Before they started on the trip to Mexico City, she warned him that they had to disguise themselves in order to escape a sorcerer. She explained to him that her mother had also been a curer, and had been taught curing by that master sorcerer, who had demanded that she, the daughter, stay with him for life. The young man said that he had refused to ask his wife about that relationship. He only wanted to free her, so he disguised himself as an old man and disguised her as a fat woman.
Their story did not end happily. The horrible man caught them and kept them as prisoners. They did not dare to take off their disguise in front of that nightmarish man, and in his presence they carried on as if they hated each other; but in reality, they pined for each other and lived only for the short times when that man was away.
Don Juan said that the young man embraced him and told him that the room where don Juan was sleeping was the only safe place in the house. Would he please go out and be on the lockout while he made love to his wife?
“The house shook with their passion,” don Juan went on, “while I sat by the door feeling guilty for listening and scared to death that the man would come back any minute. And sure enough, I heard him com-ing into the house. I banged on the door, and when they didn’t answer, I walked in. The young woman was asleep naked and the young man was nowhere in sight. I had never seen a beautiful naked woman in my life. I was still very weak. I heard the monstrous man rattling outside. My embarrassment and my fear were so great that I passed out.”
The story about the nagual Julian’s doings annoyed me no end. I told don Juan that I had failed to understand the value of the nagual Julian’s stalking skills. Don Juan listened to me without making a single comment and let me ramble on and on.
When we finally sat down on a bench, I was very tired. I did not know what to say when he asked me why his account of the nagual Julian’s method of teaching had upset me so much.
“I can’t shake off the feeling that he was a pranks-ter,” I finally said.
“Pranksters don’t teach anything deliberately with their pranks,” don Juan retorted. “The nagual Julian played dramas, magical dramas that required a movement of the assemblage point.”
“He seems like a very selfish person to me,” I insisted.
“He seems like that to you because you are judging,” he replied. “You are being a moralist. I went through all that myself. If you feel the way you do on hearing about the nagual Julian, think of the way I must have felt myself living in his house for years. I judged him, I feared him, and I envied him, in that order.
“I also loved him, but my envy was greater than my love. I envied his ease, his mysterious capacity to be young or old at will; I envied his flair and above all his influence on whoever happened to be around. It would drive me up the walls to hear him engage people in the most interesting conversation. He always had something to say; I never did, and I always felt incompe-tent, left out.”
Don Juan’s revelations made me feel ill at ease. I wished that he would change the subject, for I did not want to hear that he was like me. In my opinion, he was indeed unequaled. He obviously knew how I felt. He laughed and patted my back.
“What I am trying to do with the story of my envy,” he went on, “is to point out to you something of great importance, that the position of the assemblage point dictates how we behave and how we feel.
“My great flaw at that time was that I could not understand this principle. I was raw. I lived through self-importance, just as you do, because that was where my assemblage point was lodged. You see, I hadn’t learned yet that the way to move that point is to establish new habits, to will it to move. When it did move, it was as if I had just discovered that the only way to deal with peerless warriors like my benefactor is not to have self-importance, so that one can cele-brate them unbiasedly.”
He said that realizations are of two kinds. One is just pep talk, great outbursts of emotion and nothing more. The other is the product of a shift of the assemblage point; it is not coupled with an emotional outburst but with action. The emotional realizations come years later after warriors have solidified, by usage, the new position of their assemblage points.
“The nagual Julian tirelessly guided all of us to that kind of shift,” don Juan went on. “He got from all of us total cooperation and total participation in his big-ger-than-life dramas. For instance, with his drama of the young man and his wife and their captor he had my undivided attention and concern. To me the story of the old man who was young was very consistent. I had seen the monstrous-looking man with my very own eyes, which meant that the young man got my undying affiliation.”
Don Juan said that the nagual Julian was a magician, a conjurer who could handle the force of will to a degree that would be incomprehensible to the average man. His dramas included magical characters sum-moned by the force of intent, like the inorganic being that could adopt a grotesque human form.
“The nagual Julian’s power was so impeccable,” don Juan went on, “that he could force anyone’s assemblage point to shift and align emanations that would make him perceive whatever the nagual Julian wanted. For example, he could look very old or very young for his age, depending on what he wanted to accomplish. And all anyone who knew the nagual could say about his age was that it fluctuated. During the thirty-two years that I knew him he was at times not much older than you are now, and at other times he was so wretchedly old that he could not even walk.”
Don Juan said that under his benefactor’s guidance his assemblage point moved unnoticeably and yet profoundly. For instance, out of nowhere one day he realized that he had a fear that on the one hand made no sense to him at all, and on the other made all the sense in the world.
“My fear was that through stupidity I would lose my chance to be free and I would repeat my father’s life.
“There was nothing wrong with my father’s life, mind you. He lived and died no better and no worse than most men; the important point is that my assemblage point had moved and I realized one day that my father’s life and death hadn’t amounted to a hill of beans, either to others or to himself.
“My benefactor told me that my father and mother had lived and died just to have me, and that their own parents had done the same for them. He said that warriors were different in that they shift their assemblage points enough to realize the tremendous price that has been paid for their lives. This shift gives them the respect and awe that their parents never felt for life in general, or for being alive in particular.”
Don Juan said that not only was the nagual Julian successful in guiding his apprentices to move their assemblage points, but that he enjoyed himself tremendously while doing it.
“He certainly entertained himself immensely with me,” don Juan went on. “When the other seers of my party began to come, years later, even I looked forward to the preposterous situations that he created and developed with each one of them.
“When the nagual Julian left the world, delight went away with him and never came back. Genaro delights us sometimes, but no one can take the nagual Julian’s place. His dramas were always bigger than life. I as-sure you we didn’t know what enjoyment was until we saw what he did when some of those dramas backfired on him.”
Don Juan rose from his favorite bench. He turned to me. His eyes were brilliant and peaceful.
“If you are ever so dumb as to fail in your task,” he said, “you must have at least enough energy to move your assemblage point in order to come to this bench. Sit down here for an instant, free of thoughts and desires; I will try to come here from wherever I am and collect you. I promise you that I will try.”
He then broke into a great laugh, as if the scope of his promise was too ludicrous to be believed.