ously at my  confusion when  I asked him if  he  was
pulling my leg.
     "I  wouldn't  dream of doing that," he  said, smiling.  "Genaro may  do
that, but not I, especially  when I know how you feel about classifications.
It's just that the new seers were terribly irreverent."
     He added  that the little  petty tyrants are further  divided into four
categories. One that torments with brutality and violence. Another that does
it by creating  unbearable  apprehension through deviousness.  Another which
oppresses with  sadness.  And the  last, which  torments by making  warriors
rage.
     "La Gorda is  in  a class  of her  own," he  added. "She is  an acting,
small-fry petty  tyrant. She annoys  you to  pieces and makes you  rage. She
even slaps you. With all that she is teaching you detachment."
     "That's not possible!" I protested.
     "You  haven't  yet put together  all the ingredients of the new  seers'
strategy,"  he said. "Once you do that, you'll know how efficient and clever
is the device  of  using a  petty  tyrant. I would  certainly say  that  the
strategy not only gets rid of self-importance; it also prepares warriors for
the final  realization that impeccability is the  only thing that  counts in
the path of knowledge."
     He  said that what the  new seers had  in mind was a deadly maneuver in
which  the  petty  tyrant  is like  a mountain peak and  the  attributes  of
warriorship are like climbers who meet at the summit.
     "Usually,  only  four attributes are  played,"  he went on. "The fifth,
will,  is always  saved for an  ultimate  confrontation,  when  warriors are
facing the firing squad, so to speak."
     "Why is it done that way?"
     "Because wilt  belongs  to another  sphere, the unknown. The other four
belong to the known, exactly where  the petty tyrants are  lodged. In  fact,
what turns human  beings  into  petty  tyrants  is  precisely the  obsessive
manipulation of the known."
     Don Juan explained  that the interplay of all  the five  attributes  of
warriorship  is done only by seers who are also impeccable warriors and have
mastery over will. Such  an interplay  is a  supreme maneuver that cannot be
performed on the daily human stage.
     "Four attributes are all that is needed to deal with the worst of petty
tyrants," he continued.  "Provided, of  course, that a petty tyrant has been
found. As I said, the petty tyrant is the outside element, the one we cannot
control and the element that is perhaps  the most important of them  all. My
benefactor used to say that the warrior who  stumbles on a petty tyrant is a
lucky one. He meant that you're fortunate if you come upon one in your path,
because if you don't, you have to go out and look for one."
     He explained that one  of the greatest accomplishments of the seers  of
the  Conquest  was  a construct he  called the  three-phase  progression. By
understanding  the nature of man, they were able to reach  the incontestable
conclusion that if seers  can  hold  their own in facing petty tyrants, they
can certainly face  the unknown with impunity, and then  they can even stand
the presence of the unknowable.
     "The  average  man's  reaction is  to think  that  the  order  of  that
statement should be reversed," he went on. "A  seer who can  hold his own in
the face of the unknown can certainly face petty tyrants. But that's not so.
What destroyed the superb seers of  ancient  times was  that  assumption. We
know better now. We know that nothing can temper  the spirit of a warrior as
much as  the challenge of dealing with impossible  people  in  positions  of
power.  Only under  those conditions can warriors acquire the  sobriety  and
serenity to stand the pressure of the unknowable."
     I  vociferously  disagreed  with him.  I  told him  that in my  opinion
tyrants  can  only render their victims helpless or make them as  brutal  as
they themselves  are. I pointed out that countless studies  had been done on
the effects of physical and psychological torture on such victims.
     "The difference is in something you just said," he  retorted. "They are
victims,  not warriors. Once I  felt just as you do. I'll tell you what made
me change, but first let's go back again to what I  said about the Conquest.
The seers of  that time  couldn't have found a better ground. The  Spaniards
were the petty  tyrants who  tested  the  seers' skills to the limit;  after
dealing with the conquerors, the seers were capable of facing anything. They
were the lucky ones. At that time there were petty tyrants everywhere.
     "After  all  those marvelous years of abundance  things changed a great
deal. Petty tyrants never again had that  scope;  it was  only during  those
times that  their  authority was unlimited.  The perfect  ingredient for the
making of a superb seer is a petty tyrant with unlimited prerogatives.
     "In  our times,  unfortunately, seers have to go to extremes to  find a
worthy one. Most of the time they have to be satisfied with very small fry."
     "Did you find a petty tyrant yourself, don Juan?"
