Genaro had added that on top of all that I was vin-dictive and had a tendency to get fat. They had laughed so hard I finally felt obliged to join them.
Don Juan had told me then that exercises of assembling other worlds allowed the assemblage point to gain experience in shifting. I had always wondered, however, how to get the initial boost to dislodge my assemblage point from its usual position. When I’d questioned him about it in the past he’d pointed out that since alignment is the force that is involved in everything, intent is what makes the assemblage point move.
I asked him again about it.
“You’re in a position now to answer that question yourself,” he replied. “The mastery of awareness is what gives the assemblage point its boost. After all, there is really very little to us human beings; we are, in essence, an assemblage point fixed at a certain position. Our enemy and at the same time our friend is our internal dialogue, our inventory. Be a warrior; shut off your internal dialogue; make your inventory and then throw it away. The new seers make accurate inventories and then laugh at them. Without the inventory the assemblage point becomes free.”
Don Juan reminded me that he had talked a great deal about one of the most sturdy aspects of our inventory: our idea of God. That aspect, he said, was like a powerful glue that bound the assemblage point to its original position. If I were going to assemble another true world with another great band of emanations, I had to take an obligatory step in order to release all ties from my assemblage point.
“That step is to see the mold of man,” he said. “You must do that today unaided.”
“What’s the mold of man?” I asked.
“I’ve helped you see it many times,” he replied. “You know what I’m talking about.”
I refrained from saying that I did not know what he was talking about. If he said that I had seen the mold of man, I must have done that, although I did not have the foggiest idea what it was like.
He knew what was going through my mind. He gave me a knowing smile and slowly shook his head from side to side.
“The mold of man is a huge cluster of emanations in the great band of organic life,” he said. “It is called the mold of man because the cluster appears only in-side the cocoon of man.
“The mold of man is the portion of the Eagle’s emanations that seers can see directly without any danger to themselves.”
There was a long pause before he spoke again.
“To break the barrier of perception is the last task of the mastery of awareness,” he said. “In order to move your assemblage point to that position you must gather enough energy. Make a journey of recovery. Remember what you’ve done!”
I tried unsuccessfully to recall what was the mold of man. I felt an excruciating frustration that soon turned into real anger. I was furious with myself, with don Juan, with everybody.
Don Juan was untouched by my fury. He said mat-ter-of-factly that anger was a natural reaction to the hesitation of the assemblage point to move on command.
“It will be a long time before you can apply the principle that your command is the Eagle’s command,” he said. “That’s the essence of the mastery of intent. In the meantime, make a command now not to fret, not even at the worst moments of doubt. It will be a slow process until that command is heard and obeyed as if it were the Eagle’s command.”
He also said that there was an unmeasurable area of awareness in between the customary position of the assemblage point and the position where there are no more doubts, which is almost the place where the barrier of perception makes its appearance. In that unmeasurable area, warriors fall prey to every conceivable misdeed. He warned me to be on the lockout and not lose confidence, for I would unavoidably be struck at one time or another by gripping feelings of defeat.
“The new seers recommend a very simple act when impatience, or despair, or anger, or sadness comes their way,” he continued. “They recommend that warriors roll their eyes. Any direction will do; I prefer to roll mine clockwise.
“The movement of the eyes makes the assemblage point shift momentarily. In that movement, you will find relief. This is in lieu of true mastery of intent.”’
I complained that there was not enough time for him to tell me more about intent.
“It will all come back to you someday,” he assured me. “One thing will trigger another. One key word and all of it will tumble out of you as if the door of an overstuffed closet had given way.”
He went back then to discussing the mold of man. He said that to see it on my own, unaided by anyone, was an important step, because all of us have certain ideas that must be broken before we are free; the seer who travels into the unknown to see the unknowable must be in an impeccable state of being.
He winked at me and said that to be in an impeccable state of being is to be free of rational assumptions and rational fears. He added that both my rational assumptions and my rational fears were preventing me at that moment from realigning the emanations that would make me remember seeing the mold of man. He urged me to relax and move my eyes in order to make my assemblage point shift. He repeated over and over that it was really important to remember having seen the mold before I see it again. And since he was pressed for time there was no room for my usual slowness.
I moved my eyes as he suggested. Almost immediately I forgot my discomfort and then a sudden flash of memory came to me and I remembered that I had seen the mold of man. It had happened years earlier on an occasion that had been quite memorable to me, because from the point of view of my Catholic upbringing, don Juan had made the most sacrilegious statements I had ever heard.
It had all started as a casual conversation while we hiked in the foothills of the Sonoran desert. He was explaining to me the implications of what he was doing to me with his teachings. We had stopped to rest and had sat down on some large boulders. He had continued explaining his teaching procedure, and this had encouraged me to try for the hundredth time to give him an account of how I felt about it. It was evident that he did not want to hear about it anymore. He made me change levels of awareness and told me that if I would see the mold of man, I might understand everything he was doing and thus save us both years of toil.
He gave me a detailed explanation of what the mold of man was. He did not talk about it in terms of the Eagle’s emanations, but in terms of a pattern of energy that serves to stamp the qualities of humanness on an amorphous blob of biological matter. At least, I understood it that way, especially after he further described the mold of man using a mechanical analogy. He said that it was like a gigantic die that stamps out human beings endlessly as if they were coming to it on a mass-production conveyor belt. He vividly mimed the process by bringing the palms of his hands together with great force, as if the die molded a human being each time its two halves were clapped.
He also said that every species has a mold of its own, and every individual of every species molded by the process shows characteristics particular to its own kind.
He began then an extremely disturbing elucidation about the mold of man. He said that the old seers as well as the mystics of our world have one thing in common?they have been able to see the mold of man but not understand what it is. Mystics, throughout the centuries, have given us moving accounts of their experiences. But these accounts, however beautiful, are flawed by the gross and despairing mistake of believ-ing the mold of man to be an omnipotent, omniscient creator; and so is the interpretation of the old seers, who called the mold of man a friendly spirit, a protector of man.
He said that the new seers are the only ones who have the sobriety to see the mold of man and understand what it is. What they have come to realize is that the mold of man is not a creator, but the pattern of every human attribute we can think of and some we cannot even conceive. The mold is our God because we are what it stamps us with and not because it has created us from nothing and made us in its image and likeness. Don Juan said that in his opinion to fall on our knees in the presence of the mold of man reeks of arrogance and human self-centeredness.