on't follow you, don Juan."
     He put his hands over my notes and took them away from me. He carefully
closed the  pages of my notebook, secured it with  its rubber band, and then
threw it like a disk far into the chaparral.
     I was  shocked and began to protest but he put his hand over  my mouth.
He pointed to a large bush and told me to fix my attention not on the leaves
but on the shadows of the leaves.
     He said that running in the darkness did not have to be spurred by fear
but could be a very natural  reaction  of  a jubilant body that knew how "to
not do." He repeated over and over in a whisper in my right ear that "to not
do what I knew  how to do" was the key to power. In the case of looking at a
tree, what I knew  how  to  do was to focus immediately on  the foliage. The
shadows  of the  leaves or the spaces  in between the  leaves were never  my
concern. His last admonitions were to start focusing on the  shadows  of the
leaves on one  single  branch and  then eventually work my way to  the whole
tree,  and  not to let my  eyes go  back  to the  leaves, because the  first
deliberate step to storing personal power was to allow the body to "not-do."
     Perhaps it was because of my fatigue or my  nervous excitation,  but  I
became so immersed in  the  shadows of  the leaves that by the time don Juan
stood up I could almost group the dark masses of shadows as effectively as I
normally  grouped  the foliage. The total  effect was startling. I  told don
Juan that I would like to stay longer. He laughed and patted me on my hat.
     "I've told you, " he  said. "The body likes things  like this." He then
said that I should  let  my stored  power  guide me through the bushes to my
notebook. He gently pushed  me into the chaparral. I walked  aimlessly for a
moment and  then I came upon it. I thought that  I  must  have unconsciously
memorized the direction  in which don Juan had thrown  it.  He explained the
event, saying that I went directly to the notebook because my body had  been
soaked for hours in "not-doing."

     NOT-DOING

     Wednesday, April 12, 1962

     Upon returning to his house,  don Juan recommended  that  I work on  my
notes  as if  nothing had  happened to me,  and not to  mention or  even  be
concerned with  any of the events I had  experienced. After a day's rest  he
announced that we  had to leave the area  for  a  few days  because  it  was
advisable to put distance between us and those "entities." He said that they
had affected me deeply, although I was not noticing their effect yet because
my  body was not  sensitive  enough. In a short while, however, I would fall
seriously ill if I did not go  to my "place of predilection" to  be cleansed
and restored.
     We left before dawn and drove north, and after  an exhausting drive and
a fast hike we arrived at the hilltop in the late afternoon. Don Juan, as he
had done before, covered the spot where I had once slept with small branches
and leaves.  Then he gave me a handful of leaves to put against the  skin of
my abdomen  and  told me to  lie down and rest. He fixed  another place  for
himself slightly to my left, about five feet away from my head, and also lay
down.
     In a matter of minutes I began to feel an exquisite warmth and a  sense
of  supreme well-being. It was  a sense  of physical comfort, a sensation of
being  suspended in mid-air. I could fully  agree  with don Juan's statement
that  the  "bed  of strings"  would  keep  me floating.  I commented  on the
unbelievable  quality of my sensory experience. Don Juan  said in a  factual
tone that the "bed" was made for that purpose.
     "I can't believe that this is possible!" I  exclaimed. Don Juan took my
statement  literally and scolded me. He said he was tired of my acting as an
ultimately important being that has to be given proof over and over that the
world is unknown and marvelous.
     I  tried to explain that a rhetorical exclamation  had no significance.
He retorted  that if that were so I could have chosen another  statement. It
seemed that he was seriously annoyed with me.  I sat up halfway and began to
apologize, but he laughed and, imitating my manner of speaking, suggested  a
series of hilarious  rhetorical  exclamations I could  have  used instead. I
ended  up  laughing at  the  calculated absurdity of some  of  his  proposed
alternatives.  He  giggled  and in a soft tone  reminded  me  that I  should
abandon myself to the sensation of floating.
     The soothing feeling of peace and plenitude  that I experienced in that
mysterious place aroused some deeply buried emotions in  me. I began to talk
about my life. I confessed that I had never respected or liked anybody,  not
even myself, and that I  had always  felt I was inherently evil, and thus my
attitude towards others was always veiled with a certain bravado and daring.
     "True, " don  Juan  said. "You don't like yourself at  all." He cackled
and told me that he had been "seeing" while I talked. His recommendation was
that I should not have remorse for anything I  had done, because to  isolate
one's  acts  as being  mean,  or  ugly, or evil was to place  an unwarranted
importance on the self.
