the left-side awareness, the
nagual, the other world, the unknown, the second attention.
     "This process  of emphasizing  certain  emanations," don  Juan went on,
"was discovered and practiced by the old seers. They realized  that a nagual
man or a nagual woman, by  the fact that they  have extra strength, can push
the emphasis away from the usual emanations and make it shift to neighboring
ones. That push is known as the nagual's blow."
     Don Juan said that the shift was utilized by the old seers in practical
ways to keep their apprentices in bondage. With  that blow  they  made their
apprentices enter into  a  state of heightened, keenest, most impressionable
awareness; while they were helplessly pliable,  the  old  seers taught  them
aberrant techniques  that  made the apprentices into sinister men, just like
their teachers.
     The new seers employ the same  technique, but instead  of using  it for
sordid purposes, they use it to guide their apprentices to learn about man's
possibilities.
     Don  Juan explained that the nagual's blow  has  to be  delivered on  a
precise  spot, on the assemblage point, which varies minutely from person to
person. Also, the blow  has to be delivered by a nagual who sees. He assured
me that it is equally useless to have the strength of a  nagual and not see,
as it is  to see and not have the strength  of a nagual, in  either case the
results are just blows. A seer could strike  on  the  precise  spot over and
over  without the strength to move awareness. and  a non-seeing nagual would
not be able to strike the precise spot.
     He also said that the old seers discovered that the assemblage point is
not  in the physical body, but in  the luminous shell, in the cocoon itself.
The nagual identifies  that spot by its intense luminosity  and  pushes  it,
rather than striking it. The force of the push  creates a dent in the cocoon
and  it is felt like a blow to the right  shoulder blade, a blow that knocks
all the air out of the lungs.
     "Are there different types of dents?" I asked.
     "There are only two types," he responded. "One is a concavity  and  the
other is a crevice; each has a distinct effect. The concavity is a temporary
feature and produces a temporary  shift-- but the crevice is  a profound and
permanent feature of the cocoon and produces a permanent shift."
     He explained that usually a luminous cocoon hardened by self-reflection
is  not affected at all by the nagual's blow. Sometimes, however, the cocoon
of man is  very pliable and the  smallest force  creates  a  bowl-like  dent
ranging in size from a small  depression to one that is a third the size  of
the total cocoon; or it creates  a crevice  that may run across the width of
the egglike shell,  or along its length, making the cocoon look as if it has
curled in on itself.
     Some  luminous shells, after  being dented,  go back to  their original
shape instantly. Others remain dented for hours or even days at a time,  but
they  revert  back by  themselves.  Still others get a firm, impervious dent
that requires another  blow from the  nagual on a bordering area to  restore
the  original  shape  of  the  luminous cocoon.  And a few  never lose their
indentation  once they  get it.  No  matter  how many blows  they get from a
nagual they never revert back to their egglike shapes.
     Don  Juan  further said  that  the  dent acts  on  the first  attention
bydisplacing the glow of awareness.  The dent presses the  emanations inside
the luminous shell, and the seers witness how the first attention shifts its
emphasis  under the  force  of that pressure. The  dent,  by  displacing the
Eagle's  emanations inside the cocoon, makes the glow of  awareness  fall on
other  emanations from areas that are ordinarily inaccessible  to  the first
attention.
     I asked him if the glow of awareness is seen only on the surface of the
luminous  cocoon.  He did not answer me  right away.  He seemed  to  immerse
himself in thought.  After perhaps ten minutes he answered  my  question; he
said that normally  the glow  of awareness  is  seen on the  surface of  the
cocoon of  all sentient beings. After  man develops attention, however,  the
glow of awareness acquires depth. In other words, it is transmitted from the
surface of the cocoon to quite a number of emanations inside the cocoon.
     "The old seers knew what they were  doing when they handled awareness,"
he went on. "They  realized that by  creating a  dent in the  cocoon of man,
they could force the  glow of awareness, since it is already glowing  on the
emanations inside the cocoon, to spread to other neighboring ones."
     'You make it all sound as if it's a physical  affair," I said. "How can
dents be made in something that is just aglow?"
     "In some inexplicable way, it is a matter of a glow that creates a dent
in another glow," he replied. "Your flaw is to remain glued to the inventory
of  reason. Reason  doesn't  deal  with  man as  energy. Reason  deals  with
instruments that create  energy,  but  it has  never  seriously  occurred to
reason  that we are better  than instruments:  we are organisms  that create
energy. We are a bubble of energy. It isn't  farfetched, then, that a bubble
of energy would make a dent in another bubble of energy."
     He  said  that the  glow  of  awareness  created  by  the  dent  should
rightfully  be called  temporary heightened attention, because it emphasizes
emanations  that  are  so proximal to the habitual  ones that  the change is
minimal,  yet  the  shift produces  a greater capacity  to understand and to
concentrate and, above all, a greater capacity to forget. Seers knew exactly
how to use this  upshift in the scale of  quality.  They saw  that only  the
emanations  surrounding those we use daily suddenly become bright  after the
nagual's blow. The more  distant  ones  remain unmoved, which  meant to them
that while being in a state of heightened attention, human beings could work
as if they were in the world of  everyday life. The need of a nagual man and
a nagual woman became paramount to them, because  that state lasts  only for
as  long  as  the  depression  remains,  after  which  the  experiences  are
immediately forgotten.
     "Why does one have to forget?" I asked.
     "Because the emanations  that account for  greater clarity cease to  be
emphasized  once  warriors are  out of heightened  awareness,"  he  replied.
"Without that emphasis whatever they experience or witness vanishes."
     Don Juan said that one of the tasks the new seers had devised for their
students  was  to  force  them  to  remember,  that  is,  to reemphasize  by
themselves,  at  a  later  time,  those  emanations  used  during states  of
heightened awareness.
     He reminded me  that Genaro was always recommending to me that  I learn
to  write with  the  tip  of my finger instead  of a  pencil  so  as  not to
accumulate notes. Don Juan said that what Genaro had actually meant was that
while I was in states  of heightened awareness  I should utilize some unused
emanations for storage of dialogue and experience, and someday recall it all
by reemphasizing the emanations that were used.
     He went on  to explain that a state of heightened awareness is seen not
only as a glow that  goes  deeper inside  the egglike shape of human beings,
but  also  as a more intense glow  on the  surface of the cocoon.  Yet it is
nothing  in comparison to the glow  produced by  a state of total awareness,
which is seen as  a burst of incandescence in the entire luminous egg. It is
an explosion of light of such a  magnitude that  the boundaries of the shell
are  diffused and  the inside  emanations extend  themselves beyond anything
imaginable.
     "Are those special cases, don Juan?"
     "Certainly. They happen only to seers. No other men or any other living
creatures  brighten  up  like  that.  Seers  who  deliberately attain  total
awareness  are a sight to behold.  That is the  moment  when they  burn from
within. The fire from within consumes them. And in  full awareness they fuse
themselves to the emanations at large, and glide into eternity."

     After a few days in Sonora  I drove  don  Juan back to  the town in the
southern part of Mexico where he and his party of warriors lived.
     The  next day  was hot  and hazy.  I  felt lazy and somehow annoyed. In
midafternoon,  there was a most unpleasant quietude in  that  town. Don Juan
and I were sitting  on the  comfortable chairs  in the big room. I  told him
that life in rural  Mexico  was not my  cup of tea. I disliked the feeling I
had that the silence of that town was  forced.  The only  noise I ever heard
was the sound of children's voices yelling in the distance. I was never able
to find out whether they were playing or yelling in pain.
     "When  you're here, you're always in a state of heightened  awareness,"
don Juan said. "That  makes a  great difference.  But  no  matter what,  you
should be getting used to  living in a town like this. Someday you will live
in one."
     "Why should I have to live in a town like this, don Juan?"
     "I've explained  to you that the new seers  aim to be free. And freedom
has the  most devastating implications. Among  them is the implication  that
warriors  must purposely seek  change. Your predilection  is to live the way
you  do.  You stimulate your reason  by  running through  your inventory and
pitting it against your friends' inventories. Those maneuvers leave you very
little time to examine  yourself and your fate. You will have to give up all
that. Likewise, if all you knew were the dead calm of  this town, you'd have
to seek, sooner or later, the other side of the coin."
     "Is that what you're doing here, don Juan?"
     "Our case is a little bit  different, because  we are at the end of our
trail. We are  not  seeking  anything.  What all of us do here is  something
comprehensible only  to a warrior. We go from day to day  doing nothing.  We
are waiting. I  will not tire of repeating this: we know that we are waiting
and we know what we are waiting for. We are waiting for freedom!
     "And now that you know that," he added with  a grin, "let's get back to
our discussion of awareness."
     Usually, when we were in that room we were never interrupted by  anyone
and don Juan would always decide on the length  of our discussions. But this
time there was a polite knock on the door and Genaro walked in and sat down.
I  had not seen Genaro since the day after we had run out of  his house in a
great hurry. I embraced him.
     "Genaro has something  to tell you," don Juan said. "I've told you that
he is the master of  awareness.  Now  I can tell you what all that means. He
can  make the assemblage point move deeper into the luminous egg  after that
point has been jolted out of its position by the nagual's blow."
     He explained that Genaro had pushed my assemblage point countless times
after I  had attained  heightened  awareness.  The day we  had  gone  to the
gigantic  flat  rock  to talk,  Genaro  had made  my assemblage  point  move
dramatically into the left side-- so dramatically, in fact, that it had been
a bit dangerous.
     Don  Juan stopped talking  and seemed to  be ready  to give  Genaro the
spotlight. He nodded  as if to signal Genaro  to say something. Genaro stood
up and came to my side.
     "Flame is very  important," he said  softly. "Do you remember that  day
when I made you look at the reflection of the sunlight on a piece of quartz,
when we were sitting on that big flat rock?"
     When Genaro mentioned it I remembered. On that  day just after don Juan
had stopped talking, Genaro  had pointed to  the refraction  of  light as it
went through a piece of polished quartz that he had taken  out of his pocket
and placed on  the flat rock. The shine of the quartz had immediately caught
my attention. The next thing I knew, I was crouching on the flat rock as don
Juan stood by with a worried look on his face.
     I was about to tell Genaro what I had remembered when he began to talk.
He put  his mouth to my ear and pointed to  one of the two gasoline lamps in
the room.
     "Look at the flame," he said. "There is no heat in it. It's pure flame.
Pure flame can take you to the depths of the unknown."
     As  he  talked, I  began  to feel a strange pressure; it was a physical
heaviness. My  ears  were buzzing;  my eyes teared to the point that I could
hardly make  out the shape of the furniture.  My vision seemed to be totally
out of focus. Although my eyes were open, I could not see the  intense light
of the gasoline lamps. Everything around me was dark. There  were streaks of
chartreuse  phosphorescence that illuminated dark, moving clouds.  Then,  as
abruptly as it had faded away, my eyesight returned.
     I could  not make  out where  I  was.  I seemed to be  floating like  a
balloon.  I was alone. I  had a pang of terror, and  my reason rushed  in to
construct an explanation that made  sense to me  at that moment: Genaro  had
hypnotized  me,  using  the  flame  of  the gasoline  lamp.  I  felt  almost
satisfied. I quietly floated, trying not to  worry; I thought  that a way to
avoid worrying  was to  concentrate on the stages that I  would  have to  go
through to wake up.
     The first thing I noticed was that I was not myself. I could not really
look at anything because I had nothing to look with. When I tried to examine
my body I realized that  I could only be aware and yet it was  as if  I were
looking down into infinite space. There were portentous  clouds of brilliant
light and masses of blackness; both  were in motion.  I clearly saw a ripple
of amber glow that was coming at me, like an enormous,  slow  ocean  wave. I
knew  then  that I was like a buoy  floating in space and that  the wave was
going to  overtake me and  carry me. I accepted it as  unavoidable. But just
before it hit me  something thoroughly unexpected happened-- a  wind blew me
out of the wave's path.
     The force of that wind carried me with tremendous speed. I went through
an immense tunnel  of  intense colored lights. My vision  blurred completely
and then  I  felt that I  was waking up,  that I had been  having a dream, a
hypnotic dream brought about by Genaro, in  the  next instant I was  back in
the room with don Juan and Genaro.