     "I was lucky. A king-size one  found me. At  the  time, though, I  felt
like you; I couldn't consider myself fortunate."
     Don  Juan said that his ordeal  began  a few weeks  before  he  met his
benefactor. He was barely twenty years  old at the time. He had gotten a job
at a sugar mill working as a laborer. He had always been very  strong, so it
was  easy  for  him  to  get  jobs that required muscle. One day when he was
moving some heavy sacks of sugar a woman came by. She  was very well dressed
and seemed to be a woman of means. She was perhaps in  her fifties, don Juan
said,  and  very domineering.  She looked at don Juan  and then spoke to the
foreman and left. Don Juan was then approached by the foreman, who  told him
that for a  fee he  would recommend him for a job  in  the boss's house. Don
Juan told  the man that he had no money. The foreman  smiled and said not to
worry because he would have plenty on payday.  He patted don Juan's back and
assured him it was a great honor to work for the boss.
     Don Juan  said that being a lowly ignorant Indian living hand-to-mouth,
not only did he believe every word, he thought a good fairy had touched him.
He promised to pay the foreman anything he wished. The foreman named a large
sum, which had to be paid in installments.
     Immediately thereafter  the foreman himself took don Juan to the house,
which  was quite  a distance  from the town, and left him there with another
foreman, a huge, somber, ugly man who asked a lot of questions. He wanted to
know about don Juan's family. Don Juan answered that he didn't have any. The
man was so pleased that he even smiled through his rotten teeth.
     He promised don Juan that they would pay him plenty, and that  he would
even be  in a position  to save money, because he didn't have to  spend any,
for he was going to live and eat in the house.
     The  way the  man laughed  was terrifying. Don Juan knew that he had to
escape  immediately. He  ran for the  gate, but the man cut in  front of him
with a revolver in  his hand. He cocked  it and  rammed  it into don  Juan's
stomach. "You're here to work yourself to the bone," he said. "And don't you
forget it." He shoved don Juan around with a billy club. Then he took him to
the side of the house  and, after observing that he worked his men every day
from sunrise to sunset without a break, he put don Juan to work digging  out
two enormous tree  stumps. He also told don  Juan  that if he  ever tried to
escape or went to the  authorities he would shoot him dead-- and that if don
Juan should  ever get away, he would swear in court that don Juan  had tried
to  murder the  boss. "You'll  work here  until you  die," he said. "Another
Indian will get your job then, just as you're taking a dead Indian's place."
     Don  Juan said that the  house  looked like  a fortress, with armed men
with  machetes  everywhere.  So he got busy  working and tried  not to think
about his predicament. At the end  of the  day, the man came back and kicked
him all the  way to the kitchen, because he did not like the defiant look in
don Juan's  eyes. He threatened to cut the  tendons of don Juan's arms if he
didn't obey him.
     In the kitchen an old woman brought food, but don Juan was so upset and
afraid that he couldn't eat. The old woman advised him  to eat as much as he
could. He had to be strong, she said, because his work  would never end. She
warned him that the man who had held his job had died just a day earlier. He
was too weak to work and had fallen from a second-story window.
     Don  Juan said that he  worked at the boss's place for three weeks  and
that the man bullied  him every moment of every day. He made him work  under
the most dangerous conditions, doing the heaviest work imaginable, under the
constant  threat of his knife, gun, or billy club.  He sent him daily to the
stables to clean the stalls while the nervous stallions were in them. At the
beginning of every day don Juan thought it would  be his last  one on earth.
And surviving meant only that  he  had to go through the same hell again the
next day.
     What precipitated the end was don Juan's request to have some time off.
The pretext was that he needed to go to town to pay the foreman of the sugar
mill the money  that he owed  him. The other  foreman retorted that don Juan
could not  stop working, not even for a minute, because he was in debt up to
his ears just for the privilege of working there.
     Don Juan knew that he was done for.  He understood the man's maneuvers.
Both he and the other foreman were in cahoots to get  lowly Indians from the
mill,  work  them to death,  and divide  their  salaries.  That  realization
angered him so intensely that  he ran through the  kitchen screaming and got
inside the main house. The foreman and the other workers were caught totally
by surprise. He ran out  the front door and almost got away, but the foreman
caught up with him on the road  and shot him  in the  chest. He left him for
dead.
     Don Juan said that it was  not his destiny to die; his benefactor found
him there and tended him until he got well.
