Tales of Power Read online

  “A work which is among the best that the science of anthropology has produced.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “The present book takes Carlos to the edge of the abyss itself, on an excursion into the unknown (the nagual) that represents the death of his personal, historical self (his tonal). Don Juan, his patient teacher, and don Genaro, his lively, acrobatic benefactor, must say farewell to him. They cannot help him any longer: he is totally alone, free, a warrior at last. . . . Like all art . . . the work resists and transcends conventional categories of labeling.” —Psychology Today

  “One of the important statements of our time”

  —Book World

  “Hypnotic reading”

  —Time Magazine

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  CONTENTS

  Epigraph

  PART ONE

  A WITNESS TO ACTS OF POWER

  An Appointment with Knowledge

  The Dreamer and the Dreamed

  The Secret of the Luminous Beings

  PART TWO

  THE TONAL AND THE NAGUAL

  Having to Believe

  The Island of the Tonal

  The Day of the Tonal

  Shrinking the Tonal

  In Nagual’s Time

  The Whispering of the Nagual

  The Wings of Perception

  PART THREE

  THE SORCERERS’ EXPLANATION

  Three Witnesses to the Nagual

  The Strategy of a Sorcerer

  The Bubble of Perception

  The Predilection of Two Warriors

  About Carlos Castaneda

  The conditions of a solitary bird are five:

  The first, that it flies to the highest point;

  the second, that it does not suffer for company,

  not even of its own kind;

  the third, that it aims its beak to the skies;

  the fourth, that it does not have a definite color;

  the fifth, that it sings very softly.

  —San Juan de la Cruz, Dichos de Luz y Amor

  PART ONE

  A Witness to Acts of Power

  AN APPOINTMENT WITH KNOWLEDGE

  I had not seen don Juan for several months. It was the autumn of 1971. I had the certainty that he was at don Genaro’s house in central Mexico and made the necessary preparations for a six- or seven-day drive to visit him. On the second day of my journey, however, on an impulse, I stopped at don Juan’s place in Sonora in the midafternoon. I parked my car and walked a short distance to the house. To my surprise, I found him there.

  “Don Juan! I didn’t expect to find you here,” I said.

  He laughed; my surprise seemed to delight him. He was sitting on an empty milk crate by the front door. He appeared to have been waiting for me. There was an air of accomplishment in the ease with which he greeted me. He took off his hat and flourished it in a comical gesture. Then he put it on again and gave me a military salute. He was leaning against the wall, sitting on the crate as if it were a saddle.

  “Sit down, sit down,” he said in a jovial tone. “Good to see you again.”

  “I was going to go all the way to central Mexico for nothing,” I said. “And then I would’ve had to drive back to Los Angeles. Finding you here has saved me days and days of driving.”

  “Somehow you would’ve found me,” he said in a mysterious tone, “but let’s say that you owe me the six days that you would’ve needed to get there, days which you should use in doing something more interesting than pressing down on the gas pedal of your car.”

  There was something engaging in don Juan’s smile. His warmth was contagious.

  “Where’s your writing gear?” he asked.

  I told him that I had left it in the car; he said that I looked unnatural without it and made me go back and get it.

  “I have finished writing a book,” I said.

  He gave me a long, strange look that produced an itching in the pit of my stomach. It was as if he were pushing my middle section with a soft object. I felt like I was going to get ill, but then he turned his head to the side and I regained my original feeling of well-being.

  I wanted to talk about my book but he made a gesture that indicated that he did not want me to say anything about it. He smiled. His mood was light and charming and he immediately engaged me in a casual conversation about people and current events. Finally I managed to steer the conversation onto the topic of my interest. I began by mentioning that I had reviewed my early notes and had realized that he had been giving me a detailed description of the sorcerer’s world from the beginning of our association. In light of what he had said to me in those stages, I had begun to question the role of hallucinogenic plants.

  “Why did you make me take those power plants so many times?” I asked.

  He laughed and mumbled very softly. “ ’Cause you’re dumb.”

  I heard him the first time, but I wanted to make sure and pretended I had not understood.

  “I beg your pardon?” I asked.

  “You know what I said,” he replied and stood up.

  He tapped me on the head as he walked by me. “You’re rather slow,” he said. “And there was no other way to jolt you.”

  “So none of that was absolutely necessary?” I asked.

  “It was, in your case. There are other types of people, however, that do not seem to need them.”

  He stood next to me, staring at the top of the bushes by the left side of his house; then he sat down again and talked about Eligio, his other apprentice. He said that Eligio had taken psychotropic plants only once since he became his apprentice, and yet he was perhaps even more advanced than I was.

  “To be sensitive is a natural condition of certain people,” he said. “You are not. But neither am I. In the final analysis sensitivity matters very little.”

