e had begun to teach me how to hunt I also had begun to reassess my actions. Perhaps the most dramatic discovery for me was that I liked don Juan's ways. I liked don Juan as a person. There was something solid about his behavior; the way he conducted himself left no doubts about his mastery, and yet He had never exercised his advantage to demand anything from me. His interest in changing my way of life, I felt, was akin to an impersonal suggestion, or perhaps it was akin to an authoritative commentary on my failures. He had made me very aware of my failings, yet I could not see how his ways would remedy anything in me. I sincerely believed that, in light of what I wanted to do in my life, his ways would have only brought me misery and hardship, hence the impasse. However, I had learned to respect his mastery, which had always been expressed in terms of beauty and precision. "I have decided to shift my tactics, " he said. I asked him to explain; his statement was vague and I was not sure whether or not he was referring to me. "A good hunter changes his ways as often as he needs, " he replied. "You know that yourself." "What do you have in mind, don Juan?" "A hunter must not only know about the habits of his prey, he also must know that there are powers on this earth that guide men and animals and everything that is living." He stopped talking. I waited but he seemed to have come to the end of what he wanted to say. "What kind of powers are you talking about?" I asked after a long pause. "Powers that guide our lives and our deaths." Don Juan stopped talking and seemed to be having tremendous difficulty in deciding what to say. He rubbed his hands and shook his head, puffing out his jaws. Twice he signaled me to be quiet as I started to ask him to explain his cryptic statements. "You won't be able to stop yourself easily, " he finally said. "I know that you're stubborn, but that doesn't matter. The more stubborn you are the better it'll be when you finally succeed in changing yourself." "I am trying my best, " I said. "No. I disagree. You're not trying your best. You just said that because it sounds good to you; in fact, you've been saying the same thing about everything you do. You've been trying your best for years to no avail. Something must be done to remedy that." I felt compelled, as usual, to defend myself. Don Juan seemed to aim, as a rule, at my very weakest points. I remembered then that every time I had attempted to defend myself against his criticisms I had ended up feeling like a fool, and I stopped myself in the midst of a long explanatory speech. Don Juan examined me with curiosity and laughed. He said in a very kind tone that he had already told me that all of us were fools. I was not an exception. "You always feel compelled to explain your acts, as if you were the only man on earth who's wrong, " he said. "It's your old feeling of importance. You have too much of it; you also have too much personal history. On the other hand, you don't assume responsibility for your acts; you're not using your death as an adviser, and above all, you are too accessible. In other words, your life is as messy as it was before I met you." Again I had a genuine surge of pride and wanted to argue that he was wrong. He gestured me to be quiet. "One must assume responsibility for being in a weird world, " he said. "We are in a weird world, you know." I nodded my head affirmatively. "We're not talking about the same thing, " he said. "For you the world is weird because if you're not bored with it you're at odds with it. For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time. I wanted to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it." I insisted that to be bored with the world or to be at odds with it was the human condition. "So, change it, " he replied dryly. "If you do not respond to that challenge you are as good as dead." He dared me to name an issue, an item in my life that had engaged all my thoughts. I said art. I had always wanted to be an artist and for years I had tried my hand at that. I still had the painful memory of my failure. "You have never taken the responsibility for being in this unfathomable world, " he said in an indicting tone. "Therefore, you were never an artist, and perhaps you'll never be a hunter." "This is my best, don Juan." "No. You don't know what your best is." "I am doing all I can." "You're wrong again. You can do better. There is one simple thing wrong with you-you think you have plenty of time." He paused and looked at me as if waiting for my reaction. "You think you have plenty of time," he repeated. "Plenty of time for what, don Juan?" "You think your life is going to last forever." "No. I don't." "Then, if you don't think your life is going to last forever, what are you waiting for? Why the hesitation to change?" "Has it ever occurred to you, don Juan, that I may not want to change?" "Yes, it has occurred to me. I did not want to change either, just like you. However, I didn't like my life; I was tired of it, just like you. Now I don't have enough of it." I vehemently asserted that his insistence about changing my way of life was frightening and arbitrary. I said that I really agreed with him, at a certain level, but the mere fact that he was always the master that called the shots made the situation untenable for me. "You don't have time for this display, you fool, " he said in a severe tone. "This, whatever you're doing now, may be your last act