     I moved nervously and the bed of leaves made a rustling sound. Don Juan
said that if I wanted to rest I should not make my leaves feel agitated, and
that I should imitate him and lie without making a single movement. He added
that in his "seeing" he had come across one  of my moods. He struggled for a
moment, seemingly to find a  proper word, and said that the mood in question
was a frame of mind I continually lapsed  into. He described it as a sort of
trap door that opened at unexpected times and swallowed me.
     I  asked him to be more specific. He replied that it was  impossible to
be  specific about "seeing." Before I could say anything else  he told me  I
should relax, but not fall  asleep,  and be in a state  of  awareness for as
long as I could. He said that  the "bed of strings" was  made exclusively to
allow a warrior to arrive at  a certain state of peace and well-being. In  a
dramatic  tone don Juan  stated that well-being was a  condition one  had to
groom, a condition one had to become acquainted with in order to seek it.
     "You don't  know what well-being is, because you have never experienced
it, " he  said. I  disagreed  with him. But  he continued arguing  that well
being was an achievement one had to deliberately seek. He said that the only
thing  I  knew  how  to  seek was a sense of  disorientation, ill-being, and
confusion.
     He  laughed mockingly  and  assured me that  in order to accomplish the
feat of making myself miserable I had to work in a most intense fashion, and
that it was absurd I had never realized I could work just the same in making
myself  complete and strong. "The trick is in what one emphasizes," he said.
"We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount
of work is the same."
     I closed my eyes  and relaxed again and  began to feel I was  floating;
for a short while it was as if I were actually moving  through space, like a
leaf. Although it was utterly pleasurable,  the  feeling somehow reminded me
of times when I had  become sick  and dizzy and would experience a sensation
of spinning. I  thought  perhaps I had eaten something bad. I heard don Juan
talking to me but I did not really make an effort to listen. I was trying to
make a mental inventory of all  the things I had eaten that day, but I could
not become interested in it. It did not seem to matter.
     "Watch the way the sunlight changes," he said.
     His voice was clear. I thought it was like water, fluid and warm.
     The sky was totally  free  of clouds towards the  west and the sunlight
was  spectacular. Perhaps the fact  that  don Juan  was cueing  me made  the
yellowish glow of the afternoon sun truly magnificent.
     "Let that glow kindle you,  " don Juan said.  "Before the sun goes down
today you must be perfectly calm and restored, because  tomorrow or  the day
after, you are going to learn not-doing."
     "Learn not doing what?" I asked.
     "Never  mind  now,  " he  said.  "Wait  until  we  are  in  those  lava
mountains."
     He pointed to some distant jagged, dark, menacing-looking peaks towards
the north.

     Thursday, April 13, 1962

     We reached  the  high  desert  around  the lava  mountains in  the late
afternoon.  In  the distance the  dark brown  lava  mountains  looked almost
sinister.  The sun was very low on the horizon and shone on the western face
of the solidified lava, tinting its  dark brownness with a dazzling array of
yellow reflections. I  could not keep my eyes away.  Those  peaks were truly
mesmerizing.
     By the end of the day the bottom slopes of the mountains were in sight.
There was very  little vegetation on the high  desert; all  I could see were
cacti and a kind of tall grass that grew in tufts.
     Don  Juan stopped to  rest.  He sat down,  carefully propped  his  food
gourds against a rock, and said that we  were going to camp on that spot for
the night. He had picked a relatively high place. From where I stood I could
see quite a distance away, all around us.
     It was a  cloudy day and  the twilight quickly  enveloped  the area.  I
became involved in watching the speed with which the  crimson  clouds on the
west faded into a uniform thick dark gray. Don Juan  got up and  went to the
bushes. By the time he  came back the silhouette of the lava mountains was a
dark mass. He sat down next to me and called my attention to  what seemed to
be a natural formation on the mountains towards the northeast. It was a spot
which had a  color much lighter than its surroundings. While the whole range
of lava mountains looked  uniformly dark brown in the  twilight, the spot he
was pointing at was actually yellowish or dark beige. I could not figure out
what it could be. I stared at it for a long time. It  seemed to be moving; I
fancied it to be pulsating.
     When I squinted my eyes it actually rippled as  if the wind were moving
it.
     "Look at it fixedly!" don Juan commanded me.
