He further said that an unwitting downshift occurs periodically to every seer, but that such a downshift becomes less and less frequent as their assemblage points move farther toward the left. Every time it oc-curs, however, the power of a seer undergoing it diminishes considerably. It is a drawback that takes time and great effort to correct.
“Those lapses make seers extremely morose and narrow-minded,” he continued, “and in certain cases, extremely rational.”
“How can seers avoid those downshifts?” I asked.
“It all depends on the warrior,” he said. “Some of them are naturally inclined to indulge in their quirks? yourself, for instance. They are the ones who are hard hit. For those like you, I recommend a twenty-four- hour vigil of everything they do. Disciplined men or women are less prone to that kind of shift; for those I would recommend a twenty-three-hour vigil.”
He looked at me with shiny eyes and laughed.
“Female seers have downshifts more often than males,” he said. “But they are also capable of bouncing out of that position with no effort at all. while males linger dangerously in it.”
He also said that women seers have an extraordinary capacity to make their assemblage points hold on to any position in the area below. Men cannot. Men have sobriety and purpose, but very little talent; that is the reason why a nagual must have eight women seers in his party. Women give the impulse to cross the immeasurable vastness of the unknown. Together with that natural capacity, or as a consequence of it, women have a most fierce intensity. They can, therefore, reproduce an animal form with flare, ease, and a matchless ferocity.
“If you think about scary things,” he continued, “about something unnamable lurking in the darkness, you’re thinking, without knowing it, about a woman seer holding a position in the immeasurable area below. True horror lies right there. If you ever find an aberrant woman seer, run for the hills!”
I asked him whether other organisms were capable of shifting their assemblage points.
“Their points can shift,” he said, “but the shift is not a voluntary thing with them.”
“Is the assemblage point of other organisms also trained to appear where it does?” I asked.
“Every newborn organism is trained, one way or another,” he replied. “We may not understand how their training is done?after all, we don’t even understand how it is done to us?but seers see that the newborn are coaxed to do what their kind does. That’s exactly what happens to human infants: seers see their assemblage points shifting every which way and then they see how the presence of adults fastens each point to one spot. The same happens to every other organism.”
Don Juan seemed to reflect for a moment and then added that there was indeed one unique effect that man’s assemblage point has. He pointed to a tree outside.
“When we, as serious adult human beings, look at a tree,” he said, “our assemblage points align an infinite number of emanations and achieve a miracle. Our assemblage points make us perceive a cluster of emanations that we call tree.”
He explained that the assemblage point not only effects the alignment needed for perception, but also obliterates the alignment of certain emanations in order to arrive at a greater refinement of perception, a skimming, a tricky human construct with no parallel.
He said that the new seers had observed that only human beings were capable of further clustering the clusters of emanations. He used the Spanish word for skimming, desnate, to describe the act of collecting the most palatable cream off the top of a container of boiled milk after it cools. Likewise, in terms of perception, man’s assemblage point takes some part of the emanations already selected for alignment and makes a more palatable construct with it.
“The skimmings of men,” don Juan continued, “are more real than what other creatures perceive. That is our pitfall. They are so real to us that we forget we have constructed them by commanding our assemblage points to appear where they do. We forget they are real to us only because it is our command to perceive them as real. We have the power to skim the top off the alignments, but we don’t have the power to protect ourselves from our own commands. That has to be learned. To give our skimmings a free hand, as we do, is an error of judgment for which we pay as dearly as the old seers paid for theirs.”
9
The Shift Below
Don Juan and Genaro made their yearly trip to the northern part of Mexico, to the Sonoran desert, to look for medicinal plants. One of the seers of the na-gual’s party, Vicente Medrano, the herbalist among them, used those plants to make medicines.
I had joined don Juan and Genaro in Sonora, at the last stage of their journey, just in time to drive them south, back to their home.
The day before we started on our drive, don Juan abruptly continued his explanation of the mastery of awareness. We were resting in the shade of some tall bushes in the foothills of the mountains. It was late afternoon, almost dark. Each of us carried a large bur-lap sack filled with plants. As soon as we had put them down, Genaro lay down on the ground and fell asleep, using his folded jacket as a pillow.
Don Juan spoke to me in a low voice, as if he didn’t want to wake up Genaro. He said that by now he had explained most of the truths about awareness, and that there was only one truth left to discuss. The last truth, he assured me, was the best of the old seers’ findings, although they never knew that themselves. Its tremendous value was only recognized, ages later, by the new seers.
“I’ve explained to you that man has an assemblage point,” he went on, “and that that assemblage point aligns emanations for perception. We’ve also discussed that that point moves from its fixed position. Now, the last truth is that once that assemblage point moves beyond a certain limit, it can assemble worlds entirely different from the world we know.”
Still in a whisper, he said that certain geographical areas not only help that precarious movement of the assemblage point, but also select specific directions for that movement. For instance, the Sonoran desert helps the assemblage point move downward from its customary position, to the place of the beast.
“That’s why there are true sorcerers in Sonora,” he continued. “Especially sorceresses. You already know one, la Catalina. In the past, I have arranged bouts between the two of you. I wanted to make your assemblage point shift, and la Catalina, with her sorcery antics, jolted it loose.”
Don Juan explained that the chilling experiences I had had with la Catalina had been part of a prear-ranged agreement between the two of them.
“What would you think if we invited her to join us?” Genaro asked me in a loud voice, as he sat up.
The abruptness of his question and the strange sound of his voice plunged me into instant terror.
Don Juan laughed and shook me by the arms. He assured me that there was no need for alarm. He said that la Catalina was like a cousin or an aunt to us. She was part of our world, although she did not quite fol-low our quests. She was infinitely closer to the ancient seers.
Genaro smiled and winked at me.
“I understand that you’ve got hot pants for her,” he said to me. “She herself confessed to me that every time you have had a confrontation with her, the greater your fright, the hotter your pants.”
Don Juan and Genaro laughed to near hysteria.
I had to admit that somehow I had always found la Catalina to be a very scary but at the same time an extremely appealing woman. What impressed me the most about her was her exuding energy.
“She has so much energy saved,” don Juan commented, “that you didn’t have to be in heightened awareness for her to move your assemblage point all the way to the depths of the left side.”
Don Juan said again that la Catalina was very closely related to us, because she belonged to the na-gual Julian’s party. He explained that usually the na-gual and all the members of his party leave the world together, but that there are instances when they leave either in smaller groups or one by one. The nagual Julian and his party were an example of the latter. Although he had left the world nearly forty years ago, la Catalina was still here.
He reminded me about something he mentioned to me before, that the nagual Julian’s party consisted of a group of three thoroughly inconsequential men and eight superb women. Don Juan had always maintained that such a disparity was one of the reasons why the members of the nagual Julian’s party left the world one by one.