     I slept most of the following day. In the late afternoon,  don Juan and
I again sat down to talk. Genaro had been with me earlier but had refused to
comment on my experience.
     "Genaro  again pushed your assemblage point last night," don Juan said.
"But perhaps the shove was too forceful."
     I eagerly told don  Juan the content of my vision. He smiled, obviously
bored.
     "Your assemblage point moved  away from its normal position," he  said.
"And that  made you  perceive emanations that are not ordinarily  perceived.
Sounds like nothing, doesn't it? And yet it is a supreme accomplishment that
the new seers strive to elucidate."
     He explained that human beings repeatedly  choose  the  same emanations
for perceiving because of two reasons. First, and most important, because we
have been taught  that those emanations are perceivable, and second  because
our assemblage points select and prepare those emanations for being used.
     "Every  living  being has an assemblage  point,"  he  went  on,  "which
selects emanations for emphasis. Seers can see whether sentient beings share
the  same view  of the world, by seeing if  the emanations  their assemblage
points have selected are the same."
     He affirmed that one  of the most important breakthroughs for  the  new
seers was to find that the spot where that point is located on the cocoon of
all living creatures is  not a permanent feature, but is established on that
specific spot by habit. Hence the tremendous stress the new seers put on new
actions,  on  new  practicalities.  They want desperately to  arrive at  new
usages, new habits.
     "The  nagual's blow is  of great importance," he went  on, "because  it
makes that point move. It alters its location. Sometimes it even  creates  a
permanent crevice there.  The assemblage  point  is totally  dislodged,  and
awareness  changes  dramatically.  But  what  is a  matter of  even  greater
importance  is the  proper  understanding of  the truths about  awareness in
order to realize that that point can be  moved from  within. The unfortunate
truth is  that human beings always lose by  default. They simply  don't know
about their possibilities."
     "How can one accomplish that change from within?" I asked.
     "The new seers say that  realization is the technique," he said.  "They
say that, first of all, one must become aware  that the world we perceive is
the result of our assemblage points' being located on a specific spot on the
cocoon. Once that  is understood,  the assemblage point  can move  almost at
will, as a consequence of new habits."
     I did  not  quite understand  what he meant by  habits. I asked him  to
clarify his point.
     "The  assemblage  point  of man appears around a definite  area  of the
cocoon, because  the  Eagle  commands it," he said. "But the precise spot is
determined by  habit, by repetitious  acts. First we learn that  it  can  be
placed there  and then  we  ourselves command it to  be  there. Our  command
becomes the Eagle's command and that point is fixated at that spot. Consider
this very carefully; our command becomes the Eagle's  command. The old seers
paid dearly for that finding. We'll come back to that later on."
     He stated once again that the old seers had concentrated exclusively on
developing  thousands of the most complex  techniques  of  sorcery. He added
that what  they never realized was that  their intricate devices, as bizarre
as they were, had no other value than being the means to  break the fixation
of their assemblage points and make them move.
     I asked him to explain what he had said.
     "I've  mentioned  to  you  that  sorcery  is something  like entering a
dead-end street,"  he replied. "What I meant was that sorcery practices have
no intrinsic value. Their worth is indirect, for  their  real function is to
make the assemblage point shift  by  making the first attention  release its
control on that point.
     "The new seers  realized  the true role those sorcery  practices played
and decided  to  go  directly  into the process  of making  their assemblage
points  shift, avoiding all the other  nonsense of rituals and incantations.
Yet  rituals  and  incantations  are indeed necessary at  one  time in every
warrior's life.  I  personally  have initiated you in all kinds  of  sorcery
procedures, but  only for purposes of luring your first  attention away from
the  power of  self-absorption, which  keeps your assemblage  point  rigidly
fixed."
     He added  that  the obsessive entanglement of  the  first attention  in
self-absorption or  reason is  a powerful  binding  force,  and that  ritual
behavior, because it is  repetitive, forces the first attention to free some
energy from watching the inventory, as a consequence of which the assemblage
point loses its rigidity.
     "What happens to  the persons whose assemblage points lose rigidity?" I
asked.
     "If they're  not warriors, they think they're losing  their minds,"  he
said, smiling. "Just  as you thought you  were  going crazy at  one time. If
they're warriors, they know they've gone crazy, but they patiently wait. You
see, to be  healthy  and sane means that the assemblage  point is immovable.
When it shifts, it literally means that one is deranged."
     He said that two options are opened to warriors whose assemblage points
have shifted.  One  is  to acknowledge being  ill and to  behave in deranged
ways,  reacting emotionally  to the  strange worlds that their shifts  force
them to witness; the  other is  to remain impassive, untouched, knowing that
the assemblage point always returns to its original position.
     "What if the assemblage point doesn't return to its original position?"
I asked.
     "Then  those  people  are lost," he  said.  "They  are either incurably
crazy, because their assemblage points could never assemble the world  as we
know it, or they are peerless seers who have begun their movement toward the
unknown."
     "What determines whether it is one or the other?"
     "Energy!  Impeccability! Impeccable warriors don't  lose their marbles.
They remain untouched. I've said  to you many times that impeccable warriors
may see horrifying worlds and yet the next moment they  are telling a  joke,
laughing with their friends or with strangers."
     I said to  him then what  I had told  him many times before,  that what
made me  think  I  was ill was a  series of disruptive sensorial experiences
that I had  had as aftereffects of ingesting  hallucinogenic plants. I  went
through states of total space and  time discordance, very annoying lapses of
mental concentration, actual visions  or hallucinations of places and people
I would be staring at  as if they really existed.  I could not help thinking
that I was losing my mind.
     "By all ordinary measures, you were indeed losing your  mind," he said,
"but in the seers' view, if you  had lost it, you wouldn't  have  lost much.
The mind, for a seer, is nothing but the self-reflection of the inventory of
man. If you lose that self-reflection,  but  don't  lose your underpinnings,
you actually live an infinitely stronger life than if you had kept it."
     He remarked that my flaw was  my emotional reaction, which prevented me
from realizing that the oddity of my sensorial experiences was determined by
the  depth  to  which  my  assemblage point  had  moved into  man's band  of
emanations.
     I  told him that I couldn't understand what  he was  explaining because
the configuration that he  had called man's band of emanations was something
incomprehensible to me. I had pictured it to  be like a ribbon placed on the
surface of a ball.
     He said that calling it a band was misleading, and that he was going to
use an analogy  to illustrate what he  meant. He explained that the luminous
shape of man  is  like a ball  of jack cheese  with  a thick disk of  darker
cheese injected  into  it. He looked at me and  chuckled. He knew that I did
not like cheese.
     He made  a  diagram on a small blackboard. He drew an egglike shape and
divided it in four longitudinal sections, saying that  he  would immediately
erase the division lines because he  had drawn them only to  give me an idea
where the band was located  in the cocoon of man. He  then drew a thick band
at  the  line between the first and second sections and erased  the division
lines. He explained that the band was like a disk of cheddar cheese that had
been inserted into the ball of jack cheese.
     "Now  if that ball of jack  cheese were  transparent," he went on, "you
would have the perfect replica of man's cocoon. The  cheddar cheese goes all
the way  inside  the ball of  jack cheese. It's a disk  that  goes from  the
surface on one side to the surface on the other side.
     "The assemblage point of man is located high  up, three-fourths of  the
way toward  the top of the egg on the surface of the cocoon.  When a  nagual
presses on  that point of intense luminosity, the  point moves into the disk
of the  cheddar cheese. Heightened  awareness  comes about when  the intense
glow of the  assemblage point  lights up dormant emanations way  inside  the
disk  of cheddar  cheese.  To  see the  glow of the assemblage point  moving
inside that disk gives the  feeling that it is  shifting  toward the left on
the surface of the cocoon."
     He repeated  his analogy three or  four times, but I did not understand
it  and he had to  explain it  further. He said that the transparency of the
luminous  egg creates the  impression of a movement toward the left, when in
fact every movement of the assemblage point is in  depth, into the center of
the luminous egg along the thickness of man's band.
     I remarked  that what  he was saying made it sound as if seers would be
using their eyes when they see the assemblage point move.
     "Man  is not the unknowable,"  he  said. "Man's luminosity  can be seen
almost as if one were using the eyes alone."
     He  further explained that the old seers  had seen  the movement of the
assemblage  point  but it never occurred to them that it  was a  movement in
depth; instead  they  followed their seeing  and coined the phrase "shift to
the  left,"  which the new  seers retained  although they knew  that  it was
erroneous to call it a shift to the left.
     He also said that in the  course of my activity with him he had made my
assemblage point move  countless times, as was the case at that very moment.
Since the  shift of the  assemblage point was  always in depth, I  had never
lost  my sense  of identity, in spite of the  fact that I  was always  using
emanations I had never used before.
     "When the nagual pushes that point," he went on, "the point ends up any
which way along  man's band, but it absolutely doesn't matter where, because
wherever it ends up is always virgin ground.
     "The   grand   test   that   the  new   seers   developed   for   their
warrior-apprentices is to retrace  the journey  that their assemblage points
took under  the  influence  of  the  nagual.  This  retracing,  when  it  is
completed, is called regaining the totality of oneself."
     He went on to say  that the contention of  the new seers is that in the
course  of our growth,  once the glow of awareness focuses on man's band  of
emanations and selects some of them for emphasis, it  enters into a  vicious
circle. The more  it  emphasizes certain emanations,  the  more  stable  the
assemblage  point gets to  be. This is equivalent to saying that our command
becomes the Eagle's command. It goes without  saying that when our awareness
develops into  first attention  the command  is so strong that to break that
circle and make the assemblage point shift is a genuine triumph.
     Don Juan said that the assemblage  point is also responsible for making
the first attention perceive  in terms of clusters. An example  of a cluster
of  emanations  that  receive  emphasis  together is  the  human body as  we
perceive it. Another part of  our total  being, our  luminous cocoon,  never
receives  emphasis and  is  relegated  to  oblivion; for the  effect  of the
assemblage point is not only to make us perceive clusters of emanations, but
also to make us disregard emanations.
     When  I pressed hard for an explanation of clustering he  replied  that
the assemblage point radiates a glow that groups together bundles of encased
emanations.  These  bundles  then  become  aligned,  as  bundles,  with  the
emanations at large. Clustering is carried out even when seers deal with the
emanations  that are never  used. Whenever they  are emphasized, we perceive
them just as we perceive the clusters of the first attention.
     "One of the  greatest moments  the new  seers had,"  he continued, "was
when they found out that the unknown  is merely the emanations discarded  by
the first attention,  it's  a huge affair, but  an  affair, mind  you, where
clustering can be  done. The unknowable, on the other  hand,  is an eternity
where our assemblage point has no way of clustering anything."
     He explained that the  assemblage point is like a  luminous magnet that
picks  emanations  and  groups them  together  wherever it moves  within the
bounds of man's band of emanations. This discovery was the  glory of the new
seers,  for it put the  unknown in a new  light. The  new seers noticed that
some of the obsessive visions of seers, the ones that were almost impossible
to conceive, coincided with a shift of the assemblage point to the region of
man's band which is diametrically opposed to where it is ordinarily located.
     "Those were visions of the dark side of man," he asserted.
     "Why do you call it the dark side of man?" I asked.
     "Because  it is  somber and foreboding,"  he  said.  "It's not only the
unknown, but the who-cares-toknow-it."
     "How about the emanations that are inside  the cocoon  but  out of  the
bounds of man's band?" I asked. "Can they be perceived?"
     "Yes,  but in  really indescribable  ways," he  said.  "They're not the
human unknown, as is the case with the unused emanations in the band of man,
but the nearly immeasurable unknown where human traits do not figure at all.
It is really an area of such an overpowering vastness that the best of seers
would be hard put to describe it."
     I insisted once more that it seemed to me that the mystery is obviously
within us.
     "The  mystery  is  outside  us,"  he  said, "Inside  us  we  have  only
emanations trying to  break the cocoon.  And this fact aberrates us, one way
or  another, whether we're average men or warriors. Only the new  seers  get
around this.  They struggle to see.  And  by  means of  the shifts of  their
assemblage points, they get to realize that the mystery  is perceiving.  Not
so much what we perceive, but what makes us perceive.
     "I've mentioned to you that  the  new seers believe that our senses are
capable  of  detecting anything. They believe this because they see that the
position of the assemblage point is what dictates what our senses perceive.
     "If the  assemblage point  aligns  emanations inside the  cocoon  in  a
position  different  from its  normal  one  the  human  senses  perceive  in
inconceivable ways."