     At  one moment,  after  I had maintained my stare for  quite a while, I
felt that the whole  range of mountains was moving towards  me. That feeling
was  accompanied by an unusual  agitation  in  the  pit  of  my stomach. The
discomfort became so acute that I stood up.
     "Sit down!" don Juan yelled, but  I was already on my feet. From my new
point  of  view  the  yellowish  formation was  lower on  the  side  of  the
mountains, I sat down again, without taking my eyes away,  and the formation
shifted to  a  higher  place. I stared  at it for  an instant and suddenly I
arranged everything into the correct perspective. I realized that what I had
been  looking at was not in the  mountains at all  but was really a piece of
yellowish green cloth hanging from a tall cactus in front of me.
     I  laughed  out loud and  explained to  don  Juan that the twilight had
helped  to  create  an  optical illusion. He got up and  walked to the place
where the piece  of cloth was hanging, took  it down,  folded it, and put it
inside his pouch. "What are you doing that for?" I asked.
     "Because  this piece  of  cloth has power, " he  said casually.  "For a
moment you were doing fine with it and  there  is no way of knowing what may
have happened if you had remained seated."

     Friday, April 14, 1962

     At  the  crack  of  dawn  we   headed  for  the  mountains.  They  were
surprisingly far  away. By midday we  walked  into one of the canyons. There
was  some water in shallow pools. We sat to  rest in  the shade of a hanging
cliff. The mountains  were clumps of  a monumental lava flow. The solidified
lava had weathered over the millennia into a porous dark brown rock. Only  a
few sturdy weeds grew between the rocks and in the cracks.
     Looking  up at  the  almost perpendicular walls of the canyon,  I had a
weird  sensation in  the pit of my stomach. The walls were hundreds  of feet
high  and gave me the  feeling that they were closing in on me. The  sun was
almost overhead, slightly towards the southwest. "Stand up here, "  don Juan
said  and maneuvered my body until I was looking towards the sun. He told me
to look fixedly  at the mountain  walls above me. The sight was  stupendous.
The magnificent height of the lava flow staggered my imagination. I began to
wonder what a volcanic upheaval it must have been. I  looked up and down the
sides of  the  canyon  various  times. I became immersed  in the richness of
color  in the rock wall.  There were specks  of every conceivable hue. There
were patches of  light  gray moss  or lichen in  every rock.  I looked right
above my head and noticed that the sunlight was producing the most exquisite
reflections when it hit the brilliant specks of the solidified lava.
     I stared at an  area  in the mountains  where  the  sunlight  was being
reflected.  As  the  sun  moved,  the  intensity diminished,  then it  faded
completely. I  looked across  the canyon and  saw another  area of the  same
exquisite light refractions. I told don  Juan what was happening, and then I
spotted another  area of  light, and then another in a different  place, and
another, until the whole canyon was blotched with big patches of light.
     I felt dizzy; even if  I closed my eyes I could still see the brilliant
lights. I held my  head in my  hands and tried  to crawl  under  the hanging
cliff,  but don Juan grabbed my  arm firmly and imperatively told me to look
at the walls of the mountains and try to figure out spots  of heavy darkness
in the midst of the fields of light.
     I did not want to look, because the glare bothered my eyes. I said that
what was happening to  me was similar to staring into a sunny street through
a window  and then seeing the  window frame  as a dark silhouette everywhere
else. Don Juan shook his head from side to side and began to chuckle. He let
go of my arm and we sat down again under the hanging cliff.
     I  was jotting  down my impressions of the surroundings when  don Juan,
after a long silence, suddenly spoke in a dramatic tone. "I have brought you
here to  teach you one thing, " he said and paused.  "You are going to learn
not-doing. We might as well talk about it  because there is no other way for
you to proceed. I thought  you might catch on to not-doing without my having
to say anything. I was wrong."
     "I don't know what you're talking about, don Juan."
     "It doesn't matter, " he said. "I am going  to tell you about something
that is very simple but very difficult to perform; I am going to talk to you
about not-doing, in spite of the fact that there is no way to talk about it,
because it is the body that does it."
     He  stared  at me in glances and then said that I had to pay the utmost
attention to what  he was  going to say.  I closed  my notebook, but  to  my
amazement he insisted that I should keep on writing.
     "Not-doing is so difficult and  so powerful that you should not mention
it, "  he went on. "Not until you have stopped  the world; only then can you
talk about it freely, if that's what you'd want to do."
     Don  Juan looked around  and then pointed  to a  large rock. "That rock
over there is a rock because of doing" he said.
