He told me that he had taught me the mastery of awareness in two ways, just as the new seers recommend. In his teachings for the right side, which he had done in normal awareness, he accomplished two goals: he taught me the warriors’ way, and he loosened my assemblage point from its original position. In his teachings for the left side, which he had done in heightened awareness, he also accomplished two goals: he had made my assemblage point shift to as many positions as I was capable of sustaining, and he had given me a long series of explanations.
Don Juan stopped talking and stared at me fixedly. There was an awkward silence; then he started to talk about stalking. He said that it had very humble and fortuitous origins. It started from an observation the new seers made that when warriors steadily behave in ways not customary for them, the unused emanations inside their cocoons begin to glow. And their assemblage points shift in a mild, harmonious, barely noticeable fashion.
Stimulated by this observation, the new seers began to practice the systematic control of their behavior. They called this practice the art of stalking. Don Juan remarked that the name, although objectionable, was appropriate, because stalking entailed a specific kind of behavior with people, behavior that could be cate-gorized as surreptitious.
The new seers, armed with this technique, tackled the known in a sober and fruitful way. By continual practice, they made their assemblage points move steadily.
“Stalking is one of the two greatest accomplishments of the new seers.” he said. “The new seers decided that it should be taught to a modern-day na-gual when his assemblage point has moved quite deep into the left side. The reason for this decision is that a nagual must learn the principles of stalking without the encumbrance of the human inventory. After all, the nagual is the leader of a group, and to lead them he has to act quickly without first having to think about it.
“Other warriors can learn stalking in their normal awareness, although it is advisable that they do it in heightened awareness?not so much because of the value of heightened awareness, but because it imbues stalking with a mystery that it doesn’t really have; stalking is merely behavior with people.”
He said that I could now understand that shifting the assemblage point was the reason why the new seers placed such a high value on the interaction with petty tyrants. Petty tyrants forced seers to use the principles of stalking and, in doing so, helped seers to move their assemblage points.
I asked him if the old seers knew anything at all about the principles of stalking.
‘“Stalking belongs exclusively to the new seers,” he said, smiling. “They are the only seers who had to deal with people. The old ones were so wrapped up in their sense of power that they didn’t even know that people existed, until people started clobbering them on the head. But you already know all this.”
Don Juan said next that the mastery of intent together with the mastery of stalking are the new seers’ two masterpieces, which mark the arrival of the mod-ern-day seers. He explained that in their efforts to gain an advantage over their oppressors the new seers pursued every possibility. They knew that <heir predecessors had accomplished extraordinary feats by manipulating a mysterious and miraculous force, which they could only describe as power. The new seers had very little information about that force, so they were obliged to examine it systematically through seeing. Their efforts were amply rewarded when they discovered that the energy of alignment is that force.
They began by seeing how the glow of awareness increases in size and intensity as the emanations inside the cocoon are aligned with the emanations at large. They used that observation as a springboard, just as they had done with stalking, and went on to develop a complex series of techniques to handle that alignment of emanations.
At first they referred to those techniques as the mastery of alignment. Then they realized that what was involved was much more than alignment; what was involved was the energy that comes out of the alignment of emanations. They called that energy will.
Will became the second basis. The new seers understood it as a blind, impersonal, ceaseless burst of en-ergy that makes us behave in the ways we do. Will accounts for our perception of the world of ordinary affairs, and indirectly, through the force of that perception, it accounts for the placement of the assemblage point in its customary position.
Don Juan said that the new seers examined how the perception of the world of everyday life takes place and saw the effects of will. They saw that alignment is ceaselessly renewed in order to imbue perception with continuity. To renew alignment every time with the freshness that it needs to make up a living world, the burst of energy that comes out of those very alignments is automatically rerouted to reinforce some choice alignments.
This new observation served the new seers as another springboard that helped them reach the third basis of the set. They called it intent, and they described it as the purposeful guiding of will, the energy of alignment.
“Silvio Manuel, Genaro, and Vicente were pushed by the nagual Julian to learn those three aspects of the seers’ knowledge,” he went on. “Genaro is the master of handling awareness, Vicente is the master of stalking, and Silvio Manuel is the master of intent.
“We are now doing a final explanation of the mastery of awareness; this is why Genaro is helping you.”
Don Juan talked to the female apprentices for a long time. The women listened with serious expressions on their faces. I felt sure he was giving them detailed instructions about difficult procedures, judging from the women’s fierce concentration.
I had been barred from their meeting, but I had watched them as they talked in the front room of Ge-naro’s house. I sat at the kitchen table, waiting until they were through.
Then the women got up to leave, but before they did, they came to the kitchen with don Juan. He sat down facing me while the women talked to me with awkward formality. They actually embraced me. All of them were unusually friendly, even talkative. They said that they were going to join the male apprentices, who had gone with Genaro hours earlier. Genaro was going to show all of them his dreaming body.
As soon as the women left, don Juan quite abruptly resumed his explanation. He said that as time passed and the new seers established their practices, they realized that under the prevailing conditions of life, stalking only moved the assemblage points minimally. For maximum effect, stalking needed an ideal setting; it needed petty tyrants in positions of great authority and power. It became increasingly difficult for the new seers to place themselves in such situations; the task of improvising them or seeking them out became an unbearable burden.
The new seers deemed it imperative to see the Ea-gle’s emanations in order to find a more suitable way to move the assemblage point. As they tried to see the emanations they were faced with a very serious problem. They found out that there is no way to see them without running a mortal risk, and yet they had to see them. That was the time when they used the old seers’ technique of dreaming as a shield to protect themselves from the deadly blow of the Eagle’s emanations. And in doing so, they realized that dreaming was in itself the most effective way to move the assemblage point.
“One of the strictest commands of the new seers,” don Juan continued, “was that warriors have to learn dreaming while they are in their normal state of awareness. Following that command, I began teaching you dreaming almost from the first day we met.”
“Why do the new seers command that dreaming has to be taught in normal awareness?” I asked.
“Because dreaming is so dangerous and dreamers so vulnerable,” he said. “It is dangerous because it has inconceivable power; it makes dreamers vulnerable because it leaves them at the mercy of the incomprehensible force of alignment.
“The new seers realized that in our normal state of awareness, we have countless defenses that can safeguard us against the force of unused emanations that suddenly become aligned in dreaming.”
Don Juan explained that dreaming, like stalking, began with a simple observation. The old seers be-came aware that in dreams the assemblage point shifts slightly to the left side in a most natural manner. That point indeed relaxes when man sleeps and all kinds of unused emanations begin to glow.
The old seers became immediately intrigued with that observation and began to work with that natural shift until they were able to control it. They called that control dreaming, or the art of handling the dreaming body.