     8 The Position of the Assemblage Point

     The  next time don Juan  resumed  his  explanation of  the  mastery  of
awareness  we were again in his house  in  southern Mexico.  That  house was
actually  owned by all the  members of the nagual's party, but Silvio Manuel
officiated  as  the owner  and  everyone openly referred  to  it  as  Silvio
Manuel's house, although I, for some inexplicable reason, had gotten used to
calling it don Juan's house.
     Don Juan,  Genaro, and I had returned to the  house from a trip to  the
mountains. That day,  as we  relaxed  after the  long drive and  ate  a late
lunch, I asked  don Juan the reason for the curious deception. He assured me
that  no deception was involved, and  that to call it Silvio  Manuel's house
was an exercise in the art of stalking to be performed by all the members of
the nagual's party under any circumstances, even in the privacy of their own
thoughts. For any of them to insist on thinking about the house in any other
terms was tantamount to denying their links to the nagual's party.
     I protested that he had never told me that. I did not want to cause any
dissension with my habits.
     "Don't worry about it," he said, smiling  at  me and patting  my  back.
"You  can call this house whatever  you want. The nagual has  authority. The
nagual woman, for instance, calls it the house of shadows."
     Our conversation was interrupted, and I  did  not see him until he sent
for me to come to the back patio a couple of hours later.
     He  and Genaro were strolling around at the far  end of the corridor; I
could  see  them  moving  their  hands  in what  seemed to  be  an  animated
conversation.
     It was a clear sunny  day. The  midafternoon sun shone directly on some
of the flower pots that hung  from the eaves of the roof around the corridor
and projected their shadows on the  north  and east walls of the  patio. The
combination  of intense yellow  sunlight,  the  massive black shadows of the
pots, and the lovely, delicate,  bare shadows of  the frail flowering plants
that grew  in them  was stunning. Someone  with a  keen eye for balance  and
order had pruned those plants to create such an exquisite effect.
     "The nagual  woman  has  done  that,"  don Juan said as if  reading  my
thoughts. "She gazes at these shadows in the afternoons."
     The thought of her gazing  at shadows in the afternoons had a swift and
devastating  effect  on  me.  The intense  yellow  light  of  that hour, the
quietness of that town,  and the  affection that I felt for the nagual woman
conjured up  for me in one instant all the solitude of the warriors' endless
path.
     Don Juan had defined the scope of that path when he said to me that the
new seers are the warriors of  total freedom, that  their only search is the
ultimate  liberation  that  comes  when   they  attain  total  awareness.  I
understood with unimpaired clarity, as I looked at those haunting shadows on
the wall, what it meant to the nagual woman when she said that to read poems
out loud was the only release that her spirit had.
     I remember that the day before she  had read something to me, there  in
the patio, but I had not quite understood her urgency, her longing. It was a
poem by Juan  Ramon Jimenez,  "Hora Inmensa," which she  told me synthesized
for her the solitude of warriors who live to escape to total freedom.

     Only a bell and a bird break the stillness. . . It  seems that the  two
talk with the setting sun. Golden colored silence, the  afternoon is made of
crystals.  A roving  purity  sways  the cool trees,  and beyond all that,  a
transparent river  dreams that  trampling over  pearls it  breaks loose  and
flows into infinity.

     Don Juan and Genaro came to my side and looked at me with an expression
of surprise.
     "What are we  really doing, don Juan?"  I  asked.  "Is it possible that
warriors are only preparing themselves for death?"
     "No  way,"  he  said,  gently patting  my  shoulder.  "Warriors prepare
themselves to be aware, and full awareness  comes to them only when there is
no more  self-importance left in  them.  Only when  they are nothing do they
become everything."
     We  were quiet  for  a  moment. Then don Juan asked me if I was in  the
throes of self-pity. I did not answer because I was not sure.
     "You're not sorry that you're here, are  you?"  don Juan asked  with  a
faint smile.
     "He's  certainly  not," Genaro assured him.  Then  he seemed to have  a
moment  of doubt. He scratched  his  head, then looked at me and  arched his
brows. "Maybe you are," he said. "Are you?"
     "He's  certainly  not," don Juan  assured  Genaro  this  time.  He went
through the same  gestures of scratching  his head  and  arching  his brows.
"Maybe you are," he said. "Are you?"
     "He's  certainly not!" Genaro boomed, and  both of them  exploded  into
uncontrolled laughter.
     When they had calmed  down, don  Juan said that self-importance is  the
motivating force for every  attack of melancholy. He added that warriors are
entitled  to have profound states of sadness, but that sadness is there only
to make them laugh.
     "Genaro has something  to  show you which is more exciting than all the
self-pity  you  can muster up," don Juan  continued, "it has to do with  the
position of the assemblage point."
     Genaro immediately began to walk around the corridor,  arching his back
and lifting his thighs to his chest.
     "The nagual Julian showed him how to walk that way," don Juan said in a
whisper,  "it's called  the gait of power.  Genaro  knows  several  gaits of
power. Watch him fixedly."
     Genaro's movements were indeed  mesmeric. I  found myself following his
gait, first with my eyes and then irresistibly with my feet. I imitated  his
gait. We walked once around the patio and stopped.
     While walking, I had noticed the extraordinary lucidity that  each step
brought to me. When we stopped, I was  in a state of keen alertness. I could
hear every sound; I could detect every change in the light or in the shadows
around  me.  I  became enthralled  with a feeling of  urgency, of  impending
action.  I felt extraordinarily aggressive, muscular, daring. At that moment
I saw an enormous span of flat land in front of me; right behind me  I saw a
forest. Huge trees were lined up as straight as a wall. The forest was  dark
and green; the plain was sunny and yellow.
     My breathing was deep and strangely accelerated, but not in an abnormal
way. Yet  it was the rhythm  of my breathing that was forcing me  to trot on
the spot. I wanted  to  take off running,  or rather my  body wanted to, but
just as I was taking off something stopped me.
     Don Juan  and  Genaro  were  suddenly by my  side.  We walked  down the
corridor with Genaro to my right. He nudged me with his shoulder. I felt the
weight of his body on me. He gently shoved me to the left and we angled  off
straight for the  east wall  of the patio.  For  a  moment I had  the  weird
impression  that  we  were going  to  go through the wall, and I even braced
myself for the impact, but we stopped right in front of the wall.
     While my face  was still against the  wall, they both examined  me with
great care. I knew what they were searching  for;  they wanted  to make sure
that I had shifted my assemblage point. I  knew that I  had  because my mood
had changed. They obviously knew it too. They gently took me by the arms and
walked in  silence  with me  to the other side  of the corridor, to  a  dark
passageway, a narrow hall  that connected the  patio  with the  rest of  the
house. We stopped there. Don Juan and Genaro moved a few feet away from me.
     I was left facing  the side of the house  that was in  dark  shadows. I
looked  into an empty dark room. I had a sense of physical weariness. I felt
languid, indifferent, and yet I experienced a sense of spiritual strength. I
realized then that I had lost something. There was no strength in my body. I
could hardly stand. My  legs  finally gave in and I  sat down and then I lay
down on  my  side. While I  lay there, I had the  most wonderful, fulfilling
thoughts of love for God, for goodness.
     Then all at once I  was  in front of the  main altar  of a  church. The
bas-reliefs covered with gold leaf glittered with the light of thousands  of
candles.  I saw the  dark figures of  men  and women  carrying  an  enormous
crucifix mounted on  a huge  palanquin. I moved out of their way and stepped
outside the church. I saw a  multitude of  people,  a sea of candles, coming
toward me. I felt elated. I ran to  join them. I was moved by profound love.
I wanted to be  with them, to pray to the Lord. I was only  a  few feet away
from the mass of people when something swished me away.
     The next instant, I was with don Juan and Genaro. They flanked me as we
walked lazily around the patio.

