“Are there as many inorganic beings as there are living organisms?” I asked.
He said that inorganic beings are not as plentiful as organic ones, but that this is offset by the greater num-ber of bands of inorganic awareness. Also, the differences among the inorganic beings themselves are more vast than the differences among organisms, because organisms belong to only one band while inorganic beings belong to seven bands.
“Besides, inorganic beings live infinitely longer than organisms,” he continued. “This matter is what prompted the old seers to concentrate their seeing on the allies, for reasons I will tell you about later on.”
He said that the old seers also came to realize that it is the high energy of organisms and the subsequent high development of their awareness that make them delectable morsels for the Eagle. In the old seers’ view, gluttony was the reason the Eagle produced as many organisms as possible.
He explained next that the product of the other forty great bands is not awareness at all, but a configuration of inanimate energy. The old seers chose to call whatever is produced by those bands, vessels. While cocoons and containers are fields of energetic awareness, which accounts for their independent luminosity, vessels are rigid receptacles that hold emanations without being fields of energetic awareness. Their luminosity comes only from the energy of the encased emanations.
“You must bear in mind that everything on the earth is encased,” he continued. “Whatever we perceive is made up of portions of cocoons or vessels with emanations. Ordinarily, we don’t perceive the containers of inorganic beings at all.”
He looked at me, waiting for a sign of comprehension. When he realized I was not going to oblige him, he continued explaining.
“The total world is made of the forty-eight bands,” he said. “The world that our assemblage point assembles for our normal perception is made up of two bands; one is the organic band, the other is a band that has only structure, but no awareness. The other forty-six great bands are not part of the world we normally perceive.”
He paused again for pertinent questions. I had none.
“There are other complete worlds that our assemblage points can assemble,” he went on. “The old seers counted seven such worlds, one for each band of awareness. I’ll add that two of those worlds, besides the world of everyday life, are easy to assemble; the other five are something else.”
When we again sat down to talk, don Juan immediately began to talk about my experience with la Catalina. He said that a shift of the assemblage point to the area below its customary position allows the seer a detailed and narrow view of the world we know. So detailed is that view that it seems to be an entirely different world. It is a mesmerizing view that has a tremendous appeal, especially for those seers who have an adventurous but somehow indolent and lazy spirit.
“The change of perspective is very pleasant,” don Juan went on. “Minimal effort is required, and the results are staggering. If a seer is driven by quick gain, there is no better maneuver than the shift below. The only problem is that in those positions of the assemblage point, seers are plagued by death, which happens even more brutally and more quickly than in man’s position.
“The nagual Julian thought it was a great place for cavorting, but that’s all.”
He said that a true change of worlds happens only when the assemblage point moves into man’s band, deep enough to reach a crucial threshold, at which stage the assemblage point can use another of the great bands.
“How does it use it?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s a matter of en-ergy,” he said. “The force of alignment hooks another band, provided that the seer has enough energy. Our normal energy allows our assemblage points to use the force of alignment of one great band of emanations. And we perceive the world we know. But if we have a surplus of energy, we can use the force of alignment of other great bands, and consequently we perceive other worlds.”
Don Juan abruptly changed the subject and began to talk about plants.
“This may seem like an oddity to you,” he said, “but trees, for instance, are closer to man than ants. I’ve told you that trees and man can develop a great relationship; that’s so because they share emanations.”
“How big are their cocoons?” I asked.
“The cocoon of a giant tree is not much larger than the tree itself. The interesting part is that some tiny plants have a cocoon almost as big as a man’s body and three times its width. Those are power plants. They share the largest amount of emanations with man, not the emanations of awareness, but other emanations in general.
“Another thing unique about plants is that their luminosities have different casts. They are pinkish in general, because their awareness is pink. Poisonous plants are a pale yellow pink and medicinal plants are a bright violet pink. The only ones that are white pink are power plants; some are murky white, others are brilliant white.
“But the real difference between plants and other organic beings is the location of their assemblage points. Plants have it on the lower part of their co-coon, while other organic beings have it on the upper part of their cocoon.”
“What about the inorganic beings?” I asked. “Where do they have their assemblage points?”
“Some have it on the lower part of their containers,” he said. “Those are thoroughly alien to man, but akin to plants. Others have it anywhere on the upper part of their containers. Those are close to man and other organic creatures.”
He added that the old seers were convinced that plants have the most intense communication with inorganic beings. They believed that the lower the assemblage point, the easier for plants to break the barrier of perception; very large trees and very small plants have their assemblage points extremely low in their cocoon. Because of this, a great number of the old seers’ sorcery techniques were means to harness the awareness of trees and small plants in order to use them as guides to descend to what they called the deepest levels of the dark regions.
“You understand, of course,” don Juan went on, “that when they thought they were descending to the depths, they were, in fact, pushing their assemblage points to assemble other perceivable worlds with those seven great bands.
“They taxed their awareness to the limit and assembled worlds with five great bands that are accessible to seers only if they undergo a dangerous transformation.”
“But did the old seers succeed in assembling those worlds?” I asked.
“They did,” he said. “In their aberration they believed it was worth their while to break all the barriers of perception, even if they had to become trees to do that.”
11
Stalking, Intent and the Dreaming Position
The next day, in the early evening again, don Juan came to the room where I was talking with Genaro. He took me by the arm and walked me through the house to the back patio. It was already fairly dark. We started to walk around in the corridor that encircled the patio.
As we walked, don Juan told me that he wanted to warn me once again that it is very easy in the path of knowledge to get lost in intricacies and morbidity. He said that seers are up against great enemies that can destroy their purpose, muddle their aims, and make them weak; enemies created by the warriors’ path it-self together with the sense of indolence, laziness, and self-importance that are integral parts of the daily world.
He remarked that the mistakes the ancient seers made as a result of indolence, laziness, and self-im- portance were so enormous and so grave that the new seers had no option but to scorn and reject their own tradition.
“The most important thing the new seers needed,” don Juan continued, “was practical steps in order to make their assemblage points shift. Since they had none, they began by developing a keen interest in seeing the glow of awareness, and as a result they worked out three sets of techniques that became their cornerstone.”
Don Juan said that with these three sets, the new seers accomplished a most extraordinary and difficult feat. They succeeded in systematically making the assemblage point shift away from its customary position. He acknowledged that the old seers had also accomplished that feat, but by means of capricious, idiosyncratic maneuvers.
He explained that what the new seers saw in the glow of awareness resulted in the sequence in which they arranged the old seers’ truths about awareness. This is known as the mastery of awareness. From that, they developed the three sets of techniques. The first is the mastery of stalking, the second is the mastery of intent, and the third is the mastery of dreaming. He maintained that he had taught me these three sets from the very first day we met.