e  said  that  women  are  more  bizarre than  men," he
commented at last.
     "I don't  agree with you," Genaro said to  don Juan. "The nagual Julian
didn't have  an extra hole  between his  legs and  he was more weird than la
Catalina. I believe she learned the worm bit from him. He used to do that to
her."
     Don Juan jumped  up and down, like a child who is  trying to keep  from
wetting his pants.
     When he had regained a measure of calm,  don Juan  said that the nagual
Julian had a  knack for creating and exploiting the most bizarre situations.
He also  said that la Catalina had  given me  a  superb example of the shift
below. She had  let me see her as the being  whose  form she  had adopted by
moving her assemblage  point,  and she had  then  helped me move mine to the
same position that gave her her monstrous appearance.
     "The other teacher  that  the  nagual  Julian had,"  don Juan went  on,
"taught him  how to get  to  specific spots in  that  immensity of  the area
below. None of us  could follow him there, but  all the members of his party
did, especially la Catalina and the woman seer who taught her."
     Don  Juan  further  said that a  shift below  entailed a view,  not  of
another  world proper, but  of our same world of everyday life seen  from  a
different perspective. He added that in order for me to see another world  I
had to perceive another great band of the Eagle's emanations.
     He then brought his explanation to an end. He said that he had no  time
to elaborate on the subject of the great bands of emanations, because we had
to be on our way. I wanted to  stay a bit longer and keep on talking, but he
argued  that he would need a good deal of  time to  explain that topic and I
would need fresh concentration.

     10 Great Bands of Emanations

     Days later, in  his house  in  southern Mexico, don Juan continued with
his explanation.  He took me to the big room. It was early evening. The room
was in darkness. I wanted to light the gasoline lanterns, but don Juan would
not let me. He said  that  I had  to  let the sound  of  his  voice  move my
assemblage  point  so  that  it  would  glow  on  the  emanations  of  total
concentration and total recall.
     He then  told  me that we were  going to talk about the great  bands of
emanations. He called it another key discovery that the old seers made,  but
that, in their aberration, they  relegated to  oblivion until it was rescued
by the new seers.
     "The Eagle's emanations are always  grouped in clusters," he  went  on.
"The  old  seers called  those clusters the great bands of  emanations. They
aren't really bands, but the name stuck.
     "For  instance, there is an immeasurable cluster that produces  organic
beings. The emanations of that organic  band have a sort of fluffiness. They
are transparent and have a  unique  light of their  own, a peculiar  energy.
They  are  aware,  they jump. That's the reason  why all organic beings  are
filled  with a  peculiar consuming energy. The other bands are darker,  less
fluffy. Some of them have no light at all, but a quality of opaqueness."
     "Do you mean,  don Juan, that all organic  beings have the same kind of
emanations inside their cocoons?" I asked.
     "No.  I  don't mean that. It isn't really that simple, although organic
beings belong to the same great band. Think of it as an enormously wide band
of luminous  filaments,  luminous strings with no  end.  Organic  beings are
bubbles that grow around a group of luminous filaments. Imagine that in this
band of organic life some bubbles  are formed around the luminous  filaments
in the center of the band, others are formed close to the edges; the band is
wide enough to accommodate every  kind of organic being with room  to spare.
In such an arrangement, bubbles that are close to the edges of the band miss
altogether  the emanations that are in  the center of  the  band,  which are
shared only by bubbles that are aligned with the center. By the  same token,
bubbles in the center miss the emanations from the edges.
     "As you  can  understand, organic beings  share the emanations  of  one
band; yet seers see that within that organic band beings are as different as
they can be."
     "Are there many of these great bands?" I asked.
     "As many  as infinity  itself,"  he  replied. "Seers  have  found  out,
however, that in the earth there are only forty-eight such bands."
     "What is the meaning of that, don Juan?"
     "For seers it means  that there are forty-eight types  of organizations
on the earth,  forty-eight  types of clusters or structures. Organic life is
one of them."
     "Does that mean that there are forty-seven types of inorganic life?"
     "No,  not  at all. The  old  seers  counted  seven bands that  produced
inorganic  bubbles of awareness. In other words,  there are forty bands that
produce  bubbles  without  awareness;  those  are  bands that generate  only
organization.