     "When I told my benefactor the whole story," don  Juan  said, "he could
hardly  contain  his excitement.  'That  foreman  is  really  a  prize,'  my
benefactor said. 'He is too good to be  wasted.  Someday you must go back to
that house. '
     "He raved about my luck in finding a one-in-a-million petty tyrant with
almost unlimited power. I thought the old man was nuts. It was years  before
I fully understood what he was talking about."
     "That is one of the most horrible stories I have ever  heard,"  I said.
"Did you really go back to that house?"
     "I certainly did,  three years  later. My benefactor was right. A petty
tyrant like that one was one in a million and couldn't be wasted."
     "How did you manage to go back?"
     "My  benefactor  developed  a strategy  using the  four  attributes  of
warriorship: control, discipline, forbearance, and timing."
     Don Juan said that his benefactor, in explaining to him what  he had to
do to  profit from facing that ogre of a  man, also  told him  what the  new
seers considered  to be the four steps on the  path of knowledge.  The first
step  is the decision to become  apprentices.  After  the apprentices change
their views about themselves  and the world they take  the second  step  and
become warriors,  which is to say, beings capable  of the  utmost discipline
and control over themselves. The third step, after acquiring forbearance and
timing, is  to become men of knowledge.  When men of knowledge learn  to see
they have taken the fourth step and have become seers.
     His benefactor stressed the fact that don Juan had been  on the path of
knowledge  long  enough  to  have  acquired  a  minimum  of  the  first  two
attributes:  control and discipline. Don Juan emphasized that both  of these
attributes  refer  to an inner state.  A warrior is self-oriented, not in  a
selfish  way, but in the sense of a total  and continuous examination of the
self.
     "At  that  time, I was barred from the other two attributes," don  Juan
went on. "Forbearance and timing  are not quite  an inner state. They are in
the domain of the man of knowledge. My benefactor showed them to me  through
his strategy."
     "Does  this  mean  that  you couldn't  have faced  the  petty tyrant by
yourself?" I asked.
     "I'm  sure that  I could  have done it  myself, although I have  always
doubted  that  I would have  carried it  off with  flair and joyfulness.  My
benefactor was simply  enjoying the encounter  by  directing it. The idea of
using  a petty tyrant is  not only for perfecting the warrior's  spirit, but
also for enjoyment and happiness."
     "How could anyone enjoy the monster you described?"
     "He  was nothing  in comparison to the real monsters that the new seers
faced during the Conquest. By all indications those seers enjoyed themselves
blue dealing  with  them. They proved that even  the worst tyrants can bring
delight, provided, of course, that one is a warrior."
     Don Juan explained  that the mistake  average men  make in  confronting
petty tyrants is  not to have a strategy to fall  back on; the fatal flaw is
that average men  take themselves too seriously; their actions and feelings,
as well as  those of  the petty tyrants, are allimportant. Warriors,  on the
other  hand, not only  have  a well-thought-out  strategy, but are free from
self-importance. What  restrains  their  self-importance  is that  they have
understood that reality is an interpretation we make. That knowledge was the
definitive   advantage  that  the  new  seers  had  over  the  simple-minded
Spaniards.
     He said that he became convinced he could defeat the foreman using only
the  single  realization that  petty tyrants  take  themselves  with  deadly
seriousness while warriors do not.
     Following  his benefactor's strategic plan, therefore,  don  Juan got a
job in the  same sugar mill as before. Nobody remembered that  he had worked
there in the past; peons came to that sugar mill and left it without leaving
a trace.
     His benefactor's strategy specified that don Juan had  to be solicitous
of whoever came to  look for another victim. As  it happened, the same woman
came and spotted him, as she had done years ago. This time he was physically
even stronger than before.
     The same routine took place. The strategy, however, called for refusing
payment  to the foreman from the outset. The man had never been turned  down
and was taken aback. He threatened to fire don Juan  from the job. Don  Juan
threatened him  back,  saying that he would go directly to the  lady's house
and see her.  Don Juan knew that the woman, who was the wife of the owner of
the mill, did not know what the  two foremen were up to. He told the foreman
that he  knew where she  lived, because  he had  worked in  the  surrounding
fields cutting sugar cane. The man began  to  haggle,  and don Juan demanded
money from him before he would accept going to the lady's house. The foreman
gave  in  and handed  him a few bills. Don Juan was perfectly aware that the
foreman's acquiescence was just a ruse to get him to go to the house.
