Don Juan, displaying extraordinary nimbleness, caught the mirror and lifted it up edgewise without any difficulty.
Never in my life had I had such an attack of melancholy. It was a sadness that had no precise foundation; I associated it with the memory of the depths I had seen in the mirror. It was a mixture of pure longing for those depths plus an absolute fear of their chilling solitude.
Don Juan remarked that in the life of warriors it was extremely natural to be sad for no overt reason. Seers say that the luminous egg, as a field of energy, senses its final destination whenever the boundaries of the known are broken. A mere glimpse of the eternity outside the cocoon is enough to disrupt the coziness of our inventory. The resulting melancholy is sometimes so intense that it can bring about death.
He said that the best way to get rid of melancholy is to make fun of it. He commented in a mocking tone that my first attention was doing everything to restore the order that had been disrupted by my contact with the ally. Since there was no way of restoring it by rational means, my first attention was doing it by focusing all its power on sadness.
I told him that the fact remained the melancholy was real. Indulging in it, moping around, being gloomy, were not part of the feeling of aloneness that I had felt upon remembering those depths.
“Something is finally getting through to you,” he said. “You’re right. There is nothing more lonely than eternity. And nothing is more cozy for us than to be a human being. This indeed is another contradiction? how can man keep the bonds of his humanness and still venture gladly and purposefully into the absolute loneliness of eternity? Whenever you resolve this rid-dle, you’ll be ready for the definitive journey.”
I knew then with total certainty the reason for my sadness. It was a recurrent feeling with me, one that I would always forget until I again realized the same thing: the puniness of humanity against the immensity of that thing-in-itself which I had seen reflected in the mirror.
“Human beings are truly nothing, don Juan,” I said.
“I know exactly what you’re thinking,” he said. “Sure, we’re nothing, but that’s exactly what makes it the ultimate challenge, that we nothings could actually face the loneliness of eternity.”
He abruptly changed the subject, leaving me with my mouth open, my next question unsaid. He began to discuss our bout with the ally. He said that first of all, the struggle with the ally had been no joke. It had not really been a matter of life or death, but it had not been a picnic either.
“I chose that technique,” he went on, “because my benefactor showed it to me. When I asked him to give me an example of the old seers’ techniques, he nearly split a gut laughing; my request reminded him so much of his own experience. His benefactor, the nagual Elias, had also given him a harsh demonstration of the same technique.”
Don Juan said that as he had made the frame for his mirror out of wood, he should have asked me to do the same, but he wanted to know what would happen if the frame was sturdier than his or his benefactor’s. Both of their frames broke, and both times the ally came out.
He explained that during his own bout the ally ripped the frame apart. He and his benefactor were left holding two pieces of wood while the mirror sank and the ally climbed out of it.
His benefactor knew what kind of trouble to expect. In the reflection of mirrors, allies are not really frightening because one sees only a shape, a mass of sorts. But when they are out, besides being truly fearsome-looking things, they are a pain in the neck. He remarked that once the allies get out of their level it is very difficult for them to go back. The same prevails for man. If seers venture into a level of those creatures, chances are they are never heard of again.
“My mirror was shattered with the ally’s force,” he said. “There was no more window and the ally couldn’t go back, so it came after me. It actually ran after me, rolling on itself. I scrambled on all fours at top speed, screaming with terror. I went up and down hills like a possessed man. The ally was inches away from me the whole time.”
Don Juan said that his benefactor ran after him, but he was too old and could not move fast enough; he had the good sense, however, to tell don Juan to back-track, and in that way was able to take measures to get rid of the ally. He shouted that he was going to build a fire and that don Juan should run in circles until everything was ready. He went ahead to gather dry branches while don Juan ran around a hill, driven mad with fear.
Don Juan confessed that the thought had occurred to him, as he ran around in circles, that his benefactor was actually enjoying the whole thing. He knew that his benefactor was a warrior capable of finding delight in any conceivable situation. Why not also in this one? For a moment he got so angry at his benefactor that the ally stopped chasing him, and don Juan, in no uncertain terms, accused his benefactor of malice. His benefactor didn’t answer, but made a gesture of genuine horror as he looked past don Juan at the ally, which was looming over the two of them. Don Juan forgot his anger and began running around in circles again.
“My benefactor was indeed a devilish old man,” don Juan said, laughing. “He had learned to laugh internally. It wouldn’t show on his face, so he could pretend to be weeping or raging when he was really laughing. That day, as the ally chased me in circles, my benefactor stood there and defended himself from my accusations. I only heard bits of his long speech every time I ran by him. When he was through with that, I heard bits of another long explanation: that he had to gather a great deal of wood, that the ally was big, that the fire had to be as big as the ally itself, that the maneuver might not work.
“Only my maddening fear kept me going. Finally he must have realized that I was about to drop dead from exhaustion; he built the fire and with the flames he shielded me from the ally.”
Don Juan said that they stayed by the fire for the entire night. The worst time for him was when his benefactor had to go away to look for more dry branches and left him alone. He was so afraid that he promised to God that he was going to leave the path of knowledge and become a farmer.
“In the morning, after I had exhausted all my en-ergy, the ally managed to shove me into the fire, and I was badly burned,” don Juan added.
“What happened to the ally?” I asked.
“My benefactor never told me what happened to it,” he replied. “But I have the feeling that it is still running around aimlessly, trying to find its way back.”
“And what happened to your promise to God?”
“My benefactor said not to worry, that it had been a good promise, but that I didn’t know yet that there is no one to hear such promises, because there is no God. All there is is the Eagle’s emanations, and there is no way to make promises to them.”
“What would have happened if the ally had caught you?” I asked.
“I might have died of fright,” he said. “If I had known what was entailed in being caught I would’ve let it catch me. At that time I was a reckless man. Once an ally catches you, you either have a heart attack and die or you wrestle with it. Then after a moment of thrashing around in sham ferocity, the al-ly’s energy wanes. There is nothing that an ally can do to us, or vice versa. We are separated by an abyss.
“The ancient seers believed that at the moment the ally’s energy dwindles the ally surrenders its power to man. Power, my eye! The old seers had allies coming out of their ears and their allies’ power didn’t mean a thing.”
Don Juan explained that once again it had been up to the new seers to straighten out this confusion. They had found that the only thing that counts is impeccability, that is, freed energy. There were indeed some among the ancient seers who were saved by their al-lies, but that had had nothing to do with the allies’ power to fend off anything; rather, it was the impeccability of the men that had permitted them to use the energy of those other forms of life.