     "Think of the great bands as being like trees. All of them bear  fruit;
they  produce containers  filled  with emanations; yet  only eight of  those
trees bear edible fruit,  that is, bubbles  of  awareness. Seven  have  sour
fruit, but edible nonetheless, and one  has the  most  juicy, luscious fruit
there is."
     He laughed and said that in his analogy he had taken  the point of view
of the Eagle, for  whom the most delectable morsels are the  organic bubbles
of awareness.
     "What makes those eight bands produce awareness?" I asked.
     "The Eagle bestows awareness through its emanations," he replied.
     His answer  made  me argue  with him.  I told him that to say that  the
Eagle bestows awareness through its emanations is  like what a religious man
would say about God, that God  bestows life through  love. It does not  mean
anything.
     "The  two  statements  are not  made from the same  point  of view," he
patiently said. "And yet I think they mean the same thing. The difference is
that  seers see  how the Eagle bestows awareness through its  emanations and
religious men don't see how God bestows life through his love."
     He said  that the way the Eagle bestows awareness is by  means of three
giant  bundles  of emanations  that  run  through eight  great  bands. These
bundles are quite peculiar, because they make seers  feel a hue.  One bundle
gives  the  feeling  of  being  beige-pink,   something  like  the  glow  of
pink-colored  street lamps;  another gives the feeling  of being peach, like
buff neon lights;  and  the third bundle gives the  feeling of  being amber,
like clear honey.
     "So,  it  is  a matter of  seeing a  hue when seers see that  the Eagle
bestows awareness through its emanations," he went  on. "Religious men don't
see God's love, but if they would see it, they would know that it  is either
pink, peach, or amber.
     "Man,  for example, is attached to  the amber bundle, but so  are other
beings."
     I wanted to know which beings shared those emanations with man.
     "Details  like that you will have to find out for yourself through your
own  seeing,"' he said. "There is no point in my telling you which ones; you
will only be making another inventory. Suffice  it to  say that finding that
out for yourself will be one of the most exciting things you'll ever do."
     "Do the pink and peach bundles also show in man?" I asked.
     "Never. Those bundles belong to other living beings," he replied.
     I was about  to  ask a  question,  but  with a forceful movement of his
hand, he  signaled me to stop. He  then  became immersed in thought. We were
enveloped in complete silence for a long time.
     "I've told you that the glow of awareness in man has different colors."
he finally  said. "What I didn't tell you then, because  we hadn't gotten to
that point yet, was that they are not colors but casts of amber."
     He  said that the amber bundle of awareness has an infinitude of subtle
variants,  which always denote differences in quality of awareness. Pink and
pale-green amber are the  most common casts. Blue amber is more unusual, but
pure amber is by far the most rare.
     "What determines the particular casts of amber?"
     "Seers  say  that  the  amount  of  energy that  one saves  and  stores
determines  the  cast.  Countless  numbers  of  warriors have  begun with an
ordinary pink  amber  cast and have finished with  the purest of all ambers.
Genaro and Silvio Manuel are examples of that."
     "What  forms of  life  belong to  the  pink  and the peach  bundles  of
awareness?" I asked.
     "The three bundles with all their casts crisscross the eight bands," he
replied. "In the organic band, the pink bundle belongs mainly to plants, the
peach band  belongs to  insects, and the amber band belongs to man and other
animals.
     "The  same  situation is  prevalent in the  inorganic bands.  The three
bundles of awareness produce specific  kinds of inorganic  beings in each of
the seven great bands."
     I asked him to elaborate on the kinds of inorganic beings that existed.
     "That is another thing that you must  see for yourself," he said.  "The
seven bands and what they produce are indeed inaccessible to  human  reason,
but not to human seeing."
     I told him  that I  could not quite grasp his  explanation of the great
bands, because his description had  forced me to imagine them as independent
bundles of strings, or even as flat bands, like conveyor belts.
     He  explained that  the great bands  are neither flat  nor  round,  but
indescribably clustered together, like a pile of hay, which is held together
in midair by the  force of the hand that pitched it. Thus, there is no order
to the emanations; to  say that there is a  central  part or that there  are
edges is misleading, but necessary to understanding.
     Continuing, he  explained that inorganic beings  produced by  the seven
other bands of awareness are characterized by having a container that has no
motion; it is rather a formless receptacle  with a low degree of luminosity.
