“That’s precisely the point,” don Juan said. “You are not supposed to know yet. You are going to be left behind, by yourself, to reorganize on your own everything we are doing to you now. This is the task every nagual has to face.
“The nagual Julian did the same thing to me, much more ruthlessly than the way we do it to you. He knew what he was doing; he was a brilliant nagual who was able to reorganize in a few years everything the nagual Ellas had taught him. He did, in no time at all, something that would take a lifetime for you or for me. The difference was that all the nagual Julian ever needed was a slight insinuation; his awareness would take it from there and open the only door there is.”
“What do you mean, don Juan, by the only door there is?”
“I mean that when man’s assemblage point moves beyond a crucial limit, the results are always the same for every man. The techniques to make it move may be as different as they can be, but the results are al-ways the same, meaning that the assemblage point assembles other worlds, aided by the boost from the earth.”
“Is the boost from the earth the same for every man, don Juan?”
“Of course. The difficulty for the average man is the internal dialogue. Only when a state of total silence is attained can one use the boost. You will corroborate that truth the day you try to use that boost by yourself.”
“I wouldn’t recommend that you try it,” Genaro said sincerely. “It takes years to become an impeccable warrior. In order to withstand the impact of the earth’s boost you must be better than you are now.”
“The speed of that boost will dissolve everything about you,” don Juan said. “Under its impact we be-come nothing. Speed and the sense of individual existence don’t go together. Yesterday on the mountain, Genaro and I supported you and served as your anchors; otherwise you wouldn’t have returned. You’d be like some men who purposely used that boost and went into the unknown and are still roaming in some incomprehensible immensity.”
I wanted him to elaborate on that, but he refused. He changed the subject abruptly.
“There’s one thing you haven’t understood yet about the earth’s being a sentient being,” he said. “And Genaro, this awful Genaro, wants to push you until you understand.”
Both of them laughed. Genaro playfully shoved me and winked at me as he mouthed the words, “I am awful.”
“Genaro is a terrible taskmaster, mean and ruthless,” don Juan continued. “He doesn’t give a hoot about your fears and pushes you mercilessly. If it wasn’t for me…”
He was a perfect picture of a good, thoughtful old gentleman. He lowered his eyes and sighed. The two of them broke into roaring laughter.
When they had quieted down, don Juan said that Genaro wanted to show me what I had not understood yet, that the supreme awareness of the earth is what makes it possible for us to change into other great bands of emanations.
“We living beings are perceivers,” he said. “And we perceive because some emanations inside man’s cocoon become aligned with some emanations outside. Alignment, therefore, is the secret passageway, and the earth’s boost is the key.
“Genaro wants you to watch the moment of alignment. Watch him!”
Genaro stood up like a showman and took a bow, then showed us that he had nothing up his sleeves or inside the legs of his pants. He took his shoes off and shook them to show that there was nothing concealed there either.
Don Juan was laughing with total abandon. Genaro moved his hands up and down. The movement created an immediate fixation in me. I sensed that the three of us suddenly got up and walked away from the square, the two of them flanking me.
As we continued walking, I lost my peripheral vi-sion. I did not distinguish any more houses or streets. I did not notice any mountains or any vegetation either. At one moment I realized that I had lost sight of don Juan and Genaro; instead I saw two luminous bundles moving up and down beside me.
I felt an instantaneous panic, which I immediately controlled. I had the unusual but well-known sensation that I was myself and yet I was not. I was aware, however, of everything around me by means of a strange and at the same time most familiar capacity. The sight of the world came to me all at once. All of me saw; the entirety of what I in my normal consciousness call my body was capable of sensing as if it were an enormous eye that detected everything. What I first detected, after seeing the two blobs of light, was a sharp violet-purple world made out of something that looked like colored panels and cano-pies. Flat, screenlike panels of irregular concentric circles were everywhere.
I felt a great pressure all over me, and then I heard a voice in my ear. I was seeing. The voice said that the pressure was due to the act of moving. I was mov-ing together with don Juan and Genaro. I felt a faint jolt, as if I had broken a paper barrier, and I found myself facing a luminescent world. Light radiated from everyplace, but without being glaring. It was as if the sun were about to erupt from behind some white diaphanous clouds. I was looking down into the source of light. It was a beautiful sight. There were no land-masses, just fluffy white clouds and light. And we were walking on the clouds.
Then something imprisoned me again. I moved at the same pace as the two blobs of light by my sides. Gradually they began to lose their brilliance, then be-came opaque, and finally they were don Juan and Ge-naro. We were walking on a deserted side street away from the main square. Then we turned back.
“Genaro just helped you to align your emanations with those emanations at large that belong to another band,” don Juan said to me. “Alignment has to be a very peaceful, unnoticeable act. No flying away, no great fuss.”
He said that the sobriety needed to let the assemblage point assemble other worlds is something that cannot be improvised. Sobriety has to mature and be-come a force in itself before warriors can break the barrier of perception with impunity.
We were coming closer to the main square. Genaro had not said a word. He walked in silence, as if absorbed in thought. Just before we came into the square, don Juan said that Genaro wanted to show me one more thing: that the position of the assemblage point is everything, and that the world it makes us perceive is so real that it does not leave room for anything except realness.
“Genaro will let his assemblage point assemble another world just for your benefit,” don Juan said to me. “And then you’ll realize that as he perceives it, the force of his perception will leave room for nothing else.”
Genaro walked ahead of us, and don Juan ordered me to roll my eyes in a counterclockwise direction while I looked at Genaro, to avoid being dragged with him. I obeyed him. Genaro was five or six feet away from me. Suddenly his shape became diffuse and in one instant he was gone like a puff of air.
I thought of the science fiction movies I had seen and wondered whether we are subliminally aware of our possibilities.
“Genaro is separated from us at this moment by the force of perception,” don Juan said quietly. “When the assemblage point assembles a world, that world is total. This is the marvel that the old seers stumbled upon and never realized what it was: the awareness of the earth can give us a boost to align other great bands of emanations, and the force of that new alignment makes the world vanish.
“Every time the old seers made a new alignment they believed they had descended to the depths’ or ascended to the heavens above. They never knew that the world disappears like a puff of air when a new total alignment makes us perceive another total world.”
14
The Rolling Force
Don Juan was about to start his explanation of the mastery of awareness, but he changed his mind and stood up. We had been sitting in the big room, observing a moment of quiet.
“I want you to try seeing the Eagle’s emanations,” he said. “For that you must first move your assemblage point until you see the cocoon of man.”
We walked from the house to the center of town. We sat down on art empty, worn park bench in front of the church, it was early afternoon; a sunny, windy day with lots of people milling around.
He repeated, as if he were trying to drill it into me, that alignment is a unique force because it either helps the assemblage point shift, or it keeps it glued to its customary position. The aspect of alignment that keeps the point stationary, he said, is will; and the aspect that makes it shift is intent. He remarked that one of the most haunting mysteries is how will, the impersonal force of alignment, changes into intent, the personalized force, which is at the service of each individual.