‘Lady Saint Ana, why does the baby cry? For an apple he has lost. I will give you one. I will give you two. One for the boy and one for you [¿ Senora Santa Ana, porque llora el nino? Por una manzana que se le ha perdido. Yo le dare una. Yo le dare dos. Una para el nino y otra para vos]’ A warmth pervaded me. It was a warmth of heart and feelings. Don Juan’s words were a distant echo. They recalled the forgotten memories of childhood.
The violence I had felt before disappeared. The resentment changed into a longing – a joyous affection for don Juan. He said I must struggle not to fall asleep; that I no longer had a body and was free to turn into anything I wanted. He stepped back. My eyes were at a normal level as though I were standing in front of him. He extended both his arms towards me and told me to come inside them.
Either I moved forward, or he came closer to me. His hands were almost on my face – on my eyes, although I did not feel them. ‘Get inside my chest,’ I heard him say. I felt I was engulfing him. It was the same sensation of the sponginess of the wall.
Then I could hear only his voice commanding me to look and see. I could not distinguish him any more. My eyes were apparently open for I saw flashes of light on a red field; it was as though I was looking at a light through my closed eyelids. Then my thoughts were turned on again. They came back in a fast barrage of images – faces, scenery. Scenes without any coherence popped up and disappeared. It was like a fast dream in which images overlap and change. Then the thoughts began to diminish in number and intensity, and soon they were gone again. There was only an awareness of affection, of being happy. I couldn’t distinguish any shapes or light. All of a sudden I was pulled up. I distinctly felt I was being lifted. And I was free, moving with tremendous lightness and speed in water or air. I swam like an eel; I contorted and twisted and soared up and down at will. I felt a cold wind blowing all around me, and I began to float like a feather back and forth, down, and down, and down.
Saturday, 28 December 1963
I woke up yesterday late in the afternoon. Don Juan told me I had slept peacefully for nearly two days. I had a splitting headache. I drank some water and got sick. I felt tired, extremely tired, and after eating I went back to sleep.
Today I felt perfectly relaxed again. Don Juan and I talked about my experience with the little smoke. Thinking that he wanted me to tell the whole story the way I always did, I began to describe my impressions, but he stopped me and said it was not necessary. He told me I had really not done anything, and that I had fallen asleep right away, so there was nothing to talk about.
‘How about the way I felt? Isn’t that important at all?’ I insisted.
‘No, not with the smoke. Later on, when you learn how to travel, we will talk; when you learn how to get into things. ‘ Does one really ” get into ” things ?’
‘Don’t you remember? You went into and through that wall.’ ‘I think I really went out of my mind.’
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘Did you behave the same way I did when you smoked for the first time, don Juan ?’
‘No, it wasn’t the same. We have different characters.’
‘How did you behave?”
Don Juan did not answer. I rephrased the question and asked it again. But he said he did not remember his experiences, and that my question was comparable to asking a fisherman how he felt the first time he fished.
He said the smoke as an ally was unique, and I reminded him that he had also said Mescalito was unique. He argued that each was unique, but that they differed in quality.
‘Mescalito is a protector because he talks to you and can guide your acts,’ he said. ‘Mescalito teaches the right way to live. And you can see him because he is outside you. The smoke, on the other hand, is an ally. It transforms you and gives you power without ever showing its presence. You can’t talk to it. But you know it exists because it takes your body away and makes you as light as air. Yet you never see it. But it is there giving you power to accomplish unimaginable things, such as when it takes your body away.’
‘I really felt I had lost my body, don Juan.’ ‘You did.’
‘You mean, I really didn’t have a body?’ ‘What do you think yourself?’ ‘Well, I don’t know. All I can tell you is what I felt.’ ‘That is all there is in reality – what you felt.’ ‘But how did you see me, don Juan? How did I appear to you?’
‘ How I saw you does not matter. It is like the time when you grabbed the pole. You felt it was not there and you went around it to make sure it was there. But when you jumped at it you felt again that it was not really there.’
‘ But you saw me as I am now, didn’t you?’
‘No! You were not as you are now!’
‘True! I admit that. But I had my body, didn’t I, although / couldn’t feel it?’
‘No! Goddammit! You did not have a body like the body you have today!’
‘ What happened to my body then?’
‘I thought you understood. The little smoke took your body.’
‘But where did it go?’
‘ How in hell do you expect me to know that?’
It was useless to persist in trying to get a ‘rational’ explanation. I told him I did not want to argue or to ask stupid questions, but if I accepted the idea that it was possible to lose my body I would lose all my rationality.
He said that I was exaggerating, as usual, and that I did not, nor was I going to, lose anything because of the little smoke.
Tuesday, 28 January 1964
I asked don Juan what he thought of the idea of giving the
smoke to anyone who wanted the experience.
He indignantly replied that to give the smoke to anyone would be just the same as killing him, for he would have no one to guide him. I asked don Juan to explain what he meant. He said I was there, alive and talking to him, because he had brought me back. He had restored my body. Without him I would never have awakened.
‘How did you restore my body, don Juan?’
‘You will learn that later, but you will have to learn to do it all by yourself. That is the reason I want you to learn as much as you can while I am still around. You have wasted enough time asking stupid questions about nonsense. But perhaps it is not in your destiny to learn all about the little smoke.’
‘Well, what shall I do, then?’
‘Let the smoke teach you as much as you can learn.’
‘Does the smoke also teach?’
‘ Of course it teaches.’
‘Does it teach as Mescalito does?’
‘No, it is not a teacher as Mescalito is. It does not show the same things.’
‘ But what does the smoke teach, then ?’
‘ It shows you how to handle its power, and to learn that you must take it as many times as you can.’ ‘
‘Your ally is very frightening, don Juan. It was unlike anything I ever experienced before. I thought I had lost my mind.”
For some reason this was the most poignant image that came to my mind. I viewed the total event from the peculiar stand of having had other hallucinogenic experiences from which to draw a comparison, and the only thing that occurred to me, over and over again, was that with the smoke one loses one’s mind.
Don Juan discarded my simile, saying that what I felt was its unimaginable power. And to handle that power, he said, one has to live a strong life. The idea of the strong life not only pertains to the preparation period, but also entails the attitude of the man after the experience. He said the smoke is so strong one can match it only with strength; otherwise, one’s life would be shattered to bits.
I asked him if the smoke had the same effect on everyone. He said it produced a transformation, but not in everyone.
‘Then, what is the special reason the smoke produced the transformation in me?’ I asked.