“Are those techniques still in existence?” I asked.
“No, they are not,” he said. “But some of the seers who practiced them are.”
For reasons unknown to me, his statement caused a reaction of sheer terror in me. My breathing was altered instantly, and I couldn’t control its rapid pace.
“They’re still alive to this day, isn’t that so, Ge-naro?” don Juan asked.
“Absolutely,” Genaro muttered from an apparent state of deep sleep.
I asked don Juan if he knew the reason for my being so frightened. He reminded me about a previous occasion in that very room when they had asked me if I had noticed the weird creatures that had come in the moment Genaro opened the door.
“That day your assemblage point went very deep into the left side and assembled a frightening world,” he went on. “But I have already said that to you; what you don’t remember is that you went directly to a very remote world and scared yourself pissless there.”
Don Juan turned to Genaro, who was snoring peacefully with his legs stretched out in front of him.
“Wasn’t he scared pissless, Genaro?” he asked.
“Absolutely pissless,” Genaro muttered, and don Juan laughed.
“I want you to know that we don’t blame you for being scared,” don Juan continued. “We, ourselves, are revolted by some of the actions of the old seers. I’m sure that you have realized by now that what you can’t remember about that night is that you saw the old seers who are still alive.”
I wanted to protest that I had realized nothing, but I could not voice my words. I had to clear my throat over and over before I could articulate a word. Genaro had stood up and was gently patting my upper back, by my neck, as if I were choking.
“You have a frog in your throat,” he said.
I thanked him in a high squeaky voice.
“No, I think you have a chicken there,” he added and sat down to sleep.
Don Juan said that the new seers had rebelled against all the bizarre practices of the old seers and declared them not only useless but injurious to our total being. They even went so far as to ban those techniques from whatever was taught to new warriors; and for generations there was no mention of those practices at all.
It was in the early part of the eighteenth century that the nagual Sebastian, a member of don Juan’s direct line of naguals, rediscovered the existence of those techniques.
“How did he rediscover them?” I asked.
“He was a superb stalker, and because of his impeccability he got a chance to learn marvels,” don Juan replied.
He said that one day as the nagual Sebastian was about to start his daily routines?he was the sexton at the cathedral in the city where he lived?he found a middle-aged Indian man who seemed to be in a quandary at the door of the church.
The nagual Sebastian went to the man’s side and asked him if he needed help. “I need a bit of energy to close my gap,” the man said to him in a loud clear voice. “Would you give me some of your energy?”
Don Juan said that according to the story, the na-gual Sebastian was dumbfounded. He did not know what the man was talking about. He offered to take the Indian to see the parish priest. The man lost his patience and angrily accused the nagual Sebastian of stalling. “I need your energy because you’re a na-gual,” he said. “Let’s go quietly.”
The nagual Sebastian succumbed to the magnetic power of the stranger and meekly went with him into the mountains. He was gone for many days. When he came back he not only had a new outlook about the ancient seers, but detailed knowledge of their techniques. The stranger was an ancient Toltec. One of the last survivors.
“The nagual Sebastian found out marvels about the old seers,” don Juan went on. “He was the one who first knew how grotesque and aberrant they really were. Before him, that knowledge was only hearsay.
“One night my benefactor and the nagual Elias gave me a sample of those aberrations. They really showed it to Genaro and me together, so it’s only proper that we both show you the same sample.”
I wanted to talk in order to stall; I needed time to calm down, to think things out. But before I could say anything, don Juan and Genaro were practically dragging me out of the house. They headed for the same eroded hills we had visited before.
We stopped at the bottom of a large barren hill. Don Juan pointed toward some distant mountains to the south, and said that between the place where we stood and a natural cut in one of those mountains, a cut that looked like an open mouth, there were at least seven sites where the ancient seers had focused all the power of their awareness.
Don Juan said that those seers had not only been knowledgeable and daring but downright successful. He added that his benefactor had showed him and Genaro a site where the old seers, driven by their love for life, had buried themselves alive and actually intended the rolling force away.
“There is nothing that would catch the eye in those places,” he went on. “The old seers were careful not to leave marks. It is just a landscape. One has to see to know where those places are.”
He said that he did not want to walk to the faraway sites, but would take me to the one that was nearest. I insisted on knowing what we were after. He said that we were going to see the buried seers, and that for that we had to stay until it got dark under the cover of some green bushes. He pointed them out; they were perhaps half a mile away, up a steep slope.
We reached the patch of bushes and sat down as comfortably as we could. He began then to explain in a very low voice that in order to get energy from the earth, ancient seers used to bury themselves for periods of time, depending on what they wanted to accomplish. The more difficult their task, the longer their burial period.
Don Juan stood up and in a melodramatic way showed me a spot a few yards from where we were.
“Two old seers are buried there,” he said. “They buried themselves about two thousand years ago to escape death, not in the spirit of running away from it but in the spirit of defy ing it.”
Don Juan asked Genaro to show me the exact spot where the old seers were buried. I turned to look at Genaro and realized that he was sitting by my side sound asleep again. But to my utter amazement, he jumped up and barked like a dog and ran on all fours to the spot don Juan was pointing out. There he ran around the place in a perfect mime of a small dog.
I found his performance hilarious. Don Juan was nearly on the ground laughing.
“Genaro has shown you something extraordinary,” don Juan said, after Genaro had returned to where we were and had gone back to sleep. “He has shown you something about the assemblage point and dreaming. He’s dreaming now, but he can act as if he were fully awake and he can hear everything you say. From that position he can do more than if he were awake.”
He was silent for a moment as if assessing what to say next. Genaro snored rhythmically.
Don Juan remarked how easy it was for him to find flaws with what the old seers had done, yet, in all fairness, he never tired of repeating how wonderful their accomplishments were. He said that they understood the earth to perfection. Not only did they discover and use the boost from the earth, but they also discovered that if they remained buried, their assemblage points aligned emanations that were ordinarily inaccessible, and that such an alignment engaged the earth’s strange, inexplicable capacity to deflect the ceaseless strikes of the rolling force. Consequently, they developed the most astounding and complex techniques for burying themselves for extremely long periods of time without any detriment to themselves. In their fight against death, they learned how to elongate those periods to cover millennia.
It was a cloudy day, and night fell quickly. In no time at all, everything was in darkness. Don Juan stood up and guided me and the sleepwalker Genaro to an enormous flat oval rock that had caught my eye the moment we got to that place. It was similar to the flat rock we had visited before, but bigger. It occurred to me that the rock, enormous as it was, had deliberately been placed there.
“This is another site,” don Juan said. “This huge rock was placed here as a trap, to attract people. Soon you’ll know why.”