It does not look like the cocoon  of organic beings.  It lacks the tautness,
the  inflated  quality  that  makes  organic beings look like luminous balls
bursting with energy.
     Don Juan said that the  only  similarity between inorganic and  organic
beings is that all of  them have  the awareness-bestowing  pink or peach  or
amber emanations.
     "Those  emanations,  under certain circumstances," he continued,  "make
possible  the  most  fascinating  communication between the beings of  those
eight great bands."
     He  said that usually the organic beings, with their  greater fields of
energy, are  the initiators of communication with  inorganic  beings,  but a
subtle  and sophisticated  follow-up is always the province of the inorganic
beings. Once the barrier is broken, inorganic  beings change and become what
seers  call allies. From  that moment  inorganic beings  can  anticipate the
seer's most subtle thoughts or moods or fears.
     "The old  seers became mesmerized by such devotion from their  allies,"
he went on.  "Stories are that  the  old  seers could make  their allies  do
anything they wanted. That was one of the reasons they believed in their own
invulnerability. They got fooled by their  self-importance.  The allies have
power only  if the seer who  sees  them is the paragon of impeccability; and
those old seers just weren't."
     "Are there as many inorganic beings as there  are living organisms?"  I
asked.
     He said that inorganic beings are not as plentiful as organic ones, but
that this is offset  by the greater  number of bands of inorganic awareness.
Also,  the differences among the inorganic beings themselves  are  more vast
than the differences  among organisms,  because organisms belong to only one
band while inorganic beings belong to seven bands.
     "Besides,  inorganic beings live infinitely longer than organisms,"  he
continued. "This matter is what prompted the old  seers to concentrate their
seeing on the allies, for reasons I will tell you about later on."
     He said  that the  old  seers also  came to realize that it is the high
energy of organisms and the subsequent  high development of  their awareness
that  make them delectable morsels for the  Eagle.  In the old  seers' view,
gluttony was the reason the Eagle produced as many organisms as possible.
     He explained next that the  product  of the other forty great bands  is
not awareness at all, but a configuration of inanimate energy. The old seers
chose  to call  whatever  is produced by those bands, vessels. While cocoons
and containers are fields  of energetic awareness,  which accounts for their
independent luminosity,  vessels are rigid receptacles that hold  emanations
without  being  fields of energetic  awareness. Their luminosity  comes only
from the energy of the encased emanations.
     "You must bear  in mind  that everything on the  earth is encased,"  he
continued.  "Whatever  we perceive  is made up  of portions  of  cocoons  or
vessels  with emanations. Ordinarily,  we  don't  perceive the containers of
inorganic beings at all."
     He looked at me,  waiting for a sign of comprehension. When he realized
I was not going to oblige him, he continued explaining.
     "The total world is made of the forty-eight bands," he said. "The world
that our assemblage point assembles for our normal perception is made up  of
two bands;  one is the organic band,  the other  is a  band  that  has  only
structure, but no awareness. The other fortysix great bands are not part  of
the world we normally perceive."
     He paused again for pertinent questions. I had none.
     "There  are  other  complete  worlds  that our  assemblage  points  can
assemble," he  went  on. "The old seers  counted seven  such worlds, one for
each band of awareness. I'll add that two of those worlds, besides the world
of everyday life, are easy to assemble; the other five are something else."

     When we again sat  down  to  talk, don Juan  immediately began  to talk
about my experience with la Catalina. He said that a shift of the assemblage
point to  the area  below its customary position allows the  seer a detailed
and narrow view of the world we know. So detailed is that view that it seems
to  be  an entirely  different world. It is a mesmerizing  view that  has  a
tremendous  appeal, especially for those  seers  who have an adventurous but
somehow indolent and lazy spirit.
     "The  change  of  perspective  is  very pleasant," don  Juan  went  on.
"Minimal effort  is required,  and the results are staggering. If a  seer is
driven by quick gain, there  is no better maneuver than the shift below. The
only  problem is that in those positions  of the assemblage point, seers are
plagued by death, which happens even more  brutally and more quickly than in
man's position.
     "The nagual Julian thought  it was  a  great place  for cavorting,  but
that's all."
     He said that a true change of  worlds happens only when the  assemblage
point moves into man's band,  deep  enough to  reach a crucial threshold, at
which stage the assemblage point can use another of the great bands.
     "How does it use it?" I asked.