     We looked at each other  and he smiled. I waited for an explanation but
he remained silent. Finally I had  to say that I had  not understood what he
meant.
     "That's doing!" he exclaimed.
     "Pardon me?"
     "That's also doing."
     "What are you talking about, don Juan?"
     "Doing is what  makes that  rock a rock and that  bush a bush. Doing is
what makes you yourself and me myself."
     I told him that  his explanation did  not explain  anything. He laughed
and scratched his temples.
     "That's  the  problem  with talking,  "  he said.  "It always makes one
confuse  the issues. If one starts  talking  about doing, one always ends up
talking about something else. It is better to just act.
     "Take that rock for instance. To look at it is doing, but  to see it is
not-doing"
     I  had  to confess that his words were not making sense to me. "Oh  yes
they do!" he exclaimed. "But you are convinced that they don't  because that
is your doing. That is the way you act towards me and the world."
     He again pointed  to the rock. "That rock is a rock because  of all the
things  you know  how  to do to it, " he said. "I call  that doing. A man of
knowledge, for  instance,  knows  that the rock is  a  rock  only because of
doing, so  if he  doesn't  want  the  rock to be a  rock all he has to do is
not-doing. See what I mean?"
     I did not understand him at all. He laughed and made another attempt at
explaining.
     "The world is the world because you know the  doing involved in  making
it  so, "  he  said. "If  you didn't know  its  doing, the  world  would  be
different."
     He examined me  with  curiosity.  I  stopped writing. I  just wanted to
listen to him. He went on explaining that without that certain "doing" there
would be nothing familiar in the  surroundings. He leaned over and picked up
a small rock  between the thumb and  index of  his left  hand and held it in
front of my eyes.
     "This is a pebble because you know the doing involved in making it into
a pebble, " he said.
     "What are you saying?" I asked with a feeling of bona fide confusion.
     Don Juan smiled. He seemed to be trying to hide a mischievous delight.
     "I  don't  know why  you are so confused,  " he  said.  "Words are your
predilection. You should be in heaven."
     He gave me a mysterious look  and raised his brows two or three  times.
Then he pointed again to the small rock he was holding in front of my eyes.
     "I say  that  you  are  making this  into a pebble because you know the
doing involved in it, "  he said. "Now, in  order to stop the world you must
stop doing." He  seemed to know that I still had not understood  and smiled,
shaking his head. He then took a twig  and pointed to the uneven edge of the
pebble.
     "In the case of this little rock, " he went  on, "the first thing which
doing does to it is to shrink  it to this  size. So the proper thing  to do,
which a  warrior does if he wants to stop  the world, is to enlarge a little
rock, or any other thing, by not-doing."
     He stood up  and placed the pebble  on a boulder and then  asked  me to
come closer and examine it. He  told me to look at the holes and depressions
in the pebble and try to pick out the minute detail in them. He said that if
I could pick out the detail, the holes and depressions would disappear and I
would understand what "not-doing" meant.
     "This damn pebble is going to drive you crazy today, " he said.
     I must have had a look  of bewilderment on my face. He looked at me and
laughed uproariously. Then he pretended to get angry with the pebble and hit
it two or three times with his hat.
     I urged him to clarify his point. I argued that it was possible for him
to explain anything he wanted to if he made an effort.
     He  gave me a  sly glance  and  shook his head as if the situation were
hopeless.
     "Sure  I can explain  anything,  "  he said, laughing. "But  could  you
understand  it?"  I was taken  aback by  his insinuation.  "Doing  makes you
separate the pebble from the larger boulder, " he continued. "If you want to
learn not-doing, let's say that you have to join them."
     He pointed to the small shadow that the pebble cast on the  boulder and
said that it  was not a shadow but a glue which bound them together. He then
turned around and walked away, saying that he was coming back to check on me
later.  I stared  at  the  pebble for a  long  time. I could  not  focus  my
attention on the minute detail  in the holes and  depressions, but  the tiny
shadow that the pebble cast on the boulder became a  most interesting point.
Don Juan was right; it was like a  glue.  It moved  and shifted. I  had  the
impression it was being squeezed from underneath the pebble.
     When don Juan returned I related to him what I had  observed about  the
shadow.
     "That's  a good beginning, " he said. "A warrior can  tell all kinds of
things from  the shadows."  He then suggested  that I should take the pebble
and bury it somewhere.
     "Why?" I asked.
