I had the overwhelming urge to run after the jaguar and scare him into losing his caution. I knew that he would get pricked by the spines. A thought then erupted in my silent mind—I thought that the jaguar would be a more dangerous animal if he was hurt by the spines. That thought produced the same effect as someone waking me from a dream.
When I became aware that my thinking processes were functioning again, I found that I was at the base of a low range of rocky hills. I looked around. Don Juan was a few feet away. He seemed exhausted. He was pale and breathing very hard.
“What happened, don Juan?” I asked, after clearing my raspy throat.
“You tell me what happened,” he gasped between breaths.
I told him what I had felt. Then I realized that I could barely see the top of the mountain directly in my line of vision. There was very little daylight left, which meant I had been running, or walking, for more than two hours.
I asked don Juan to explain the time discrepancy. He said that my assemblage point had moved beyond the place of no pity into the place of silent knowledge, but that I still lacked the energy to manipulate it myself. To manipulate it myself meant I would have to have enough energy to move between reason and silent knowledge at will. He added that if a sorcerer had enough energy—or even if he did not have sufficient energy but needed to shift because it was a matter of life and death—he could fluctuate between reason and silent knowledge.
His conclusions about me were that because of the seriousness of our situation, I had let the spirit move my assemblage point. The result had been my entering into silent knowledge. Naturally, the scope of my perception had increased, which gave me the feeling of height, of looming over the bushes.
At that time, because of my academic training, I was passionately interested in validation by consensus. I asked him my standard question of those days.
“If someone from UCLA’s Anthropology Department had been watching me, would he have seen me as a giant thrashing through the chaparral?”
“I really don’t know,” don Juan said. “The way to find out would be to move your assemblage point when you are in the Department of Anthropology.”
“I have tried,” I said. “But nothing ever happens. I must need to have you around for anything to take place.”
“It was not a matter of life and death for you then,” he said. “If it had been, you would have moved your assemblage point all by yourself.”
“But would people see what I see when my assemblage point moves?” I insisted.
“No, because their assemblage points won’t be in the same place as yours,” he replied.
“Then, don Juan, did I dream the jaguar?” I asked. “Did all of it happen only in my mind?”
“Not quite,” he said. “That big cat is real. You have moved miles and you are not even tired. If you are in doubt, look at your shoes. They are full of cactus spines. So you did move, looming over the shrubs. And at the same time you didn’t. It depends on whether one’s assemblage point is on the place of reason or on the place of silent knowledge.”
I understood everything he was saying while he said it, but could not repeat any part of it at will. Nor could I determine what it was I knew, or why he was making so much sense to me.
The growl of the jaguar brought me back to the reality of the immediate danger. I caught sight of the jaguar’s dark mass as he swiftly moved uphill about thirty yards to our right.
“What are we going to do, don Juan?” I asked, knowing that he had also seen the animal moving ahead of us.
“Keep climbing to the very top and seek shelter there,” he said calmly.
Then he added, as if he had not a single worry in the world, that I had wasted valuable time indulging in my pleasure at looming over the bushes. Instead of heading for the safety of the hills he had pointed out, I had taken off toward the easterly higher mountains.
“We must reach that scarp before the jaguar or we don’t have a chance,” he said, pointing to the nearly vertical face at the very top of the mountain.
I turned right and saw the jaguar leaping from rock to rock. He was definitely working his way over to cut us off.
“Let’s go, don Juan!” I yelled out of nervousness.
Don Juan smiled. He seemed to be enjoying my fear and impatience. We moved as fast as we could and climbed steadily. I tried not to pay attention to the dark form of the jaguar as it appeared from time to time a bit ahead of us and always to our right.
The three of us reached the base of the escarpment at the same time. The jaguar was about twenty yards to our right. He jumped and tried to climb the face of the cliff, but failed. The rock wall was too steep.
Don Juan yelled that I should not waste time watching the jaguar, because he would charge as soon as he gave up trying to climb. No sooner had don Juan spoken than the animal charged.
There was no time for further urging. I scrambled up the rock wall followed by don Juan. The shrill scream of the frustrated beast sounded right by the heel of my right foot. The propelling force of fear sent me up the slick scarp as if I were a fly.
I reached the top before don Juan, who had stopped to laugh.
Safe at the top of the cliff, I had more time to think about what had happened. Don Juan did not want to discuss anything. He argued that at this stage in my development, any movement of my assemblage point would still be a mystery. My challenge at the beginning of my apprenticeship was, he said, maintaining my gains, rather than reasoning them out—and that at some point everything would make sense to me.
I told him everything made sense to me at that moment. But he was adamant that I had to be able to explain knowledge to myself before I could claim that it made sense to me. He insisted that for a movement of my assemblage point to make sense, I would need to have energy to fluctuate from the place of reason to the place of silent knowledge.
He stayed quiet for a while, sweeping my entire body with his stare. Then he seemed to make up his mind and smiled and began to speak again.
“Today you reached the place of silent knowledge,” he said with finality.
He explained that that afternoon, my assemblage point had moved by itself, without his intervention. I had intended the movement by manipulating my feeling of being gigantic, and in so doing my assemblage point had reached the position of silent knowledge.
I was very curious to hear how don Juan interpreted my experience. He said that one way to talk about the perception attained in the place of silent knowledge was to call it “here and here.” He explained that when I had told him I had felt myself looming over the desert chaparral, I should have added that I was seeing the desert floor and the top of the shrubs at the same time. Or that I had been at the place where I stood and at the same time at the place where the jaguar was. Thus I had been able to notice how carefully he stepped to avoid the cactus spines. In other words, instead of perceiving the normal here and there, I had perceived “here and here.”
His comments frightened me. He was right. I had not mentioned that to him, nor had I admitted even to myself that I had been in two places at once. I would not have dared to think in those terms had it not been for his comments.
He repeated that I needed more time and more energy to make sense of everything. I was too new; I still required a great deal of supervision. For instance, while I was looming over the shrubs, he had to make his assemblage point fluctuate rapidly between the places of reason and silent knowledge to take care of me. And that had exhausted him.
“Tell me one thing,” I said, testing his reasonableness. “That jaguar was stranger than you want to admit, wasn’t it? Jaguars are not part of the fauna of this area. Pumas, yes, but not jaguars. How do you explain that?”
Before answering, he puckered his face. He was suddenly very serious.
“I think that this particular jaguar confirms your anthropological theories,” he said in a solemn tone. “Obviously, the jaguar was following this famous trade route connecting Chihuahua with Central America.”