  “What’s the thing that matters then?” I asked.

  He seemed to search for an appropriate answer.

  “What matters is that a warrior be impeccable,” he finally said. “But that’s only a way of talking, a way of beating around the bush. You have already accomplished some tasks of sorcery and I believe this is the time to mention the source of everything that matters. So I will say that what matters to a warrior is arriving at the totality of oneself.”

  “What is the totality of oneself, don Juan?”

  “I said that I was only going to mention it. There are still a lot of loose ends in your life that you must tie together before we can talk about the totality of oneself.”

  He ended our conversation there. He made a gesture with his hands to signal that he wanted me to stop talking. Apparently there was something or somebody nearby. He tilted his head to the left, as if to listen. I could see the whites of his eyes as he focused on the bushes beyond the house to his left. He listened attentively for a few moments and then stood up, came to me and whispered in my ear that we had to leave the house and go for a walk.

  “Is there something wrong?” I asked, also in a whisper.

  “No. Nothing is wrong,” he said. “Everything is rather right.”

  He led me into the desert chaparral. We walked for perhaps half an hour and then came to a small circular area free from vegetation, a spot about twelve feet in diameter where the reddish dirt was packed and perfectly flat. There were no signs, however, that machinery had cleared and flattened the area. Don Juan sat down in the center of it, facing the
southeast. He pointed to a place about five feet away from him and asked me to sit there, facing him.

  “What are we going to do here?” I asked.

  “We have an appointment here tonight,” he replied.

  He scanned the surroundings with a quick glance, turning around on his seat until he was again facing the southeast.

  His movements had alarmed me. I asked him who we had the appointment with.

  “With knowledge,” he said. “Let’s say that knowledge is prowling around here.”

  He did not let me hook onto that cryptic answer. He quickly changed the subject and in a jovial tone he urged me to be natural, that is, to take notes and talk as we would have done at his house.

  What was most pressing on my mind at that time was the vivid sensation I had had six months before, of “talking” to a coyote. That event meant to me that for the first time I had been capable of visualizing or apprehending, through my senses and in sober consciousness, the sorcerers’ description of the world; a description in which communicating with animals through speech was a matter of course.

  “We’re not going to engage ourselves in dwelling on any experience of that nature,” don Juan said upon hearing my question. “It is not advisable for you to indulge in focusing your attention on past events. We may touch on them, but only in reference.”

  “Why is that so, don Juan?”

  “You don’t have enough personal power yet to seek the sorcerers’ explanation.”

  “Then there is a sorcerers’ explanation!”

  “Certainly. Sorcerers are men. We’re creatures of thought. We seek clarifications.”

  “I was under the impression that my great flaw was to seek explanations.”

  “No. Your flaw is to seek convenient explanations, explanations that fit you and your world. What I object to is your reasonableness. A sorcerer explains things in his world too, but he’s not as stiff as you.”

  “How can I arrive at the sorcerers’ explanation?”

  “By accumulating personal power. Personal power will make you slide with great ease into the sorcerers’ explanation. The explanation is not what you would call an explanation; nevertheless, it makes the world and its mysteries, if not clear, at least less awesome. That should be the essence of an explanation, but that is not what you seek. You’re after the reflection of your ideas.”

  I lost my momentum to ask questions. But his smile urged me to keep on talking. Another issue of great importance to me was his friend don Genaro and the extraordinary effect that his actions had had on me. Every time I had come into contact with him I had experienced the most outlandish sensory distortions.

  Don Juan laughed when I voiced my question.

  “Genaro is stupendous,” he said. “But for the time being, there is no sense in talking about him or about what he does to you. Again, you don’t have enough personal power to unravel that topic. Wait until you have it, then we will talk.”

  “What if I never have it?”

  “If you never have it, we’ll never talk.”

  “At the rate I’m going, will I ever have enough of it?” I asked.

  “That’s up to you,” he replied. “I have given you all the information necessary. Now it’s your responsibility to gain enough personal power to tip the scales.”

  “You’re talking in metaphors,” I said. “Give it to me straight. Tell me exactly what I should do. If you have already told me, let’s say that I’ve forgotten it.”

  Don Juan chuckled and lay down, putting his arms behind his head.

  “You know exactly what you need,” he said.

  I told him that sometimes I thought I knew, but that most of the time I had no self-confidence.

  “I’m afraid that you are confusing issues,” he said. “The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to himself. Perhaps you are chasing rainbows. You’re after the self-confidence of the average man, when you should be after the humbleness of a warrior. The difference between the two is remarkable. Self-confidence entails knowing something for sure; humbleness entails being impeccable in one’s actions and feelings.”

