“The new seers seem to have been very abstract,” I commented. “They sound like modern-day philosophers.”
“No. The new seers were terribly practical men,” he replied. “They weren’t involved in concocting rational theories.”
He said that the ancient seers were the ones who were the abstract thinkers. They built monumental ed-ifices of abstractions proper to them and their time. And just like the modern-day philosophers, they were not at all in control of their concatenations. The new seers, on the other hand, imbued with practicality, were able to see a flux of emanations and to see how man and other living beings utilize them to construct their perceivable world.
“How are those emanations utilized by man, don Juan?”
“It’s so simple it sounds idiotic. For a seer, men are luminous beings. Our luminosity is made up of that portion of the Eagle’s emanations which is encased in our egglike cocoon. That particular portion, that handful of emanations that is encased, is what makes us men. To perceive is to match the emanations contained inside our cocoon with those that are outside.
“Seers can see, for instance, the emanations inside any living creature and can tell which of the outside emanations would match them.”
“Are the emanations like beams of light?” I asked.
“No. Not at all. That would be too simple. They are something indescribable. And yet, my personal comment would be to say that they are like filaments of light. What’s incomprehensible to normal awareness is that the filaments are aware. I can’t tell you what that means, because I don’t know what I am saying. All I can tell you with my personal comments is that the filaments are aware of themselves, alive and vibrating, that there are so many of them that numbers have no meaning and that each of them is an eternity in itself.”
4
The Glow of Awareness
Don Juan, don Genaro, and I had just returned from gathering plants in the surrounding mountains. We were at don Genaro’s house, sitting around the table, when don Juan made me change levels of awareness. Don Genaro had been staring at me and began to chuckle. He remarked how odd he thought it was that I had two completely different standards for dealing with the two sides of awareness. My relation with him was the most obvious example. On my right side, he was the respected and feared sorcerer don Genaro, a man whose incomprehensible acts delighted me and at the same time filled me with mortal terror. On my left side, he was plain Genaro, or Genarito, with no don attached to his name, a charming and kind seer whose acts were thoroughly comprehensible and coherent with what I myself did or tried to do.
I agreed with him and added that on my left side, the man whose mere presence made me shake like a leaf was Silvio Manuel, the most mysterious of don Juan’s companions. I also said that don Juan, being a true nagual, transcended arbitrary standards and was respected and admired by me in both states.
“But is he feared?” Genaro asked in a quivering voice.
“Very feared,” don Juan interjected in a falsetto voice.
We all laughed, but don Juan and Genaro laughed with such abandon that I immediately suspected they knew something they were holding back.
Don Juan was reading me like a book. He explained that in the intermediate stage, before one enters fully into the left-side awareness, one is capable of tremendous concentration, but one is also susceptible to every conceivable influence. I was being influenced by suspicion.
“La Gorda is always in this stage,” he said. “She learns beautifully, but she’s a royal pain in the neck. She can’t help being driven by anything that comes her way, including, of corse, very good things, like keen concentration.”
Don Juan explained that the new seers discovered that the transition period is the time when the deepest learning takes place, and that it is also the time when warriors must be supervised and explanations must be given to them so they can evaluate them properly. If no explanations are given to them before they enter into the left side, they will be great sorcerers but poor seers, as the ancient Toltecs were.
Female warriors in particular fall prey to the lure of the left side, he said. They are so nimble that they can go into the left side with no effort, often too soon for their own good.
After a long silence, Genaro fell asleep. Don Juan began to speak. He said that the new seers had had to invent a number of terms in order to explain the sec-ond truth about awareness. His benefactor had changed some of those terms to suit himself, and he himself had done the same, guided by the seers’ belief that it does not make any difference what terms are used as long as the truths have been verified by seeing.
I was curious to know what terms he had changed, but I didn’t know quite how to word my question. He took it that I was doubting his right or his ability to change them and explained that if the terms we propose originate in our reason they can only communi-cate the mundane agreement of everyday life. When seers propose a term, on the other hand, it is never a figure of speech because it stems from seeing and embraces everything that seers can attain.
I asked him why he had changed the terms.
“It’s a nagual’s duty always to look for better ways to explain,” he replied. “Time changes everything, and every new nagual has to incorporate new words, new ideas, to describe his seeing. ’”
“Do you mean that a nagual takes ideas from the world of every day life?” I asked.
“No. I mean that a nagual talks about seeing in ever new ways,” he said. “For instance, as the new na-gual, you’d have to say that awareness gives rise to perception. You’d be saying the same thing my benefactor said, but in a different way.”
“What do the new seers say perception is, don Juan?”
“They say that perception is a condition of alignment; the emanations inside the cocoon become aligned with those outside that fit them. Alignment is what allows awareness to be cultivated by every living creature. Seers make these statements because they see living creatures as they really are: luminous beings that look like bubbles of whitish light.”
I asked him how the emanations inside the cocoon fit those outside so as to accomplish perception.
“The emanations inside and the emanations outside,” he said, “are the same filaments of light. Sentient beings are minute bubbles made out of those filaments, microscopic points of light, attached to the infinite emanations.”
He went on to explain that the luminosity of living beings is made by the particular portion of the Eagle’s emanations they happen to have inside their luminous cocoons. When seers see perception, they witness that the luminosity of the Eagle’s emanations outside those creatures’ cocoons brightens the luminosity of the emanations inside their cocoons. The outside luminosity attracts the inside one; it traps it, so to speak, and fixes it. That fixation is the awareness of every specific being.
Seers can also see how the emanations outside the cocoon exert a particular pressure on the portion of emanations inside. This pressure determines the de-gree of awareness that every living being has.
I asked him to clarify how the Eagle’s emanations outside the cocoon exert pressure on those inside.
“The Eagle’s emanations are more than filaments of light,” he replied. “Each one of them is a source of boundless energy. Think of it this way: since some of the emanations outside the cocoon are the same as the emanations inside, their energies are like a continuous pressure. But the cocoon isolates the emanations that are inside its web and thereby directs the pressure.
“I’ve mentioned to you that the old seers were masters of the art of handling awareness,” he went on. “What I can add now is that they were the masters of that art because they learned to manipulate the structure of man’s cocoon. I’ve said to you that they unraveled the mystery of being aware. By that I meant that they saw and realized that awareness is a glow in the cocoon of living beings. They rightly called it the glow of awareness.”
He explained that the old seers saw that man’s awareness is a glow of amber luminosity more intense than the rest of the cocoon. That glow is on a narrow, vertical band on the extreme right side of the cocoon, running along its entire length. The mastery of the old seers was to move that glow, to make it spread from its original setting on the surface of the cocoon inward across its width.
He stopped talking and looked at Genaro, who was still sound asleep.
“Genaro doesn’t give a fig about explanations,” he said. “He’s a doer. My benefactor pushed him constantly to face insoluble problems. So he entered into the left side proper and never had a chance to ponder and wonder.”