     While we were having  lunch the next day, don Juan said that Genaro had
pushed my assemblage point with his gait of power, and that he had been able
to do that because I had been in a state of inner silence. He explained that
the  articulation point  of everything seers do  is something he had  talked
about since the day we met: stopping the internal dialogue. He stressed over
and over that the internal dialogue is what keeps the assemblage point fixed
to its original position.
     "Once silence is attained, everything is possible," he said.
     I told him  I was very  conscious of the  fact  that in general  I  had
stopped talking to myself, but  did not  know how I had done it. If asked to
explain the procedure I would not know what to say.
     "The  explanation is  simplicity itself," he  said. "You willed it, and
thus you  set a  new  intent, a new  command. Then your  command became  the
Eagle's command.
     "This is one of the most extraordinary things that the new seers  found
out: that our command can become the Eagle's command. The internal  dialogue
stops in the same way it begins: by an act of will. After all, we are forced
to start talking to ourselves by those who teach us. As they teach us,  they
engage their will
     and  we engage ours, both without knowing  it. As we learn  to  talk to
ourselves, we learn to handle will.  We will ourselves to talk to ourselves.
The way to  stop talking to ourselves is to use exactly the  same method: we
must will it, we must inlend it."
     We were silent for a few  minutes. I asked him to whom he was referring
when he said that we had teachers who taught us to talk to ourselves.
     "I  was  talking  about  what  happens  to human  beings when they  are
infants," he  replied, "a  time when they are taught by everyone around them
to repeat  an  endless  dialogue  about  themselves.  The  dialogue  becomes
internalized, and that force alone keeps the assemblage point fixed.
     "The  new seers  say  that infants have hundreds of teachers who  teach
them exactly where to place their assemblage point."
     He said that  seers see that infants have no fixed assemblage  point at
first. Their encased emanations  are in a state of great  turmoil, and their
assemblage  points shift  everywhere in  the band of man, giving  children a
great  capacity  to  focus  on  emanations  that  later  will  be thoroughly
disregarded. Then as they grow, the  older humans around them, through their
considerable  power over  them, force  the children's assemblage  points  to
become more  steady by means of an increasingly complex  internal  dialogue.
The internal dialogue is a process that constantly  strengthens the position
of the assemblage point, because that position is an arbitrary one and needs
steady reinforcement.
     "The  fact of the matter is that  many children see," he went on. "Most
of those who see are considered to be  oddballs and  every effort is made to
correct them, to  make  them  solidify  the  position  of  their  assemblage
points."
     "But  would  it  be  possible  to  encourage  children  to  keep  their
assemblage points more fluid?" I asked.
     "Only if they live among the new seers," he said. "Otherwise they would
get entrapped, as the old seers did,  in the intricacies of  the silent side
of  man. And, believe me, that's worse than being caught  in the clutches of
rationality."
     Don Juan went on  to  express his  profound  admiration for  the  human
capacity  to  impart  order  to  the chaos  of  the Eagle's  emanations.  He
maintained that every one of us, in his  own  right, is a masterful magician
and that our magic is to keep our assemblage point unwaveringly fixed.
     "The  force  of  the  emanations  at  large," he went  on,  "makes  our
assemblage  point select certain  emanations and cluster  them for alignment
and perception. That's the command of the Eagle, but all the meaning that we
give to what we perceive is our command, our gift of magic."
     He said that  in the  light of what he had  explained,  what Genaro had
made me do the day before was something extraordinarily complex and yet very
simple.  It  was  complex  because it required  a  tremendous  discipline on
everybody's part; it  required that the internal dialogue be stopped, that a
state of heightened  awareness be reached, and  that someone  walk away with
one's  assemblage point. The explanation behind all these complex procedures
was very  simple;  the new  seers say  that since the exact  position of the
assemblage point is an arbitrary position chosen for us by our ancestors, it
can  move  with  a relatively small  effort;  once  it moves,  it forces new
alignments of emanations, thus new perceptions.
     "I used to give you power plants in order to make your assemblage point
move,"  don  Juan  continued. "Power  plants have that effect;  but  hunger,
tiredness,  fever, and other things like that can have a similar effect. The
flaw of the average man is that  he  thinks the result of a shift is  purely
mental. It isn't, as you yourself can attest."
     He explained  that my assemblage  point had shifted scores of times  in
the  past, just as  it had shifted the day before, and that most of the time
the worlds it had assembled  had been so close to the world of everyday life
as  to be virtually phantom worlds.  He  emphatically added that visions  of
that kind are automatically rejected by the new seers.
     "Those visions are the product of man's  inventory," he went on.  "They
are of  no  value for warriors in search of  total freedom, because they are
produced by a lateral shift of the assemblage point."
     He stopped talking and looked at me. I knew that by  "lateral shift" he
had meant a shift of the point from one side to the other along the width of
man's band of emanations instead of a  shift in depth. I asked him if  I was
right.
     "That's exactly what I meant," he said. "On both edges of man's band of
emanations  there is a strange  storage  of refuse, an incalculable  pile of
human junk. It's a very morbid, sinister storehouse. It had great  value for
the old seers but not for us.
     "One of  the  easiest things one can do is to  fall into it.  Yesterday
Genaro and I  wanted to give you a quick example of that lateral shift; that
was why  we  walked your  assemblage point, but  any  person  can reach that
storehouse  by  simply stopping  his  internal  dialogue.  If  the  shift is
minimal, the results are explained as fantasies of the mind. If the shift is
considerable, the results are called hallucinations."
     I asked him to explain the act of walking the assemblage point. He said
that once warriors have  attained  inner silence by  stopping their internal
dialogue, the sound of the gait of power, more than the sight of it, is what
traps their assemblage points. The rhythm of muffled steps instantly catches
the alignment  force of  the  emanations  inside the cocoon,  which has been
disconnected by inner silence.
     "That force hooks itself immediately to the edges of the band," he went
on.  "On  the right  edge  we  find endless  visions of  physical  activity,
violence,  killing, sensuality.  On  the left  edge  we  find  spirituality,
religion,  God. Genaro and I walked your assemblage point to both  edges, so
as to give you a complete view of that human junk pile."
     Don  Juan  restated,  as if  on  second thought,  that one of the  most
mysterious aspects  of the seers'  knowledge  is the  incredible  effects of
inner silence.  He said that once inner silence  is attained, the bonds that
tie the assemblage point to  the particular spot where it is placed begin to
break and the assemblage point is free to move.
     He  said that the  movement ordinarily is toward the  left, that such a
directional preference is a natural reaction of most human  beings, but that
there  are  seers  who  can direct  that  movement  to  positions below  the
customary spot where  the  point is  located. The new seers call  that shift
"the shift below."
     "Seers  also  suffer  accidental  shifts  below,"   he  went  on.  "The
assemblage  point  doesn't remain  there long, and that's fortunate, because
that is  the place of the beast. To go below is  counter  to  our  interest,
although the easiest thing to do."
     Don Juan also said that among the many errors of judgment the old seers
had committed, one of the most grievous was  moving their  assemblage points
to the immeasurable area below, which  made them  experts at adopting animal
forms. They chose different  animals as their point  of reference and called
those  animals their  nagual. They believed  that by moving their assemblage
points  to  specific  spots they  would  acquire  the characteristics of the
animal  of  their choice,  its strength or wisdom  or  cunning or agility or
ferocity.
     Don  Juan assured me  that there  are many  dreadful examples  of  such
practices even among the seers of our day. The relative facility  with which
the assemblage  point of  man moves toward  any lower position poses a great
temptation to seers, especially to those whose inclination leans toward that
end. It is the duty of a nagual, therefore, to test his warriors.
     He told me then that he had put  me to the test by moving my assemblage
point to a position below, while I was under the influence of a power plant.
He then guided my assemblage point until I could isolate the crows' band  of
emanations, which resulted in my changing into a crow.
     I again asked don Juan  the question I had asked him dozens of times. I
wanted to  know whether I had  physically turned into  a crow or  had merely
thought and felt like one. He explained that a shift of the assemblage point
to the area below always results in a total transformation. He added that if
the assemblage point moves  beyond a crucial threshold, the world  vanishes;
it ceases to be what it is to us at man's level.
     He  conceded  that  my  transformation was  indeed  horrifying  by  any
standards.  My  reaction to that  experience  proved to  him  that I had  no
leanings toward  that direction. Had it  not been that way, I would have had
to employ enormous energy in order to fight off a tendency to remain in that
area below, which some seers find most comfortable.
     He further  said  that  an  unwitting downshift occurs periodically  to
every  seer, but that  such  a  downshift becomes less and less  frequent as
their assemblage  points move farther toward the left. Every time it occurs,
however, the power of a seer undergoing it diminishes considerably. It  is a
drawback that takes time and great effort to correct.
     "Those  lapses  make  seers  extremely  morose and  narrow-minded,"  he
continued, "and in certain cases, extremely rational."
     "How can seers avoid those downshifts?" I asked.
     "It all depends on the  warrior," he  said. "Some of them are naturally
inclined to indulge  in their quirks-- yourself, for instance. They are  the
ones  who  are  hard hit. For those like you,  I recommend a twenty-fourhour
vigil of everything they do. Disciplined men or women are less prone to that
kind of shift; for those I would recommend a twenty-three-hour vigil."
     He looked at me with shiny eyes and laughed.
     "Female  seers have  downshifts more  often than  males," he said. "But
they  are also  capable of bouncing out of  that position with no  effort at
all. while males linger dangerously in it."
     He also said that  women  seers  have an extraordinary capacity to make
their assemblage points hold on  to  any  position  in the area  below.  Men
cannot.  Men have  sobriety and purpose, but very little talent; that is the
reason why a nagual must have eight women seers in his party. Women give the
impulse to  cross the immeasurable  vastness  of the unknown.  Together with
that natural capacity, or as a  consequence of it, women have a  most fierce
intensity. They can, therefore, reproduce an  animal form with  flare, ease,
and a matchless ferocity.
     "If  you  think  about scary  things," he  continued,  "about something
unnamable  lurking in the darkness,  you're thinking,  without  knowing  it,
about a woman seer holding a position  in the immeasurable  area below. True
horror lies right there. If  you  ever find an aberrant  woman seer, run for
the hills!"
     I  asked him whether  other organisms were  capable  of  shifting their
assemblage points.
     "Their  points can shift," he  said, "but  the shift is not a voluntary
thing with them."
     "Is the assemblage  point  of other organisms  also  trained  to appear
where it does?" I asked.
     "Every  newborn organism  is trained, one way or  another," he replied.
"We may not understand how their training is done-- after all, we don't even
understand how it is done  to us-- but seers see that the newborn are coaxed
to  do what their kind does. That's exactly what happens to  human  infants:
seers see their assemblage points shifting every which way and then they see
how the presence of adults fastens each  point to one spot. The same happens
to every other organism."
     Don Juan seemed to reflect for  a moment and then added that  there was
indeed one unique effect that  man's  assemblage  point has. He pointed to a
tree outside.
     "When we, as serious adult human beings, look at a tree," he said, "our
assemblage points  align  an  infinite number  of emanations  and achieve  a
miracle. Our assemblage points make us perceive a cluster of emanations that
we call tree."
     He explained that the assemblage point not  only  effects the alignment
needed  for  perception,  but  also obliterates  the  alignment  of  certain
emanations in  order to arrive at  a  greater  refinement  of  perception, a
skimming, a tricky human construct with no parallel.
     He said  that the new  seers had  observed that only  human beings were
capable  of  further  clustering  the  clusters  of emanations. He used  the
Spanish word for skimming,  desnate, to describe the act of  collecting  the
most palatable cream off  the top of a  container of  boiled milk  after  it
cools. Likewise, in terms of perception, man's assemblage  point takes  some
part  of  the  emanations already  selected for alignment and makes  a  more
palatable construct with it.
     "The  skimmings of men,"  don Juan  continued, "are more real than what
other creatures perceive. That is our pitfall. They are so  real to us  that
we  forget we have constructed them  by commanding our assemblage  points to
appear where they do. We forget  they are real to us only because it  is our
command to perceive them as real. We have the  power to skim the top off the
alignments, but we don't  have the power  to  protect ourselves from our own
commands. That has to be learned. To give our skimmings  a free hand, as  we
do, is an error of judgment for which we pay as dearly as the old seers paid
for theirs."

