“Each of us has a different degree of attachment to his self-reflection,” he went on. “And that attachment is felt as need. For example, before I started on the path of knowledge, my life was endless need. And years after the nagual Julian had taken me under his wing, I was still just as needy, if not more so.
“But there are examples of people, sorcerers or average men, who need no one. They get peace, harmony, laughter, knowledge, directly from the spirit. They need no intermediaries. For you and for me, it’s different. I’m your intermediary and the nagual Julian was mine. Intermediaries, besides providing a minimal chance—the awareness of intent—help shatter people’s mirrors of self-reflection.
“The only concrete help you ever get from me is that I attack your self-reflection. If it weren’t for that, you would be wasting your time. This is the only real help you’ve gotten from me.”
“You’ve taught me, don Juan, more than anyone in my entire life,” I protested.
“I’ve taught you all kinds of things in order to trap your attention,” he said. “You’ll swear, though, that that teaching has been the important part. It hasn’t. There is very little value in instruction. Sorcerers maintain that moving the assemblage point is all that matters. And that movement, as you well know, depends on increased energy and not on instruction.”
He then made an incongruous statement. He said that any human being who would follow a specific and simple sequence of actions can learn 10 move his assemblage point.
I pointed out that he was contradicting himself. To me, a sequence of actions meant instructions; it meant procedures.
“In the sorcerers’ world there are only contradictions of terms,” he replied. “In practice there are no contradictions. The sequence of actions I am talking about is one that stems from being aware. To become aware of this sequence you need a nagual. This is why I’ve said that the nagual provides a minimal chance, but that minimal chance is not instruction, like the instruction you need to learn to operate a machine. The minimal chance consists of being made aware of the spirit.”
He explained that the specific sequence he had in mind called for being aware that self-importance is the force which keeps the assemblage point fixed. When self-importance is curtailed, the energy it requires is no longer expended. That increased energy then serves as the springboard that launches the assemblage point, automatically and without premeditation, into an inconceivable journey.
Once the assemblage point has moved, the movement itself entails moving from self-reflection, and this, in turn, assures a clear connecting link with the spirit. He commented that, after all, it was self-reflection that had disconnected man from the spirit in the first place.
“As I have already said to you,” don Juan went on, “sorcery is a journey of return. We return victorious to the spirit, having descended into hell. And from hell we bring trophies. Understanding is one of our trophies.”
I told him that his sequence seemed very easy and very simple when he talked about it, but that when I had tried to put it into practice I had found it the total antithesis of ease and simplicity.
“Our difficulty with this simple progression,” he said, “is that most of us are unwilling to accept that we need so little to get on with. We are geared to expect instruction, teaching, guides, masters. And when we are told that we need no one, we don’t believe it. We become nervous, then distrustful, and finally angry and disappointed. If we need help, it is not in methods, but in emphasis. If someone makes us aware that we need to curtail our self-importance, that help is real.
“Sorcerers say we should need no one to convince us that the world is infinitely more complex than our wildest fantasies. So, why are we dependent? Why do we crave someone to guide us when we can do it ourselves? Big question, eh?”
Don Juan did not say anything else. Obviously, he wanted me to ponder the question. But I had other worries in my mind. My recollection had undermined certain foundations that I had believed unshakable, and I desperately needed him to redefine them. I broke the long silence and voiced my concern. I told him that I had come to accept that it was possible for me to forget whole incidents, from beginning to end, if they had taken place in heightened awareness. Up to that day I had had total recall of anything I had done under his guidance in my state of normal awareness. Yet, having had breakfast with him in Nogales had not existed in my mind prior to my recollecting it. And that event simply must have taken place in the world of everyday affairs.
“You are forgetting something essential,” he said.
“The nagual’s presence is enough to move the assemblage point. I have humored you all along with the nagual’s blow. The blow between the shoulder blades that I have delivered is only a pacifier. It serves the purpose of removing your doubts. Sorcerers use physical contact as a jolt to the body. It doesn’t do anything but give confidence to the apprentice who is being manipulated.”
“Then who moves the assemblage point, don Juan?” I asked.
“The spirit does it,” he replied in the tone of someone about to lose his patience.
He seemed to check himself and smiled and shook his head from side to side in a gesture of resignation.
“It’s hard for me to accept,” I said. “My mind is ruled by the principle of cause and effect.”
He had one of his usual attacks of inexplicable laughter—inexplicable from my point of view, of course. I must have looked annoyed. He put his hand on my shoulder.
“I laugh like this periodically because you are demented,” he said. “The answer to everything you ask me is staring you right in the eyes and you don’t see it. I think dementia is your curse.”
His eyes were so shiny, so utterly crazy and mischievous, that I ended up laughing myself.
“I have insisted to the point of exhaustion that there are no procedures in sorcery,” he went on. “There are no methods, no steps. The only thing that matters is the movement of the assemblage point. And no procedure can cause that. It’s an effect that happens all by itself.”
He pushed me as if to straighten my shoulders, and then he peered at me, looking right into my eyes. My attention became riveted to his words.
“Let us see how you figure this out,” he said. “I have just said that the movement of the assemblage point happens by itself. But I have also said that the nagual’s presence moves his apprentice’s assemblage point and that the way the nagual masks his ruthless-ness either helps or hinders that movement. How would you resolve this contradiction?”
I confessed that I had been just about to ask him about the contradiction, for I had been aware of it, but that I could not even begin to think of resolving it. I was not a sorcery practitioner. “What are you, then?” he asked. “I am a student of anthropology, trying to figure out what sorcerers do,” I said.
My statement was not altogether true, but it was not a lie.
Don Juan laughed uncontrollably “It’s too late for that,” he said. “Your assemblage point has moved already. And it is precisely that movement that makes one a sorcerer.”
He stated that what seemed a contradiction was really the two sides of the same coin. The nagual entices the assemblage point into moving by helping to destroy the mirror of self-reflection. But that is all the nagual can do. The actual mover is the spirit, the abstract; something that cannot be seen or felt; something that does not seem to exist, and yet does. For this reason, sorcerers report that the assemblage point moves all by itself. Or they say that the nagual moves it. The nagual, being the conduit of the abstract, is allowed to express it through his actions. I looked at don Juan questioningly. “The nagual moves the assemblage point, and yet it is not he himself who does the actual moving,” don Juan said. “Or perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that the spirit expresses itself in accordance with the nagual’s impeccability. The spirit can move the assemblage point with the mere presence of an impeccable nagual.”
He said that he had wanted to clarify this point, because, if it was misunderstood, it led a nagual back to self-importance and thus to his destruction.
He changed the subject and said that, because the spirit had no perceivable essence, sorcerers deal rather with the specific instances and ways in which they are able to shatter the mirror of self-reflection.
Don Juan noted that in this area it was important to realize the practical value of the different ways in which the naguals masked their ruthlessness. He said my mask of generosity, for example, was adequate for dealing with people on a shallow level, but useless for shattering their self-reflection because it forced me to demand an almost impossible decision on their part. I expected them to jump into the sorcerers’ world without any preparation.