     He shrugged his shoulders.  "It's a matter of  energy,"  he  said. "The
force  of alignment  hooks another band, provided  that the  seer has enough
energy. Our  normal  energy allows our assemblage points to use the force of
alignment  of one  great band  of emanations. And  we perceive the  world we
know. But if we have a surplus of energy, we can use  the force of alignment
of other great bands, and consequently we perceive other worlds."
     Don Juan abruptly changed the subject and began to talk about plants.
     "This  may seem  like an  oddity  to you,"  he  said,  "but trees,  for
instance,  are closer to man than ants. I've told you that trees and man can
develop a great relationship; that's so because they share emanations."
     "How big are their cocoons?" I asked.
     "The cocoon  of a giant tree is  not much larger than the  tree itself.
The interesting part is that some tiny plants have a cocoon almost as big as
a man's body and three times its width.  Those are power plants.  They share
the largest amount of emanations with  man, not the emanations of awareness,
but other emanations in general.
     "Another  thing unique  about  plants is  that their luminosities  have
different casts.  They  are pinkish  in general,  because their awareness is
pink. Poisonous plants are a pale  yellow pink  and  medicinal  plants are a
bright violet pink. The only ones that are white pink are power plants; some
are murky white, others are brilliant white.
     "But the real difference between plants and other organic beings is the
location of  their assemblage  points. Plants  have it on  the lower part of
their cocoon, while other organic beings have  it on the upper part of their
cocoon."
     "What about  the inorganic beings?" I asked. "Where  do they have their
assemblage points?"
     "Some have it  on  the lower part of their containers," he said. "Those
are thoroughly alien to man, but akin to plants.  Others have it anywhere on
the upper part of their containers. Those are close to man and other organic
creatures."
     He  added that the old  seers  were convinced that plants have the most
intense  communication with inorganic  beings.  They believed that the lower
the  assemblage  point,  the  easier  for  plants  to break  the barrier  of
perception; very  large trees and very  small plants  have their  assemblage
points extremely low in their cocoon. Because of this, a great number of the
old seers' sorcery techniques were means  to  harness the awareness of trees
and small  plants  in  order to use them as guides  to descend to  what they
called the deepest levels of the dark regions.
     "You understand, of  course," don Juan went on, "that when they thought
they were  descending  to the  depths, they  were,  in  fact, pushing  their
assemblage  points to assemble  other  perceivable  worlds with  those seven
great bands.
     "They taxed their awareness to the limit and assembled worlds with five
great bands  that are accessible to  seers  only if they undergo a dangerous
transformation."
     "But did the old seers succeed in assembling those worlds?" I asked.
     "They did,"  he said.  "In their aberration they  believed it was worth
their while to break all the  barriers  of perception,  even  if they had to
become trees to do that."

     11 Stalking, Intent and the Dreaming Position

     The  next day,  in the early evening again, don  Juan came  to the room
where I was talking with Genaro. He took me by the arm and walked me through
the house to the back patio. It was already fairly dark.  We started to walk
around in the corridor that encircled the patio.
     As we walked, don Juan told me  that  he wanted to warn  me once  again
that it is very easy in the path of knowledge to get lost in intricacies and
morbidity. He said that  seers are up against great enemies that can destroy
their purpose, muddle their aims, and make them weak; enemies created by the
warriors' path itself together with the  sense of  indolence, laziness,  and
self-importance that are integral parts of the daily world.
     He remarked  that the  mistakes the  ancient seers  made as a result of
indolence,  laziness, and self-importance were so enormous and so grave that
the new seers had no option but to scorn and reject their own tradition.
     "The most important thing the  new seers needed,"  don  Juan continued,
"was practical steps in order  to  make their assemblage points shift. Since
they had none, they began  by developing a  keen interest in seeing the glow
of awareness, and as a  result they worked out three sets of techniques that
became their cornerstone."
     Don Juan said that with these  three sets, the new seers accomplished a
most  extraordinary  and  difficult feat.  They  succeeded in systematically
making  the  assemblage  point  shift away  from its customary position.  He
acknowledged that the old seers  had  also accomplished  that  feat, but  by
means of capricious, idiosyncratic maneuvers.
