Castaneda, Carlos – The Second Ring of Power

They looked at one another again. They gave me the feeling

that they were struggling to keep from laughing. I told them

that all I knew about Eligio was what dona Soledad had told

me. She had said that Eligio had gone to the other world to

join the Nagual and Genaro. To me that sounded as if the

three of them had died.

Why do you talk like that. Maestro? Nestor asked with a

tone of deep concern. Not even Pablito talks like that.

I thought Pablito was going to protest. He almost stood up,

but he seemed to change his mind.

Yes, that’s right, he said. Not even I talk like that.

Well, if Eligio didn’t die, where is he? I asked.

Soledad already told you, Nestor said softly. Eligio went

to join the Nagual and Genaro.

I decided that it was best not to ask any more questions. I

did not mean my probes to be aggressive, but they always

turned out that way. Besides, I had the feeling that they did

not know much more than I did.

Nestor suddenly stood up and began to pace back and forth

in front of me. Finally he pulled me away from the table by

my armpits. He did not want me to write. He asked me if I

had really blacked out like Pablito had at the moment of jump-

ing and did not remember anything. I told him that I had had

a number of vivid dreams or visions that I could not explain

and that I had come to see them to seek clarification. They

wanted to hear about all the visions I had had.

After they had heard my accounts, Nestor said that my

visions were of a bizarre order and only the first two were of

great importance and of this earth; the rest were visions of

alien worlds. He explained that my first vision was of special

value because it was an omen proper. He said that sorcerers

always took a first event of any series as the blueprint or the

map of what was going to develop subsequently.

In that particular vision I had found myself looking at an

outlandish world. There was an enormous rock right in front

of my eyes, a rock which had been split in two. Through a

wide gap in it I could see a boundless phosphorescent plain,

a valley of some sort, which was bathed in a greenish-yellow

light. On one side of the valley, to the right, and partially cov-

ered from my view by the enormous rock, there was an un-

believable domelike structure. It was dark, almost a charcoal

gray. If my size was what it is in the world of everyday life,

the dome must have been fifty thousand feet high and miles

and miles across. Such an enormity dazzled me. I had a sensa-

tion of vertigo and plummeted into a state of disintegration.

Once more I rebounded from it and found myself on a very

uneven and yet flat surface. It was a shiny, interminable sur-

face just like the plain I had seen before. It went as far as I

could see. I soon realized that I could turn my head in any

direction I wanted on a horizontal plane, but I could not look

at myself. I was able, however, to examine the surroundings

by rotating my head from left to right and vice versa. Never-

theless, when I wanted to turn around to look behind me, I

could not move my bulk.

The plain extended itself monotonously, equally to my left

and to my right. There was nothing else in sight but an endless,

whitish glare. I wanted to look at the ground underneath my

feet but my eyes could not move down. I lifted my head up to

look at the sky; all I saw was another limitless, whitish surface

that seemed to be connected to the one I was standing on. I

then had a moment of apprehension and felt that something

was just about to be revealed to me. But the sudden and

devastating jolt of disintegration stopped my revelation. Some

force pulled me downward. It was as if the whitish surface

had swallowed me.

Nestor said that my vision of a dome was of tremendous

importance because that particular shape had been isolated by

the Nagual and Genaro as the vision of the place where all of

us were supposed to meet them someday.

Benigno spoke to me at that point and said that he had heard

Eligio being instructed to find that particular dome. He said

that the Nagual and Genaro insisted that Eligio understand

their point correctly. They always had believed Eligio to be

the best; therefore, they directed him to find that dome and to

enter its whitish vaults over and over again.

Pablito said that all three of them were instructed to find

that dome if they could, but that none of them had. I said then,

in a complaining tone, that neither don Juan nor don Genaro

had ever mentioned anything like that to me. I had had no

instruction of any sort regarding a dome.

Benigno, who was sitting across the table from me, suddenly

stood up and came to my side. He sat to my left and whispered

very softly in my ear that perhaps the two old men had in-

structed me but I did not remember, or that they had not said

anything about it so I would not fix my attention on it once I

had found it.

Why was the dome so important? I asked Nestor.

Because that’s where the Nagual and Genaro are now, he

replied.

And where’s that dome? I asked.

Somewhere on this earth, he said.

I had to explain to them at great length that it was impossi-

ble that a structure of that magnitude could exist on our planet.

I said that my vision was more like a dream and domes of that

height could exist only in fantasies. They laughed and patted

me gently as if they were humoring a child.

You want to know where Eligio is, Nestor said all of a

sudden. Well, he is in the white vaults of that dome with the

Nagual and Genaro.

But that dome was a vision, I protested.

Then Eligio is in a vision, Nestor said. Remember what

Benigno just said to you. The Nagual and Genaro didn’t tell

you to find that dome and go back to it over and over. If they

had, you wouldn’t be here. You’d be like Eligio, in the dome

of that vision. So you see, Eligio did not die like a man in the

street dies. He simply did not return from his jump.

His claim was staggering to me. I could not brush aside the

memory of the vividness of the visions I had had, but for some

strange reason I wanted to argue with him. Nestor, without

giving me time to say anything, drove his point a notch fur-

ther. He reminded me of one of my visions: the next to the

last. That particular one had been the most nightmarish of

them all. I had found myself being chased by a strange, unseen

creature. I knew that it was there but I could not see it, not

because it was invisible but because the world I was in was so

incredibly unfamiliar that I could not tell what anything was.

Whatever the elements of my vision were, they were certainly

not from this earth. The emotional distress I experienced upon

being lost in such a place was almost more than I could bear.

At one moment, the surface where I stood began to shake. I

felt that it was caving in under my feet and I grabbed a sort of

branch, or an appendage of a thing that reminded me of a tree,

which was hanging just above my head on a horizontal plane.

The instant I touched it, the thing wrapped around my wrist,

as if had been filled with nerves that sensed everything. I felt

that I was being hoisted to a tremendous height. I looked down

and saw an incredible animal; I knew it was the unseen crea-

ture that had been chasing me. It was coming out of a surface

that looked like the ground. I could see its enormous mouth

open like a cavern. I heard a chilling, thoroughly unearthly

roar, something like a shrill, metallic gasp, and the tentacle that

had me caught unraveled and I fell into that cavernous mouth,

I saw every detail of that mouth as I was falling into it. Then

it closed with me inside. I felt an instantaneous pressure that

mashed my body.

You have already died, Nestor said. That animal ate you.

You ventured beyond this world and found horror itself. Our

life and our death are no more and no less real than your short

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