“The real challenge for those sorcerer seers,” don Juan went on, “was finding a system of behavior that was neither petty nor capricious, but that combined the morality and the sense of beauty which differentiates sorcerer seers from plain witches.”
He stopped talking, and they all looked at me as if searching for signs of fatigue in my eyes or face.
“Anyone who succeeds in moving his assemblage point to a new position is a sorcerer,” don Juan continued. “And from that new position, he can do all kinds of good and bad things to his fellow men. Being a sorcerer, therefore, can be like being a cobbler or a baker. The quest of sorcerer seers is to go beyond that stand. And to do that, they need morality and beauty.”
He said that for sorcerers stalking was the foundation on which everything else they did was built.
“Some sorcerers object to the term stalking,” he went on, “but the name came about because it entails surreptitious behavior.
“It’s also called the art of stealth, but that term is equally unfortunate. We ourselves, because of our nonmilitant temperament, call it the art of controlled folly. You can call it anything you wish. We, however, will continue with the term stalking since it’s so easy to say stalker and, as my benefactor used to say, so awkward to say controlled folly maker.”
At the mention of their benefactor, they laughed like children.
I understood him perfectly. I had no questions or doubts. If anything, I had the feeling that I needed to hold onto every word don Juan was saying to anchor myself. Otherwise my thoughts would have run ahead of him.
I noticed that my eyes were fixed on the movement of his lips as my ears were fixed on the sound of his words. But once I realized this, I could no longer follow him. My concentration was broken. Don Juan continued talking, but I was not listening. I was wondering about the inconceivable possibility of living permanently in heightened awareness. I asked myself what would the survival value be? Would one be able to assess situations better? Be quicker than the average man, or perhaps more intelligent?
Don Juan suddenly stopped talking and asked me what I was thinking about.
“Ah, you’re so very practical,” he commented after I had told him my reveries. “I thought that in heightened awareness your temperament was going to be more artistic, more mystical.”
Don Juan turned to Vicente and asked him to answer my question. Vicente cleared his throat and dried his hands by rubbing them against his thighs. He gave the clear impression of suffering from stage fright. I felt sorry for him. My thoughts began to spin. And when I heard him stammering, an image burst into my mind—the image I had always had of my father’s timidity, his fear of people. But before I had time to surrender myself to that image, Vicente’s eyes flared with some strange inner luminosity. He made a comically serious face at me and then spoke with authority and a professorial manner.
“To answer your question,” he said, “there is no survival value in heightened awareness; otherwise the whole human race would be there. They are safe from that, though, because it’s so hard to get into it. There is always, however, the remote possibility that an average man might enter into such a state. If he does, he ordinarily succeeds in confusing himself, sometimes irreparably.”
The three of them exploded with laughter. “Sorcerers say that heightened awareness is the portal of intent,'”‘ don Juan said. “And they use it as such. Think about it.”
I was staring at each of them in turn. My mouth was open, and I felt that if I kept it open I would be able to understand the riddle eventually. I closed my eyes and the answer came to me. I felt it. I did not think it. But I could not put it into words, no matter how hard I tried.
“There, there,” don Juan said, “you’ve gotten another sorcerer’s answer all by yourself, but you still don’t have enough energy to flatten it and turn it into words.”
The sensation I was experiencing was more than just that of being unable to voice my thoughts; it was like reliving something I had forgotten ages ago: not to know what I felt because I had not yet learned to speak, and therefore lacked the resources to translate my feelings into thoughts.
“Thinking and saying exactly what you want to say requires untold amounts of energy,” don Juan said and broke into my feelings.
The force of my reverie had been so intense it had made me forget what had started it. I stared dumbfounded at don Juan and confessed I had no idea what they or I had said or done just a moment before. I remembered the incident of the leather rope and what don Juan had told me immediately afterward, but I could not recall the feeling that had flooded me just moments ago.
“You’re going the wrong way,” don Juan said. “You’re trying to remember thoughts the way you normally do, but this is a different situation. A second ago you had an overwhelming feeling that you knew something very specific. Such feelings cannot be recollected by using memory. You have to recall them by intending them back.”
He turned to Silvio Manuel, who had stretched out in the armchair, his legs under the coffee table. Silvio Manuel looked fixedly at me. His eyes were black, like two pieces of shiny obsidian. Without moving a muscle, he let out a piercing birdlike scream. “Intent!!” he yelled. “Intent!! Intent!!!” With each scream his voice became more and more inhuman and piercing. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I felt goose bumps on my skin. My mind, however, instead of focusing on the fright I was experiencing, went directly to recollecting the feeling I had had. But before I could savor it completely, the feeling expanded and burst into something else. And then I understood not only why heightened awareness was the portal of intent, but I also understood what intent was. And, above all, I understood that that knowledge could not be turned into words. That knowledge was there for everyone. It was there to be felt, to be used, but not to be explained. One could come into it by changing levels of awareness, therefore, heightened awareness was an entrance. But even the entrance could not be explained. One could only make use of it.
There was still another piece of knowledge that came to me that day without any coaching: that the natural knowledge of intent was available to anyone, but the command of it belonged to those who probed it.
I was terribly tired by this time, and doubtlessly as a result of that, my Catholic upbringing came to bear heavily on my reactions. For a moment I believed that intent was God.
I said as much to don Juan, Vicente and Silvio Manuel. They laughed. Vicente, still in his professorial tone, said that it could not possibly be God, because intent was a force that could not be described, much less represented.
“Don’t be presumptuous,” don Juan said to me sternly. “Don’t try to speculate on the basis of your first and only trial. Wait until you command your knowledge, then decide what is what.”
Remembering the four moods of stalking exhausted me. The most dramatic result was a more than ordinary indifference. I would not have cared if I had trapped dead, nor if don Juan had. I did not care whether we stayed at that ancient lookout post overnight or started back in the pitch-dark.
Don Juan was very understanding. He guided me by he hand, as if I were blind, to a massive rock, and helped me sit with my back to it. He recommended that I let natural sleep return me to a normal state of awareness.
4
The Descent of the Spirit
SEEING THE SPIRIT
Right after a late lunch, while we were still at the table, don Juan announced that the two of us were going to spend the night in the sorcerers’ cave and that we had to be on our way. He said that it was imperative that I sit there again, in total darkness, to allow the rock formation and the sorcerers’ intent to move my assemblage point.
I started to get up from my chair, but he stopped me. He said that there was something he wanted to explain to me first. He stretched out, putting his feet on the seat of a chair, then leaned back into a relaxed, comfortable position.
“As I see you in greater detail,” don Juan said, “I notice more and more how similar you and my benefactor are.”
I felt so threatened that I did not let him continue. I told him that I could not imagine what those similarities were, but if there were any—a possibility I did not consider reassuring—I would appreciate it if he told me about them, to give me a chance to correct or avoid them. Don Juan laughed until tears were rolling down his cheeks.