     "You've been watching it for a long time,"  he  said. "It has something
of you  now. A warrior always tries to affect the force of doing by changing
it into not-doing. Doing would be to leave the pebble  lying around  because
it is merely a small rock. Not-doing would be to proceed with that pebble as
if it were something far beyond  a mere rock.  In this case, that pebble has
soaked in you for  a  long time and now  it is you,  and as such, you cannot
leave  it lying  around but must bury it. If you would have personal  power,
however, not-doing would be to change that pebble into a power object."
     "Can I do that now?"
     "Your life is not tight  enough to do that. If you would see, you would
know  that your heavy  concern has changed that  pebble into something quite
unappealing,  therefore the best thing you can do is  to dig a hole and bury
it and let the earth absorb its heaviness."
     "Is all this true, don Juan?"
     "To say yes or no to your question is doing. But since you are learning
not-doing  I have to  tell you that it  really doesn't matter whether or not
all this is true.  It is  here that a warrior has a point of  advantage over
the average man. An average man cares that  things are either true or false,
but a warrior doesn't. An average man proceeds in a specific way with things
that he knows are true, and in a different way with things that he knows are
not true. If  things are  said to be true,  he acts and  believes in what he
does. But if things are said to  be untrue, he doesn't care to  act,  or  he
doesn't believe in what he does. A warrior, on the other hand,  acts in both
instances. If things are said to be true, he would act in order to do doing.
     If things  are  said to be  untrue, he still would  act in order  to do
not-doing. See what I mean?"
     "No, I don't see what you mean at all, "  I said. Don Juan's statements
put me in a belligerent mood. I could not make sense of what he  was saying.
I told him it  was  gibberish, and he mocked me and said that I did not even
have an impeccable spirit in what I liked to do the most, talking.
     He  actually made fun  of  my  verbal command and found  it faulty  and
inadequate.
     "If you are going  to be  all mouth,  be a mouth warrior, " he said and
roared with laughter. I felt  dejected. My ears were buzzing.  I experienced
an uncomfortable heat in  my head. I was actually embarrassed and presumably
red  in  the face.  I  stood  up  and went into the chaparral and buried the
pebble.
     "I was  teasing  you a little bit, "  don Juan said when I returned and
sat down again. "And yet I know that if you don't talk you don't understand.
Talking is doing for you,  but talking is not appropriate and if you want to
know what I mean by not-doing you have to do a simple exercise. Since we are
concerned with not-doing it doesn't matter whether  you do the exercise  now
or ten years from now."
     He made me lie down and took my right arm and bent it at my elbow. Then
he turned my  hand until the palm was facing the front; he curved my fingers
so my hand looked as if I were holding a doorknob, and then he began to move
my  arm back and forth with a  circular  motion  that resembled  the act  of
pushing and pulling a lever attached to a wheel.
     Don  Juan  said  that a warrior executed that  movement every  time  he
wanted to  push something out of his body,  something  like a disease  or an
unwelcome feeling. The idea was to push and pull an imaginary opposing force
until one felt a heavy  object, a solid body, stopping the free movements of
the hand. In the case of the exercise, "not-doing" consisted in repeating it
until one felt the heavy body with the hand,  in  spite of the fact that one
could never believe it was possible to feel it. I began moving my arm and in
a short  while  my  hand  became ice cold. I had  begun  to feel  a sort  of
mushiness around my hand.  It was as  if I were paddling  through some heavy
viscous liquid matter.
     Don Juan made a sudden movement  and grabbed my arm to stop the motion.
My  whole  body  shivered  as  though  stirred  by  some  unseen  force.  He
scrutinized me as  I sat up, and then walked  around me before  he  sat back
down on the place where he had been.
     "You've done  enough, " he said. "You  may do this  exercise some other
time, when you have more personal power."
     "Did I do something wrong?"
     "No. Not-doing is only for very strong warriors and you  don't have the
power to deal with it yet.  Now you will  only trap  horrendous things  with
your hand. So do it  little by little, until your  hand doesn't get cold any
more. Whenever your hand remains  warm  you can actually feel  the lines of.
the world with it."
     He  paused as  if to give me  time to ask about the lines. But before I
had a chance  to, he started explaining that there were infinite numbers  of
lines that joined us to  things.  He  said that the  exercise of "not-doing"
that he had just described would  help anyone to feel a line  that  came out
from  the moving hand, a  line  that one could  place or  cast wherever  one
wanted to. Don Juan said  that  this was only an exercise, because the lines
formed  by  the hand were not  durable  enough  to  be  of  real  value in a
practical situation.
