Tales of Power Read online

  Don Juan wanted to know the salient points. I began telling him that the difficulty of setting up the command to look at my hands seemed to be, quite often, insurmountable. He had warned me that the early stage of the preparatory facet, which he called “setting up dreaming,” consisted of a deadly game that one’s mind played with itself, and that some part of myself was going to do everything it could to prevent the fulfillment of my task. That could include, don Juan had said, plunging me into a loss of meaning, melancholy, or even a suicidal depression. I did not go that far, however. My experience was rather on the light, comical side; nonetheless, the result was equally frustrating. Every time I was about to look at my hands in a dream something extraordinary would happen; I would begin to fly, or my dream would turn into a nightmare, or it would simply become a very pleasant experience of bodily excitation; everything in the dream would extend far beyond the “normal” in matters of vividness and, therefore, be terribly absorbing. My original intention of observing my hands was always forgotten in light of the new situation.

  One night, quite unexpectedly, I found my hands in my dreams. I dreamt that I was walking on an unknown street in a foreign city and suddenly I lifted up my hands and placed them in front of my face. It was as if something within myself had given up and had permitted me to watch the backs of my hands.

  Don Juan’s instructions had been that as soon as the sight of my hands would begin to dissolve or change into something else, I had to shift my view from my hands to any other element in the surroundings of my dream. In that particular dream I shifted my view to a building at the end of the street. When the sight of the building began to dissipate I focused my attention on the other elements of the surroundings in my dream. The end result was an incredibly clear composite picture of a deserted street in some unknown foreign city.

  Don Juan made me continue with my account of other experiences in “dreaming.” We talked for a long time.

  At the end of my report he stood up and went to the bushes. I also stood up. I was nervous. It was an unwarranted sensation since there was nothing precipitating fear or concern. Don Juan returned shortly. He noticed my agitation.

  “Calm down,” he said, holding my arm gently.

  He made me sit down and put my notebook on my lap. He coaxed me to write. His argument was that I should not disturb the power place with unnecessary feelings of fear or hesitation.

  “Why do I get so nervous?” I asked.

  “It’s natural,” he said. “Something in you is threatened by your activities in dreaming. As long as you did not think about those activities, you were all right. But now that you have revealed your actions you’re about to faint.

  “Each warrior has his own way of dreaming. Each way is different. The only thing which we all have in common is that we play tricks in order to force ourselves to abandon the quest. The counter-measure is to persist in spite of all the barriers and disappointments.”

  He asked me then if I was capable of selecting topics for “dreaming.” I said that I did not have the faintest idea of how to do that.

  “The sorcerers explanation of how to select a topic for dreaming,” he said, “is that a warrior chooses the topic by deliberately holding an image in his mind while he shuts off his internal dialogue. In other words, if he is capable of not talking to himself for a moment and then holds the image or the thought of what he wants in dreaming, even if only for an instant, then the desired topic will come to him. I’m sure you’ve done that, although you were not aware of it.”

  There was a long pause and then don Juan began to sniff the air. It was as if he were cleaning his nose; he exhaled three or four times through his nostrils with great force. The muscles of his abdomen contracted in spasms, which he controlled by taking in short gasps of air.

  “We won’t talk about dreaming any more,” he said. “You might become obsessed. If one is to succeed in anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but with no stress or obsession.”

  He stood up and walked to the edge of the bushes. He leaned forward and peered into the foliage. He seemed to be examining something in the leaves, without getting too close to them.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, unable to contain my curiosity.

  He turned to me, smiled and raised his brow.

  “The bushes are filled with strange things,” he said as he sat down again.

  His tone was so casual that it scared me more than if he had let out a sudden yell. My notebook and pencil fell from my hands. He laughed and mimicked me and said that my exaggerated reactions were one of the loose ends that still existed in my life.

  I wanted to raise a point but he would not let me talk.

  “There’s only a bit of daylight left,” he said. “There are other things we ought to touch upon before the twilight sets in.”

  He then added that judging by my production in “dreaming” I must have learned how to stop my internal dialogue at will. I told him that I had.

  At the beginning of our association don Juan had delineated another procedure: walking for long stretches without focusing the eyes on anything. His recommendation had been to not look at anything directly but, by slightly crossing the eyes, to keep a peripheral view of everything that presented itself to the eyes. He had insisted, although I had not understood at the time, that if one kept one’s unfocused eyes at a point just above the horizon, it was possible to notice, at once, everything in almost the total 180-degree range in front of one’s eyes. He had assured me that that exercise was the only way of shutting off the internal dialogue. He used to ask me for reports on my progress, and then he stopped inquiring about it.

  I told don Juan that I had practiced the technique for years without noticing any change, but I had expected none anyway. One day, however, I had the shocking realization that I had just walked for about ten minutes without having said a single word to myself.

  I mentioned to don Juan that on that occasion I also became cognizant that stopping the internal dialogue involved more than merely curtailing the words I said to myself. My entire thought processes had stopped and I had felt I was practically suspended, floating. A sensation of panic had ensued from that awareness and I had to resume my internal dialogue as an antidote.