on earth. It may very well be your last battle. There is no power which could guarantee that you are going to live one more minute." "I know that, " I said with contained anger. "No. You don't. If you knew that you would be a hunter." I contended that I was aware of my impending death but it was useless to talk or think about it, since I could not do anything to avoid it. Don Juan laughed and said I was like a comedian going mechanically through a routine. "If this were your last battle on earth, I would say that you are an idiot, " he said calmly. "You are wasting your last act on earth in some stupid mood." We were quiet for a moment. My thoughts ran rampant. He was right, of course. "You have no time, my friend, no time. None of us have time, " he said. "I agree, don Juan, but-" "Don't just agree with me, " he snapped. "You must, instead of agreeing so easily, act upon it. Take the challenge. Change." "Just like that?" "That's right. The change I'm talking about never takes place by degrees; it happens suddenly. And you are not preparing yourself for that sudden act that will bring a total change." I believed he was expressing a contradiction. I explained to him that if I were preparing myself to change I was certainly changing by degrees. "You haven't changed at all, " he said. "That is why you believe you're changing little by little. Yet, perhaps you will surprise yourself someday by changing suddenly and without a single warning. I know this is so, and thus I don't lose sight of my interest in convincing you." I could not persist in my arguing. I was not sure of what I really wanted to say. After a moment's pause don Juan went on explaining his point. "Perhaps I should put it in a different way, " he said. "What I recommend you to do is to notice that we do not have any assurance that our lives will go on indefinitely. I have just said that change comes suddenly and unexpectedly, and so does death. What do you think we can do about it?" I thought he was asking a rhetorical question, but he made a gesture with his eyebrows urging me to answer. "To live as happily as possible, " I said. "Right! But do you know anyone who lives happily?" My first impulse was to say yes; I thought I could use a number of people I knew as examples. On second thought, however, I knew my effort would only be an empty attempt at exonerating myself. "No, " I said. "I really don't." "I do, " don Juan said. "There are some people who are very careful about the nature of their acts. Their happiness is to act with the full knowledge that they don't have time; therefore, their acts have a peculiar power; their acts have a sense of . . ." Don Juan seemed to be at a loss for words. He scratched his temples and smiled. Then suddenly he stood up as if he were through with our conversation. I beseeched him to finish what he was telling me. He sat down and puckered up his lips. "Acts have power, " he said. "Especially when the person acting knows that those acts are his last battle. There is a strange consuming happiness in acting with the full knowledge that whatever one is doing may very well be one's last act on earth. I recommend that you reconsider your life and bring your acts into that light." I disagreed with him. Happiness for me was to assume that there was an inherent continuity to my acts and that I would be able to continue doing, at will, whatever I was doing at the moment, especially if I was enjoying it. I told him that my disagreement was not a banal one but stemmed from the conviction that the world and myself had a determinable continuity. Don Juan seemed to be amused by my efforts to make sense. He laughed, shook his head, scratched his hair, and finally when I talked about a "determinable continuity" threw his hat to the ground and stomped on it. I ended up laughing at his clowning. "You don't have time, my friend, " he said. "That is the misfortune of human beings. None of us have sufficient time, and your continuity has no meaning in this awesome, mysterious world. "Your continuity only makes you timid, " he said. "Your acts cannot possibly have the flair, the power, the compelling force of the acts performed by a man who knows that he is fighting his last battle on earth. In other words, your continuity does not make you happy or powerful." I admitted that I was afraid of thinking I was going to die and I accused him of causing great apprehension in me with his constant talk and concern about death. "But we are all going to die, " he said. He pointed towards some hills in the distance. "There is something out there waiting for me, for sure; and I will join it, also for sure. But perhaps you're different and death is not waiting for you at all." He laughed at my gesture of despair. "I don't want to think about it, don Juan." "Why not?" "It is meaningless. If it is out there waiting for me why should I worry about it?" "I didn't say that you have to worry about it." "What am I supposed to do then?" "Use it. Focus your attention on the link between you and your death, without remorse or sadness or worrying. Focus your attention on the fact you don't have time and let your acts flow accordingly. Let each of your acts be your last battle on earth. Only under those conditions will your acts have their rightful power. Otherwise they will be, for as long as you live, the acts of a timid man." "Is it so terrible to be a timid man?" "No. It isn't if you are going to be immortal, but if you are going to die