“What all of you have to do is lose your human forms.”
“What do you mean?”
My question did not seem to have any meaning for her. She stared at me blankly as if waiting for me to clarify what I had just said. She closed her eyes for a moment.
“You don’t know about the human mold and the human form, do you?” she asked.
I stared at her.
“I’ve just seen that you know nothing about them,” she said and smiled.
“You are absolutely right,” I said.
“The Nagual told me that the human form is a force,” she said. “And the human mold is… well… a mold. He said that everything has a particular mold. Plants have molds, animals have molds, worms have molds. Are you sure the Nagual never showed you the human mold?”
I told her that he had sketched the concept, but in a very brief manner, once when he had tried to explain something about a dream I had had. In the dream in question I had seen a man who seemed to be concealing himself in the darkness of a narrow gully. To find him there scared me. I looked at him for a moment and then the man stepped forward and made himself visible to me. He was naked and his body glowed. He seemed to be delicate, almost frail. I liked his eyes. They were friendly and profound. I thought that they were very kind. But then he stepped back into the darkness of the gully and his eyes became like two mirrors, like the eyes of a ferocious animal.
Don Juan said that I had encountered the human mold in “dreaming.” He explained that sorcerers have the avenue of their “dreaming” to lead them to the mold, and that the mold of men was definitely an entity, an entity which could be seen by some of us at certain times when we are imbued with power, and by all of us for sure at the moment of our death. He described the mold as being the source, the origin of man, since, without the mold to group together the force of life, there was no way for that force to assemble itself into the shape of man.
He interpreted my dream as a brief and extraordinarily simplistic glance at the mold. He said that my dream had restated the fact that I was a simpleminded and very earthy man.
La Gorda laughed and said that she would have said the same thing herself. To see the mold as an average naked man and then as an animal had been indeed a very simplistic view view of the mold.
“Perhaps it was just a stupid, ordinary dream,” I said, trying to defend myself.
“No,” she said with a large grin. “You see, the human mold glows and it is always found in water holes and narrow gullies.”
“Why in gullies and water holes?” I asked.
“It feeds on water. Without water there is no mold,” she replied. “I know that the Nagual took you to water holes regularly in hopes of showing yon the mold. But your emptiness prevented you from seeing anything. The same thing happened to me. He used to make me lie naked on a rock in the very center of a particular dried-up water hole, but all I did was to feel the presence of something that scared me out of my wits.”
“Why does emptiness prevent one from seeing the mold?”
“The Nagual said that everything in the world is a force, a pull or a push. In order for us to be pushed or pulled we need to be like a sail, like a kite in the wind. But if we have a hole in the middle of our luminosity, the force goes through it and never acts upon us.
“The Nagual told me that Genaro liked you very much and tried to make you aware of the hole in your middle. He used to fly his sombrero as a kite to tease you; he even pulled you from that hole until you had diarrhea, but you never caught on to what he was doing.”
“Why didn’t they tell me as plainly as you have told me?”
“They did, but you didn’t notice their words.”
I found her statement impossible to believe. To accept that they had told me about it and I had not acknowledged it was unthinkable.
“Did you ever see the mold, Gorda?” I asked.
“Sure, when I became complete again. I went to that particular water hole one day by myself and there it was. It was a radiant, luminous being. I could not look at it. It blinded me. But being in its presence was enough. I felt happy and strong. And nothing else mattered, nothing. Just being there was all I wanted. The Nagual said that sometimes if we have enough personal power we can catch a glimpse of the mold even though we are not sorcerers; when that happens we say that we have seen God. He said that if we call it God it is the truth. The mold is God.
“I had a dreadful time understanding the Nagual, because I was a very religious woman. I had nothing else in the world but my religion. So to hear the Nagual say the things he used to say made me shiver. But then I became complete and the forces of the world began to pull me, and I knew that the Nagual was right. The mold is God. What do you think?”
“The day I see it I’ll tell you, Gorda,” I said.
She laughed, and said that the Nagual used to make fun of me, saying that the day I would see the mold I would probably become a Franciscan friar, because in the depths of me I was a religious soul.
“Was the mold you saw a man or a woman?” I asked.
“Neither. It was simply a luminous human. The Nagual said that I could have asked something for myself. That a warrior cannot let that chance pass. But I could not think of anything to ask for. It was better that way. I have the most beautiful memory of it. The Nagual said that a warrior with enough power can see the mold many, many times. What a great fortune that must be!”
“But if the human mold is what puts us together, what is the human form?”
“Something sticky, a sticky force that makes us the people we are. The Nagual told me that the human form has no form. Like the allies that he carried in his gourd, it’s anything, but in spite of not having form, it possesses us during our lives and doesn’t leave us until we die. I’ve never seen the human form but I have felt it in my body.”
She then described a very complex series of sensations that she had had over a period of years that culminated in a serious illness, the climax of which was a bodily state that reminded me of descriptions I had read of a massive heart attack. She said that the human form, as the force that it is, left her body after a serious internal battle that manifested itself as illness.
“It sounds as if you had a heart attack,” I said.
“Maybe I did,” she replied, “but one thing I know for sure. The day I had it, I lost my human form. I became so weak that for days I couldn’t even get out of my bed. Since that day I haven’t had the energy to be my old self. From time to time I have tried to get into my old habits, but I didn’t have the strength to enjoy them the way I used to. Finally I gave up trying.”
“What is the point of losing your form?”
“A warrior must drop the human form in order to change, to really change. Otherwise there is only talk about change, like in your case. The Nagual said that it is useless to think or hope that one can change one’s habits. One cannot change one iota as long as one holds on to the human form. The Nagual told me that a warrior knows that he cannot change, and yet he makes it his business to try to change, even though he knows that he won’t be able to. That’s the only advantage a warrior has over the average man. The warrior is never disappointed when he fails to change.”
“But you are still yourself, Gorda, aren’t you?”
“No. Not anymore. The only thing that makes you think you are yourself is the form. Once it leaves, you are nothing.”
“But you still talk and think and feel as you always did, don’t you?”
“Not at all. I’m new.”
She laughed and hugged me as if she were consoling a child.
“Only Eligio and I have lost our form,” she went on. “It was our great fortune that we lost it while the Nagual was among us. You people will have a horrid time. That is your fate. Whoever loses it next will have only me as a companion. I already feel sorry for whoever it will be.”