     "He himself once again took me to the house," don Juan said. "It was an
old hacienda owned  by the people  of  the sugar mill--  rich men who either
knew  what was going on  and  didn't  care, or were too indifferent even  to
notice.
     "As soon as we got there, I ran into  the house to look for the lady. I
found her  and dropped to my knees and kissed her hand to thank her. The two
foremen were livid.
     "The  foreman at  the house followed the same pattern as before.  But I
had  the proper  equipment  to deal with  him;  I  had  control, discipline,
forbearance, and timing. It turned out as  my benefactor had planned  it. My
control  made me  fulfill  the  man's  most  asinine  demands. What  usually
exhausts  us  in  a  situation  like  that  is  the  wear  and  tear  on our
self-importance.  Any man who has an iota  of pride is ripped apart by being
made to feel worthless.
     "I gladly did everything he asked of me. I was joyful and strong. And I
didn't give a fig about my  pride or my fear. I was  there as an  impeccable
warrior. To  tune the  spirit when  someone is trampling  on  you  is called
control."
     Don Juan explained that his benefactor's strategy required that instead
of feeling sorry  for  himself  as he  had done before, he immediately go to
work  mapping  the  man's  strong  points,  his  weaknesses,  his quirks  of
behavior.
     He found that the  foreman's strongest points were  his violent  nature
and  his daring. He had  shot don  Juan in broad  daylight and  in  sight of
scores  of  onlookers. His  great weakness was that he liked his job and did
not want to endanger it. Under no circumstances could he attempt to kill don
Juan inside  the compound in the daytime. His other weakness was that he was
a family man.  He had  a  wife  and  children who lived in a shack  near the
house.
     "To gather all this information while they are beating you up is called
discipline," don Juan said. "The  man was a regular fiend. He  had no saving
grace.  According to the new seers, a perfect petty  tyrant has no redeeming
feature."
     Don Juan said that the other two attributes of warriorship, forbearance
and timing, which he did  not  yet  have, had been automatically included in
his benefactor's strategy. Forbearance  is to wait  patiently-- no rush,  no
anxiety-- a simple, joyful holding back of what is due.
     "I  groveled  daily,"  don  Juan continued, "sometimes crying under the
man's whip. And yet  I was  happy. My benefactor's strategy was what made me
go from  day to day without hating  the man's guts. I was a warrior.  I knew
that  I was  waiting  and  I knew what I was waiting for. Right there is the
great joy of warriorship."
     He  added  that  his  benefactor's  strategy called  for  a  systematic
harassment of the man by taking cover with a higher order, just as the seers
of the new cycle  had done during the Conquest by shielding  themselves with
the Catholic church.  A  lowly priest  was  sometimes more powerful  than  a
nobleman.
     Don Juan's shield was the lady who got him the job. He kneeled in front
of her and called her a saint every  time  he saw her. He begged her to give
him the medallion of her patron saint so he could pray to him for her health
and well-being.
     "She gave me one,"  don Juan went on, "and that rattled  the foreman to
pieces. And when I got  the  servants to pray at night he nearly had a heart
attack. I think he  decided then to kill me. He couldn't afford to let me go
on.
     "As a countermeasure I organized a rosary among all the servants of the
house. The lady thought I had the makings of a most pious man.
     "I  didn't sleep  soundly after that, nor  did  I sleep  in my  bed.  I
climbed to the  roof every night. From there I saw the man twice looking for
me in the middle of the night with murder in his eyes.
     "Daily he shoved me into the  stallions' stalls  hoping that I would be
crushed to  death,  but I had a plank of heavy boards that I  braced against
one of the  corners and protected  myself  behind  it.  The man  never  knew
because  he was  nauseated by the  horses-- another  of his  weaknesses, the
deadliest of all, as things turned out."
     Don Juan said  that timing  is the quality that governs  the release of
all that is held back. Control,  discipline, and forbearance  are like a dam
behind which everything is pooled. Timing is the gate in the dam.
     The man knew  only violence,  with which he terrorized. If his violence
was neutralized he was rendered  nearly helpless. Don Juan knew that the man
would not dare to kill him in view of the house, so one day, in the presence
of the other workers but in sight of his lady as well, don Juan insulted the
man. He called him a coward, who was mortally afraid of the boss's wife.
     His  benefactor's  strategy  had called  for  being on the  alert for a
moment like that  and  using it  to turn  the  tables on the  petty  tyrant.