     He  explained  that  what the new  seers saw in  the  glow of awareness
resulted in the sequence in which they arranged the old seers'  truths about
awareness.  This  is known  as  the mastery  of  awareness.  From that, they
developed  the  three  sets  of  techniques.  The  first is  the mastery  of
stalking, the second is the mastery of intent,  and the third is the mastery
of  dreaming. He maintained that he had taught me these three  sets from the
very first day we met.
     He  told me that he had taught me the mastery of awareness in two ways,
just as  the new seers recommend. In his teachings for the right side, which
he had done in normal awareness, he accomplished two goals: he taught me the
warriors'  way,  and  he  loosened my  assemblage point  from  its  original
position.  In  his  teachings  for  the  left  side, which he  had  done  in
heightened  awareness,  he  also  accomplished two  goals: he  had  made  my
assemblage point shift to as  many positions as I was capable of sustaining,
and he had given me a long series of explanations.
     Don Juan stopped talking and stared at me fixedly. There was an awkward
silence; then  he started to talk about  stalking. He  said that it had very
humble  and fortuitous origins. It started from an observation the new seers
made that when warriors steadily behave in ways not customary  for them, the
unused  emanations inside their cocoons begin to glow. And their  assemblage
points shift in a mild, harmonious, barely noticeable fashion.
     Stimulated  by this observation, the  new seers began to  practice  the
systematic control of their  behavior. They called this practice  the art of
stalking.  Don Juan  remarked  that the  name,  although objectionable,  was
appropriate,  because  stalking entailed a  specific kind  of behavior  with
people, behavior that could be categorized as surreptitious.
     The new seers, armed with this technique, tackled the  known in a sober
and  fruitful way. By continual practice, they made their  assemblage points
move steadily.
     "Stalking is one of the two greatest accomplishments of the new seers."
he  said.  "The new seers decided that it should be taught to  a  modern-day
nagual when  his assemblage  point has moved quite deep into  the left side.
The reason  for this decision is that a nagual must  learn the principles of
stalking  without  the encumbrance of  the human  inventory. After  all, the
nagual is  the  leader  of a group,  and to lead them  he has to act quickly
without first having to think about it.
     "Other warriors can learn stalking in their normal awareness,  although
it is  advisable  that they  do it  in  heightened awareness-- not  so  much
because of the value of heightened awareness, but because it imbues stalking
with a mystery that it doesn't really have; stalking is merely behavior with
people."
     He said that I could now understand that shifting the  assemblage point
was the reason why the new seers placed such a high value on the interaction
with petty tyrants.  Petty tyrants forced seers  to use  the  principles  of
stalking and, in doing so, helped seers to move their assemblage points.
     I asked him if the old seers knew anything at all about the  principles
of stalking.
     '"Stalking  belongs exclusively to  the  new seers,"  he said, smiling.
"They  are the only seers who had  to deal with people. The old ones were so
wrapped up in their  sense of  power that they didn't even know  that people
existed, until people started clobbering them  on the  head. But you already
know all this."
     Don Juan said next that the mastery of intent together with the mastery
of stalking are  the new  seers' two masterpieces, which mark the arrival of
the  modern-day  seers.  He  explained  that  in their efforts  to  gain  an
advantage  over their  oppressors  the  new seers pursued every possibility.
They knew that <heir predecessors  had accomplished  extraordinary  feats by
manipulating  a  mysterious  and miraculous force,  which  they  could  only
describe  as power. The  new  seers  had very little  information about that
force,  so  they were  obliged to examine it  systematically through seeing.
Their efforts were  amply rewarded when they discovered that  the energy  of
alignment is that force.
     They began  by seeing  how  the glow of awareness increases in size and
intensity  as  the  emanations  inside  the  cocoon  are  aligned  with  the
emanations  at large. They used that observation  as a springboard,  just as
they  had done  with stalking, and went  on to  develop a complex series  of
techniques to handle that alignment of emanations.
     At first they referred to those techniques as the mastery of alignment.
Then they realized that what was involved was much more than alignment; what
was involved was  the energy that comes out of the alignment of  emanations.
They called that energy will.
     Will became the  second basis. The new  seers understood it as a blind,
impersonal, ceaseless  burst of energy  that makes us  behave in the ways we
do.  Will accounts for our perception of the  world of ordinary affairs, and
indirectly,  through  the  force  of that  perception, it  accounts  for the
placement of the assemblage point in its customary position.
