“These words should be said in the late afternoon,” he said, still laughing. “Never in the morning. The morning makes one feel optimistic and such words lose their meaning.”
13
The Earth’s Boost
“Let’s walk on the road to Oaxaca,” don Juan said to me. “Genaro is waiting for us somewhere along the way.”
His request took me by surprise. I had been waiting all day for him to continue his explanation. We left his house and walked in silence through the town to the unpaved highway. We walked leisurely for a long time. Suddenly don Juan began to talk.
“I’ve been telling you all along about the great findings that the old seers made,” he said. “Just as they found out that organic life is not the only life present on earth, they also discovered that the earth itself is a living being.”
He waited a moment before continuing. He smiled at me as if inviting me to make a comment. I could not think of anything to say.
“The old seers saw that the earth has a cocoon,” he went on. “They saw that there is a ball encasing the earth, a luminous cocoon that entraps the Eagle’s emanations. The earth is a gigantic sentient being subjected to the same forces we are.”
He explained that the old seers, on discovering this, became immediately interested in the practical uses of that knowledge. The result of their interest was that the most elaborate categories of their sorcery had to do with the earth. They considered the earth to be the ultimate source of everything we are.
Don Juan reaffirmed that the old seers were not mistaken in this respect, because the earth is indeed our ultimate source.
He didn’t say anything else until we met Genaro about a mile up the road. He was waiting for us, sitting on a rock by the side of the road.
He greeted me with great warmth. He said to me that we should climb up to the top of some small rug-ged mountains covered with hardy vegetation.
“The three of us are going to sit against a rock,” don Juan said to me, “and look at the sunlight as it is reflected on the eastern mountains. When the sun goes down behind the western peaks, the earth may let you see alignment.”
When we reached the top of a mountain, we sat down, as don Juan had said, with our backs against a rock. Don Juan made me sit in between the two of them.
I asked him what he was planning to do. His cryptic statements and his long silences were ominous. I felt terribly apprehensive.
He didn’t answer me. He kept on talking as if I had not spoken at all.
“it was the old seers who, on discovering that perception is alignment,” he said, “stumbled onto something monumental. The sad part is that their aberrations again kept them from knowing what they had accomplished.”
He pointed at the mountain range east of the small valley where the town is located.
“There is enough glitter in those mountains to jolt your assemblage point,” he said to me. “Just before the sun goes down behind the western peaks, you will have a few moments to catch all the glitter you need. The magic key that opens the earth’s doors is made of internal silence plus anything that shines.”
“What exactly should I do, don Juan?” I asked.
Both of them examined me. I thought I saw in their eyes a mixture of curiosity and revulsion.
“Just cut off the internal dialogue,” don Juan said to me.
I had an intense pang of anxiety and doubt; I had no confidence that I could do it at will. After an initial moment of nagging frustration, I resigned my self just to relax.
I looked around. I noticed that we were high enough to look down into the long, narrow valley. More than half of it was in the late-afternoon shadows. The sun was still shining on the foothills of the eastern range of mountains, on the other side of the valley; the sunlight made the eroded mountains look ocher, while the more distant bluish peaks had acquired a purple tone.
“You do realize that you’ve done this before, don’t you?” don Juan said to me in a whisper.
I told him that I had not realized anything.
“We’ve sat here before on other occasions,” he insisted, “but that doesn’t matter, because this occasion is the one that will count.
“Today, with the help of Genaro, you are going to find the key that unlocks everything. You won’t be able to use it as yet, but you’ll know what it is and where it is. Seers pay the heaviest prices to know that. You, yourself, have been paying your dues all these years.”
He explained that what he called the key to everything was the firsthand knowledge that the earth is a sentient being and as such can give warriors a tremendous boost; it is an impulse that comes from the awareness of the earth itself at the instant in which the emanations inside warriors’ cocoons are aligned with the appropriate emanations inside the earth’s cocoon. Since both the earth and man are sentient beings, their emanations coincide, or rather, the earth has all the emanations present in man and all the emanations that are present in all sentient beings, organic and inorganic for that matter. When a moment of alignment takes place, sentient beings use that alignment in a limited way and perceive their world. Warriors can use that alignment either to perceive, like everyone else, or as a boost that allows them to enter unimaginable worlds.
“I’ve been waiting for you to ask me the only mean-ingful question you can ask, but you never ask it,” he continued. “You are hooked on asking about whether the mystery of it all is inside us. You came close enough, though.
“The unknown is not really inside the cocoon of man in the emanations untouched by awareness, and yet it is there, in a manner of speaking. This is the point you haven’t understood. When I told you that we can assemble seven worlds besides the one we know, you took it as being an internal affair, because your total bias is to believe that you are only imagining everything you do with us. Therefore, you have never asked me where the unknown really is. For years I have circled with my hand to point to everything around us and I have told you that the unknown is there. You never made the connection.”
Genaro began to laugh, then coughed and stood up. “He still hasn’t made the connection,” he said to don Juan.
I admitted to them that if there was a connection to be made, I had failed to make it.
Don Juan restated over and over that the portion of emanations inside man’s cocoon is in there only for awareness, and that awareness is matching that portion of emanations with the same portion of emanations at large. They are called emanations at large because they are immense; and to say that outside man’s cocoon is the unknowable is to say that within the earth’s cocoon is the unknowable. However, in-side the earth’s cocoon is also the unknown, and in-side man’s cocoon the unknown is the emanations untouched by awareness. When the glow of awareness touches them, they become active and can be aligned with the corresponding emanations at large. Once that happens the unknown is perceived and becomes the known.
“I’m too dumb, don Juan. You have to break it into smaller pieces for me,” I said.
“Genaro is going to break it up for you,” don Juan retorted.
Genaro stood up and started doing the same gait of power that he had done before, when he circled an enormous flat rock in a corn field by his house, while don Juan had watched in fascination. This time don Juan whispered in my ear that I should try to hear Genaro’s movements, especially the movements of his thighs as they went up against his chest every time he stepped.
I followed Genaro’s movements with my eyes. In a few seconds I felt that some part of me had gotten trapped in Genaro’s legs. The movement of his thighs would not let me go. I felt as if I were walking with him. I was even out of breath. Then I realized that I was actually following Genaro. I was in fact walking with him, away from the place where we had been sitting.
I did not see don Juan, just Genaro walking ahead of me in the same strange manner. We walked for hours and hours. My fatigue was so intense that I got a terrible headache, and suddenly I got sick. Genaro stopped walking and came to my side. There was an intense glare around us, and the light was reflected in Genaro’s features. His eyes glowed.