     "A man of knowledge  uses  other  parts of  his body to produce durable
lines, " he said.
     "What parts of the body, don Juan?"
     "The most durable  lines that a man of knowledge produces come from the
middle of the body," he said. "But he can also make them with his eyes."
     "Are they real lines?"
     "Surely."
     "Can you see them and touch them?"
     "Let's say that you can feel them.  The  most  difficult part about the
warrior's  way  is  to realize  that  the  world is a feeling. When  one  is
not-doing, one  is  feeling the world, and  one  feels the world through its
lines."
     He  paused  and  examined me with  curiosity.  He raised  his brows and
opened his  eyes and  then  blinked.  The effect was like the eyes of a bird
blinking.   Almost  immediately   I  felt  a  sensation  of  discomfort  and
queasiness.  It was actually as if something  was  applying  pressure  to my
stomach.
     "See what I mean?" don Juan asked and moved his eyes away.
     I  mentioned  that I felt nauseated and he replied in  a matter-of-fact
tone that he knew it, and  that he  was  trying to make me feel the lines of
the world with his  eyes. I  could not accept the  claim that he himself was
making  me feel that way.  I voiced my doubts. I could  hardly  conceive the
idea  that he was causing my feeling of  nausea, since  he  had not, in  any
physical way, impinged on me. "Not-doing is very simple  but very difficult,
" he said. "It is not  a  matter  of understanding it but  of mastering  it.
Seeing, of course, is the final accomplishment of  a man  of knowledge, .and
seeing is attained only when one has stopped the world through the technique
of not-doing."
     I smiled  involuntarily.  I had not understood what he meant. "When one
does something  with people, " he said,  "the concern  should  be  only with
presenting the case to their bodies. That's what I've been doing with you so
far, letting your body know. Who cares whether or not you understand?"
     "But  that's  unfair,  don  Juan.  I  want  to  understand  everything,
otherwise coming here would be a waste of my time."
     "A waste of  your time!" he  exclaimed parodying my tone of voice. "You
certainly are conceited." He stood up and told me that we were going to hike
to  the top of the lava peak to  our  right.  The  ascent  to the top was an
excruciating affair. It was actual mountain climbing, except that there were
no ropes  to aid  and protect  us. Don Juan repeatedly told  me  not to look
down;  and he had to actually pull  me up bodily a couple of times, after  I
had begun to slide down the rock. I felt terribly embarrassed that don Juan,
being so  old, had to  help  me. I  told  him  that I  was  in poor physical
condition  because I was too lazy to do  any exercise.  He replied that once
one  had arrived  at  a certain  level  of personal  power, exercise  or any
training of that  sort  was unnecessary,  since all one  needed, to be in an
impeccable form, was to engage oneself in "not-doing."
     When we arrived  at  the  top I lay  down. I was  about  to be sick. He
rolled me back and forth with his foot as he had done once before. Little by
little the motion restored  my balance. But I felt nervous. It  was as if  I
were somehow waiting for the sudden appearance of something. I involuntarily
looked two or three  times to each side. Don Juan  did not say a word but he
also looked in the direction I was looking.
     "Shadows are  peculiar  affairs, " he said all of  a  sudden. "You must
have noticed that there is one following us."
     "I haven't noticed anything of the sort, " I protested in a loud voice.
     Don  Juan said  that my body had noticed our  pursuer,  in spite of  my
stubborn  opposition, and assured me  in  a  confident  tone  that there was
nothing unusual about being followed by a shadow.
     "It is just a power, " he said. "These  mountains are filled with them.
It is just like one of those entities that scared you the other night."
     I wanted to know if  I could  actually perceive it myself. He  asserted
that in the daytime I could only feel its presence. I wanted an  explanation
of why he called it a  shadow when obviously it was not like the shadow of a
boulder. He replied  that  both had  the  same  lines,  therefore  both were
shadows.
     He pointed to a long boulder standing directly in front of us.
     "Look  at  the  shadow of that  boulder, "He  said. "The shadow  is the
boulder, and yet it isn't. To observe  the boulder in order to know what the
boulder is, is doing, but to observe its shadow is not-doing.
     "Shadows  are like doors,  the doors of not-doing.  A man of knowledge,
for  example, can tell  the  innermost  feelings  of men  by  watching their
shadows."