     9 The Shift Below

     Don Juan  and Genaro made  their yearly trip  to the  northern part  of
Mexico, to the Sonoran desert,  to look for  medicinal  plants.  One of  the
seers of the nagual's party, Vicente Medrano, the herbalist among them, used
those plants to make medicines.
     I had joined don Juan and Genaro  in Sonora, at the last stage of their
journey, just in time to drive them south, back to their home.
     The day before we started on our drive, don Juan abruptly continued his
explanation  of  the mastery  of awareness. We were resting in the  shade of
some tall  bushes in the foothills of  the mountains. It was late afternoon,
almost dark. Each of us  carried a large burlap sack filled with plants.  As
soon as we had put them down, Genaro lay down on the ground and fell asleep,
using his folded jacket as a pillow.
     Don  Juan spoke to me in a low  voice, as if he didn't  want to wake up
Genaro. He  said that  by  now  he had explained  most  of the  truths about
awareness, and  that there  was only  one truth  left to  discuss.  The last
truth, he assured me, was the best of the old seers' findings, although they
never knew that themselves. Its tremendous value was  only recognized,  ages
later, by the new seers.
     "I've explained to  you  that man has an assemblage point," he went on,
"and that that assemblage point aligns emanations for perception. We've also
discussed that that point moves from its fixed position. Now, the last truth
is that once  that assemblage point  moves beyond  a  certain limit,  it can
assemble worlds entirely different from the world we know."
     Still in  a whisper, he said  that  certain geographical areas not only
help  that precarious movement  of  the  assemblage  point, but also  select
specific  directions  for  that movement.  For instance,  the Sonoran desert
helps the assemblage point move downward from its customary position, to the
place of the beast.
     "That's  why  there  are  true  sorcerers  in  Sonora,"  he  continued.
"Especially sorceresses. You already know one, la Catalina. In  the past,  I
have arranged bouts between the two of you. I wanted to make your assemblage
point shift, and la Catalina, with her sorcery antics, jolted it loose."
     Don  Juan  explained that the  chilling experiences I  had had with  la
Catalina had been part of a prearranged agreement between the two of them.
     "What would you think if we invited her to join us?" Genaro asked me in
a loud voice, as he sat up.
     The abruptness  of his question  and  the  strange  sound of his  voice
plunged me into instant terror.
     Don Juan laughed and shook me by the arms. He assured me that there was
no need for alarm. He said that la Catalina was like a cousin  or an aunt to
us. She was part of our world, although she did not quite follow our quests.
She was infinitely closer to the ancient seers.
     Genaro smiled and winked at me.
     "I understand that  you've  got hot pants for her," he said to me. "She
herself confessed to me that every  time you have had a  confrontation  with
her, the greater your fright, the hotter your pants."
     Don Juan and Genaro laughed to near hysteria.
     I had to admit that somehow I had always found la Catalina to be a very
scary but at the same  time an  extremely appealing woman. What impressed me
the most about her was her exuding energy.
     "She has  so  much energy saved," don Juan commented, "that  you didn't
have to be in heightened awareness for her to move your assemblage point all
the way to the depths of the left side."
     Don Juan said  again that  la  Catalina was very closely related to us,
because she belonged to the nagual Julian's party. He explained that usually
the nagual and  all the members  of his party leave the world together,  but
that there are instances when they leave either in smaller groups  or one by
one. The nagual Julian and his party were an example of the latter. Although
he had left the world nearly forty years ago, la Catalina was still here.
     He  reminded  me  about something he mentioned to me  before,  that the
nagual   Julian's   party  consisted  of  a   group  of   three   thoroughly
inconsequential men and  eight superb women.  Don Juan had always maintained
that such  a disparity was one of the reasons why the  members of the nagual
Julian's party left the world one by one.
     He said that la Catalina had been  attached to one  of the superb women
seers of the nagual Julian's  party, who taught  her extraordinary maneuvers
to  shift her assemblage  point to the area below. That seer was one of  the
last  to leave the world. She  lived to an extremely old age, and since both
she  and  la Catalina  were originally  from Sonora,  they  returned, in her
advanced years, to  the desert and  lived together  until the seer  left the
world. In  the  years  they  spent together,  la  Catalina  became her  most
dedicated  helper and  disciple,  a  disciple who was willing to  learn  the
extravagant ways the old seers knew to make the assemblage point shift.
     I asked don  Juan if la  Catalina's knowledge was inherently  different
from his own.
     "We are exactly  the same," he replied. "She's more like Silvio  Manuel
or Genaro; she is really the female version of them, but, of course, being a
woman she's infinitely more aggressive and dangerous than both of them."
     Genaro assented with a nod of  his head. "Infinitely more," he said and
winked again.
     "Is she attached to your party?" I asked don Juan.
     "I said  that she's like  a  cousin or an aunt to  us," he  replied. "I
meant she belongs  to the older generation,  although she's younger than all
of us. She is the last of that group. She  is rarely in contact with us. She
doesn't quite like us. We are  too stiff for  her, because she's used to the
nagual Julian's touch. She prefers the high adventure of the unknown  to the
quest for freedom."
     "What is the difference between the two?" I asked don Juan.
     "In the last  part of my explanation of the truths about awareness," he
replied, "we  are going  to  discuss that  difference slowly and thoroughly.
What's  important for you to know. at  this moment, is that you're jealously
guarding weird secrets in your leftside awareness; that is why  la  Catalina
and you like each other."
     I insisted again that it was not that I liked her, it was rather that I
admired her great strength.
     Don Juan and Genaro  laughed and patted me as if they  knew something I
did not.
     "She likes  you because  she knows what you're like,"  Genaro  said and
smacked his lips. "She knew the nagual Julian very well."
     Both of them gave me a long look that made me feel embarrassed.
     "What are you driving at?" I asked Genaro in a belligerent tone.
     He  grinned  at  me  and moved his eyebrows up and down  in  a  comical
gesture. But he kept quiet.
     Don Juan spoke and broke the silence.
     "There  are very strange points in common between the nagual Julian and
you," he said. "Genaro is just trying to figure out if you're aware of it."
     I  asked both of  them  how on  earth  I would be aware of something so
farfetched.
     "La Catalina thinks you are,"  Genaro  said. "She says  so  because she
knew the nagual Julian better than any of us here."
     I commented  that I couldn't believe that  she  knew the nagual Julian,
since he had left the world nearly forty years ago.
     "La Catalina is no spring chicken," Genaro said. "She just looks young;
that's part of her knowledge. Just as it was  part  of  the nagual  Julian's
knowledge. You've seen  her only when  she looks young.  If you see her when
she looks old, she'll scare the living daylights out of you."
     "What  la Catalina does," don  Juan interrupted, "can be explained only
in terms of the  three masteries: the mastery  of  awareness, the mastery of
stalking, and the mastery of intent.
     "But today, we are going to examine what she does only in  light of the
last truth about awareness:  the truth  that says that the assemblage  point
can assemble worlds different from our own  after it moves from its original
position."
     Don Juan  signaled me to get  up. Genaro also stood up. I automatically
grabbed the burlap sack filled with medicinal plants. Genaro stopped me as I
was about to put it on my shoulders.
     "Leave the sack alone,"  he said, smiling.  "We have to take  a  little
hike up the hill and meet la Catalina."
     "Where is she?" I asked.
     "Up there,"  Genaro said, pointing to the top of a small  hill. "If you
stare with your eyes half-closed, you'll see her as a very dark spot against
the green shrubbery."
     I strained to see the dark spot, but I couldn't see anything.
     "Why don't you walk up there?" don Juan suggested to me.
     I felt dizzy and sick to my stomach. Don Juan urged me  with a movement
of his hand to go up, but I didn't dare move. Finally, Genaro took me by the
arm and both of  us climbed toward the top of the hill. When we got there, I
realized that don Juan had come up right behind us. The three  of us reached
the top at the same time.
     Don Juan very  calmly  began  to  talk  to Genaro.  He asked  him if he
remembered the many times the nagual  Julian was about to choke both of them
to death, because they indulged in their fears.
     Genaro turned to me and assured  me that the  nagual  Julian had been a
ruthless teacher. He and his own teacher, the nagual Elias, who was still in
the world then,  used to push everyone's  assemblage points beyond a crucial
limit and let them fend for themselves.
     "I once told you that the nagual Julian recommended us not to waste our
sexual energy,"  Genaro went on. "He meant that  for the assemblage point to
shift,  one  needs energy. If one doesn't have it,  the nagual's blow is not
the blow of freedom, but the blow of death."
     "Without enough  energy," don  Juan said,  "the force  of  alignment is
crushing.  You  have  to have energy to  sustain the pressure of  alignments
which never take place under ordinary circumstances."
     Genaro said  that the nagual Julian was an inspiring teacher. He always
found ways  to  teach  and  at  the same time entertain himself. One of  his
favorite teaching devices was to catch them unawares once or twice, in their
normal awareness, and make their assemblage points shift. From  then on, all
he had to do to have their undivided attention was  to threaten them with an
unexpected nagual's blow.
     "The nagual Julian was really an unforgettable man," don Juan said. "He
had a great touch with people. He  would do  the worst things in the  world,
but done by him they were  great. Done by anyone else, they would  have been
crude and callous.
     "The nagual Ellas, on the other hand, had no touch, but he was indeed a
great, great teacher."
     "The  nagual Elias was very much like  the  nagual Juan Matus,"  Genaro
said to  me. "They  got along very  fine. And the  nagual  Elias taught  him
everything without ever raising his voice, or playing tricks on him.
     "But the nagual Julian was quite different," Genaro  went on, giving me
a friendly shove. "I'd say that he jealously guarded strange  secrets in his