  “I’ve been trying to live in accordance with your suggestions,” I said. “I may not be the best, but I’m the best of myself. Is that impeccability?”

  “No. You must do better than that. You must push yourself beyond your limits, all the time.”

  “But that would be insane, don Juan. No one can do that.”

  “There are lots of things that you do now which would have seemed insane to you ten years ago. Those things themselves did not change, but your idea of yourself changed; what was impossible before is perfectly possible now and perhaps your total success in changing yourself is only a matter of time. In this affair the only possible course that a warrior has is to act consistently and without reservations. You know enough of the warrior’s way to act accordingly, but your old habits and routines stand in your way.”

  I understood what he meant.

  “Do you think that writing is one of the old habits I should change?” I asked. “Should I destroy my new manuscript?”

  He did not answer. He stood up and turned to look at the edge of the chaparral.

  I told him that I had received letters from various people telling me that it was wrong to write about my apprenticeship. They had cited as a precedent that the masters of Eastern esoteric doctrines demanded absolute secrecy about their teachings.

  “Perhaps those masters are just indulging in being masters,” don Juan said without looking at me. “I’m not a master, I’m only a warrior. So I really don’t know what a master feels like.”

  “But maybe I’m revealing things I shouldn’t, don Juan.”

  “It doesn’t matter what one reveals or what one keeps to oneself,” he said. “Everything we do, everything we are, rests on our personal power. If we have enough of it, one word uttered to us might be sufficient to change the course of our lives. But if we don’t have enough personal power, the most magnificent piece of wisdom can be revealed to us and that revelation won’t make a damn bit of difference.”

  He then lowered his voice as if he were disclosing a confidential matter to me.

  “I’m going to utter perhaps the greatest piece of knowledge anyone can voice,” he said. “Let me see what you can do with it.

  “Do you know that at this very moment you are surrounded by eternity? And do you know that you can use that eternity, if you so desire?”

  After a long pause, during which he urged me with a subtle movement of his eyes to make a statement, I said that I did not understand what he was talking about.

  “There! Eternity is there!” he said, pointing to the horizon.

  Then he pointed to the zenith. “Or there, or perhaps we can say that eternity is like this.” He extended both arms to point to the east and west.

  We looked at each other. His eyes held a question.

  “What do you say to that?” he asked, coaxing me to ponder upon his words.

  I did not know what to say.

  “Do you know that you can extend yourself forever in any of the directions I have pointed to?” he went on. “Do you know that one moment can be eternity? This is not a riddle; it’s a fact, but only if you mount that moment and use it to take the totality of yourself forever in any direction.”

  He stared at me.

  “You didn’t have this knowledge before,” he said, smiling. “Now you do. I have revealed it to you, but it doesn’t make a bit of difference, because you don’t have enough personal power to utilize my revelation. Yet if you did have enough power, my words alone would serve as the means for you to round up the totality of yourself and to get the crucial part of it out of the boundaries in which it is contained.”

&
nbsp; He came to my side and poked my chest with his fingers; it was a very light tap.

  “These are the boundaries I’m talking about,” he said. “One can get out of them. We are a feeling, an awareness encased here.”

  He slapped my shoulders with both hands. My pad and pencil fell to the ground. Don Juan put his foot on the pad and stared at me and then laughed.

  I asked him if he minded my taking notes. He said no in a reassuring tone and moved his foot away.

  “We are luminous beings,” he said, shaking his head rhythmically. “And for a luminous being only personal power matters. But if you ask me what personal power is, I have to tell you that my explanation will not explain it.”

  Don Juan looked at the western horizon and said that there were still a few hours of daylight left.

  “We have to be here for a long time,” he explained. “So, we either sit quietly or we talk. It is not natural for you to be silent, so let’s keep on talking. This spot is a power place and it must become used to us before nightfall. You must sit here, as naturally as possible, without fear or impatience. It seems that the easiest way for you to relax is to take notes, so write to your heart’s content.

  “And now, suppose you tell me about your dreaming.”

  His sudden shift caught me unprepared. He repeated his request. There was a great deal to say about it. “Dreaming” entailed cultivating a peculiar control over one’s dreams to the extent that the experiences undergone in them and those lived in one’s waking hours acquired the same pragmatic valence. The sorcerers’ allegation was that under the impact of “dreaming” the ordinary criteria to differentiate a dream from reality became inoperative.

  Don Juan’s praxis of “dreaming” was an exercise that consisted of finding one’s hands in a dream. In other words, one had to deliberately dream that one was looking for and could find one’s hands in a dream by simply dreaming that one lifted one’s hands to the level of the eyes.

  After years of unsuccessful attempts I had finally accomplished the task. Looking at it in retrospect, it had become evident to me that I had succeeded only after I had gained a degree of control over the world of my everyday life.