Unexpected things always happen that way. The lowest of the  slaves suddenly
makes fun of the tyrant, taunts him, makes him feel  ridiculous in front  of
significant witnesses, and  then rushes away without  giving the tyrant time
to retaliate.
     "A  moment  later,  the man  went  crazy with rage, but  I  was already
solicitously kneeling in front of the lady," he continued.
     Don Juan said that when the lady went inside the house, the man and his
friends called him to the back, allegedly to do some  work. The man was very
pale, white with anger.  From the sound of his voice  don Juan knew what the
man was really planning to do. Don Juan pretended  to acquiesce, but instead
of heading for the  back, he ran for the stables. He trusted that the horses
would make such a racket the owners would come out to see what was wrong. He
knew that the man would not dare shoot  him.  That would have been too noisy
and  the man's fear of endangering his job was too  overpowering.  Don  Juan
also knew that the man would not go where the horses were-- that  is, unless
he had been pushed beyond his endurance.
     "I  jumped inside  the stall  of the wildest stallion," don  Juan said,
"and  the petty  tyrant, blinded by rage, took out his  knife and  jumped in
after  me. I went  instantly behind my planks. The horse kicked him once and
it was all over.
     "I had spent six months in that house  and in that period of time I had
exercised  the  four  attributes  of  warriorship.  Thanks  to  them, I  had
succeeded. Not once had  I felt sorry for myself or wept in impotence. I had
been joyful  and  serene. My control and discipline were  as  keen as they'd
ever been, and I had had a firsthand view of what forbearance and timing did
for impeccable warriors. And I had not once wished the man to die.
     "My benefactor explained something very interesting. Forbearance  means
holding back with the spirit something that  the warrior knows is rightfully
due. It  doesn't  mean that a  warrior  goes  around plotting  to do anybody
mischief,  or  planning to  settle  past  scores. Forbearance  is  something
independent. As long  as  the warrior  has control, discipline,  and timing,
forbearance assures giving whatever is due to whoever deserves it."
     "Do petty tyrants sometimes win, and destroy the warrior facing  them?"
I asked.
     "Of  course.  There  was  a time when  warriors died  like flies at the
beginning  of the Conquest. Their ranks  were  decimated.  The petty tyrants
could  put  anyone to death,  simply acting  on a  whim. Under  that kind of
pressure seers reached sublime states."
     Don Juan  said that that  was  the time when the surviving seers had to
exert themselves to the limit to find new ways.
     "The  new seers  used petty  tyrants,"  don  Juan said,  staring at  me
fixedly, "not only  to get rid of their  self-importance, but to  accomplish
the very  sophisticated maneuver  of moving themselves  out  of  this world.
You'll understand  that maneuver  as we keep  on discussing  the  mastery of
awareness."
     I explained to don Juan that what I had wanted to know was  whether, in
the present, in our times, the petty tyrants he  had called small fry  could
ever defeat a warrior.
     "All  the time," he replied. "The consequences aren't as  dire as those
in the remote past. Today it goes without saying that warriors always have a
chance to  recuperate  or  to retrieve and come  back  later.  But there  is
another side to this problem. To  be defeated by a small-fry petty tyrant is
not deadly, but devastating. The degree of mortality, in a figurative sense,
is almost as high. By that I mean that warriors  who succumb  to a small-fry
petty tyrant are obliterated by their own sense of failure and unworthiness.
That spells high mortality to me."
     "How do you measure defeat?"
     "Anyone  who joins the  petty tyrant  is  defeated.  To  act  in anger,
without control and discipline, to have no forbearance, is to be defeated."

     "What happens after warriors are defeated?"
     "They either regroup themselves or they abandon the quest for knowledge
and join the ranks of the petty tyrants for life."

     3 The Eagle's Emanations

     The next day, don Juan and I went for a walk along the road to the city
of Oaxaca. The road was deserted at that hour. It was 2: 00 p. m.
     As we strolled leisurely, don Juan suddenly began to talk. He said that
our discussion about the petty  tyrants  had  been merely an introduction to
the topic of awareness. I remarked that it had  opened a new view for me. He
asked me to explain what I meant.
     I told him that it  had  to do with  an argument we had  had some years
before about the Yaqui Indians. In the course of his teachings for the right
side, he  had tried to tell  me about the  advantages that  the Yaquis could
find  in  being  oppressed. I  had passionately  argued that  there were  no
possible advantages in  the wretched  conditions in  which they lived. And I
had told him that  I could not understand how, being a Yaqui himself, he did
not react against such a flagrant injustice.