there is no time for timidity, simply because timidity makes you cling to something that exists only in your thoughts. It soothes you while everything is at a lull, but then the awesome, mysterious world will open its mouth for you, as it will open for every one of us, and then you will realize that your sure ways were not sure at all. Being timid prevents us from examining and exploiting our lot as men." "It is not natural to live with the constant idea of our death, don Juan." "Our death is waiting and this very act we're performing now may well be our last battle on earth, " he replied in a solemn voice. "I call it a battle because it is a struggle. Most people move from act to act without any struggle or thought. A hunter, on the contrary, assesses every act; and since he has an intimate knowledge of his death, he proceeds judiciously, as if every act were his last battle. Only a fool would fail to notice the advantage a hunter has over his fellow men. A hunter gives his last battle its due respect. It's only natural that his last act on earth should be the best of himself. It's pleasurable that way. It dulls the edge of his fright." "You are right, " I conceded. "It's just hard to accept." "It'll take years for you to convince yourself and then it'll take years for you to act accordingly. I only hope you have time left." "I get scared when you say that, " I said. Don Juan examined me with a serious expression on his face. "I've told you, this is a weird world, " he said. "The forces that guide men are unpredictable, awesome, yet their splendor is something to witness." He stopped talking and looked at me again. He seemed to be on the verge of revealing something to me, but he checked himself and smiled. "Is there something that guides us?" I asked. "Certainly. There are powers that guide us." "Can you describe them?" "Not really, except to call them forces, spirits, airs, winds, or anything like that." I wanted to probe him further, but before I could ask anything else he stood up. I stared at him, flabbergasted. He had stood up in one single movement; his body simply jerked up and he was on his feet. I was still pondering upon the unusual skill that would be needed in order to move with such speed when he told me in a dry tone of command to stalk a rabbit, catch it, kill it, skin it, and roast the meat before the twilight. He looked up at the sky and said that I might have enough time. I automatically started off, proceeding the way I had done scores of times. Don Juan walked beside me and followed my movements with a scrutinizing look. I was very calm and moved carefully and I had no trouble at all in catching a male rabbit. "Now kill it, " don Juan said dryly. I reached into the trap to grab hold of the rabbit. I had it by the ears and was pulling it out when a sudden sensation of terror invaded me. For the first time since don Juan had begun to teach me to hunt it occurred to me that he had never taught me how to kill game. In the scores of times we had roamed in the desert he himself had only killed one rabbit, two quail and one rattlesnake. I dropped the rabbit and looked at don Juan. "I can't kill it, " I said. "Why not?" "I've never done that." "But you've killed hundreds of birds and other animals." "With a gun, not with my bare hands." "What difference does it make? This rabbit's time is up." Don Juan's tone shocked me; it was so authoritative, so knowledgeable, it left no doubts in my mind that he knew that the rabbit's time was up. "Kill it!" he commanded with a ferocious look in his eyes. "I can't." He yelled at me that the rabbit had to die. He said that its roaming in that beautiful desert had come to an end. I had no business stalling, because the power or the spirit that guides rabbits had led that particular one into my trap, right at the edge of the twilight. A series of confusing thoughts and feelings overtook me, as if the feelings had been out there waiting for me. I felt with agonizing clarity the rabbit's tragedy, to have fallen into my trap. In a matter of seconds my mind swept across the most crucial moments of my own life, the many times I had been the rabbit myself. I looked at it, and it looked at me. The rabbit had backed up against the side of the cage; it was almost curled up, very quiet and motionless. We exchanged a somber glance, and that glance, which I fancied to be of silent despair, cemented a complete identification on my part. "The hell with it, " I said loudly. "I won't kill anything. That rabbit goes free." A profound emotion made me shiver. My arms trembled as I tried to grab the rabbit by the ears; it moved fast and I missed. I again tried and fumbled once more. I became desperate. I had the sensation of nausea and quickly kicked the trap in order to smash it and let the rabbit go free. The cage was unsuspectedly strong and did not break as I thought it would. My despair mounted to an unbearable feeling of anguish. Using all my strength, I stomped on the edge of the cage with my right foot. The sticks cracked loudly. I pulled the rabbit out. I had a moment of relief, which was shattered to bits in the next instant. The rabbit hung limp in my hand. It was dead. I did not know what to do. I became preoccupied with finding out how it had died. I turned to don Juan. He was staring at me. A feeling of terror sent a chill through my body. I sat down by some rocks. I had a terrible headache. Don Juan put his hand on my head and whispered in my ear