ice cold. I had  begun  to feel  a sort  of
mushiness around my hand.  It was as  if I were paddling  through some heavy
viscous liquid matter.
     Don Juan made a sudden movement  and grabbed my arm to stop the motion.
My  whole  body  shivered  as  though  stirred  by  some  unseen  force.  He
scrutinized me as  I sat up, and then walked  around me before  he  sat back
down on the place where he had been.
     "You've done  enough, " he said. "You  may do this  exercise some other
time, when you have more personal power."
     "Did I do something wrong?"
     "No. Not-doing is only for very strong warriors and you  don't have the
power to deal with it yet.  Now you will  only trap  horrendous things  with
your hand. So do it  little by little, until your  hand doesn't get cold any
more. Whenever your hand remains  warm  you can actually feel  the lines of.
the world with it."
     He  paused as  if to give me  time to ask about the lines. But before I
had a chance  to, he started explaining that there were infinite numbers  of
lines that joined us to  things.  He  said that the  exercise of "not-doing"
that he had just described would  help anyone to feel a line  that  came out
from  the moving hand, a  line  that one could  place or  cast wherever  one
wanted to. Don Juan said  that  this was only an exercise, because the lines
formed  by  the hand were not  durable  enough  to  be  of  real  value in a
practical situation.
     "A man of knowledge  uses  other  parts of  his body to produce durable
lines, " he said.
     "What parts of the body, don Juan?"
     "The most durable  lines that a man of knowledge produces come from the
middle of the body," he said. "But he can also make them with his eyes."
     "Are they real lines?"
     "Surely."
     "Can you see them and touch them?"
     "Let's say that you can feel them.  The  most  difficult part about the
warrior's  way  is  to realize  that  the  world is a feeling. When  one  is
not-doing, one  is  feeling the world, and  one  feels the world through its
lines."
     He  paused  and  examined me with  curiosity.  He raised  his brows and
opened his  eyes and  then  blinked.  The effect was like the eyes of a bird
blinking.   Almost  immediately   I  felt  a  sensation  of  discomfort  and
queasiness.  It was actually as if something  was  applying  pressure  to my
stomach.
     "See what I mean?" don Juan asked and moved his eyes away.
     I  mentioned  that I felt nauseated and he replied in  a matter-of-fact
tone that he knew it, and  that he  was  trying to make me feel the lines of
the world with his  eyes. I  could not accept the  claim that he himself was
making  me feel that way.  I voiced my doubts. I could  hardly  conceive the
idea  that he was causing my feeling of  nausea, since  he  had not, in  any
physical way, impinged on me. "Not-doing is very simple  but very difficult,
" he said. "It is not  a  matter  of understanding it but  of mastering  it.
Seeing, of course, is the final accomplishment of  a man  of knowledge, .and
seeing is attained only when one has stopped the world through the technique
of not-doing."
     I smiled  involuntarily.  I had not understood what he meant. "When one
does something  with people, " he said,  "the concern  should  be  only with
presenting the case to their bodies. That's what I've been doing with you so
far, letting your body know. Who cares whether or not you understand?"
     "But  that's  unfair,  don  Juan.  I  want  to  understand  everything,
otherwise coming here would be a waste of my time."
     "A waste of  your time!" he  exclaimed parodying my tone of voice. "You
certainly are conceited." He stood up and told me that we were going to hike
to  the top of the lava peak to  our  right.  The  ascent  to the top was an
excruciating affair. It was actual mountain climbing, except that there were
no ropes  to aid  and protect  us. Don Juan repeatedly told  me  not to look
down;  and he had to actually pull  me up bodily a couple of times, after  I
had begun to slide down the rock. I felt terribly embarrassed that don Juan,
being so  old, had to  help  me. I  told  him  that I  was  in poor physical
condition  because I was too lazy to do  any exercise.  He replied that once
one  had arrived  at  a certain  level  of personal  power, exercise  or any
training of that  sort  was unnecessary,  since all one  needed, to be in an
impeccable form, was to engage oneself in "not-doing."
     When we arrived  at  the  top I lay  down. I was  about  to be sick. He
rolled me back and forth with his foot as he had done once before. Little by
little the motion restored  my balance. But I felt nervous. It  was as if  I
were somehow waiting for the sudden appearance of something. I involuntarily
looked two or three  times to each side. Don Juan  did not say a word but he
also looked in the direction I was looking.
     "Shadows are  peculiar  affairs, " he said all of  a  sudden. "You must
have noticed that there is one following us."
     "I haven't noticed anything of the sort, " I protested in a loud voice.
     Don  Juan said  that my body had noticed our  pursuer,  in spite of  my
stubborn  opposition, and assured me  in  a  confident  tone  that there was
nothing unusual about being followed by a shadow.
     "It is just a power, " he said. "These  mountains are filled with them.