     Don Juan said that the  new seers  examined how  the  perception of the
world of  everyday  life takes  place and saw the effects  of will. They saw
that alignment  is  ceaselessly  renewed in order to  imbue perception  with
continuity. To  renew  alignment every time with the freshness that it needs
to make up  a living world, the burst of energy that comes out of those very
alignments is automatically rerouted to reinforce some choice alignments.
     This new observation served the new  seers as another springboard  that
helped them reach  the third  basis of the set. They called  it intent,  and
they  described  it  as  the  purposeful  guiding  of  will,  the energy  of
alignment.
     "Silvio Manuel, Genaro, and Vicente were pushed by the nagual Julian to
learn those three  aspects of the seers' knowledge,"  he went on. "Genaro is
the master  of handling  awareness, Vicente is  the master  of stalking, and
Silvio Manuel is the master of intent.
     "We are now doing a final explanation of the mastery of awareness; this
is why Genaro is helping you."

     Don Juan talked to  the female apprentices  for a  long time. The women
listened with serious expressions  on their faces. I felt sure he was giving
them  detailed instructions about  difficult procedures,  judging  from  the
women's fierce concentration.
     I had been barred from their meeting,  but I had watched  them as  they
talked in the  front room of Genaro's  house. I  sat at  the  kitchen table,
waiting until they were through.
     Then the women got up to leave,  but before they did,  they came to the
kitchen with don  Juan. He sat  down facing me while  the women talked to me
with  awkward  formality.  They  actually  embraced me.  All  of  them  were
unusually friendly, even  talkative. They said that they were going to  join
the  male  apprentices, who had  gone with Genaro  hours earlier. Genaro was
going to show all of them his dreaming body.
     As soon  as  the  women  left,  don  Juan  quite abruptly  resumed  his
explanation. He said that as time passed and the new seers established their
practices,  they realized  that  under  the prevailing conditions  of  life,
stalking  only  moved the assemblage  points minimally. For maximum  effect,
stalking  needed an ideal setting; it  needed  petty tyrants in positions of
great authority and power.  It  became  increasingly  difficult for  the new
seers to place themselves in  such situations; the task of improvising  them
or seeking them out became an unbearable burden.
     The new  seers  deemed it imperative  to see the  Eagle's emanations in
order to find a  more suitable  way to move  the assemblage  point.  As they
tried  to see the emanations  they were faced  with a very serious  problem.
They found  out that there  is no way to  see  them without running a mortal
risk, and yet they had to see them. That was the time when they used the old
seers'  technique of  dreaming  as a  shield  to protect themselves from the
deadly blow of the Eagle's  emanations. And in  doing so, they realized that
dreaming was in itself the most effective way to move the assemblage point.
     "One of  the strictest commands of the  new seers," don Juan continued,
"was that warriors have to learn  dreaming  while they are in  their  normal
state of awareness. Following that  command, I began teaching  you  dreaming
almost from the first day we met."
     "Why do the new seers  command that dreaming has to be taught in normal
awareness?" I asked.
     "Because dreaming is so dangerous and dreamers so vulnerable," he said.
"It is  dangerous  because  it  has  inconceivable power; it  makes dreamers
vulnerable because it leaves them at the mercy of the incomprehensible force
of alignment.
     "The new seers realized that in our normal state  of awareness, we have
countless  defenses that  can safeguard  us  against  the  force  of  unused
emanations that suddenly become aligned in dreaming."
     Don Juan  explained that dreaming, like  stalking, began with a  simple
observation. The old seers  became aware that in dreams the assemblage point
shifts slightly to the left side in a most natural manner. That point indeed
relaxes when man sleeps and all kinds of unused emanations begin to glow.
     The old  seers became immediately  intrigued with that observation  and
began  to work with that natural  shift until they were able to  control it.
They called that control dreaming, or the art of handling the dreaming body.
     He remarked that there is hardly  a way of describing the  immensity of
their knowledge about dreaming. Very little of  it,  however, was of any use
to the new seers. So  when the  time  of reconstruction came, the  new seers
took  for themselves only the bare  essentials of dreaming  to aid  them  in
seeing the Eagle's emanations and to help them move their assemblage points.
     He  said that seers,  old and  new,  understand dreaming as  being  the
control of the  natural shift that  the assemblage point undergoes in sleep.