that I had to skin the rabbit and roast it before the twilight was over. I felt nauseated. He very patiently talked to me as if he were talking to a child. He said that the powers that guided men or animals had led that particular rabbit to me, in the same way they will lead me to my own death. He said the rabbit's death had been a gift for me in exactly the same way my own death will be a gift for something or someone else. I was dizzy. The simple events of that day had crushed me. I tried to think that it was only a rabbit; I could not, however, shake off the uncanny identification I had had with it. Don Juan said that I needed to eat some of its meat, if only morsel, in order to validate my finding. "I can't do that, " I protested meekly. "We are dregs in the hands of those forces, " he snapped at me. "So stop your self-importance and use this gift properly." I picked up the rabbit; it was warm. Don Juan leaned over and whispered in my ear, "Your trap was his last battle on earth. I told you, he had no more time to roam in this marvelous desert." BECOMING ACCESSIBLE TO POWER Thursday, August 11, 1961 As soon as I got out of my car I complained to don Juan that I was not feeling well. "Sit down, sit down, " he said softly and almost led me by the hand to his porch. He smiled and patted me on the back. Two weeks before, on August 4th, don Juan, as he had said, changed his tactics with me and allowed me to ingest some peyote buttons. During the height of my hallucinatory experience I played with a dog that lived in the house where the peyote session took place. Don Juan interpreted my interaction with the dog as a very special event. He contended that at moments of power, such as the one I had been living then, the world of ordinary affairs did not exist and nothing could be taken for granted, that the dog was not really a dog but the incarnation of Mescalito, the power or deity contained in peyote. The post-effects of that experience were a general sense of fatigue and melancholy, plus the incidence of exceptionally vivid dreams and nightmares. "Where's your writing gear?" don Juan asked as I sat down on the porch. I had left my notebooks in my car. Don Juan walked back to the car and carefully pulled out my briefcase and brought it to my side. He asked if I usually carried my briefcase when I walked. I said I did. "That's madness, " he said. "I've told you never to carry anything in your hands when you walk. Get a knapsack." I laughed. The idea of carrying my notes in a knapsack was ludicrous. I told him that ordinarily I wore a suit and a knapsack over a three-piece suit would be a preposterous sight. "Put your coat on over the knapsack," he said. "It is better that people think you're a hunchback than to ruin your body carrying all this around." He urged me to get out my notebook and write. He seemed to be making a deliberate effort to put me at ease. I complained again about the feeling of physical discomfort and the strange sense of unhappiness I was experiencing. Don Juan laughed and said, "You're beginning to learn." We then had a long conversation. He said that Mescalito, by allowing me to play with him, had pointed me out as a "chosen man" and that, although he was baffled by the omen because I was not an Indian, he was going to pass on to me some secret knowledge. He said that he had had a "benefactor" himself, who taught him how to become a "man of knowledge." I sensed that something dreadful was about to happen. The revelation that I was his chosen man, plus the unquestionable strangeness of his ways and the devastating effect that peyote had had on me, created a state of unbearable apprehension and indecision. But don Juan disregarded my feelings and recommended that I should only think of the wonder of Mescalito playing with me. "Think about nothing else, " he said. "The rest will come to you of itself." He stood up and patted me gently on the head and said in a very soft voice, "I am going to teach you how to become a warrior in the same manner I have taught you how to hunt. I must warn you, though, learning how to hunt has not made you into a hunter, nor would learning how to become a warrior make you one." I experienced a sense of frustration, a physical discomfort that bordered on anguish. I complained about the vivid dreams and nightmares I was having. He seemed to deliberate for a moment and sat down again. "They're weird dreams, " I said. "You've always had weird dreams, " he retorted. "I'm telling you, this time they are truly more weird than anything I've ever had." "Don't concern yourself. They are only dreams. Like the dreams of any ordinary dreamer, they don't have power. So what's the use of worrying about them or talking about them?" "They bother me, don Juan. Isn't there something I can do to stop them?" "Nothing. Let them pass, " he said. "Now it's time for you to become accessible to power, and you are going to begin by tackling dreaming." The tone of voice he used when he said "dreaming" made me think that he was using the word in a very particular fashion. I was pondering about a proper question to ask when he began to talk again. "I've never told you about dreaming, because until now I was only concerned with teaching you how to be a hunter, " he said. "A hunter is not concerned with the manipulation of power, therefore his dreams are only dreams. They might be poignant but they are not dreaming. "A warrior, on the other hand, seeks power, and one of the