left side, just like you. Wouldn't you say so?" he asked don Juan.
     Don  Juan did not answer,  but nodded  affirmatively. He seemed  to  be
holding back his laughter.
     "He had a playful nature," don Juan said, and both of them broke into a
great laughter.
     The fact that  they were obviously alluding to something they knew made
me feel even more threatened.
     Don Juan matter-of-factly said that  they were referring to the bizarre
sorcery techniques that the nagual Julian had  learned in the  course of his
life. Genaro added that the nagual Julian had a unique  teacher  besides the
nagual Elias. A teacher who had liked him immensely and had taught him novel
and complex ways of moving  his assemblage point. As  a result of  this, the
nagual Julian was extraordinarily eccentric in his behavior.
     "Who was that teacher, don Juan?" I asked.
     Don Juan and Genaro looked at each other and giggled like two children.
     "That is a very tough question to answer," don Juan replied. "All I can
say is that he  was the  teacher that deviated the  course  of our line.  He
taught us many things, good and bad, but  among the worst, he taught us what
the old seers did. So, some of us got trapped. The nagual  Julian was one of
them, and so is la Catalina. We only hope that you won't follow them."
     I immediately began to protest. Don Juan interrupted me. He said that I
did not know what I was protesting.
     As  don  Juan  spoke,  I  became  terribly angry with him  and  Genaro.
Suddenly, I was raging, yelling at  them at the top of my voice. My reaction
was so out of tone with  me that  it scared  me. It was as if I were someone
else. I stopped and looked at them for help.
     Genaro had  his hands on don Juan's shoulders  as if he needed support.
Both of them were laughing uncontrollably.
     I became so despondent I was nearly in tears. Don Juan came to my side.
He  reassuringly put  his  hand  on  my  shoulder. He said that the  Sonoran
desert,  for reasons incomprehensible to him, fostered definite belligerence
in man or any other organism.
     "People  may say  that  it's  because the  air  is  too dry  here,"  he
continued, "or because  it's  too hot.  Seers would  say  that  there  is  a
particular confluence of the Eagle's emanations here, which, as I've already
said, helps the assemblage point to shift below.
     "Be that as it may, warriors are in the world to train themselves to be
unbiased witnesses, so  as to understand the mystery of ourselves and relish
the exultation of finding what we really are. This is the highest of the new
seers' goals. And  not every warrior  attains it. We believe that the nagual
Julian didn't attain it. He was waylaid, and so was la Catalina."
     He further said that  to be a peerless nagual, one has to love freedom,
and one  has to have  supreme  detachment. He  explained that what makes the
warrior's path  so very  dangerous  is that it  is the opposite of  the life
situation of modern  man. He  said that modern man has left the realm of the
unknown  and  the mysterious, and  has  settled down  in the  realm  of  the
functional. He has  turned  his  back to the world of the foreboding and the
exulting and has welcomed the world of boredom.
     "To be given a  chance  to go back  again to the mystery of the world,"
don Juan continued, "is sometimes too much  for warriors, and  they succumb;
they are waylaid by what I've called the high adventure of the unknown. They
forget the  quest for freedom; they forget  to  be unbiased  witnesses. They
sink into the unknown and love it."
     "And you think i'm like that, don't you?" I asked don Juan.
     "We  don't  think,  we  know," Genaro  replied. "And la Catalina  knows
better than anyone else."
     "Why would she know it?" I demanded.
     "Because she's like you," Genaro replied, pronouncing his words  with a
comical intonation.
     I  was  about  to  get  into  a heated  argument  again  when  don Juan
interrupted me.
     "There's no need to get so worked up," he said to me. "You are what you
are. The fight for freedom is harder for some. You are one of them.
     "In  order  to  be unbiased  witnesses,"  he  went  on,  "we  begin  by
understanding  that the fixation or the movement  of the assemblage point is
all there is to us and the world we witness, whatever that world might be.
     "The new  seers say that when we were taught to  talk to  ourselves, we
were  taught  the means to dull ourselves in  order  to  keep the assemblage
point fixed on one spot."
     Genaro  clapped his hands noisily  and let out  a piercing whistle that
imitated the whistle of a football coach.
     "Let's get that assemblage point moving!" he yelled. "Up, up, up! Move,
move, move!"
     We were  all still  laughing  when  the  bushes by  my right  side were
suddenly stirred. Don Juan and Genaro immediately sat down with the left leg
tucked under the seat. The right leg, with the knee up, was like a shield in
front of  them. Don Juan signaled me to do the same. He raised his brows and
made a gesture of resignation at the corner of his mouth.
     "Sorcerers  have  their own quirks," he said  in a whisper.  "When  the
assemblage point moves to the regions below its normal  position, the vision
of sorcerers becomes limited. If they see you standing, they'll attack you."
     "The nagual  Julian  kept  me  once  for  two  days  in  this warrior's
position," Genaro whispered  to me. "I  even had  to urinate while  I sat in
this position."
     "And defecate," don Juan added.
     "Right,"  Genaro said. And then he  whispered  to  me, as if  on second
thought, "I hope you did your kaka earlier. If your bowels aren't empty when
la Catalina  shows up, you'll  shit  in your pants, unless I show you how to
take them off. If you have to shit in this position, you've got  to get your
pants off."
     He  began to show me how to maneuver out of my trousers. He did it in a
most serious and concerned  manner. All  my concentration was focused on his
movements. It was only when I had gotten out of my pants that I became aware
that don  Juan was roaring with laughter. I  realized that  Genaro was again
poking fun at me. I was  about to stand up to put on my pants, when don Juan
stopped  me.  He  was laughing so hard  that he could hardly articulate  his
words. He told  me to stay put, that Genaro did things only half in fun, and
that la Catalina was really there behind the bushes.
     His tone of urgency, in  the midst  of laughter,  got to me. I froze on
the spot.  A moment  later a rustle in  the bushes sent me into such a panic
that I forgot about my pants.  I looked at Genaro. He was again  wearing his
pants. He shrugged his shoulders.
     "I'm sorry," he whispered.  "I didn't have time to  show you how to put
them back on without getting up."
     I  did  not have  time to get angry or to  join  them in  their  mirth.
Suddenly, right in front of me,  the bushes separated and a most  horrendous
creature  came out.  It was so  outlandish  I  was no longer  afraid.  I was
spellbound.  Whatever was in front  of  me was  not  a human  being; it  was
something not even remotely resembling one. It was more like a reptile. Or a
bulky grotesque insect. Or even a hairy, ultimately repulsive bird. Its body
was  dark and had  coarse reddish hair.  I could  not see any legs, just the
ugly  enormous head. The nose  was flat and the  nostrils were two  enormous
lateral holes.  It had something like a beak with teeth. Horrifying  as that
thing was, its eyes were magnificent.  They were  like two mesmeric pools of
inconceivable clarity. They had knowledge. They were not human eyes, or bird
eyes, or any kind of eyes I had ever seen.
     The  creature moved toward my left, rustling the bushes. As I moved  my
head  to follow it,  I  noticed that  don Juan  and Genaro  seemed  to be as
spellbound by its presence as I was.  It  occurred to me that they had never
seen anything like that either.
     In an instant, the creature  had  moved completely out of sight.  But a
moment later there was a growl and its gigantic shape  again loomed in front
of us.
     I was fascinated  and at the same time worried by  the fact  that I was
not in  the  least afraid of that grotesque creature. It was  as if my early
panic had been experienced by someone else.
     I  felt, at  one moment, that I  was beginning  to stand up. Against my
volition, my legs straightened up and I found myself standing up, facing the
creature. I vaguely felt that I was  taking off my  jacket, my shirt, and my
shoes. Then  I was naked. The muscles of my legs  tensed with a tremendously
powerful contraction. I jumped up and down with colossal  agility,  and then
the creature and I raced toward some ineffable greenness in the distance.
     The creature raced ahead of me, coiling on itself,  like a serpent. But
then  I  caught  up  with it.  As we  speeded together,  I became  aware  of
something  I already knew-- the  creature  was really la Catalina. All  of a
sudden, la Catalina, in the flesh, was next to me. We moved effortlessly. It
was as if we were stationary, only posed in a bodily gesture of movement and
speed, while the scenery around us was being moved, giving the impression of
enormous acceleration.
     Our racing  stopped as suddenly as it had started, and then I was alone
with  la Catalina  in a different world. There was not a single recognizable
feature  in  it. There was an intense glare and heat coming from what seemed
to be the ground, a  ground covered with huge rocks. Or at least they seemed
to be rocks.  They had the color of sandstone, but they had  no weight; they
were  like chunks of sponge tissue. I could send them hurling around by only
leaning on them.
     I  became  so  fascinated  with my  strength that  I  was oblivious  to
anything else. I had assessed, in whatever way, that the chunks of seemingly
weightless material  opposed  resistance to  me. It was my superior strength
that sent them hurling around.
     I tried to grab them with  my hands, and I realized that my entire body
had  changed.  La Catalina  was looking at me.  She was again the  grotesque
creature she had  been before, and so  was I. I could not see myself,  but I
knew that both of us were exactly alike.
     An indescribable joy possessed me, as  if joy were some force that came
from outside me. La Catalina and I cavorted, and twisted, and played until I
had  no more thoughts, or feelings, or human awareness in any degree. Yet, I
was definitely  aware.  My awareness  was  a  vague  knowledge  that gave me
confidence; it was a limitless trust,  a physical certainty of my existence,
not in the sense of a human feeling of individuality,  but in the sense of a
presence that was everything.
     Then, everything  came again into  human focus all at once. La Catalina
was holding  my hand. We  were walking on the desert  floor among the desert
shrubs.  I had  the immediate and painful realization that the desert  rocks
and hard clumps of dirt were horribly injurious to my bare feet.
     We came to a spot clear  of vegetation. Don Juan and Genaro were there.
I sat down and put on my clothes.