It is just like one of those entities that scared you the other night."
     I wanted to know if  I could  actually perceive it myself. He  asserted
that in the daytime I could only feel its presence. I wanted an  explanation
of why he called it a  shadow when obviously it was not like the shadow of a
boulder. He replied  that  both had  the  same  lines,  therefore  both were
shadows.
     He pointed to a long boulder standing directly in front of us.
     "Look  at  the  shadow of that  boulder, "He  said. "The shadow  is the
boulder, and yet it isn't. To observe  the boulder in order to know what the
boulder is, is doing, but to observe its shadow is not-doing.
     "Shadows  are like doors,  the doors of not-doing.  A man of knowledge,
for  example, can tell  the  innermost  feelings  of men  by  watching their
shadows."
     "Is there movement in them?" I asked.
     "You may say that  there is movement  in them, or you may  say that the
lines of the world are shown in them, or you may say that feelings come from
them."
     "But how could feelings come out of shadows, don Juan?"
     "To believe that shadows are just shadows is doing" he explained. "That
belief is somehow stupid. Think about it this way: There is so much more  to
everything in the world  that obviously there  must  be more to shadows too.
After all, what makes them shadows is merely our doing."
     There was a long silence. I did not know what else to say.
     "The  end of the day  is approaching, "  don  Juan said, looking at the
sky. "You have to use this brilliant sunlight to perform one last exercise."
     He  led me to  a place where  there were  two  peaks the size of a  man
standing parallel  to each other, about four or five  feet  apart.  Don Juan
stopped ten yards away from them, facing  the  west. He marked a spot for me
to stand on and told me to look at the shadows of  the peaks. He said that I
should watch  them and cross my eyes in the same manner I ordinarily crossed
them when scanning the ground for a place to rest.
     He clarified his directions by saying that when searching for a resting
place one had to look without  focusing but in observing shadows  one had to
cross the eyes  and yet keep a sharp image in focus. The idea was to let one
shadow be superimposed on the  other by crossing the eyes. He explained that
through that process one could  ascertain  a  certain feeling which emanated
from shadows. I commented on his vagueness, but he maintained that there was
really no way of describing what he meant.
     My attempt to  carry  out the exercise was futile. I  struggled until I
got a headache.  Don Juan was  not at  all concerned  with  my  failure.  He
climbed to  a dome like peak and yelled from the top, telling me to look for
two small long  and narrow pieces of rock. He showed with his hands the size
rock he wanted. I  found two  pieces and handed them to him. Don Juan placed
each rock about a  foot apart  in  two crevices,  made me stand  above  them
facing the west, and told me to do the same exercise with their shadows.
     This  time it was an altogether different affair.  Almost immediately I
was capable of crossing  my eyes and perceiving their individual  shadows as
if  they  had  merged into  one. I  noticed  that the act of looking without
converging the images  gave the single shadow I had  formed  an unbelievable
depth and a sort of transparency. I stared at it, bewildered. Every hole  in
the rock, on  the  area where my eyes  were focused, was neatly discernible;
and the composite shadow, which was superimposed on them, was like a film of
indescribable transparency.
     I did  not  want to  blink,  for fear  of  losing the  image  I  was so
precariously holding. Finally my sore eyes forced me to blink, but I did not
lose the view of the detail at all.  In fact, by remoistening my  cornea the
image became even clearer. I noticed at that point that it was as if I  were
looking  from an  immeasurable height at a world  I had never seen before. I
also noticed that I could scan the surroundings of the shadow without losing
the  focus of my visual perception. Then, for an instant,  I lost the notion
that I  was looking  at a  rock.  I felt that I was landing in a world, vast
beyond  anything I had ever  conceived. This extraordinary perception lasted
for  a second and then everything was turned off. I  automatically looked up
and saw  don Juan  standing directly above  the  rocks,  facing  me. He  had
blocked the sunlight with his body. I described the unusual sensation I  had
had,  and he explained  that he had been forced to  interrupt it because  he
"saw"  that I  was  about to get lost in  it. He added that it was a natural
tendency  for all of  us  to indulge ourselves when feelings of  that nature
occur,  and that by indulging myself in it I  had  almost turned "not-doing"
into  my  old  familiar "doing." He said that what I should have done was to
maintain  the view  without succumbing to it, because in a way "doing" was a
manner of succumbing.
     I complained that he should have told  me beforehand what to expect and
what to do, but he  pointed out that he had no way of knowing whether or not
I would succeed in merging the shadows.
     I had to confess I  was more mystified than ever about "not-doing." Don
Juan's  comments  were that I should be  satisfied with  what  I  had  done,
because for once I had proceeded correctly, that by reducing the world I had
enlarged it, and that, although I had been far from feeling the lines of the
world, I  had  correctly  used the shadow  of  the  rocks  as  a  door  into
"not-doing."
