“One of the similarities is that when you act, you act very well,” he said, “but when you think, you always trip yourself up. My benefactor was like that. He didn’t think too well.”
I was just about to defend myself, to say there was nothing wrong with my thinking, when I caught a glint of mischievousness in his eyes. I stopped cold. Don Juan noticed my shift and laughed with a note of surprise. He must have been anticipating the opposite.
“What I mean, for instance, is that you only have problems understanding the spirit when you think about it,” he went on with a chiding smile. “But when you act, the spirit easily reveals itself to you. My benefactor was that way.
“Before we leave for the cave, I am going to tell you a story about my benefactor and the fourth abstract core.
“Sorcerers believe that until the very moment of the spirit’s descent, any of us could walk away from the spirit; but not afterwards.”
Don Juan deliberately stopped to urge me, with a movement of his eyebrows, to consider what he was telling me.
“The fourth abstract core is the full brunt of the spirit’s descent,” he went on. “The fourth abstract core is an act of revelation. The spirit reveals itself to us. Sorcerers describe it as the spirit lying in ambush and then descending on us, its prey. Sorcerers say that the spirit’s descent is always shrouded. It happens and yet it seems not to have happened at all.”
I became very nervous. Don Juan’s tone of voice was giving me the feeling that he was preparing to spring something on me at any moment.
He asked me if I remembered the moment the spirit descended on me, sealing my permanent allegiance to the abstract.
I had no idea what he was talking about.
“There is a threshold that once crossed permits no retreat,” he said. “Ordinarily, from the moment the spirit knocks, it is years before an apprentice reaches that threshold. Sometimes, though, the threshold is reached almost immediately. My benefactor’s case is an example.”
Don Juan said every sorcerer should have a clear memory of crossing that threshold so he could remind himself of the new state of his perceptual potential. He explained that one did not have to be an apprentice of sorcery to reach this threshold, and that the only difference between an average man and a sorcerer, in such cases, is what each emphasizes. A sorcerer emphasizes crossing this threshold and uses the memory of it as a point of reference. An average man does not cross the threshold and does his best to forget all about it.
I told him that I did not agree with his point, because I could not accept that there was only one threshold to cross.
Don Juan looked heavenward in dismay and shook his head in a joking gesture of despair. I proceeded with my argument, not to disagree with him, but to clarify things in my mind. Yet I quickly lost my impetus. Suddenly I had the feeling I was sliding through a tunnel.
“Sorcerers say that the fourth abstract core happens when the spirit cuts our chains of self-reflection,” he said. “Cutting our chains is marvelous, but also very undesirable, for nobody wants to be free.”
The sensation of sliding through a tunnel persisted for a moment longer, and then everything became clear to me. And I began to laugh. Strange insights pent up inside me were exploding into laughter.
Don Juan seemed to be reading my mind as if it were a book.
“What a strange feeling: to realize that everything we think, everything we say depends on the position of the assemblage point,” he remarked.
And that was exactly what I had been thinking and laughing about.
“I know that at this moment your assemblage point has shifted,” he went on, “and you have understood the secret of our chains. They imprison us, but by keeping us pinned down on our comfortable spot of self-reflection, they defend us from the onslaughts of the unknown.”
I was having one of those extraordinary moments in which everything about the sorcerers’ world was crystal clear. I understood everything.
“Once our chains are cut,” don Juan continued, “we are no longer bound by the concerns of the daily world. We are still in the daily world, but we don’t belong there anymore. In order to belong we must share the concerns of people, and without chains we can’t.”
Don Juan said that the nagual Elías had explained to him that what distinguishes normal people is that we share a metaphorical dagger: the concerns of our self-reflection. With this dagger, we cut ourselves and bleed; and the job of our chains of self-reflection is to give us the feeling that we are bleeding together, that we are sharing something wonderful: our humanity. But if we were to examine it, we would discover that we are bleeding alone; that we are not sharing anything; that all we are doing is toying with our manageable, unreal, man-made reflection.
“Sorcerers are no longer in the world of daily affairs,” don Juan went on, “because they are no longer prey to their self-reflection.”
Don Juan then began his story about his benefactor and the descent of the spirit. He said that the story started right after the spirit had knocked on the young actor’s door.
I interrupted don Juan and asked him why he consistently used the terms “young man” or “young actor” to refer to the nagual Julian.
“At the time of this story, he wasn’t the nagual,” don Juan replied. “He was a young actor. In my story, I can’t just call him Julian, because to me he was always the nagual Julian. As a sign of deference for his lifetime of impeccability, we always prefix ‘nagual’ to a nagual’s name.”
Don Juan proceeded with his story. He said that the nagual Elms had stopped the young actor’s death by making him shift into heightened awareness, and following hours of struggle, the young actor regained consciousness. The nagual Elf as did not mention his name, but he introduced himself as a professional healer who had stumbled onto the scene of a tragedy, where two persons had nearly died. He pointed to the young woman, Talia, stretched out on the ground. The young man was astonished to see her lying unconscious next to him. He remembered seeing her as she ran away. It startled him to hear the old healer explain that doubtlessly God had punished Talia for her sins by striking her with lightning and making her lose her mind.
“But how could there be lightning if it’s not even raining?” the young actor asked in a barely audible voice. He was visibly affected when the old Indian replied that God’s ways couldn’t be questioned.
Again I interrupted don Juan. I was curious to know if the young woman really had lost her mind. He reminded me that the nagual Elías delivered a shattering
blow to her assemblage point. He said that she had not lost her mind, but that as a result of the blow she slipped in and out of heightened awareness, creating a serious threat to her health. After a gigantic struggle, however, the nagual Elías helped her to stabilize her assemblage point and she entered permanently into heightened awareness.
Don Juan commented that women are capable of such a master stroke: they can permanently maintain a new position of their assemblage point. And Talia was peerless. As soon as her chains were broken, she immediately understood everything and complied with the nagual’s designs.
Don Juan, recounting his story, said that the nagual Elías—who was not only a superb dreamer, but also a superb stalker—had seen that the young actor was spoiled and conceited, but only seemed to be hard and calloused. The nagual knew that if he brought forth the idea of God, sin, and retribution, the actor’s religious beliefs would make his cynical attitude collapse.
Upon hearing about God’s punishment, the actor’s facade began to crumble. He started to express remorse, but the nagual cut him short and forcefully stressed that when death was so near, feelings of guilt no longer mattered.
The young actor listened attentively, but, although he felt very ill, he did not believe that he was in danger of dying. He thought that his weakness and fainting had been brought on by his loss of blood.
As if he had read the young actor’s mind, the nagual explained to him that those optimistic thoughts were out of place, that his hemorrhaging would have been fatal had it not been for the plug that he, as a healer, had created.
“When I struck your back, I put in a plug to stop the draining of your life force,” the nagual said to the skeptical young actor. “Without that restraint, the unavoidable process of your death would continue. If you don’t believe me, I’ll prove it to you by removing the plug with another blow.”