     My  experience  with la Catalina delayed  our trip back to the south of
Mexico. It had unhinged me in  some indescribable way. In my normal state of
awareness,  I  became  disassociated. It was  as if  I had  lost a point  of
reference. I  had become despondent. I told don Juan that I had even lost my
desire to live.
     We were sitting around in  the ramada of  don  Juan's house. My car was
loaded with sacks and we were ready to  leave, but my feeling of despair got
the best of me and I began to weep.
     Don Juan and Genaro laughed  until  their eyes were  tearing.  The more
desperate I felt, the greater was their enjoyment. Finally, don Juan  had me
shift into heightened awareness and explained that  their  laughter  was not
unkindness on their part, or the result of a  weird  sense of humor, but the
genuine  expression  of  happiness  at  seeing me  advance  in  the path  of
knowledge.
     "I'll tell you what the nagual Julian used  to say to us when we got to
where you are," don  Juan went on.  "That way,  you'll know that  you're not
alone. What's happening to you happens to anyone who stores enough energy to
catch a glimpse of the unknown."
     He said that the nagual Julian  used  to tell them  that they had  been
evicted  from the homes where they had lived all their lives.  A  result  of
having saved  energy  had  been  the disruption of  their  cozy  but utterly
limiting and boring  nest  in the world  of everyday life. Their depression,
the  nagual  Julian  told them, was  not so much the sadness of having  lost
their nest, but the annoyance of having to look for new quarters.
     "The new quarters,"  don Juan went  on, "are not  as cozy. But they are
infinitely more roomy.
     "Your eviction notice came in the form of a great depression, a loss of
the  desire to  live, just as it happened to us. When you  told us that  you
didn't want to live, we couldn't help laughing."
     "What's going to happen to me now?" I asked.
     "Using the vernacular, you got to get another pad," don Juan replied.
     Don Juan and Genaro again entered into a state of great euphoria. Every
one of their statements and remarks made them laugh hysterically.
     "It's  all very simple," don  Juan said. "Your new level of energy will
create a new spot to house your assemblage point. And the warriors' dialogue
you  carry on  with us  every time  we get  together  will solidify that new
position."
     Genaro adopted a serious look and in a booming voice he asked  me, "Did
you shit today?"
     He urged me with a movement of his head to answer. "Did you, did  you?"
he demanded. "Let's get going with our warriors' dialogue."
     When their laughter had subsided, Genaro said that I had to be aware of
a drawback, the fact that from time to time the  assemblage point returns to
its original position. He told me that in his own case, the normal  position
of his  assemblage point had  forced  him  to see people  as threatening and
often terrifying beings. To his utter amazement, one day he realized that he
had changed. He was considerably more daring and had successfully dealt with
a situation that would have ordinarily thrown him into chaos and fear.
     "I  found myself making love,"  Genaro continued, and he winked at  me.
"Usually I was afraid to death of women. But  one day I found myself  in bed
with a most ferocious woman, it was so unlike me that when I realized what I
was  doing I nearly had  a heart attack. The  jolt made my assemblage  point
return to its miserable  normal position and I  had to run out of the house,
shaking like a scared rabbit.
     "You'd better watch out for the recoil of the assemblage point," Genaro
added, and they were laughing again.
     "The  position of  the  assemblage point  on man's  cocoon,"  don  Juan
explained, "is maintained by the  internal dialogue, and because of that, it
is a flimsy position at best. That's  why men and women lose their minds  so
easily, especially those whose internal dialogue is repetitious, boring, and
without any depth.
     "The new seers say that the more resilient human beings are those whose
internal dialogue is more fluid and varied."
     He  said  that  the  position  of  the warrior's  assemblage  point  is
infinitely stronger, because as soon  as the assemblage point begins to move
in the  cocoon, it  creates a dimple in the luminosity, a dimple that houses
the assemblage point from then on.
     "That's  the reason why  we can't say that warriors lose  their minds,"
don Juan went on. "If they lose anything, they lose their dimple."
     Don Juan and  Genaro found that statement so hilarious that they rolled
on the floor laughing.
     I asked don Juan to explain my experience with la Catalina. And both of
them again howled with laughter.
     "Women are definitely more bizarre  than  men,"  don Juan finally said.
"The fact that they have an extra opening between their legs makes them fall
prey  to strange  influences. Strange, powerful  forces possess them through
that opening. That's the only way I can understand their quirks."
     He kept silent for a while, and I asked what he meant by that.
     "La Catalina came to us as a giant worm," he replied.
     Don  Juan's expression when he said  that,  and  Genaro's  explosion of
laughter, took me into sheer mirth. I laughed until I was nearly sick.
     Don  Juan said that la  Catalina's skill was so extraordinary that  she
could  do  anything she wanted in the realm  of the beast.  Her unparalleled
display had been motivated by her affinity with me.  The final result of all
that, he said, was that la Catalina pulled my assemblage point with her.
     "What did  you  two  do  as  worms?" Genaro asked and slapped me on the
back.
     Don Juan seemed to be close to choking with laughter.
     "That's why  I've  said  that  women  are  more  bizarre than  men," he
commented at last.
     "I don't  agree with you," Genaro said to  don Juan. "The nagual Julian
didn't have  an extra hole  between his  legs and  he was more weird than la
Catalina. I believe she learned the worm bit from him. He used to do that to
her."
     Don Juan jumped  up and down, like a child who is  trying to keep  from
wetting his pants.
     When he had regained a measure of calm,  don Juan  said that the nagual
Julian had a  knack for creating and exploiting the most bizarre situations.
He also  said that la Catalina had  given me  a  superb example of the shift
below. She had  let me see her as the being  whose  form she  had adopted by
moving her assemblage  point,  and she had  then  helped me move mine to the
same position that gave her her monstrous appearance.
     "The other teacher  that  the  nagual  Julian had,"  don Juan went  on,
"taught him  how to get  to  specific spots in  that  immensity of  the area
below. None of us  could follow him there, but  all the members of his party
did, especially la Catalina and the woman seer who taught her."
     Don  Juan  further  said that a  shift below  entailed a view,  not  of
another  world proper, but  of our same world of everyday life seen  from  a
different perspective. He added that in order for me to see another world  I
had to perceive another great band of the Eagle's emanations.
     He then brought his explanation to an end. He said that he had no  time
to elaborate on the subject of the great bands of emanations, because we had
to be on our way. I wanted to  stay a bit longer and keep on talking, but he
argued  that he would need a good deal of  time to  explain that topic and I
would need fresh concentration.