     The statement that I had enlarged the world by reducing it intrigued me
to  no  end. The  detail of the porous rock, in the small area where my eyes
were  focused, was so  vivid and  so  precisely defined that the top of  the
round  peak  became a vast  world for me;  and yet it  was really  a reduced
vision of  the  rock. When  don  Juan blocked  the light and I found  myself
looking as I normally  would  do, the precise detail became dull,  the  tiny
holes in the porous  rock  became bigger, the brown color of the  dried lava
became opaque, and everything lost the shiny transparency that made the rock
into a real world.
     Don Juan then took the two rocks, laid them gently into a deep crevice,
and sat down cross-legged  facing the west, on the spot  where the rocks had
been. He patted a spot next to him to his left and told me to sit down.
     We did not speak for a long time.  Then we ate, also in silence. It was
only  after the  sun had set that he  suddenly turned and asked me about  my
progress in "dreaming." I told him  that it had been easy  in the beginning,
but that at  the  moment  I  had ceased altogether  to  find my hands  in my
dreams.
     "When  you  first  started dreaming  you were using my  personal power,
that's why  it was easier, " he said. "Now you  are empty. But you must keep
on trying until you have enough power of your own. You  see, dreaming is the
not-doing of  dreams, and as you progress  in your not -doing you  will also
progress in dreaming. The trick is  not to stop looking for your hands, even
if you don't believe that what you are doing has any meaning. In fact,  as I
have told you before,  a warrior doesn't need to believe, because as long as
he keeps on  acting without believing he is not-doing."  We  looked  at each
other for a moment.
     "There  is nothing else I can tell  you about dreaming." he  continued.
"Everything I may say  would only be not-doing.  But if you tackle not-doing
directly, you yourself would know what to do in dreaming. To find your hands
is essential, though, at this time, and I  am sure you will." "I don't know,
don Juan. I don't trust myself."
     "This  is not  a  matter  of trusting anybody. This whole affair  is  a
matter  of  a warrior's struggle; and  you will keep  on struggling, if  not
under your own power, then perhaps under the impact of a worthy opponent, or
with the help of some allies, .like the one which is already following you."
I made a jerky involuntary movement with my right arm.
     Don Juan said that my body knew much more than I suspected, because the
force that had been pursuing us was to my right.  He confided in  a low tone
of  voice that twice that day the  ally had come so close to me that he  had
had to step in and stop it.
     "During the  day shadows  are the doors of not-doing" he  said. "But at
night, since very little doing prevails in the dark, everything is a shadow,
including the allies. I've already told you about this when I taught you the
gait of power." I laughed out loud and my own laughter scared me.
     "Everything I have taught you so  far has been an  aspect of not-doing"
he went on. "A warrior applies not-doing to everything in the world, and yet
I can't tell  you  more about  it than what I  have said today. You must let
your  own  body discover the power  and the  feeling of  not-doing."  I  had
another fit of nervous cackling.
     "It is  stupid for  you to  scorn  the  mysteries  of  the world simply
because you know the doing of scorn," he said with a serious face. I assured
him  that I was not scorning anything or anyone, but that I was more nervous
and incompetent than he thought. "I've  always been that way, " I said. "And
yet I want to change, but I don't know how. I am so inadequate."
     "I already know that you think you are rotten, " he said.
     "That's  your doing. Now in order to  affect that  doing  I am going to
recommend that you learn another doing. From  now  on,  and for a period  of
eight days, I want you to lie to yourself.  Instead of telling  yourself the
truth, that you  are ugly and  rotten and inadequate, you will tell yourself
that  you are the complete opposite, knowing that you are lying and that you
are absolutely beyond hope."
     "But what would be the point of lying like that, don Juan?"
     "It may hook you to another  doing and  then you  may realize that both
doings are lies, unreal, and that to hinge yourself to either one is a waste
of time, because the only thing  that is  real is the being  in  you that is
going to die. To arrive at that being is the not-doing of the self."

     THE RING OF POWER

     Saturday, April 15, 1962

     Don  Juan  felt  the weight of  our gourds  and  concluded that  we had
exhausted our  food supply and  that  it was time to return home. I casually
mentioned that it was going to  take us at least a couple of days to  get to
his  house. He said he was not going back to  Sonora but  to  a  border town
where he had some business to take care of. I thought we were going to start
our descent through a water canyon but don Juan headed towards the northwest
on the high plateaus of the lava mountains. After  about an  hour of walking
he led me into a deep ravine, which  ended at a point where two peaks almost
joined. There was a slope there, going almost  to  the top of  the  range, a
strange slope  which looked like a  slanted concave bridge between  the  two
peaks. Don Juan pointed to an area on the face of the slope.
     "Look there fixedly, " he said. "The sun is almost right."
     He  explained that at midday the light of the  s