     "Is there movement in them?" I asked.
     "You may say that  there is movement  in them, or you may  say that the
lines of the world are shown in them, or you may say that feelings come from
them."
     "But how could feelings come out of shadows, don Juan?"
     "To believe that shadows are just shadows is doing" he explained. "That
belief is somehow stupid. Think about it this way: There is so much more  to
everything in the world  that obviously there  must  be more to shadows too.
After all, what makes them shadows is merely our doing."
     There was a long silence. I did not know what else to say.
     "The  end of the day  is approaching, "  don  Juan said, looking at the
sky. "You have to use this brilliant sunlight to perform one last exercise."
     He  led me to  a place where  there were  two  peaks the size of a  man
standing parallel  to each other, about four or five  feet  apart.  Don Juan
stopped ten yards away from them, facing  the  west. He marked a spot for me
to stand on and told me to look at the shadows of  the peaks. He said that I
should watch  them and cross my eyes in the same manner I ordinarily crossed
them when scanning the ground for a place to rest.
     He clarified his directions by saying that when searching for a resting
place one had to look without  focusing but in observing shadows  one had to
cross the eyes  and yet keep a sharp image in focus. The idea was to let one
shadow be superimposed on the  other by crossing the eyes. He explained that
through that process one could  ascertain  a  certain feeling which emanated
from shadows. I commented on his vagueness, but he maintained that there was
really no way of describing what he meant.
     My attempt to  carry  out the exercise was futile. I  struggled until I
got a headache.  Don Juan was  not at  all concerned  with  my  failure.  He
climbed to  a dome like peak and yelled from the top, telling me to look for
two small long  and narrow pieces of rock. He showed with his hands the size
rock he wanted. I  found two  pieces and handed them to him. Don Juan placed
each rock about a  foot apart  in  two crevices,  made me stand  above  them
facing the west, and told me to do the same exercise with their shadows.
     This  time it was an altogether different affair.  Almost immediately I
was capable of crossing  my eyes and perceiving their individual  shadows as
if  they  had  merged into  one. I  noticed  that the act of looking without
converging the images  gave the single shadow I had  formed  an unbelievable
depth and a sort of transparency. I stared at it, bewildered. Every hole  in
the rock, on  the  area where my eyes  were focused, was neatly discernible;
and the composite shadow, which was superimposed on them, was like a film of
indescribable transparency.
     I did  not  want to  blink,  for fear  of  losing the  image  I  was so
precariously holding. Finally my sore eyes forced me to blink, but I did not
lose the view of the detail at all.  In fact, by remoistening my  cornea the
image became even clearer. I noticed at that point that it was as if I  were
looking  from an  immeasurable height at a world  I had never seen before. I
also noticed that I could scan the surroundings of the shadow without losing
the  focus of my visual perception. Then, for an instant,  I lost the notion
that I  was looking  at a  rock.  I felt that I was landing in a world, vast
beyond  anything I had ever  conceived. This extraordinary perception lasted
for  a second and then everything was turned off. I  automatically looked up
and saw  don Juan  standing directly above  the  rocks,  facing  me. He  had
blocked the sunlight with his body. I described the unusual sensation I  had
had,  and he explained  that he had been forced to  interrupt it because  he
"saw"  that I  was  about to get lost in  it. He added that it was a natural
tendency  for all of  us  to indulge ourselves when feelings of  that nature
occur,  and that by indulging myself in it I  had  almost turned "not-doing"
into  my  old  familiar "doing." He said that what I should have done was to
maintain  the view  without succumbing to it, because in a way "doing" was a
manner of succumbing.
     I complained that he should have told  me beforehand what to expect and
what to do, but he  pointed out that he had no way of knowing whether or not
I would succeed in merging the shadows.
     I had to confess I  was more mystified than ever about "not-doing." Don
Juan's  comments  were that I should be  satisfied with  what  I  had  done,
because for once I had proceeded correctly, that by reducing the world I had
enlarged it, and that, although I had been far from feeling the lines of the
world, I  had  correctly  used the shadow  of  the  rocks  as  a  door  into
"not-doing."
     The statement that I had enlarged the world by reducing it intrigued me
to  no  end. The  detail of the porous rock, in the small area where my eyes
were  focused, was so  vivid and  so  precisely defined that the top of  the
round  peak  became a vast  world for me;  and yet it  was really  a reduced
vision of  the  rock. When  don  Juan blocked  the light and I found  myself
looking as I normally  would  do, the precise detail became dull,  the  tiny
holes in the porous  rock  became bigger, the brown color of the  dried lava
became opaque, and everything lost the shiny transparency that made the rock
into a real world.
