, you are mistaken. Those truths
were  put  together for  the delight and  enlightenment of  warriors, not to
engage  any  proprietary sentiments. When I told  you  that  a nagual has no
points  to  defend, I  meant,  among  other  things,  that a nagual  has  no
obsessions."
     I told  him that I was not following  his  teachings, for I  had become
obsessed with his description of the Eagle and what it does. I remarked over
and over about the awesomeness of such an idea.
     "It is not just an idea,"  he said. "It is a fact. And a damn scary one
if you ask me. The new seers were not simply playing with ideas."
     "But what kind of a force would the Eagle be?"
     "I wouldn't know how to answer that. The Eagle is as real for the seers
as gravity and time are for you, and just as abstract and incomprehensible."
     "Wait a  minute,  don Juan.  Those are abstract  concepts, but they  do
refer   to  real  phenomena  that  can  be  corroborated.  There  are  whole
disciplines dedicated to that."
     "The Eagle and  its  emanations are equally corroboratable,"  don  Juan
retorted.  "And  the discipline  of the new seers is dedicated to doing just
that."
     I asked him to explain what the Eagle's emanations are.
     He said that  the Eagle's emanations are  an immutable thing-in-itself,
which engulfs everything that exists, the knowable and the unknowable.
     "There  is no  way to describe in  words what  the  Eagle's  emanations
really are," don Juan continued. "A seer must witness them."
     "Have you witnessed them yourself, don Juan?"
     "Of course I have, and yet  I can't tell  you what they are. They are a
presence,  almost  a  mass  of  sorts, a  pressure that  creates a  dazzling
sensation. One can catch only  a glimpse of them,  as one can catch  only  a
glimpse of the Eagle itself."
     "Would  you  say,  don  Juan, that  the  Eagle  is  the  source  of the
emanations?"
     "It   goes  without  saying  that  the  Eagle  is  the  source  of  its
emanations."
     "I meant to ask if that is so visually."
     "There  is nothing  visual about the Eagle. The entire  body of a  seer
senses the  Eagle. There is something  in all of us that can make us witness
with our  entire body.  Seers explain the  act of  seeing  the Eagle in very
simple terms: because man is composed of  the Eagle's  emanations, man  need
only revert back to his components. The problem arises with man's awareness;
it  is his awareness  that becomes  entangled  and confused. At the  crucial
moment  when  it  should  be a simple  case of the  emanations acknowledging
themselves,  man's awareness is compelled  to  interpret.  The  result  is a
vision of the Eagle and the Eagle's emanations. But there is no Eagle and no
Eagle's emanations.  What is out there is something that no  living creature
can grasp."
     I  asked  him if  the source of  the emanations  was called  the  Eagle
because eagles in general have important attributes.
     "This is  simply the case of something  unknowable  vaguely  resembling
something known," he replied. "On account of that, there have certainly been
attempts to imbue eagles with attributes they don't  have.  But that  always
happens when impressionable people learn to perform acts that require  great
sobriety. Seers come in all sizes and shapes."
     "Do you mean to say that there are different kinds of seers?"
     "No. I mean that there are scores of  imbeciles who become seers. Seers
are  human beings  full  of foibles, or rather, human beings full of foibles
are  capable of becoming seers. Just as in the case of  miserable people who
become superb scientists.
     "The characteristic  of miserable  seers is that  they are  willing  to
forget  the wonder of the  world. They  become overwhelmed  by the fact that
they  see and  believe that it's their genius that counts. A seer  must be a
paragon  in order  to override the  nearly invincible  laxness of  our human
condition. More important than seeing itself is what seers do with what they
see."
     "What do you mean by that, don Juan?"
     "Look  at what  some seers have  done to  us. We  are  stuck with their
vision of an Eagle that rules us and devours us at the moment of our death."
     He  said that there is a definite laxness  in  that version,  and  that
personally  he  did  not appreciate the idea of  something devouring us. For
him,  it would be more  accurate  to say that there is a force that attracts
our consciousness, much as a magnet attracts iron shavings. At the moment of
dying, all of our being disintegrates under the attraction  of  that immense
force.
     That such an event was interpreted  as the Eagle devouring us he  found
grotesque, because  it turns  an indescribable act into something as mundane
as eating.
     "I'm a very  average man,"  I  said. "The description of  an Eagle that
devours us had a great impact on me."
     "The  real  impact can't be measured until the  moment when you see  it
yourself," he said. "But you must bear in mind that our flaws remain with us
even after  we become seers. So when  you see that force, you  may very well
agree with  the  lax seers who called it  the Eagle, as I did myself. On the
other hand, you may not.  You may  resist  the  temptation  to ascribe human
attributes to what is  incomprehensible,  and actually  improvise a new name
for it, a more accurate one."