avenues to power is dreaming. You may say that the difference between a hunter and a warrior is that a warrior is on his way to power, while a hunter knows nothing or very little about it. "The decision as to who can be a warrior and who can only be a hunter is not up to us. That decision is in the realm of the powers that guide men. That's why your playing with Mescalito was such an important omen. Those forces guided you to me; they took you to that bus depot, remember? Some clown brought you to me. A perfect omen, a clown pointing you out. So, I taught you how to be a hunter. And then the other perfect omen, Mescalito himself playing with you. See what I mean?" His weird logic was overwhelming. His words created visions of myself succumbing to something awesome and unknown, something which I had not bargained for, and which I had not conceived existed, even in my wildest fantasies. "What do you propose I should do?" I asked. "Become accessible to power; tackle your dreams, " he replied. "You call them dreams because you have no power. A warrior, being a man who seeks power, doesn't call them dreams, he calls them real." "You mean he takes his dreams as being reality?" "He doesn't take anything as being anything else. What you call dreams are real for a warrior. You must understand that a warrior is not a fool. A warrior is an immaculate hunter who hunts power; he's not drunk, or crazed, and he has neither the time nor the disposition to bluff, or to lie to himself, or to make a wrong move. The stakes are too high for that. The stakes are his trimmed orderly life which he has taken so long to tighten and perfect. He is not going to throw that away by making some stupid miscalculation, by taking something for being something else. "Dreaming is real for a warrior because in it he can act deliberately, he can choose and reject, he can select from a variety of items those which lead to power, and then he can manipulate them and use them, while in an ordinary dream he cannot act deliberately." "Do you mean then, don Juan, that dreaming is real?" "Of course it is real." "As real as what we are doing now?" "If you want to compare things, I can say that it is perhaps more real. In dreaming you have power; you can change things; you may find out countless concealed facts; you can control whatever you want." Don Juan's premises always had appealed to me at a certain level. I could easily understand his liking the idea that one could do anything in dreams, but I could not take him seriously. The jump was too great. We looked at each other for a moment. His statements were insane and yet he was, to the best of my knowledge, one of the most level-headed men I had ever met. I told him that I could not believe he took his dreams to be reality. He chuckled as if he knew the magnitude of my untenable position, then he stood up without saying a word and walked inside his house. I sat for a long time in a state of stupor until he called me to the back of his house. He had made some corn gruel and handed me a bowl. I asked him about the time when one was awake. I wanted to know if he called it anything in particular. But he did not understand or did not want to answer. "What do you call this, what we're doing now?" I asked, meaning that what we were doing was reality as opposed to dreams. "I call it eating, " he said and contained his laughter. "I call it reality, " I said. "Because our eating is actually taking place." "Dreaming also takes place, " he replied, giggling. "And so does hunting, walking, laughing." I did not persist in arguing. I could not, however, even if I stretched myself beyond my limits, accept his premise. He seemed to be delighted with my despair. As soon as we had finished eating he casually stated that we were going to go for a hike, but we were not going to roam in the desert in the manner we had done before. "It's different this time, " he said. "From now on we're going to places of power; you're going to learn how to make yourself accessible to power." I again expressed my turmoil. I said I was not qualified for that endeavor. "Come on, you're indulging in silly fears, " he said in a low voice, patting me on the back and smiling benevolently. "I've been catering to your hunter's spirit. You like to roam with me in this beautiful desert. It's too late for you to quit." He began to walk into the desert chaparral. He signaled me with his head to follow him. I could have walked to my car and left, except that I liked to roam in that beautiful desert with him. I liked the sensation, which I experienced only in his company, that this was indeed an awesome, mysterious, yet beautiful world. As he said, I was hooked. Don Juan led me to the hills towards the east. It was a long hike. It was a hot day; the heat, however, which ordinarily would have been unbearable to me, was somehow unnoticeable. We walked for quite a distance into a canyon until don Juan came to a halt and sat down in the shade of some boulders. I took some crackers out of my knapsack but he told me not to bother with them. He said that I should sit in a prominent place. He pointed to a single almost round boulder ten or fifteen feet away and helped me climb to the top. I thought he was also going to sit there, but instead he just climbed part of the way in order to hand me some pieces of dry meat. He told me with a deadly serious expression that it was power meat and should be chewed very slowly and should not be mixed with