     Don Juan then took the two rocks, laid them gently into a deep crevice,
and sat down cross-legged  facing the west, on the spot  where the rocks had
been. He patted a spot next to him to his left and told me to sit down.
     We did not speak for a long time.  Then we ate, also in silence. It was
only  after the  sun had set that he  suddenly turned and asked me about  my
progress in "dreaming." I told him  that it had been easy  in the beginning,
but that at  the  moment  I  had ceased altogether  to  find my hands  in my
dreams.
     "When  you  first  started dreaming  you were using my  personal power,
that's why  it was easier, " he said. "Now you  are empty. But you must keep
on trying until you have enough power of your own. You  see, dreaming is the
not-doing of  dreams, and as you progress  in your not -doing you  will also
progress in dreaming. The trick is  not to stop looking for your hands, even
if you don't believe that what you are doing has any meaning. In fact,  as I
have told you before,  a warrior doesn't need to believe, because as long as
he keeps on  acting without believing he is not-doing."  We  looked  at each
other for a moment.
     "There  is nothing else I can tell  you about dreaming." he  continued.
"Everything I may say  would only be not-doing.  But if you tackle not-doing
directly, you yourself would know what to do in dreaming. To find your hands
is essential, though, at this time, and I  am sure you will." "I don't know,
don Juan. I don't trust myself."
     "This  is not  a  matter  of trusting anybody. This whole affair  is  a
matter  of  a warrior's struggle; and  you will keep  on struggling, if  not
under your own power, then perhaps under the impact of a worthy opponent, or
with the help of some allies, .like the one which is already following you."
I made a jerky involuntary movement with my right arm.
     Don Juan said that my body knew much more than I suspected, because the
force that had been pursuing us was to my right.  He confided in  a low tone
of  voice that twice that day the  ally had come so close to me that he  had
had to step in and stop it.
     "During the  day shadows  are the doors of not-doing" he  said. "But at
night, since very little doing prevails in the dark, everything is a shadow,
including the allies. I've already told you about this when I taught you the
gait of power." I laughed out loud and my own laughter scared me.
     "Everything I have taught you so  far has been an  aspect of not-doing"
he went on. "A warrior applies not-doing to everything in the world, and yet
I can't tell  you  more about  it than what I  have said today. You must let
your  own  body discover the power  and the  feeling of  not-doing."  I  had
another fit of nervous cackling.
     "It is  stupid for  you to  scorn  the  mysteries  of  the world simply
because you know the doing of scorn," he said with a serious face. I assured
him  that I was not scorning anything or anyone, but that I was more nervous
and incompetent than he thought. "I've  always been that way, " I said. "And
yet I want to change, but I don't know how. I am so inadequate."
     "I already know that you think you are rotten, " he said.
     "That's  your doing. Now in order to  affect that  doing  I am going to
recommend that you learn another doing. From  now  on,  and for a period  of
eight days, I want you to lie to yourself.  Instead of telling  yourself the
truth, that you  are ugly and  rotten and inadequate, you will tell yourself
that  you are the complete opposite, knowing that you are lying and that you
are absolutely beyond hope."
     "But what would be the point of lying like that, don Juan?"
     "It may hook you to another  doing and  then you  may realize that both
doings are lies, unreal, and that to hinge yourself to either one is a waste
of time, because the only thing  that is  real is the being  in  you that is
going to die. To arrive at that being is the not-doing of the self."

     THE RING OF POWER

     Saturday, April 15, 1962

     Don  Juan  felt  the weight of  our gourds  and  concluded that  we had
exhausted our  food supply and  that  it was time to return home. I casually
mentioned that it was going to  take us at least a couple of days to  get to
his  house. He said he was not going back to  Sonora but  to  a  border town
where he had some business to take care of. I thought we were going to start
our descent through a water canyon but don Juan headed towards the northwest
on the high plateaus of the lava mountains. After  about an  hour of walking
he led me into a deep ravine, which  ended at a point where two peaks almost
joined. There was a slope there, going almost  to  the top of  the  range, a
strange slope  which looked like a  slanted concave bridge between  the  two
peaks. Don Juan pointed to an area on the face of the slope.
     "Look there fixedly, " he said. "The sun is almost right."
     He  explained that at midday the light of the  s