He stressed that to control that shift does not mean  in  any way  to direct
it,  but  to  keep  the  assemblage  point  fixed at  the position  where it
naturally moves in  sleep, a most difficult maneuver that took the old seers
enormous effort and concentration to accomplish.
     Don Juan explained that dreamers have  to strike a very subtle balance,
for dreams  cannot  be  interfered  with, nor can they be  commanded  by the
conscious effort of  the dreamer,  and yet the shift of the assemblage point
must  obey  the   dreamer's  command--  a  contradiction  that   cannot   be
rationalized but must be resolved in practice.
     After  observing dreamers while they slept, the  old seers hit upon the
solution  of letting dreams follow their  natural course. They had seen that
in some dreams, the assemblage point of the dreamer would drift considerably
deeper into the left side than in other dreams.  This observation  posed  to
them the question of whether  the content of the dream makes  the assemblage
point move, or the movement of the  assemblage point by  itself produces the
content of the dream by activating unused emanations.
     They soon realized that the  shifting  of the assemblage point into the
left side  is what produces dreams. The farther the movement, the more vivid
and bizarre the dream.  Inevitably, they attempted to  command their dreams,
aiming to make their assemblage points move deeply into  the left side. Upon
trying   it,   they   discovered  that  when  dreams   are  consciously   or
semiconsciously manipulated, the assemblage point immediately returns to its
usual place. Since what they wanted was for that point to move, they reached
the unavoidable conclusion that interfering with dreams was interfering with
the natural shift of the assemblage point.
     Don Juan said that  from there the  old seers went  on to develop their
astounding knowledge  on the subject --  a knowledge which  had a tremendous
bearing on what the new seers aspired to do with dreaming, but was of little
use to them in its original form.
     He told me that thus far I had understood dreaming as being the control
of dreams, and that every one of the exercises he had  given  me to perform,
such  as finding my hands in  my dreams, was not,  although it might seem to
be, aimed at teaching me to command my dreams. Those exercises were designed
to keep my  assemblage point  fixed at  the place where  it had moved in  my
sleep. It  is  here that the  dreamers have to strike a  subtle balance. All
they can direct is  the fixation of their assemblage points.  Seers are like
fishermen equipped with a line that casts  itself wherever  it may; the only
thing they can do is keep the line anchored at the place where it sinks.
     "Wherever the assemblage point moves  in  dreams is called the dreaming
position,"'  he went  on.  "The old seers became so  expert at keeping their
dreaming position that they were even able to wake up while their assemblage
points were anchored there.
     "The old  seers  called  that  state  the  dreaming  body, because they
controlled  it to the extreme  of creating a  temporary  new body every time
they woke up at a new dreaming position.
     "I have to make it clear to you that dreaming has a terrible drawback,"
he went on. "It belongs to the old seers. It's tainted with their mood. I've
been very careful in guiding you through it,  but  still there  is no way to
make sure."
     "What are you warning me about, don Juan?" I asked.
     "I'm  warning  you  about  the  pitfalls  of dreaming, which  are truly
stupendous,"  he replied. "In dreaming, there is really no way of  directing
the movement of  the  assemblage  point;  the  only thing that dictates that
shift is the inner strength or weakness of dreamers. Right there we have the
first pitfall."
     He said  that at first  the new seers were hesitant to use dreaming. It
was their belief  that dreaming, instead of fortifying, made warriors  weak,
compulsive, capricious. The old seers were all like that. In order to offset
the  nefarious effect of dreaming, since they had no other option but to use
it, the new seers developed a complex and rich system of behavior called the
warriors' way, or the warriors' path.
     With that system, the new  seers fortified themselves and  acquired the
internal  strength they needed to guide the shift of the assemblage point in
dreams.  Don Juan stressed that the strength  that he was talking  about was
not conviction alone. No one  could have had stronger  convictions than  the
old  seers,  and yet  they were weak  to the core. Internal strength meant a
sense of  equanimity, almost  of indifference, a feeling  of being  at ease,
but, above all, it  meant a natural  and profound bent for examination,  for
understanding. The new seers called all these traits of character sobriety.
     "The conviction that the new seers have," he continued, "is that a life
of impeccability by itself  leads unavoidably to a  sense of  sobriety,  and
this in turn leads to the movement of the assemblage point.