any other food. He then walked back to the shaded area and sat down with his back against a rock. He seemed relaxed, almost sleepy. He remained in the same position until I had finished eating. Then he sat up straight and tilted his head to the right. He seemed to be listening attentively. He glanced at me two or three times, stood up abruptly, and began to scan the surroundings with his eyes, the way a hunter would do. I automatically froze on the spot and only moved my eyes in order to follow his movements. Very carefully he stepped behind some rocks, as if he were expecting game to come into the area where we were. I realized then that we were in a round covelike bend in the dry water canyon, surrounded by sandstone boulders. Don Juan suddenly came out from behind the rocks and smiled at me. He stretched his arms, yawned, and walked towards the boulder where I was. I relaxed my tense position and sat down. "What happened?" I asked in a whisper. He answered me, yelling, that there was nothing around there to worry about. I felt an immediate jolt in my stomach. His answer was inappropriate and it was inconceivable to me that he would yell, unless he had a specific reason for it. I began to slide down from the boulder, but he yelled that I should stay there a while longer. "What are you doing?" I asked. He sat down and concealed himself between two rocks at the base of the boulder where I was, and then he said in a very loud voice that he had only been looking around because he thought he had heard something. I asked if he had heard a large animal. He put his hand to his ear and yelled that he was unable to hear me and that I should shout my words. I felt ill at ease yelling, but he urged me in a loud voice to speak up. I shouted that I wanted to know what was going on, and he shouted back that there was really nothing around there. He yelled, asking if I could see anything unusual from the top of the boulder. I said no, and he asked me to describe to him the terrain towards the south. We shouted back and forth for a while and then he signaled me to come down. I joined him and he whispered in my ear that the yelling was necessary to make our presence known, because I had to make myself accessible to the power of that specific water hole. I looked around but could not see the water hole. He pointed that we were standing on it. "There's water here, " he said in a whisper, "and also power. There's a spirit here and we have to lure it out; perhaps it will come after you." I wanted to know more about the alleged spirit, but he insisted on total silence. He advised me to stay perfectly still and not let out a whisper or make the slightest movement to betray our presence. Apparently it was easy for him to remain in complete immobility for hours; for me, however, it was sheer torture. My legs fell asleep, my back ached, and tension built up around my neck and shoulders. My entire body became numb and cold. I was in great discomfort when don Juan finally stood up. He just sprung to his feet and extended his hand to me to help me stand up. As I was trying to stretch my legs I realized the inconceivable easiness with which don Juan had jumped up after hours of immobility. It took quite some time for my muscles to regain the elasticity needed for walking. Don Juan headed back for the house. He walked extremely slowly. He set up a length of three paces as the distance I should observe in following him. He meandered around the regular route and crossed it four or five times in different directions; when we finally arrived at his house it was late afternoon. I tried to question him about the events of the day. He explained that talking was unnecessary. For the time being, I had to refrain from asking questions until we were in a place of power. I was dying to know what he meant by that and tried to whisper a question, but he reminded me, with a cold severe look, that he meant business. We sat on his porch for hours. I worked on my notes. From time to time he handed me a piece of dry meat; finally it was too dark to write. I tried to think about the new developments, but some part of myself refused to and I fell asleep. Saturday, August 19, 1961 Yesterday morning don Juan and I drove to town and ate breakfast at a restaurant. He advised me not to change my eating habits too drastically. "Your body is not used to power meat, " he said. "You'd get sick if you didn't eat your food." He himself ate heartily. When I joked about it he simply said, "My body likes everything." Around noon we hiked back to the water canyon. We proceeded to make ourselves noticeable to the spirit by "noisy talk" and by a forced silence which lasted hours. When we left the place, instead of heading back to the house, don Juan took off in the direction of the mountains. We reached some mild slopes first and then we climbed to the top of some high hills. There, don Juan picked out a spot to rest in the open unshaded area. He told me that we had to wait until dusk , and that I should conduct myself in the most natural fashion, which included asking all the questions I wanted. "I know that the spirit is out there lurking, " he said in a very low voice. "Where?" "Out there, in the bushes." "What kind of spirit is it?" He looked at me with a quizzical expression and retorted, "How many kinds are there?" We both laughed. I was asking questions out of nervousness. "It'll come out at dusk, " he said. "We just have to wait." I remained quiet. I