  “I’ve told you that the internal dialogue is what grounds us,” don Juan said. “The world is such and such or so and so, only because we talk to ourselves about its being such and such or so and so.”

  Don Juan explained that the passageway into the world of sorcerers opens up after the warrior has learned to shut off the internal dialogue.

  “To change our idea of the world is the crux of sorcery,” he said. “And stopping the internal dialogue is the only way to accomplish it. The rest is just padding. Now you’re in the position to know that nothing of what you’ve seen or done, with the exception of stopping the internal dialogue, could by itself have changed anything in you, or in your idea of the world. The provision is, of course, that that change should not be deranged. Now you can understand why a teacher doesn’t clamp down on his apprentice. That would only breed obsession and morbidity.”

  He asked for details of other experiences I had had in shutting off the internal dialogue. I recounted everything that I could remember.

  We talked until it became dark and I could no longer take notes in a comfortable manner; I had to pay attention to my writing and that altered my concentration. Don Juan became aware of it and began to laugh. He pointed out that I had accomplished another sorcery task, writing without concentrating. The moment he said it, I realized that I really did not pay attention to the act of taking notes. It seemed to be a separate activity I had nothing to do with. I felt odd. Don Juan asked me to sit by him in the center of the circle. He said it was too dark and I was no longer safe sitting so close to the edge of the chaparral. I felt a chill up my back and jumped to his side.

  He made me face the southeast and asked me to command myself to be silent and without thoughts
. I could not do it at first and had a moment of impatience. Don Juan turned his back to me and told me to lean on his shoulder for support. He said that once I had quieted down my thoughts, I should keep my eyes open, facing the bushes towards the southeast. In a mysterious tone he added that he was setting up a problem for me, and that if I resolved it I would be ready for another facet of the sorcerers’ world.

  I posed a weak question about the nature of the problem. He chuckled softly. I waited for his answer and then something in me was turned off. I felt I was suspended. My ears seemed to unplug and a myriad of noises in the chaparral became audible. There were so many that I could not distinguish them individually. I felt I was falling asleep and then all at once something caught my attention. It was not something which involved my thought processes; it was not a vision, or a feature of the environment either, yet my awareness had been engaged by something. I was fully awake. My eyes were focused on a spot on the edge of the chaparral, but I was not looking, or thinking, or talking to myself. My feelings were clear bodily sensations; they did not need words. I felt I was rushing through something indefinite. Perhaps what would have ordinarily been my thoughts were rushing; at any rate, I had the sensation that I had been caught in a landslide and something was avalanching, with me at the crest. I felt the rush in my stomach. Something was putting me into the chaparral. I could distinguish the dark mass of the bushes in front of me. It was not, however, an undifferentiated darkness as it would ordinarily be. I could see every individual bush as if I were looking at them in a dark twilight. They seemed to be moving; the mass of their foliage looked like black skirts flowing towards me as if they were being blown by the wind, but there was no wind. I became absorbed in their mesmerizing movements; it was a pulsating ripple that seemed to draw them nearer and nearer to me. And then I noticed a lighter silhouette which seemed to be superimposed on the dark shapes of the bushes. I focused my eyes on a spot to the side of the lighter silhouette and I could make out a chartreuse glow on it. Then I looked at it without focusing and I had the certainty that the lighter silhouette was a man hiding in the underbrush.

  I was, at that moment, in a most peculiar state of awareness. I was cognizant of the surroundings and of the mental processes that the surroundings engendered in myself, yet I was not thinking as I ordinarily think. For instance, when I realized that the silhouette superimposed on the bushes was a man, I recalled another occasion on the desert; I had noticed then, while don Genaro and I were walking in the chaparral at night, that a man was hiding in the bushes behind us, but the instant I had attempted to explain the phenomenon rationally I lost sight of the man. This time, however, I felt I had the upper hand and I refused to explain or to think anything at all. For a moment I had the impression that I could hold the man and force him to remain where he was. I then experienced a strange pain in the pit of my stomach. Something seemed to rip inside me and I could not hold the muscles of my midsection tense any longer. At the very moment I let go, the dark shape of an enormous bird, or some sort of flying animal, lurched at me from the chapparal. It was as if the shape of the man had turned into the shape of a bird. I had the clear conscious perception of fear. I gasped and then let out a loud yell and fell on my back.

  Don Juan helped me up. His face was very close to mine. He was laughing.

  “What was that?” I shouted.

  He hushed me, putting his hand over my mouth. He put his lips to my ear and whispered that we had to leave the area in a calm and collected fashion, as if nothing had happened.

  We walked side by side. His pace was relaxed and even. A couple of times he turned around quickly. I did the same and twice I caught sight of a dark mass that seemed to be following us. I heard a loud eerie shriek behind me. I experienced a moment of sheer terror; ripples ran through the muscles of my stomach; they came in spasms and grew in intensity until they simply forced my body to run.

  The only way of talking about my reaction has to be in don Juan’s terminology; and thus I can say that my body, due to the fright I was experiencing, was capable of executing what he had called “the gait of power,” a technique he had taught me years before, consisting of running in the darkness without tripping or hurting oneself in any way.

