and we engage ours, both without knowing it. As we learn to talk to ourselves, we learn to handle will. We will ourselves to talk to ourselves. The way to stop talking to ourselves is to use exactly the same method: we must will it, we must inlend it.”
We were silent for a few minutes. I asked him to whom he was referring when he said that we had teachers who taught us to talk to ourselves.
“I was talking about what happens to human beings when they are infants,” he replied, “a time when they are taught by everyone around them to repeat an endless dialogue about themselves. The dialogue becomes internalized, and that force alone keeps the assemblage point fixed.
“The new seers say that infants have hundreds of teachers who teach them exactly where to place their assemblage point.”
He said that seers see that infants have no fixed assemblage point at first. Their encased emanations are in a state of great turmoil, and their assemblage points shift everywhere in the band of man, giving children a great capacity to focus on emanations that later will be thoroughly disregarded. Then as they grow, the older humans around them, through their considerable power over them, force the children’s assemblage points to become more steady by means of an increasingly complex internal dialogue. The internal dialogue is a process that constantly strengthens the position of the assemblage point, because that position is an arbitrary one and needs steady reinforce-ment.
“The fact of the matter is that many children see,” he went on. “Most of those who see are considered to be oddballs and every effort is made to correct them, to make them solidify the position of their assemblage points.”
“But would it be possible to encourage children to keep their assemblage points more fluid?” I asked.
“Only if they live among the new seers,” he said. “Otherwise they would get entrapped, as the old seers did, in the intricacies of the silent side of man. And, believe me, that’s worse than being caught in the clutches of rationality.”
Don Juan went on to express his profound admiration for the human capacity to impart order to the chaos of the Eagle’s emanations. He maintained that every one of us, in his own right, is a masterful magician and that our magic is to keep our assemblage point unwaveringly fixed.
“The force of the emanations at large,” he went on, “makes our assemblage point select certain emanations and cluster them for alignment and perception. That’s the command of the Eagle, but all the meaning that we give to what we perceive is our command, our gift of magic.”
He said that in the light of what he had explained, what Genaro had made me do the day before was something extraordinarily complex and yet very sim-ple. It was complex because it required a tremendous discipline on everybody’s part; it required that the internal dialogue be stopped, that a state of heightened awareness be reached, and that someone walk away with one’s assemblage point. The explanation behind all these complex procedures was very simple; the new seers say that since the exact position of the assemblage point is an arbitrary position chosen for us by our ancestors, it can move with a relatively small effort; once it moves, it forces new alignments of emanations, thus new perceptions.
“I used to give you power plants in order to make your assemblage point move,” don Juan continued. “Power plants have that effect; but hunger, tiredness, fever, and other things like that can have a similar effect. The flaw of the average man is that he thinks the result of a shift is purely mental. It isn’t, as you yourself can attest.”
He explained that my assemblage point had shifted scores of times in the past, just as it had shifted the day before, and that most of the time the worlds it had assembled had been so close to the world of everyday life as to be virtually phantom worlds. He emphatically added that visions of that kind are automatically rejected by the new seers.
“Those visions are the product of man’s inventory,” he went on. “They are of no value for warriors in search of total freedom, because they are produced by a lateral shift of the assemblage point.”
He stopped talking and looked at me. I knew that by “lateral shift” he had meant a shift of the point from one side to the other along the width of man’s band of emanations instead of a shift in depth. I asked him if I was right.
“That’s exactly what I meant,” he said. “On both edges of man’s band of emanations there is a strange storage of refuse, an incalculable pile of human junk. It’s a very morbid, sinister storehouse. It had great value for the old seers but not for us.
“One of the easiest things one can do is to fall into it. Yesterday Genaro and I wanted to give you a quick example of that lateral shift; that was why we walked your assemblage point, but any person can reach that storehouse by simply stopping his internal dialogue. If the shift is minimal, the results are explained as fan-tasies of the mind. If the shift is considerable, the results are called hallucinations.”
I asked him to explain the act of walking the assemblage point. He said that once warriors have attained inner silence by stopping their internal dialogue, the sound of the gait of power, more than the sight of it, is what traps their assemblage points. The rhythm of muffled steps instantly catches the alignment force of the emanations inside the cocoon, which has been dis-connected by inner silence.
“That force hooks itself immediately to the edges of the band,” he went on. “On the right edge we find endless visions of physical activity, violence, killing, sensuality. On the left edge we find spirituality, religion, God. Genaro and I walked your assemblage point to both edges, so as to give you a complete view of that human junk pile.”
Don Juan restated, as if on second thought, that one of the most mysterious aspects of the seers’ knowledge is the incredible effects of inner silence. He said that once inner silence is attained, the bonds that tie the assemblage point to the particular spot where it is placed begin to break and the assemblage point is free to move.
He said that the movement ordinarily is toward the left, that such a directional preference is a natural reaction of most human beings, but that there are seers who can direct that movement to positions below the customary spot where the point is located. The new seers call that shift “the shift below.”
“Seers also suffer accidental shifts below,” he went on. “The assemblage point doesn’t remain there long, and that’s fortunate, because that is the place of the beast. To go below is counter to our interest, although the easiest thing to do.”
Don Juan also said that among the many errors of judgment the old seers had committed, one of the most grievous was moving their assemblage points to the immeasurable area below, which made them experts at adopting animal forms. They chose different animals as their point of reference and called those animals their nagual. They believed that by moving their assemblage points to specific spots they would acquire the characteristics of the animal of their choice, its strength or wisdom or cunning or agility or ferocity.
Don Juan assured me that there are many dreadful examples of such practices even among the seers of our day. The relative facility with which the assemblage point of man moves toward any lower position poses a great temptation to seers, especially to those whose inclination leans toward that end. It is the duty of a nagual, therefore, to test his warriors.
He told me then that he had put me to the test by moving my assemblage point to a position below, while I was under the influence of a power plant. He then guided my assemblage point until I could isolate the crows’ band of emanations, which resulted in my changing into a crow.
I again asked don Juan the question I had asked him dozens of times. I wanted to know whether I had physically turned into a crow or had merely thought and felt like one. He explained that a shift of the assemblage point to the area below always results in a total transformation. He added that if the assemblage point moves beyond a crucial threshold, the world vanishes; it ceases to be what it is to us at man’s level.
He conceded that my transformation was indeed horrifying by any standards. My reaction to that experience proved to him that I had no leanings toward that direction. Had it not been that way, I would have had to employ enormous energy in order to fight off a tendency to remain in that area below, which some seers find most comfortable.