I went up to him, and then I realized that it was Genaro. He was sound asleep, snoring peacefully, lying face down.
“Wake him up,” don Juan said to me. “We’ve got to be going. He must be dead tired.”
I gently shook Genaro. He slowly turned around, made the sounds of someone waking up from a deep slumber. He stretched his arms, and then he opened his eyes. I screamed involuntarily and jumped back.
Genaro’s eyes were not human eyes at all. They were two points of intense amber light. The jolt of my fright had been so intense that I became dizzy. Don Juan tapped my back and restored my equilibrium.
Genaro stood up and smiled at me. His features were rigid. He moved as if he were drunk or physically impaired. He walked by me and headed directly for the wall. I winced at the imminent crash, but he went through the wall as if it were not there at all. He came back into the room through the kitchen doorway. And then, as I looked in true horror, Genaro walked on the walls, with his body parallel to the ground, and on the ceiling, with his head upside down.
I fell backwards as I tried to follow his movements. From that position I didn’t see Genaro anymore; instead I was looking at a blob of light that moved on the ceiling above me and on the walls, circling the room. It was as if someone with a giant flashlight was shining the beam on the ceiling and the walls. The beam of light was finally turned off. It disappeared from view by vanishing against a wall.
Don Juan remarked that my animal fright was al-ways out of measure, that I had to struggle to bring it under control, but that all in all, I had behaved very well. I had seen Genaro’s dreaming body as it really is, a blob of light.
I asked him how he was so sure I had done that. He replied that he had seen my assemblage point first move toward its normal setting in order to compensate for my fright, then move deeper into the left, beyond the point where there are no doubts.
“At that position there is only one thing one can see: blobs of energy,” he went on. “But from heightened awareness to that other point deeper into the left side, it is only a short hop. The real feat is to make the assemblage point shift from its normal setting to the point of no doubt.”
He added that we still had an appointment with Ge-naro’s dreaming body in the fields around the house, while I was in normal awareness.
When we were back in Silvio Manuel’s house, don Juan said that Genaro’s proficiency with the dreaming body was a very minor affair compared with what the old seers did with it.
“You’ll see that very soon,” he said with an ominous tone, then laughed.
I questioned him about it with mounting fear, and that only evoked more laughter. He finally stopped and said that he was going to talk about the way the new seers got to the dreaming body and the way they used it.
“The old seers were after a perfect replica of the body,” he continued, “and they nearly succeeded in getting one. The only thing they never could copy was the eyes. Instead of eyes, the dreaming body has just the glow of awareness. You never realized that before, when Genaro used to show you his dreaming body.
“The new seers could not care less about a perfect replica of the body; in fact, they are not even interested in copying the body at all. But they have kept just the name dreaming body to mean a feeling, a surge of energy that is transported by the movement of the assemblage point to any place in this world, or to any place in the seven worlds available to man.”
Don Juan then outlined the procedure for getting to the dreaming body. He said that it starts with an initial act, which by the fact of being sustained breeds unbending intent. Unbending intent leads to internal silence, and internal silence to the inner strength needed to make the assemblage point shift in dreams to suitable positions.
He called this sequence the groundwork. The development of control comes after the groundwork has been completed; it consists of systematically maintaining the dreaming position by doggedly holding on to the vision of the dream. Steady practice results in a great facility to hold new dreaming positions with new dreams, not so much because one gains deliberate control with practice, but because every time this control is exercised the inner strength gets fortified. Fortified inner strength in turn makes the assemblage point shift into dreaming positions, which are more and more suitable to fostering sobriety; in other words, dreams by themselves become more and more manageable, even orderly.
“The development of dreamers is indirect,” he went on. “That’s why the new seers believed we can do dreaming by ourselves, alone. Since dreaming uses a natural, built-in shift of the assemblage point, we should need no one to help us.
“What we badly need is sobriety, and no one can give it to us or help us get it except ourselves. Without it, the shift of the assemblage point is chaotic, as our ordinary dreams are chaotic.
“So, all in all, the procedure to get to the dreaming body is impeccability in our daily life.”
Don Juan explained that once sobriety is acquired and the dreaming positions become increasingly stronger, the next step is to wake up at any dreaming position. He remarked that the maneuver, although made to sound simple, was really a very complex af-fair?so complex that it requires not only sobriety but all the attributes of warriorship as well, especially in-tent.
I asked him how intent helps seers wake up at a dreaming position. He replied that intent, being the most sophisticated control of the force of alignment, is what maintains, through the dreamer’s sobriety, the alignment of whatever emanations have been lit up by the movement of the assemblage point.
Don Juan said that there is one more formidable pitfall of dreaming: the very strength of the dreaming body. For example, it is very easy for the dreaming body to gaze at the Eagle’s emanations uninterruptedly for long periods of time, but it is also very easy in the end for the dreaming body to be totally consumed by them. Seers who gazed at the Eagle’s emanations without their dreaming bodies died, and those who gazed at them with their dreaming bodies burned with the fire from within. The new seers solved the problem by seeing in teams. While one seer gazed at the emanations, others stood by ready to end the seeing.
“How did the new seers see in teams?” I asked.
“They dreamed together, ’” he replied. “As you yourself know, it’s perfectly possible for a group of seers to activate the same unused emanations. And in this case also, there are no known steps, it just happens; there is no technique to follow.”
He added that in dreaming together, something in us takes the lead and suddenly we find ourselves shar-ing the same view with other dreamers. What happens is that our human condition makes us focus the glow of awareness automatically on the same emanations that other human beings are using; we adjust the position of our assemblage points to fit the others around us. We do that on the right side, in our ordinary perception, and we also do it on the left side, while dreaming together.
12
The Nagual Julian
There was a strange excitement in the house. All the seers of don Juan’s party seemed to be so elated that they were actually absentminded, a thing that I had never witnessed before. Their usual high level of en-ergy appeared to have increased. I became very apprehensive. I asked don Juan about it. He took me to the back patio. We walked in silence for a moment. He said that the time was getting closer for all of them to leave. He was pressing his explanation in order to finish it in time.
“How do you know that you are closer to leaving?” I asked.
“It is an internal knowledge,” he said. “You’ll know it someday yourself. You see, the nagual Julian made my assemblage point shift countless times, just as I have made yours shift. Then he left me the task of realigning all those emanations which he had helped me align through these shifts. That is the task that every nagual is left to do.
“At any rate, the job of realigning all those emanations paves the way for the peculiar maneuver of lighting up all the emanations inside the cocoon. I have nearly done that. I am about to reach my maximum. Since I am the nagual, once I do light up all the emanations inside my cocoon we will all be gone in an instant.”