  I was not fully aware of what I had done or how I had done it. Suddenly I found myself again at don Juan’s house. Apparently he had also run and we had arrived at the same time. He lit his kerosene lantern, hung it from a beam in the ceiling and casually asked me to sit down and relax.

  I jogged on the same spot for a while until my nervousness became more manageable. Then I sat down. He forcefully ordered me to act as if nothing had happened and handed me my notebook. I had not realized that in my haste to leave the bushes I had dropped it.

  “What happened out there, don Juan?” I finally asked.

  “You had an appointment with knowledge,” he said, pointing with a movement of his chin to the dark edge of the desert chaparral. “I took you there because I caught a glimpse of knowledge prowling around the house earlier. You might say that knowledge knew that you were coming and was waiting for you. Rather than meeting it here, I felt it was proper to meet it on a power spot. Then I set up a test to see if you had enough personal power to isolate it from the rest of the things around us. You did fine.”

  “Wait a minute!” I protested. “I saw the silhouette of a man hiding behind a bush and then I saw a huge bird.”

  “You didn’t see a man!” he said emphatically. “Neither did you see a bird. The silhouette in the bushes and what flew to us was a moth. If you want to be accurate in sorcerers’ terms, but very ridiculous in your own terms, you could say that tonight you had an appointment with a moth. Knowledge is a moth.”

  He looked at me piercingly. The light of the lantern created strange shadows on his face. I moved my eyes away.

  “Perhaps you’ll have enough personal power to unravel that mystery tonight,” he said. “If not tonight, perhaps tomorrow; remember, you still owe me six days.”

  Don Juan stood up and walked to the kitchen in the back of the house. He took the lantern and set it against the wall on the short round stump that he used as a bench. We sat down on the floor opposite each other and served ourselves some beans and meat from a pot that he had placed in front of us. We ate in silence.

  He gave me furtive glances from time to time and seemed on the verge of laughing. His eyes were like two slits. When he looked at me he would open them a bit and the moistness of the corneas reflected the light of the lantern. It was as if he were using the light to create a mirror reflection. He played with it, shaking his head almost imperceptibly every time he focused his eyes on me. The effect was a fascinating quiver of light. I became aware of his maneuvers after he had executed them a couple of times. I was convinced that he was acting with a definite purpose in mind. I felt compelled to ask him about it.

  “I have an ulterior reason,” he said reassuringly. “I’m soothing you with my eyes. You don’t seem to be getting more nervous, do you?”

  I had to admit that I felt quite at ease. The steady flicker in his eyes was not menacing and it had not scared or annoyed me in any way.

  “How do you soothe me with your eyes?” I asked.

  He repeated the imperceptible shake of his head. The corneas of his eyes were indeed reflecting the light of the kerosene lantern.

  “Try to do it yourself,” he said casually as he gave himself another serving of food. “You can soothe yourself.”

  I tried to shake my head; my movements were awkward.

  “You won’t soothe yourself bobbing your head like that,” he said and laughed. “You’ll give yourself a headache instead. The secret is not in the head shake but in the feeling that comes to the eyes from the area below the stomach. This is what makes the head shake.”

  He rubbed his umbilical region.

  After I had finished eating I slouched against a pile of wood and some burlap sacks. I tried to imitate his head shake. Don Juan seemed to be enjoyin
g himself immensely. He giggled and slapped his thighs.

  Then a sudden noise interrupted his laughter. I heard a strange deep sound, like tapping on wood, that came from the chaparral. Don Juan jutted his chin, signaling me to remain alert.

  “That’s the little moth calling you,” he said in an unemotional tone.

  I jumped to my feet. The sound ceased instantaneously. I looked at don Juan for an explanation. He made a comical gesture of helplessness, shrugging his shoulders.

  “You haven’t fulfilled your appointment yet,” he added.

  I told him that I felt unworthy and that perhaps I should go home and come back when I felt stronger.

  “You’re talking nonsense,” he snapped. “A warrior takes his lot, whatever it may be, and accepts it in ultimate humbleness. He accepts in humbleness what he is, not as grounds for regret but as a living challenge.

  “It takes time for every one of us to understand that point and fully live it. I, for instance, hated the mere mention of the word ‘humbleness.’ I’m an Indian and we Indians have always been humble and have done nothing else but lower our heads. I thought humbleness was not in the warrior’s way. I was wrong! I know now that the humbleness of a warrior is not the humbleness of a beggar. The warrior lowers his head to no one, but at the same time, he doesn’t permit anyone to lower his head to him. The beggar, on the other hand, falls to his knees at the drop of a hat and scrapes the floor for anyone he deems to be higher; but at the same time, he demands that someone lower than him scrape the floor for him.

  “That’s why I told you earlier today that I didn’t understand what masters felt like. I know only the humbleness of a warrior, and that will never permit me to be anyone’s master.”

  We were quiet for a moment. His words had caused me a profound agitation. I was moved by them and at the same time I felt concerned with what I had witnessed in the chaparral. My conscious assessment was that don Juan was holding out on me and that he must have known what was really taking place.