     10 Great Bands of Emanations

     Days later, in  his house  in  southern Mexico, don Juan continued with
his explanation.  He took me to the big room. It was early evening. The room
was in darkness. I wanted to light the gasoline lanterns, but don Juan would
not let me. He said  that  I had  to  let the sound  of  his  voice  move my
assemblage  point  so  that  it  would  glow  on  the  emanations  of  total
concentration and total recall.
     He then  told  me that we were  going to talk about the great  bands of
emanations. He called it another key discovery that the old seers made,  but
that, in their aberration, they  relegated to  oblivion until it was rescued
by the new seers.
     "The Eagle's emanations are always  grouped in clusters," he  went  on.
"The  old  seers called  those clusters the great bands of  emanations. They
aren't really bands, but the name stuck.
     "For  instance, there is an immeasurable cluster that produces  organic
beings. The emanations of that organic  band have a sort of fluffiness. They
are transparent and have a  unique  light of their  own, a peculiar  energy.
They  are  aware,  they jump. That's the reason  why all organic beings  are
filled  with a  peculiar consuming energy. The other bands are darker,  less
fluffy. Some of them have no light at all, but a quality of opaqueness."
     "Do you mean,  don Juan, that all organic  beings have the same kind of
emanations inside their cocoons?" I asked.
     "No.  I  don't mean that. It isn't really that simple, although organic
beings belong to the same great band. Think of it as an enormously wide band
of luminous  filaments,  luminous strings with no  end.  Organic  beings are
bubbles that grow around a group of luminous filaments. Imagine that in this
band of organic life some bubbles  are formed around the luminous  filaments
in the center of the band, others are formed close to the edges; the band is
wide enough to accommodate every  kind of organic being with room  to spare.
In such an arrangement, bubbles that are close to the edges of the band miss
altogether  the emanations that are in  the center of  the  band,  which are
shared only by bubbles that are aligned with the center. By the  same token,
bubbles in the center miss the emanations from the edges.
     "As you  can  understand, organic beings  share the emanations  of  one
band; yet seers see that within that organic band beings are as different as
they can be."
     "Are there many of these great bands?" I asked.
     "As many  as infinity  itself,"  he  replied. "Seers  have  found  out,
however, that in the earth there are only forty-eight such bands."
     "What is the meaning of that, don Juan?"
     "For seers it means  that there are forty-eight types  of organizations
on the earth,  forty-eight  types of clusters or structures. Organic life is
one of them."
     "Does that mean that there are forty-seven types of inorganic life?"
     "No,  not  at all. The  old  seers  counted  seven bands that  produced
inorganic  bubbles of awareness. In other words,  there are forty bands that
produce  bubbles  without  awareness;  those  are  bands that generate  only
organization.
     "Think of the great bands as being like trees. All of them bear  fruit;
they  produce containers  filled  with emanations; yet  only eight of  those
trees bear edible fruit,  that is, bubbles  of  awareness. Seven  have  sour
fruit, but edible nonetheless, and one  has the  most  juicy, luscious fruit
there is."
     He laughed and said that in his analogy he had taken  the point of view
of the Eagle, for  whom the most delectable morsels are the  organic bubbles
of awareness.
     "What makes those eight bands produce awareness?" I asked.
     "The Eagle bestows awareness through its emanations," he replied.
     His answer  made  me argue  with him.  I told him that to say that  the
Eagle bestows awareness through its emanations is  like what a religious man
would say about God, that God  bestows life through  love. It does not  mean
anything.
     "The  two  statements  are not  made from the same  point  of view," he
patiently said. "And yet I think they mean the same thing. The difference is
that  seers see  how the Eagle bestows awareness through its  emanations and
religious men don't see how God bestows life through his love."
     He said  that the way the Eagle bestows awareness is by  means of three
giant  bundles  of emanations  that  run  through eight  great  bands. These
bundles are quite peculiar, because they make seers  feel a hue.  One bundle
gives  the  feeling  of  being  beige-pink,   something  like  the  glow  of
pink-colored  street lamps;  another gives the feeling  of being peach, like
buff neon lights;  and  the third bundle gives the  feeling of  being amber,
like clear honey.
     "So,  it  is  a matter of  seeing a  hue when seers see that  the Eagle
bestows awareness through its emanations," he went  on. "Religious men don't
see God's love, but if they would see it, they would know that it  is either
pink, peach, or amber.
     "Man,  for example, is attached to  the amber bundle, but so  are other
beings."
     I wanted to know which beings shared those emanations with man.
     "Details  like that you will have to find out for yourself through your
own  seeing,"' he said. "There is no point in my telling you which ones; you
will only be making another inventory. Suffice  it to  say that finding that
out for yourself will be one of the most exciting things you'll ever do."
     "Do the pink and peach bundles also show in man?" I asked.
     "Never. Those bundles belong to other living beings," he replied.
     I was about  to  ask a  question,  but  with a forceful movement of his
hand, he  signaled me to stop. He  then  became immersed in thought. We were
enveloped in complete silence for a long time.
     "I've told you that the glow of awareness in man has different colors."
he finally  said. "What I didn't tell you then, because  we hadn't gotten to
that point yet, was that they are not colors but casts of amber."
     He  said that the amber bundle of awareness has an infinitude of subtle
variants,  which always denote differences in quality of awareness. Pink and
pale-green amber are the  most common casts. Blue amber is more unusual, but
pure amber is by far the most rare.
     "What determines the particular casts of amber?"
     "Seers  say  that  the  amount  of  energy that  one saves  and  stores
determines  the  cast.  Countless  numbers  of  warriors have  begun with an
ordinary pink  amber  cast and have finished with  the purest of all ambers.
Genaro and Silvio Manuel are examples of that."
     "What  forms of  life  belong to  the  pink  and the peach  bundles  of
awareness?" I asked.
     "The three bundles with all their casts crisscross the eight bands," he
replied. "In the organic band, the pink bundle belongs mainly to plants, the
peach band  belongs to  insects, and the amber band belongs to man and other
animals.
     "The  same  situation is  prevalent in the  inorganic bands.  The three
bundles of awareness produce specific  kinds of inorganic  beings in each of
the seven great bands."
     I asked him to elaborate on the kinds of inorganic beings that existed.
     "That is another thing that you must  see for yourself," he said.  "The
seven bands and what they produce are indeed inaccessible to  human  reason,
but not to human seeing."
     I told him  that I  could not quite grasp his  explanation of the great
bands, because his description had  forced me to imagine them as independent
bundles of strings, or even as flat bands, like conveyor belts.
     He  explained that  the great bands  are neither flat  nor  round,  but
indescribably clustered together, like a pile of hay, which is held together
in midair by the  force of the hand that pitched it. Thus, there is no order
to the emanations; to  say that there is a  central  part or that there  are
edges is misleading, but necessary to understanding.
     Continuing, he  explained that inorganic beings  produced by  the seven
other bands of awareness are characterized by having a container that has no
motion; it is rather a formless receptacle  with a low degree of luminosity.
It does not look like the cocoon  of organic beings.  It lacks the tautness,
the  inflated  quality  that  makes  organic beings look like luminous balls
bursting with energy.
     Don Juan said that the  only  similarity between inorganic and  organic
beings is that all of  them have  the awareness-bestowing  pink or peach  or
amber emanations.
     "Those  emanations,  under certain circumstances," he continued,  "make
possible  the  most  fascinating  communication between the beings of  those
eight great bands."
     He  said that usually the organic beings, with their  greater fields of
energy, are  the initiators of communication with  inorganic  beings,  but a
subtle  and sophisticated  follow-up is always the province of the inorganic
beings. Once the barrier is broken, inorganic  beings change and become what
seers  call allies. From  that moment  inorganic beings  can  anticipate the
seer's most subtle thoughts or moods or fears.
     "The old  seers became mesmerized by such devotion from their  allies,"
he went on.  "Stories are that  the  old  seers could make  their allies  do
anything they wanted. That was one of the reasons they believed in their own
invulnerability. They got fooled by their  self-importance.  The allies have
power only  if the seer who  sees  them is the paragon of impeccability; and
those old seers just weren't."
     "Are there as many inorganic beings as there  are living organisms?"  I
asked.
     He said that inorganic beings are not as plentiful as organic ones, but
that this is offset  by the greater  number of bands of inorganic awareness.
Also,  the differences among the inorganic beings themselves  are  more vast
than the differences  among organisms,  because organisms belong to only one
band while inorganic beings belong to seven bands.
     "Besides,  inorganic beings live infinitely longer than organisms,"  he
continued. "This matter is what prompted the old  seers to concentrate their
seeing on the allies, for reasons I will tell you about later on."
     He said  that the  old  seers also  came to realize that it is the high
energy of organisms and the subsequent  high development of  their awareness
that  make them delectable morsels for the  Eagle.  In the old  seers' view,
gluttony was the reason the Eagle produced as many organisms as possible.
     He explained next that the  product  of the other forty great bands  is
not awareness at all, but a configuration of inanimate energy. The old seers
chose  to call  whatever  is produced by those bands, vessels. While cocoons
and containers are fields  of energetic awareness,  which accounts for their
independent luminosity,  vessels are rigid receptacles that hold  emanations
without  being  fields of energetic  awareness. Their luminosity  comes only
from the energy of the encased emanations.
     "You must bear  in mind  that everything on the  earth is encased,"  he
continued.  "Whatever  we perceive  is made up  of portions  of  cocoons  or
vessels  with emanations. Ordinarily,  we  don't  perceive the containers of
inorganic beings at all."
     He looked at me,  waiting for a sign of comprehension. When he realized
I was not going to oblige him, he continued explaining.
     "The total world is made of the forty-eight bands," he said. "The world
that our assemblage point assembles for our normal perception is made up  of
two bands;  one is the organic band,  the other  is a  band  that  has  only
structure, but no awareness. The other fortysix great bands are not part  of
the world we normally perceive."
     He paused again for pertinent questions. I had none.
     "There  are  other  complete  worlds  that our  assemblage  points  can
assemble," he  went  on. "The old seers  counted seven  such worlds, one for
each band of awareness. I'll add that two of those worlds, besides the world
of everyday life, are easy to assemble; the other five are something else."

     When we again sat  down  to  talk, don Juan  immediately began  to talk
about my experience with la Catalina. He said that a shift of the assemblage
point to  the area  below its customary position allows the  seer a detailed
and narrow view of the world we know. So detailed is that view that it seems
to  be  an entirely  different world. It is a mesmerizing  view that  has  a
tremendous  appeal, especially for those  seers  who have an adventurous but
somehow indolent and lazy spirit.
     "The  change  of  perspective  is  very pleasant," don  Juan  went  on.
"Minimal effort  is required,  and the results are staggering. If a  seer is
driven by quick gain, there  is no better maneuver than the shift below. The
only  problem is that in those positions  of the assemblage point, seers are
plagued by death, which happens even more  brutally and more quickly than in
man's position.
     "The nagual Julian thought  it was  a  great place  for cavorting,  but
that's all."
     He said that a true change of  worlds happens only when the  assemblage
point moves into man's band,  deep  enough to  reach a crucial threshold, at
which stage the assemblage point can use another of the great bands.
     "How does it use it?" I asked.
     He shrugged his shoulders.  "It's a matter of  energy,"  he  said. "The
force  of alignment  hooks another band, provided  that the  seer has enough
energy. Our  normal  energy allows our assemblage points to use the force of
alignment  of one  great band  of emanations. And  we perceive the  world we
know. But if we have a surplus of energy, we can use  the force of alignment
of other great bands, and consequently we perceive other worlds."
     Don Juan abruptly changed the subject and began to talk about plants.
     "This  may seem  like an  oddity  to you,"  he  said,  "but trees,  for
instance,  are closer to man than ants. I've told you that trees and man can
develop a great relationship; that's so because they share emanations."
     "How big are their cocoons?" I asked.
     "The cocoon  of a giant tree is  not much larger than the  tree itself.
The interesting part is that some tiny plants have a cocoon almost as big as
a man's body and three times its width.  Those are power plants.  They share
the largest amount of emanations with  man, not the emanations of awareness,
but other emanations in general.
     "Another  thing unique  about  plants is  that their luminosities  have
different casts.  They  are pinkish  in general,  because their awareness is
pink. Poisonous plants are a pale  yellow pink  and  medicinal  plants are a
bright violet pink. The only ones that are white pink are power plants; some
are murky white, others are brilliant white.
     "But the real difference between plants and other organic beings is the
location of  their assemblage  points. Plants  have it on  the lower part of
their cocoon, while other organic beings have  it on the upper part of their
cocoon."
     "What about  the inorganic beings?" I asked. "Where  do they have their
assemblage points?"
     "Some have it  on  the lower part of their containers," he said. "Those
are thoroughly alien to man, but akin to plants.  Others have it anywhere on
the upper part of their containers. Those are close to man and other organic
creatures."
     He  added that the old  seers  were convinced that plants have the most
intense  communication with inorganic  beings.  They believed that the lower
the  assemblage  point,  the  easier  for  plants  to break  the barrier  of
perception; very  large trees and very  small plants  have their  assemblage
points extremely low in their cocoon. Because of this, a great number of the
old seers' sorcery techniques were means  to  harness the awareness of trees
and small  plants  in  order to use them as guides  to descend to  what they
called the deepest levels of the dark regions.
     "You understand, of  course," don Juan went on, "that when they thought
they were  descending  to the  depths, they  were,  in  fact, pushing  their
assemblage  points to assemble  other  perceivable  worlds with  those seven
great bands.
     "They taxed their awareness to the limit and assembled worlds with five
great bands  that are accessible to  seers  only if they undergo a dangerous
transformation."
     "But did the old seers succeed in assembling those worlds?" I asked.
     "They did,"  he said.  "In their aberration they  believed it was worth
their while to break all the  barriers  of perception,  even  if they had to
become trees to do that."

     11 Stalking, Intent and the Dreaming Position

     The  next day,  in the early evening again, don  Juan came  to the room
where I was talking with Genaro. He took me by the arm and walked me through
the house to the back patio. It was already fairly dark.  We started to walk
around in the corridor that encircled the patio.
     As we walked, don Juan told me  that  he wanted to warn  me once  again
that it is very easy in the path of knowledge to get lost in intricacies and
morbidity. He said that  seers are up against great enemies that can destroy
their purpose, muddle their aims, and make them weak; enemies created by the
warriors' path itself together with the  sense of  indolence, laziness,  and
self-importance that are integral parts of the daily world.
     He remarked  that the  mistakes the  ancient seers  made as a result of
indolence,  laziness, and self-importance were so enormous and so grave that
the new seers had no option but to scorn and reject their own tradition.
     "The most important thing the  new seers needed,"  don  Juan continued,
"was practical steps in order  to  make their assemblage points shift. Since
they had none, they began  by developing a  keen interest in seeing the glow
of awareness, and as a  result they worked out three sets of techniques that
became their cornerstone."
     Don Juan said that with these  three sets, the new seers accomplished a
most  extraordinary  and  difficult feat.  They  succeeded in systematically
making  the  assemblage  point  shift away  from its customary position.  He
acknowledged that the old seers  had  also accomplished  that  feat, but  by
means of capricious, idiosyncratic maneuvers.
     He  explained  that  what the new  seers saw in  the  glow of awareness
resulted in the sequence in which they arranged the old seers'  truths about
awareness.  This  is known  as  the mastery  of  a