     He had  listened attentively. Then,  when I was  sure he  was going  to
defend his  point, he agreed that the conditions  of  the Yaqui Indians were
indeed wretched. But he  pointed out that it  was useless to single out  the
Yaquis when life conditions of man in general were horrendous.
     "Don't just feel  sorry for the poor Yaqui Indians," he had said. "Feel
sorry for mankind. In  the case of the Yaqui Indians, I can even say they're
the  lucky ones.  They are  oppressed, and because of that, some of them may
come out triumphant in the end. But the oppressors,  the petty tyrants  that
tread upon them, they don't have a chance in hell."
     I had immediately answered  him  with a barrage of political slogans. I
had not understood his point at all. He  again  tried to explain to  me  the
concept of petty  tyrants, but the  whole  idea bypassed me. It was only now
that everything fit into place.
     "Nothing has fit into  place yet," he said, laughing at what I had told
him. "Tomorrow, when you are  in your normal state of awareness,  you  won't
even remember what you've realized now."
     I felt utterly depressed, for I knew he was right.
     "What's going  to happen to you is what happened to me,"  he continued.
"My  benefactor,  the nagual Julian, made me realize in heightened awareness
what you have realized  yourself about petty tyrants. And  I ended up, in my
daily life, changing my opinions without knowing why.
     "I had always been oppressed, so I had real venom toward my oppressors,
imagine  my  surprise when  I  found  myself  seeking the company  of  petty
tyrants. I thought I had lost my mind."
     We came to a place, on the side of the  road, where some large boulders
were half buried by an old landslide; don Juan headed  for them and sat down
on a flat rock. He signaled  me  to sit down, facing him.  And  then without
further  preliminaries,  he  started  his  explanation  of  the  mastery  of
awareness.
     He said that there were a series of truths that seers, old and new, had
discovered about awareness,  and  that  such  truths had  been arranged in a
specific sequence for purposes of comprehension.
     He explained  that the mastery  of awareness consisted in internalizing
the total sequence of  such truths. The first truth,  he said, was  that our
familiarity with the  world  we perceive  compels us  to believe that we are
surrounded by objects, existing by themselves and as themselves, just as  we
perceive them,  whereas,  in  fact,  there is no  world  of objects,  but  a
universe of the Eagle's emanations.
     He told me then that before he could explain the Eagle's emanations, he
had to talk about  the  known, the  unknown, and the unknowable. Most of the
truths  about awareness were discovered by the old seers, he  said.  But the
order in which they were  arranged had been worked out by the new seers. And
without that order those truths were nearly incomprehensible.
     He said that not to seek order  was one of  the great mistakes that the
ancient  seers  made.  A  deadly  consequence  of  that  mistake  was  their
assumption that the unknown and the unknowable are the same thing. It was up
to the new seers  to correct that error. They set up  boundaries and defined
the  unknown as something that is veiled from  man, shrouded  perhaps  by  a
terrifying  context,  but  which, nonetheless,  is  within man's reach.  The
unknown  becomes the known  at a given  time.  The unknowable, on the  other
hand,  is  the  indescribable, the  unthinkable,  the  unrealizable.  It  is
something that will never be known to us, and yet it is there, dazzling  and
at the same time horrifying in its vastness.
     "How can seers make the distinction between the two?" I asked.
     "There  is a  simple  rule  of thumb,"  he said. "In  the face  of  the
unknown, man  is  adventurous. It  is a quality of the  unknown to give us a
sense  of  hope  and  happiness.  Man  feels robust, exhilarated.  Even  the
apprehension that it arouses is very fulfilling.  The new seers saw that man
is at his best in the face of the unknown."
     He  said that whenever what is taken to be the unknown turns out  to be
the unknowable the results are disastrous. Seers  feel drained, confused.  A
terrible oppression takes possession of them. Their  bodies lose tone, their
reasoning  and sobriety wander  away aimlessly, for  the unknowable  has  no
energizing effects whatsoever. It is not within human  reach;  therefore, it
should  not  be intruded  upon foolishly or even  prudently. The  new  seers
realized that  they had  to be  prepared  to pay exorbitant prices  for  the
faintest contact with it.
