“No, I don’t,” I said.
And then I realized that I did, or rather, that I intuited what it meant. There was some part of me that could transcend my rationality and understand and explain, beyond the level of metaphor, a somersault of thought into the inconceivable. The trouble was that part of me was not strong enough to surface at will.
I said as much to don Juan, who laughed and commented that my awareness was like a yo-yo. Sometimes it rose to a high spot and my command was keen, while at others it descended and I became a rational moron. But most of the time it hovered at an unworthy median where I was neither fish nor fowl.
“A somersault of thought into the inconceivable,” he explained with an air of resignation, “is the descent of the spirit; the act of breaking our perceptual barriers. It is the moment in which man’s perception reaches its limits. Sorcerers practice the art of sending scouts, advance runners, to probe our perceptual limits. This is another reason I like poems. I take them as advance runners. But, as I’ve said to you before, poets don’t know as exactly as sorcerers what those advance runners can accomplish.”
In the early evening, don Juan said that we had many things to discuss and asked me if I wanted to go for a walk. I was in a peculiar state of mind. Earlier I had noticed a strange aloofness in myself that came and went. At first I thought it was physical fatigue clouding my thoughts. But my thoughts were crystal clear. So I became convinced that my strange detachment was a product of my shift to heightened awareness.
We left the house and strolled around the town’s plaza. I quickly asked don Juan about my aloofness before he had a chance to begin on anything else. He explained it as a shift of energy. He said that as the energy that was ordinarily used to maintain the fixed position of the assemblage point became liberated, it focused automatically on that connecting link. He assured me that there were no techniques or maneuvers for a sorcerer to learn beforehand to move energy from one place to the other. Rather it was a matter of an instantaneous shift taking place once a certain level of proficiency had been attained.
I asked him what the level of proficiency was. Pure understanding, he replied. In order to attain that instantaneous shift of energy, one needed a clear connection with intent, and to get a clear connection one needed only to intend it through pure understanding.
Naturally I wanted him to explain pure understanding. He laughed and sat down on a bench.
“I’m going to tell you something fundamental about sorcerers and their acts of sorcery,” he went on. “Something about the somersault of their thought into the inconceivable.”
He said that some sorcerers were storytellers. Storytelling for them was not only the advance runner that probed their perceptual limits but their path to perfection, to power, to the spirit. He was quiet for a moment, obviously searching for an appropriate example. Then he reminded me that the Yaqui Indians had a collection of historical events they called “the memorable dates.” I knew that the memorable dates were oral accounts of their history as a nation when they waged war against the invaders of their homeland: the Spaniards first, the Mexicans later. Don Juan, a Yaqui himself, stated emphatically that the memorable dates were accounts of their defeats and disintegration.
“So, what would you say,” he asked me, “since you are a learned man, about a sorcerer storyteller’s taking an account from the memorable dates—let’s say, for example, the story of Calixto Muni—and changing the ending so that instead of describing how Calixto Muni was drawn and quartered by the Spanish executioners, which is what happened, he tells a story of Calixto Muni the victorious rebel who succeeded in liberating his people?”
I knew the story of Calixto Muni. He was a Yaqui Indian who, according to the memorable dates, served for many years on a buccaneer ship in the Caribbean in order to learn war strategy. Then he returned to his native Sonora, managed to start an uprising against the Spaniards and declared a war of independence, only to be betrayed, captured, and executed.
Don Juan coaxed me to comment. I told him I would have to assume that changing the factual account in the manner he was describing would be a psychological device, a sort of wishful thinking on the sorcerer storyteller’s part. Or perhaps it would be a personal, idiosyncratic way of alleviating frustration. I added that I would even call such a sorcerer storyteller a patriot because he was unable to accept bitter defeat.
Don Juan laughed until he was choking.
“But it’s not a matter of one sorcerer storyteller,” he argued. “They all do that.”
“Then it’s a socially sanctioned device to express the wishful thinking of a whole society,” I retorted. “A socially accepted way of releasing psychological stress collectively.”
“Your argument is glib and convincing and reasonable,” he commented. “But because your spirit is dead, you can’t see the flaw in your argument.”
He eyed me as if coaxing me to understand what he was saying. I had no comment, and anything I might have said would have made me sound peevish.
“The sorcerer storyteller who changes the ending of the ‘factual’ account,” he said, “does it at the direction and under the auspices of the spirit. Because he can manipulate his elusive-connection with intent, he can actually change things. The sorcerer storyteller signals that he has intended it by taking off his hat, putting it on the ground, and turning it a full three hundred and sixty degrees counterclockwise. Under the auspices of the spirit, that simple act plunges him into the spirit itself. He has let his thought somersault into the inconceivable.”
Don Juan lifted his arm above his head and pointed for an instant to the sky above the horizon.
“Because his pure understanding is an advance runner probing that immensity out there,” don Juan went on, “the sorcerer storyteller knows without a shadow-of doubt that somewhere, somehow, in that infinity, at this very moment the spirit has descended. Calixto Muni is victorious. He has delivered his people. His goal has transcended his person.”
MOVING THE ASSEMBLAGE POINT
A couple of days later, don Juan and I made a trip to the mountains. Halfway up the foothills we sat down to rest. Earlier that day, don Juan had decided to find an appropriate setting in which to explain some intricate aspects of the mastery of awareness. Usually he preferred to go to the closer western range of mountains. This time, however, he chose the eastern peaks. They were much higher and farther away. To me they seemed more ominous, darker, and more massive. But I could not tell whether this impression was my own or if I had somehow absorbed don Juan’s feelings about these mountains.
I opened my backpack. The women seers from don Juan’s group had prepared it for me and I discovered that they had packed some cheese. I experienced a moment of annoyance, because while I liked cheese, it did not agree with me. Yet I was incapable of refusing it whenever it was made available.
Don Juan had pointed this out as a true weakness and had made fun of me. I was embarrassed at first but found that when I did not have cheese around I did not miss it. The problem was that the practical jokers in don Juan’s group always packed a big chunk of cheese for me, which, of course, I always ended up eating.
“Finish it in one sitting,” don Juan advised me with a mischievous glint in his eyes. “That way you won’t have to worry about it anymore.”
Perhaps influenced by his suggestion, I had the most intense desire to devour the whole chunk. Don Juan laughed so much I suspected that once again he had schemed with his group to set me up.
In a more serious mood, he suggested that we spend the night there in the foothills and take a day or two to reach the higher peaks. I agreed.
Don Juan casually asked me if I had recalled anything about the four moods of stalking. I admitted that I had tried, but that my memory had failed me.
“Don’t you remember my teaching you the nature of ruthlessness?” he asked. “Ruthlessness, the opposite of self-pity?”
I could not remember. Don Juan appeared to be considering what to say next. Then he stopped. The corners of his mouth dropped in a gesture of sham impotence. He shrugged his shoulders, stood up and quickly walked a short distance to a small level spot on top of a hill.
“All sorcerers are ruthless,” he said, as we sat down on the flat ground. “But you know this. We have discussed this concept at length.”