“Don’t apologize,” he said. “I should tell you that the understanding you’re after is impossible at this time. The abstract cores of the sorcery stories will say nothing to you now. Later—years later, I mean—they may make perfect sense to you.”
I begged don Juan not to leave me in the dark, to
discuss the abstract cores. It was not at all clear to me what he wanted me to do with them. I assured him that my present state of heightened awareness could be very helpful to me in allowing me to understand his discussion. I urged him to hurry, for I could not guarantee how long this state would last. I told him that soon I would return to my normal state and would become a bigger idiot than I was at that moment. I said it half in jest. His laughter told me that he had taken it as such, but I was deeply affected by my own words. A tremendous sense of melancholy overtook me.
Don Juan gently took my arm, pulled me to a comfortable armchair, then sat down facing me. He gazed fixedly into my eyes, and for a moment I was incapable of breaking the force of his stare.
“Sorcerers constantly stalk themselves,” he said in a reassuring voice, as if trying to calm me with the sound of his voice.
I wanted to say that my nervousness had passed and that it had probably been caused by my lack of sleep, but he did not allow me to say anything.
He assured me that he had already taught me everything there was to know about stalking, but I had not yet retrieved my knowledge from the depth of heightened awareness, where I had it stored. I told him I had the annoying sensation of being bottled up. I felt there was something locked inside me, something that made me slam doors and kick tables, something that frustrated me and made me irascible.
“That sensation of being bottled up is experienced by every human being,” he said. “It is a reminder of our existing connection with intent. For sorcerers this sensation is even more acute, precisely because their goal is to sensitize their connecting link until they can make it function at will.
“When the pressure of their connecting link is too great, sorcerers relieve it by stalking themselves.”
“I still don’t think I understand what you mean by stalking,” I said. “But at a certain level I think I know exactly what you mean.”
“I’ll try to help you clarify what you know, then,” he said. “Stalking is a procedure, a very simple one. Stalking is special behavior that follows certain principles. It is secretive, furtive, deceptive behavior designed to deliver a jolt. And, when you stalk yourself you jolt yourself, using your own behavior in a ruthless, cunning way.”
He explained that when a sorcerer’s awareness became bogged down with the weight of his perceptual input, which was what was happening to me, the best, or even perhaps the only, remedy was to use the idea of death to deliver that stalking jolt.
“The idea of death therefore is of monumental importance in the life of a sorcerer,” don Juan continued. “I have shown you innumerable things about death to convince you that the knowledge of our impending and unavoidable end is what gives us sobriety. Our most costly mistake as average men is indulging in a sense of immortality. It is as though we believe that if we don’t think about death we can protect ourselves from it.”
“You must agree, don Juan, not thinking about death certainly protects us from worrying about it.”
“Yes, it serves that purpose,” he conceded. “But that purpose is an unworthy one for average men and a travesty for sorcerers. Without a clear view of death, there is no order, no sobriety, no beauty. Sorcerers struggle to gain this crucial insight in order to help them realize at the deepest possible level that they have no assurance whatsoever their lives will continue beyond the moment. That realization gives sorcerers
the courage to be patient and yet take action, courage to be acquiescent without being stupid.”
Don Juan fixed his gaze on me. He smiled and shook his head.
“Yes,” he went on. “The idea of death is the only thing that can give sorcerers courage. Strange, isn’t it? It gives sorcerers the courage to be cunning without being conceited, and above all it gives them courage to be ruthless without being self-important.”
He smiled again and nudged me. I told him I was absolutely terrified by the idea of my death, that I thought about it constantly, but it certainly didn’t give me courage or spur me to take action. It only made me cynical or caused me to lapse into moods of profound melancholy.
“Your problem is very simple,” he said. “You become easily obsessed. I have been telling you that sorcerers stalk themselves in order to break the power of their obsessions. There are many ways of stalking oneself. If you don’t want to use the idea of your death, use the poems you read me to stalk yourself.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I have told you that there are many reasons I like poems,” he said. “What I do is stalk myself with them. I deliver a jolt to myself with them. I listen, and as you read, I shut off my internal dialogue and let my inner silence gain momentum. Then the combination of the poem and the silence delivers the jolt.”
He explained that poets unconsciously long for the sorcerers’ world. Because they are not sorcerers on the path of knowledge, longing is all they have.
“Let us see if you can feel what I’m talking about,” he said, handing me a book of poems by Jose Gorostiza.
I opened it at the bookmark and he pointed to the poem he liked.
. . . this Incessant stubborn dying,
this living death,
that slays you, oh God,
in your rigorous handiwork,
in the roses, in the stones,
in the indomitable stars
and in the flesh that burns out,
like a bonfire lit by a song,
a dream,
a hue that hits the eye.
. . . and you, yourself,
perhaps have died eternities of ages out there,
without us knowing about it,
we dregs, crumbs, ashes of you;
you that still are present,
like a star faked by its very light,
an empty light without star
that reaches us,
hiding
its infinite catastrophe.
“As I hear the words,” don Juan said when I had finished reading, “I feel that that man is seeing the essence of things and I can see with him. I don’t care what the poem is about. I care only about the feeling the poet’s longing brings me. I borrow his longing, and with it I borrow the beauty. And marvel at the fact that he, like a true warrior, lavishes it on the recipients, the beholders, retaining for himself only his longing. This jolt, this shock of beauty, is stalking.”
I was very moved. Don Juan’s explanation had touched a strange chord in me.
“Would you say, don Juan, that death is the only real enemy we have?” I asked him a moment later.
“No,” he said with conviction. “Death is not an enemy, although it appears to be. Death is not our destroyer, although we think it is.”
“What is it, then, if not our destroyer?” I asked.
“Sorcerers say death is the only worthy opponent we have,” he replied. “Death is our challenger. We are born to take that challenge, average men or sorcerers. Sorcerers know about it; average men do not.”
“I personally would say, don Juan, life, not death, is the challenge.”
“Life is the process by means of which death challenges us,” he said. “Death is the active force. Life is the arena. And in that arena there are only two contenders at any time: oneself and death.”
“I would think, don Juan, that we human beings are the challengers,” I said.
“Not at all,” he retorted. “We are passive. Think about it. If we move, it’s only when we feel the pressure of death. Death sets the pace for our actions and feelings and pushes us relentlessly until it breaks us and wins the bout, or else we rise above all possibilities and defeat death.
“Sorcerers defeat death and death acknowledges the defeat by letting the sorcerers go free, never to be challenged again.”
“Does that mean that sorcerers become immortal?”
“No. It doesn’t mean that,” he replied. “Death stops challenging them, that’s all.”
“But what does that mean, don Juan?” I asked.
“It means thought has taken a somersault into the inconceivable,” he said.
“What is a somersault of thought into the inconceivable?” I asked, trying not to sound belligerent. “The problem you and I have is that we do not share the same meanings.”
“You’re not being truthful,” don Juan interrupted. “You understand what I mean. For you to demand a rational explanation of ‘a somersault of thought into the inconceivable’ is a travesty. You know exactly what it is.”