had run out of questions. "This is the time when we must keep on talking, " he said. "The human voice attracts spirits. There's one lurking out there now. We are making ourselves available to it, so keep on talking." I experienced an idiotic sense of vacuity. I could not think of anything to say. He laughed and patted me on the back. "You're truly a pill, " he said. "When you have to talk, you lose your tongue. Come on, beat your gums." He made a hilarious gesture of beating his gums together, opening and closing his mouth with great speed. "There are certain things we will talk about from now on only at places of power, " he went on. "I have brought you here, because this is your first trial. This is a place of power, and here we can talk only about power." "I really don't know what power is, " I said. "Power is something a warrior deals with, " he said. "At first it's an incredible, far-fetched affair; it is hard to even think about it. This is what's happening to you now. Then power becomes a serious matter; one may not have it, or one may not even fully realize that it exists, yet one knows that something is there, something which was not noticeable before. Next power is manifested as something uncontrollable that comes to oneself. It is not possible for me to say how it comes or what it really is. It is nothing and yet it makes marvels appear before your very eyes. And finally power is something in oneself, something that controls one's acts and yet obeys one's command." There was a short pause. Don Juan asked me if I had understood. I felt ludicrous saying I did. He seemed to have noticed my dismay and chuckled. "I am going to teach you right here the first step to power, " he said as if he were dictating a letter to me. "I am going to teach you how to set up dreaming." He looked at me and again asked me if I knew what he meant. I did not. I was hardly following him at all. He explained that to "set up dreaming" meant to have a concise and pragmatic control over the general situation of a dream, comparable to the control one has over any choice in the desert, such as climbing up a hill or remaining in the shade of a water canyon. "You must start by doing something very simple, " he said. "Tonight in your dreams you must look at your hands." I laughed out loud. His tone was so factual that it was as if he were telling me to do something commonplace. "Why do you laugh?" he asked with surprise. "How can I look at my hands in my dreams?" "Very simple, focus your eyes on them just like this." He bent his head forward and stared at his hands with his mouth open. His gesture was so comical that I had to laugh. "Seriously, how can you expect me to do that?" I asked. "The way I've told you, " he snapped. "You can, of course, look at whatever you goddamn please-your toes, or your belly, or your pecker, for that matter. I said your hands because that was the easiest thing for me to look at. Don't think it's a joke. Dreaming is as serious as seeing or dying or any other thing in this awesome, mysterious world. "Think about it as something entertaining. Imagine all the inconceivable things you could accomplish. A man hunting for power has almost no limits in his dreaming." I asked him to give me some pointers. "There aren't any pointers, " he said. "Just look at your hands." "There must be more that you could tell me, " I insisted. He shook his head and squinted his eyes, staring at me in short glances. "Every one of us is different, " he finally said. "What you call pointers would only be what I myself did when I was learning. We are not the same; we aren't even vaguely alike." "Maybe anything you'd say would help me." "It would be simpler for you just to start looking at your hands." He seemed to be organizing his thoughts and bobbed his head up and down. "Every time you look at anything in your dreams it changes shape, " he said after a long silence. "The trick in learning to set up dreaming is obviously not just to look at things but to sustain the sight of them. Dreaming is real when one has succeeded in bringing everything into focus. Then there is no difference between what you do when you sleep and what you do when you are not sleeping. Do you see what I mean?" I confessed that although I understood what he had said I was incapable of accepting his premise. I brought up the point that in a civilized world there were scores of people who had delusions and could not distinguish what took place in the real world from what took place in their fantasies. I said that such persons were undoubtedly mentally ill, and my uneasiness increased every time he would recommend I should act like a crazy man. After my long explanation don Juan made a comical gesture of despair by putting his hands to his cheeks and sighing loudly. "Leave your civilized world alone, " he said. "Let it be! Nobody is asking you to behave like a madman. I've already told you, a warrior has to be perfect in order to deal with the powers he hunts; how can you conceive that a warrior would not be able to tell things apart? "On the other hand, you, my friend, who know what the real world is, would fumble and die in no time at all if you would have to depend on your ability for telling what is real and what is not." I obviously had not expressed what I really had in mind. Every time I protested I was simply voicing the unbearable frustration of being in an untenable position. "I am not trying to make you into a sick, crazy man, " don