We walked to the nearby stream, and he selected a place with flat, exposed rocks. He said that there the water was shallow enough for our purposes.
“What do you expect to happen?” I asked in the midst of a gripping apprehension.
“I don’t know. All I know is what we are going to attempt. We will hold the mirror very carefully, but very firmly. We will gently place it on the surface of the water and then let it submerge. We will then hold it on the bottom. I’ve checked it. There is enough silt there to allow us to dig our fingers underneath the mirror to hold it firmly.”
He asked me to squat on a flat rock above the surface in the middle of the gentle stream and made me hold the mirror with both hands, almost at the corners on one side. He squatted facing me and held the mirror the same way I did. We let the mirror sink and then we held it by plunging our arms in the water almost to our elbows.
He commanded me to empty myself of thoughts and stare at the surface of the mirror. He repeated over and over that the trick was not to think at all. I looked intently into the mirror. The gentle current mildly dis-arranged the reflection of don Juan’s face and mine. After a few minutes of steady gazing into the mirror it seemed to me that gradually the image of his face and mine became much clearer. And the mirror grew in size until it was at least a yard square. The current seemed to have stopped, and the mirror looked as clear as if it were placed on top of the water. Even more odd was the crispness of our reflections, it was as if my face had been magnified, not in size but in focus. I could see the pores in the skin of my forehead.
Don Juan gently whispered not to stare at my eyes or his, but to let my gaze wander around without focusing on any part of our reflections.
“Gaze fixedly without staring!” he repeatedly ordered in a forceful whisper.
I did what he said without stopping to ponder about the seeming contradiction. At that moment something inside me was caught in that mirror and the contradiction actually made sense. “It is possible to gaze fixedly without staring,” I thought, and the instant that thought was formulated another head appeared next to don Juan’s and mine. It was on the lower side of the mirror, to my left.
My whole body trembled. Don Juan whispered to calm down and not show fear or surprise. He again commanded me to gaze without staring at the new-comer. I had to make an unimaginable effort not to gasp and release the mirror. My body was shaking from head to toe. Don Juan whispered again to get hold of myself. He nudged me repeatedly with his shoulder.
Slowly I got my fear under control. I gazed at the third head and gradually realized that it was not a human head, or an animal head either. In fact, it was not a head at all. It was a shape that had no inner mobility. As the thought occurred to me, I instantly realized that I was not thinking it myself. The realization was not a thought either. I had a moment of tremendous anxiety and then something incomprehensible became known to me. The thoughts were a voice in my ear!
“I am seeing!” I yelled in English, but there was no sound. “Yes, you’re seeing,” the voice in my ear said in Spanish.
I felt that I was encased in a force greater than myself. I was not in pain or even anguished. I felt nothing. I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt, because the voice was telling me so, that I could not break the grip of that force by an act of will or strength. I knew I was dying. I lifted my eyes automatically to look at don Juan, and at the instant our eyes met the force let go of me. I was free. Don Juan was smiling at me as if he knew exactly what I had gone through.
I realized that I was standing up. Don Juan was holding the mirror edgewise to let the water drip off.
We walked back to the house in silence.
“The ancient Toltecs were simply mesmerized by their findings,” don Juan said.
“I can understand why,” I said.
“So can I,” don Juan retorted.
The force that had enveloped me had been so powerful as to incapacitate me for speech, even for thought, for hours afterward. It had frozen me with a total lack of volition. And I had thawed out only by tiny degrees.
“Without any deliberate intervention on our part,” don Juan continued, “this ancient Toltec technique has been divided into two parts for you. The first was just enough to familiarize you with what takes place. In the second, we will try to accomplish what the old seers pursued.”
“What really took place out there, don Juan?” I asked.
“There are two versions. I’ll give you the old seers’ version first. They thought that the reflecting surface of a shiny object submerged in water enlarges the power of the water. What they used to do was gaze into bodies of water, and the reflecting surface served them as an aid to accelerate the process. They believed that our eyes are the keys to entering into the unknown; by gazing into water, they were allowing the eyes to open the way.”
Don Juan said that the old seers observed that the wetness of water only dampens or soaks, but that the fluidity of water moves. It runs, they surmised, in search of other levels underneath us. They believed that water had been given to us not only for life, but also as a link, a road to the other levels below.
“Are there many levels below?” I asked.
“The ancient seers counted seven levels,” he replied.
“Do you know them yourself, don Juan?”
“I am a seer of the new cycle, and consequently I have a different view,” he said. “I am just showing you what the old seers did and I’m telling you what they believed.”
He asserted that just because he had different views did not mean the old seers’ practices were invalid; their interpretations were wrong, but their truths had practical value for them. In the instance of the water practices, they were convinced that it was humanly possible to be transported bodily by the fluidity of water anywhere between this lev-el of ours and the other seven levels below; or to be transported in essence anywhere on this level, along the watercourse of a river in either direction. They used, accordingly, running water to be transported on this level of ours and the water of deep lakes or that of waterholes to be transported to the depths.
“What they pursued with the technique I’m showing you was twofold,” he went on. “On the one hand they used the fluidity of the water to be transported to the first level below. On the other, they used it to have a face-to-face meeting with a living being from that first level. The headlike shape in the mirror was one of those creatures that came to look us over.”
“So, they really exist!” I exclaimed.
“They certainly do,” he retorted.
He said that ancient seers were damaged by their aberrant insistence on staying glued to their procedures, but that whatever they found was valid. They found out that the surest way to meet one of those creatures is through a body of water. The size of the body of water is not relevant; an ocean or a pond serves the same purpose. He had chosen a small stream because he hated to get wet. We could have gotten the same results in a lake or a large river.
“The other life comes to find out what’s going on when human beings call,” he continued. “That Toltec technique is like a knock on their door. The old seers said the shiny surface on the bottom of the water served as a bait and a window. So humans and those creatures meet at a window.”
“Is that what happened to me there?” I asked.
“The old seers would’ve said that you were being pulled by the power of the water and the power of the first level, plus the magnetic influence of the creature at the window.”
“But I heard a voice in my ear saying that I was dying,” I said.
“The voice was right. You were dying, and you would have if I hadn’t been there. That is the danger of practicing the Toltecs’ techniques. They are extremely effective but most of the time they are deadly.”
I told him that I was ashamed to confess that I was terrified. Seeing that shape in the mirror and having the sensation of an enveloping force around me had proved too much for me the day before.