     "I've said that the new seers believed that the assemblage point can be
moved from within. They went one step further and maintained that impeccable
men need  no one  to guide them, that by  themselves, through  saving  their
energy,  they can do  everything  that seers do. All they need  is a minimal
chance,  just  to  be  cognizant  of  the  possibilities  that   seers  have
unraveled."
     I told him  that we were back in the same position we had been in in my
normal  state of  awareness.  I  was still  convinced that  impeccability or
saving energy was something  so vague that it could be interpreted by anyone
in whatever whimsical way he wanted.
     I  wanted  to  say more to  build  my argument, but a  strange  feeling
overtook me. It was an actual physical sensation that  I was rushing through
something. And  then  I  rebuffed my own  argument. I knew without any doubt
whatsoever that  don Juan was right. All that is required is  impeccability,
energy,  and that begins  with  a  single act  that  has  to be  deliberate,
precise, and sustained. If that act  is repeated long enough, one acquires a
sense of unbending intent, which can be applied to anything else. If that is
accomplished the road  is  clear. One thing will lead  to another until  the
warrior realizes his full potential.
     When I told don Juan what I had just realized, he laughed with apparent
delight and exclaimed that this was indeed a godsent example of the strength
that  he was  talking about.  He  explained that  my  assemblage  point  had
shifted, and that it had been moved by sobriety to a  position that fostered
understanding.  It could  have  as well  been moved by  capriciousness  to a
position that only enhances self-importance, as had been the case many times
before.
     "Let's talk now about  the dreaming body."'  he went on. "The old seers
concentrated  all their efforts on exploring  and  exploiting  the  dreaming
body. And  they succeeded  in  using it  as a more practical  body, which is
tantamount to saying they recreated themselves in increasingly weird ways."
     Don  Juan maintained  that it is common  knowledge among the  new seers
that flocks of  the old sorcerers  never  came  back after  waking  up  at a
dreaming position of their liking. He said that chances are they all died in
those inconceivable  worlds, or they may still  be alive today in  who knows
what kind of contorted shape or manner.
     He stopped and looked at me and broke into a great laugh.
     "You're dying to ask me what the old seers did with  the dreaming body,
aren't you?"  he asked, and urged me with a movement  of his chin to ask the
question.
     Don  Juan   stated  that  Genaro,  being  the  indisputable  master  of
awareness, had shown me the dreaming body many times while I  was in a state
of  normal   awareness.  The   effect  that  Genaro   was   after  with  his
demonstrations was to make my assemblage point  move, not from a position of
heightened awareness, but from its normal setting.
     Don Juan told  me then, as  if he were letting a secret be known,  that
Genaro was waiting for us in some  fields  near  the  house to  show me  his
dreaming body. He repeated over and over that I was now in the perfect state
of awareness to see and understand what the dreaming body really is. Then he
had me get up, and we walked through the front room to reach the door to the
outside. As I was about to open  the door, I  noticed that someone was lying
on the pile of floor mats that  the apprentices used as beds. I thought that
one of the apprentices must have returned to the house while don  Juan and I
were talking in the kitchen.
     I went up to him, and then I realized that it was Genaro. He  was sound
asleep, snoring peacefully, lying face down.
     "Wake him up," don Juan said to me.  "We've got to be going. He must be
dead tired."
     I gently shook  Genaro.  He slowly turned around,  made  the sounds  of
someone  waking up from a deep  slumber. He stretched his  arms, and then he
opened his eyes. I screamed involuntarily and jumped back.
     Genaro's  eyes were not  human eyes  at  all. They were  two  points of
intense amber light. The jolt of my fright had been so intense that I became
dizzy. Don Juan tapped my back and restored my equilibrium.
     Genaro stood up and smiled at me. His features were rigid.  He moved as
if he were drunk or physically impaired. He walked by me and headed directly
for the wall.  I winced at the imminent crash, but  he went through the wall
as  if it were not  there at all.  He  came back  into the  room through the
kitchen doorway. And then, as I looked in true  horror, Genaro walked on the
walls,  with his body parallel to the ground, and on  the ceiling,  with his
head upside down.
     I fell backwards as I tried to follow his movements. From that position
I didn't see Genaro anymore;  instead I was looking at a  blob of light that
moved on the ceiling above me and on the walls, circling the room. It was as
if someone  with a giant  flashlight was shining the beam on the ceiling and
the walls.  The beam of light was finally turned  off.  It  disappeared from
view by vanishing against a wall.
     Don Juan remark