     Don Juan explained that the new  seers  had had  formidable barriers of
tradition to overcome. At the  time when the new cycle  began,  none of them
knew for certain which procedures of  their immense tradition were the right
ones and  which  were not.  Obviously,  something  had  gone  wrong with the
ancient seers, but the new seers did not  know what. They  began by assuming
that everything  their  predecessors had  done was  erroneous. Those ancient
seers had been the masters of conjecture.  They had, for  one thing, assumed
that  their proficiency  in seeing was a safeguard. They  thought  that they
were untouchable-- that is, until the invaders smashed them, and put most of
them to horrendous deaths. The  ancient seers had no protection  whatsoever,
despite their total certainty that they were invulnerable.
     The new seers did not waste their  time in speculations about what went
wrong. Instead, they began to map the unknown in  order  to separate it from
the unknowable.
     "How did they map the unknown, don Juan?" I asked.
     "Through the controlled use of seeing," he replied.
     I said that what  I had meant to  ask was, what was entailed in mapping
the unknown?
     He answered that mapping the  unknown means making it  available to our
perception.  By  steadily  practicing seeing, the  new seers found  that the
unknown and  the  known  are really on the same  footing,  because both  are
within the reach of human perception. Seers, in fact, can leave the known at
a given moment and enter into the unknown.
     Whatever is beyond our capacity to perceive is the unknowable.  And the
distinction between it and the knowable is crucial. Confusing the two  would
put seers in a  most  precarious  position whenever they are confronted with
the unknowable.
     "When  this  happened to the  ancient seers," don  Juan went  on, "they
thought their procedures had  gone haywire. It  never occurred  to them that
most  of  what's out there  is beyond our comprehension. It was a terrifying
error of judgment on their part, for which they paid dearly."
     "What  happened  after  the  distinction between  the  unknown and  the
unknowable was realized?" I asked.
     "The new  cycle began," he replied. "That distinction  is the  frontier
between the old and the  new. Everything that the new seers have done  stems
from understanding that distinction."
     Don  Juan  said  that  seeing  was the  crucial  element  in  both  the
destruction of the ancient seers' world and in the reconstruction of the new
view. It was through seeing that the new seers discovered certain undeniable
facts,  which they  used to arrive  at certain conclusions, revolutionary to
them, about the nature of man and the world. These  conclusions, which  made
the new cycle possible, were the truths about awareness he was explaining to
me.

     Don Juan asked  me to accompany him to the center of  town for a stroll
around the square. On our way, we began to talk about machines  and delicate
instruments. He said  that instruments are extensions  of our  senses, and I
maintained that there are instruments that are not in that category, because
they   perform  functions  that  we  are   not  physiologically  capable  of
performing.
     "Our senses are capable of everything," he asserted.
     "I  can tell  you  offhand  that there are instruments that  can detect
radio waves that come from outer space," I  said.  "Our senses cannot detect
radio waves."
     "I have  a different idea," he said. "I  think our  senses  can  detect
everything we are surrounded by."
     "What about the case  of ultrasonic sounds?" I insisted. "We don't have
the organic equipment to hear them."
     "It is the seers' conviction that we've tapped a very small portion  of
ourselves," he replied.
     He immersed  himself  in  thought for a  while as if he were  trying to
decide what to say next. Then he smiled.
     "The first truth  about awareness, as  I  have  already  told  you," he
began, "is that the world  out  there is  not really as  we think it is.  We
think it is a world of objects and it's not."
     He paused as if to measure  the effect of his  words. I told him that I
agreed with  his premise, because everything could  be reduced  to  being  a
field of energy. He said that  I was  merely  intuiting a truth, and that to
reason it out was not to verify it. He was not interested in my agreement or
disagreement, he said, but in my attempt  to comprehend what was involved in
that truth.
     "You cannot witness fields  of energy," he went  on. "Not as an average
man, that is.  Now, if you were  able to see them, you  would be a  seer, in
which  case you  would be  explaining the  truths  about awareness.  Do  you
understand what I mean?"
     He went on to say  that  conclusions  arrived at  through reasoning had
very little or no influence in altering the course  of our lives. Hence, the
countless examples of people who have the  clearest convictions and yet  act
diametrically  against  them  time and time  again;  and  have as  the  only
explanation for their behavior the idea that to err is human.
     "The first truth is that the world is as it looks and yet it isn't," he
went on.  "It's not  as solid  and real as  our perception has  been led  to
believe, but it  isn't a mirage either. The world is  not an illusion, as it
has been said to be; it's real on the one hand, and unreal on the other. Pay
close attention to this,  for  it must be understood, not  just accepted. We
perceive. This  is a  hard  fact. But what  we perceive is not a fact of the
same kind, because we learn what to perceive.
