I asked don Juan about the time of day. He said it was early morning. After a while I was completely awake, and got out of the water.
‘ You must tell me all you saw,’ don Juan said when we got to his house. He also said he had been trying to ‘bring me back’ for three days, and had had a very difficult time doing it. I made numerous attempts to describe what I had seen, but I could not concentrate. Later on, during the early evening, I felt I was ready to talk with don Juan, and I began to tell him what I remembered from the time I had fallen on my side, but he did not want to hear about it. He said the only interesting part was what I saw and did after he’ tossed me into the air and I flew away’.
All I could remember was a series of dreamlike images or scenes. They had no sequential order. I had the impression that each one of them was like an isolated bubble, floating into focus and then moving away. They were not, however, merely scenes to look at. I was inside them. I took part in them. When I tried to recollect them at first, I had the sensation that they were vague, diffused flashes, but as I thought about them I realized that each one of them was extremely clear although totally unrelated to ordinary seeing – hence, the sensation of vagueness. The images were few and simple.
As soon as don Juan mentioned that he had ‘tossed me into the air’ I had a faint recollection of an absolutely clear scene in which I was looking straight at him from some distance away. I was looking at his face only. It was monumental in size. It was flat and had an intense glow. His hair was yellowish, and it moved. Each part of his face moved by itself, projecting a sort of amber light.
.
The next image was one in which don Juan had actually tossed me up, or hurled me, in a straight onward direction. I remember I ‘extended my wings and flew’. I felt alone, cutting through the air, painfully moving straight ahead. It was more like walking than like flying. It tired my body. There was no feeling of flowing free, no exuberance.
Then I remembered an instant in which I was motionless, looking at a mass of sharp, dark edges set in an area that had a dull, painful light; next I saw a field with an infinite variety of lights. The lights moved and flickered and changed their luminosity. They were almost like colours. Their intensity dazzled me.
At another moment, an object was almost against my eye. It was a thick, pointed object; it had a definite pinkish glow. I felt a sudden tremor somewhere in my body and saw a multitude of similar pink forms coming towards me. They all moved on me. I jumped away.
The last scene I remembered was three silvery birds. They radiated a shiny, metallic light, almost like stainless steel, but intense and moving and alive. I liked them. We flew together.
Don Juan did not make any comments on my recounting.
Tuesday, 23 March 1965
The following conversation took place the next day, after the
recounting of my experience.
Don Juan said: ‘ It does not take much to become a crow. You did it and now you will always be one.’
‘What happened after I became a crow, don Juan? Did I fly for three days?’
‘No, you came back at nightfall as I had told you to.’
‘ But how did I come back?’
‘You were very tired and went to sleep. That is all.’
‘I mean did I fly back?’
‘I have already told you. You obeyed me and came back to the house. But don’t concern yourself with that matter. It is of no importance.”
‘ What is important, then?’
‘In your whole trip there was only one thing of great value the silvery birds!’
‘ What was so special about them ? They were just birds.’
‘Not just birds – they were crows.”
‘Were they white crows, don Juan?’
‘The black feathers of a crow are really silvery. The crows shine so intensely that they are not bothered by other birds.’
‘Why did their feathers look silvery?’
‘ Because you were seeing as a crow sees. A bird that looks dark to us looks white to a crow. The white pigeons, for instance, are pink or bluish to a crow; seagulls are yellow. Now, try to remember how you joined them.’
I thought about it, but the birds were a dim, disassociated image which had no continuity. I told him I could remember only that I felt I had flown with them. He asked me whether I had joined them in the air or on the ground, but I could not possibly answer that. He became almost angry with me. He demanded that I think about it. He said: ‘All this will not mean a damn; it will be only a mad dream unless you remember correctly.’ I strained myself to recollect, but I could not.
Saturday, 3 April 1965
Today I thought of another image in my ‘dream’ about the silvery birds. I remembered seeing a dark mass with myriads of pinholes. In fact, the mass was a dark cluster of little holes. I don’t know why I thought it was soft. As I was looking at it, three birds flew straight at me. One of them made a noise; then all three of them were next to me on the ground.
I described the image to don Juan. He asked me from what direction the birds had come. I said I couldn’t possibly determine that. He became quite impatient and accused me of being inflexible in my thinking. He said I could very well remember if I tried to, and that I was afraid to let myself become less rigid. He said that I was thinking in terms of men and crows, and that I was neither a man nor a crow at the time that I wanted to recollect.
He asked me to remember what the crow had said to me. I tried to think about it, but my mind played on scores of other things instead. I couldn’t concentrate.
Sunday, 4 April 1965
I took a long hike today. It got quite dark before I reached don Juan’s house. I was thinking about the crows when suddenly a very strange ‘thought’ crossed my mind. It was more like an impression or a feeling than a thought. The bird that had made the noise said they were coming from the north and were going south, and when we met again they would be coming the same way.
I told don Juan what I had thought up, or maybe remembered. He said,’ Don’t think about whether you remembered it or made it up. Such thoughts fit men only. They do not fit crows, especially those you saw, for they are the emissaries of your fate. You are already a crow. You will never change that. From now on the crows will tell you with their flight about every turn of your fate. In which direction did you fly with them?’
‘ I couldn’t know that, don Juan!’
‘If you think properly you will remember. Sit on the floor and tell me the position in which you were when the birds flew to you. Close your eyes and make a line on the floor.’
I followed his suggestion and determined the point.
‘ Don’t open your eyes yet!’ He proceeded, ‘ In which direction did you all fly in relation to that point?’
I made another mark on the ground.
Taking these points of orientation as a reference, don Juan interpreted the different patterns of flight the crows would observe to foretell my personal future or fate. He set up the four points of the compass as the axis of the crows’ flight.
I asked him whether the crows always followed the cardinal points to tell a man’s fate. He said that the orientation was mine alone; whatever the crows did in my first meeting with them was of crucial importance. He insisted on my recalling every detail, for the message and the pattern of the ’emissaries’ were an individual, personalized matter.
There was one more thing he insisted I should remember3 and that was the time of day when the emissaries left me. He asked me to think of the difference in the light around me between the time when I ‘began to fly’ and the time when the silvery birds ‘ flew with me’. When I first had the sensation of painful flight, it was dark. But when I saw the birds, everything was reddish light red, or perhaps orange.
He said: ‘That means it was late in the day; the sun was not down yet. When it is completely dark a crow is blind with whiteness and not with darkness, the way we are at night. This indication of the time places your last emissaries at the end of the day. They will call you, and as they fly above your head, they will become silvery white; you will see them shining against the sky, and it will mean your time is up. It will mean you are going to die and become a crow yourself.’