He said that the second attention is also called the left-side awareness; and it is the vastest field that one can imagine, so vast in fact that it seems limitless.
“I wouldn’t stray into it for anything in this world,” he went on. “It is a quagmire so complex and bizarre that sober seers go into it only under the strictest conditions.
“The great difficulty is that the entrance into the second attention is utterly easy and its lure nearly irresistible.”
He said that the old seers, being the masters of awareness, applied their expertise to their own glows of awareness and made them expand to inconceivable limits. They actually aimed at lighting up all the emanations inside their cocoons, one band at a time. They succeeded, but oddly enough the accomplishment of lighting up one band at a time was instrumental in their becoming imprisoned in the quagmire of the second attention.
“The new seers corrected that error,” he continued, “and let the mastery of awareness develop to its natural end, which is to extend the glow of awareness beyond the bounds of the luminous cocoon in one sin-gle stroke.
“The third attention is attained when the glow of awareness turns into the fire from within: a glow that kindles not one band at a time but all the Eagle’s emanations inside man’s cocoon.”
Don Juan expressed his awe for the new seers’ deliberate effort to attain the third attention while they are alive and conscious of their individuality.
He did not consider it worthwhile to discuss the random cases of men and other sentient beings who enter into the unknown and the unknowable without being aware of it; he referred to this as the Eagle’s gift. He asserted that for the new seers to enter into the third attention is also a gift, but has a different meaning, it is more like a reward for an attainment.
He added that at the moment of dying all human beings enter into the unknowable and some of them do attain the third attention, but altogether too briefly and only to purify the food for the Eagle.
“The supreme accomplishment of human beings,” he said, “is to attain that level of attention while retaining the life-force, without becoming a disembodied awareness moving like a flicker of light up to the Ea-gle’s beak to be devoured.”
While listening to don Juan’s explanation I had again completely lost sight of everything that surrounded me. Genaro apparently had gotten up and left us, and was nowhere in sight. Strangely, I found my-self crouching on the rock, with don Juan squatting by me holding me down by gently pushing on my shoulders. I reclined on the rock and closed my eyes. There was a soft breeze blowing from the west.
“Don’t fall asleep,” don Juan said. “Not for any reason should you fall asleep on this rock.”
I sat up. Don Juan was staring at me.
“Just relax,” he went on. “Let the internal dialogue die out.”
All my concentration was involved in following what he was saying when I got a jolt of fright. I did not know what it was at first; I thought I was going through another attack of distrust. But then it struck me, like a bolt, that it was very late in the afternoon. What I had thought was an hour’s conversation had consumed an entire day.
I jumped up, fully aware of the incongruity, although I could not conceive what had happened to me. I felt a strange sensation that made my body want to run. Don Juan jumped me, restraining me forcefully. We fell to the soft ground, and he held me there with an iron grip. I had had no idea that don Juan was so strong.
My body shook violently. My arms flew every which way as they shook. I was having something like a seizure. Yet some part of me was detached to the point of becoming fascinated with watching my body vibrate, twist, and shake.
The spasms finally died out and don Juan let go of me. He was panting with the exertion. He recommended that we climb back up on the rock and sit there until I was all right.
I could not help pressing him with my usual question: What had happened to me? He answered that as he talked to me I had pushed beyond a certain limit and had entered very deeply into the left side. He and Genaro had followed me in there. And then I had rushed out in the same fashion I had rushed in.
“I caught you right on time,” he said. “Otherwise you would have gone straight out to your normal self.”
I was totally confused. He explained that the three of us had been playing with awareness. I must have gotten scared and run out on them.
“Genaro is the master of awareness,” don Juan went on. “Silvio Manuel is the master of wilt. The two of them were mercilessly pushed into the unknown. My benefactor did to them what his benefactor did to him. Genaro and Silvio Manuel are very much like the old seers in some respects. They know what they can do, but they don’t care to know how they do it. Today, Genaro seized the opportunity to push your glow of awareness and we all ended up in the weird confines of the unknown.”
I begged him to tell me what had happened in the unknown.
“You’ll have to remember that yourself,” a voice said just by my ear.
I was so convinced that it was the voice of seeing that it did not frighten me at all. I did not even obey the impulse to turn around.
“I am the voice of seeing and I tell you that you are a peckerhead,” the voice said again and chuckled.
I turned around. Genaro was sitting behind me. I was so surprised that I laughed perhaps a bit more hysterically than they did.
“It’s getting dark now,” Genaro said to me. “As I promised you earlier today, we are going to have a ball here.”
Don Juan intervened and said that we should stop for the day, because I was the kind of nincompoop who could die offright.
“Nah, he’s all right,” Genaro said, patting me on the shoulder.
“You’d better ask him,” don Juan said to Genaro. “He himself will tell you that he’s that kind of nincompoop.”
“Are you really that kind of nincompoop?” Genaro asked me with a frown.
I didn’t answer him. And that made them roll around laughing. Genaro rolled all the way to the ground.
“He’s caught,” Genaro said to don Juan, referring to me, after don Juan had swiftly jumped down and helped him to stand up. “He’ll never say he’s a nincompoop. He’s too self-important for that, but he’s shivering in his pants with fear of what might happen because he didn’t confess he’s a nincompoop.”
Watching them laugh, I was convinced that only Indians could laugh with such joyfulness. But I also became convinced that there was a mile-wide streak of maliciousness in them. They were poking fun at a non-Indian.
Don Juan immediately caught my feelings.
“Don’t let your self-importance run rampant,” he said. “You’re not special by any standards. None of us are, Indians and non-Indians. The nagual Julian and his benefactor added years of enjoyment to their lives laughing at us.”
Genaro nimbly climbed back onto the rock and came to my side.
“If I were you. I’d feel so frigging embarrassed I’d cry,” he said to me. “Cry, cry. Have a good cry and you’ll feel better.”
To my utter amazement I began to weep softly. Then I got so angry that I roared with fury. Only then I felt better.
Don Juan patted my back gently. He said that usually anger is very sobering, or sometimes fear is, or humor. My violent nature made me respond only to anger.
He added that a sudden shift in the glow of awareness makes us weak. They had been trying to reinforce me, to bolster me. Apparently, Genaro had succeeded by making me rage.
It was twilight by then. Suddenly Genaro pointed to a flicker in midair at eye level, in the twilight it appeared to be a large moth flying around the place where we sat.
“Be very gentle with your exaggerated nature,” don Juan said to me. “Don’t be eager. Just let Genaro guide you. Don’t take your eyes from that spot.”
The flickering point was definitely a moth. I could clearly distinguish all its features. I followed its con-voluted, tired flight, until I could see every speck of dust on its wings.
Something got me out of my total absorption. I sensed a flurry of soundless noise, if that could be possible, just behind me. I turned around and caught sight of an entire row of people on the other edge of the rock, an edge that was a bit higher than the one on which we were sitting. I supposed that the people who lived nearby must have gotten suspicious of us hanging around all day and had climbed onto the rock intending to harm us. I knew about their intentions instantly.