     "Something out there is affecting our senses. This is the  part that is
real. The unreal part is what our senses tell us is there. Take a  mountain,
for instance. Our senses tell us that it  is an object. It has size,  color,
form. We even have categories of mountains, and they are downright accurate.
Nothing wrong with that; the flaw is simply that it has never occurred to us
that our senses play only a  superficial role. Our senses perceive  the  way
they do because a specific feature of our awareness forces them to do so."
     I began to agree with him again, but not because I wanted to, for I had
not quite  understood  his point.  Rather, I was reacting  to  a threatening
situation. He made me stop.
     "I've used  the  term  'the  world,  ' "  don  Juan went  on, "to  mean
everything that surrounds us. I  have a better term, of course, but it would
be quite incomprehensible to you. Seers say  that we think there is  a world
of objects out there  only because of  our awareness. But what's  really out
there  are  the  Eagle's  emanations,  fluid,  forever in  motion,  and  yet
unchanged, eternal."
     He stopped me with a gesture of his hand just as I was about to ask him
what the Eagle's emanations were. He explained that one of the most dramatic
legacies the old  seers  had left us was their discovery that the reason for
the  existence  of  all  sentient beings  is  to enhance awareness. Don Juan
called it a colossal discovery.
     In a half-serious tone  he asked me if I knew of a better answer to the
question  that  has always haunted  man: the reason  for  our  existence.  I
immediately  took  a  defensive  position  and  began  to  argue  about  the
meaninglessness of the question because it cannot  be  logically answered. I
told him that in order to  discuss that  subject we would have to talk about
religious beliefs and turn it all into a matter of faith.
     "The old seers were not just  talking about faith," he said. "They were
not as  practical as  the new seers,  but they were practical enough to know
what  they were seeing.  What I  was trying to point out  to  you with  that
question,  which has  rattled  you so badly, is that  our  rationality alone
cannot come up with an answer about the reason for our existence. Every time
it tries,  the answer  turns into a matter of  beliefs. The  old  seers took
another  road,  and they  did find  an answer  which  doesn't  involve faith
alone."
     He said that the old seers, risking  untold dangers, actually  saw  the
indescribable force which  is the source of all sentient beings. They called
it the Eagle, because in the few glimpses  that they could sustain, they saw
it as something that resembled a black-andwhite eagle of infinite size.
     They saw that it is the Eagle who bestows awareness. The  Eagle creates
sentient beings  so  that they will  live and  enrich the awareness it gives
them  with  life. They also saw that it is  the Eagle who devours  that same
enriched awareness after making sentient beings relinquish it at the  moment
of death.
     "For  the  old  seers," don Juan  went on, "to  say that the reason for
existence is  to  enhance awareness is not a matter  of faith or  deduction.
They saw it.
     "They saw  that the  awareness of  sentient  beings flies  away at  the
moment  of  death  and floats  like a luminous  cotton  puff  right into the
Eagle's beak  to be consumed. For  the old seers that was  the evidence that
sentient beings live only to enrich the awareness that is the Eagle's food."

     Don Juan's elucidation was interrupted because  he had to  leave  on  a
short  business  trip.  Nestor  drove  him  to Oaxaca.  As I saw them off, I
remembered that at the beginning of my association with don Juan, every time
he  mentioned a business  trip I  thought  he was employing a euphemism  for
something  else. I eventually realized that he meant  what he said. Whenever
such a trip  was  about  to  take place,  he  would  put on one of  his many
immaculately tailored three-piece suits and would look like anything but the
old  Indian  I knew. I  had commented to him about the sophistication of his
metamorphosis.
     "A nagual is someone flexible enough to be anything," he had  said. "To
be a nagual, among other things, means to have no points to defend. Remember
this-- we'll come back to it over and over."
     We had come  back  to  it over and over, in every possible way; he  did
indeed seem to  have no points to defend, but during his absence in Oaxaca I
was given to  just a shadow of doubt. Suddenly I realized that a  nagual did
have one point to  defend-- the description  of the  Eagle and what  it does
required, in my opinion, a passionate defense.
     I tried to pose  that question  to  some  of don Juan's companions, but
they eluded  my probings. They told me  that I  was in quarantine  from that
kind of discussion until don Juan had finished his explanation.
     The moment he returned, we sat down to talk and I asked him about it.
     "Those truths are not something to  defend passionately,"  he  replied.
"If you think that I'm trying to defend them