     "Seers who see the Eagle's  emanations often  call them commands,"  don
Juan said. "I wouldn't mind  calling  them commands myself if  I hadn't  got
used to calling  them emanations.  It  was a  reaction  to  my  benefactor's
preference; for him they were commands.  I thought  that  term was  more  in
keeping with his  forceful  personality than  with  mine. I wanted something
impersonal. 'Commands'  sounds too human to me, but that's what they  really
are, commands."
     Don Juan said that to  see the Eagle's emanations is to court disaster.
The new seers soon discovered the tremendous difficulties involved, and only
after great tribulations in trying  to map  the unknown and separate it from
the unknowable did they realize  that everything is made out of the  Eagle's
emanations.  Only  a small portion of  those  emanations is within reach  of
human  awareness, and that  small portion  is  still  further reduced,  to a
minute fraction, by the constraints of our daily lives. That minute fraction
of the Eagle's emanations is the  known; the small portion  within  possible
reach  of human awareness is the unknown, and the incalculable rest  is  the
unknowable.
     He  went  on to say that  the  new seers, being pragmatically oriented,
became immediately cognizant of the compelling power of the emanations. They
realized  that  all  living creatures  are  forced  to  employ  the  Eagle's
emanations  without  ever  knowing what they are.  They  also  realized that
organisms are constructed to  grasp a  certain range of those emanations and
that every species has a definite range. The emanations exert great pressure
on  organisms,   and   through  that  pressure   organisms  construct  their
perceivable world.
     "In  our  case,  as human beings,"  don Juan  said,  "we  employ  those
emanations  and interpret them  as reality. But what  man senses  is  such a
small  portion of the  Eagle's  emanations that it's ridiculous to  put much
stock in our perceptions, and yet it isn't possible  for us to disregard our
perceptions.  The new seers found  this  out the hard  way--  after courting
tremendous dangers."

     Don Juan was sitting where he usually sat in the large room. Ordinarily
there  was no furniture in that room-- people sat on mats on the floor-- but
Carol, the  nagual woman,  had managed to furnish  it with very  comfortable
armchairs for the sessions when she and I took turns reading to him from the
works of Spanish-speaking poets.
     "I want you to be  very aware of what we are doing," he said as soon as
I sat  down. "We are discussing the mastery  of awareness. The  truths we're
discussing are the principles of that mastery."
     He added that in  his teachings for the right side  he had demonstrated
those principles  to my normal awareness  with the help of one of  his  seer
companions, Genaro, and that Genaro had played around with my awareness with
all the humor and irreverence for which the new seers were known.
     "Genaro is the one  who should be here telling you about the Eagle," he
said, "except that his versions are too irreverent. He thinks that the seers
who called  that force the  Eagle were either very stupid or  were making  a
grand joke, because eagles not only lay eggs, they also lay turds."
     Don  Juan  laughed  and  said  that  he  found  Genaro's   comments  so
appropriate that he couldn't resist laughter. He added that if the new seers
had been the ones to describe the Eagle the description would certainly have
been made half in fun.
     I told don Juan that  on  one level I took the Eagle as a poetic image,
and as such it delighted me, but  on another level I took it literally,  and
that terrified me.
     "One of the greatest forces in the lives of warriors is fear," he said.
"It spurs them to learn."
     He reminded me that the description of the  Eagle came from the ancient
seers.  The  new  seers  were  through  with  description,  comparison,  and
conjecture of any sort. They wanted to get directly  to the source of things
and  consequently  risked unlimited danger  to get to it.  They  did see the
Eagle's  emanations.  But they  never tampered  with the description  of the
Eagle. They felt that it took too much energy to see the Eagle, and that the
ancient  seers  had  already paid  heavily for  their  scant  glimpse of the
unknowable.
     "How did the old seers come around to describing the Eagle?" I asked.
     "They needed  a minimal set  of guidelines  about  the  unknowable  for
purposes of instruction," he  replied.  "They  resolved  it  with  a sketchy
description of the force that rules all there is, but not of its emanations,
because  the  emanations  cannot  be  rendered  at  all  in  a  language  of
comparisons.  Individual seers may  feel the  urge  to  make  comments about
certain emanations, but that will remain personal, in other words,  there is
no pat version of the emanations, as there is of the Eagle."
     "The new seers  seem  to have been  very abstract," I commented.  "They
sound like modern-day philosophers."
     "No.  The new  seers  were terribly  practical  men," he replied. "They
weren't involved in concocting rational theories."
     He  said that  the  ancient seers were the ones  who  were the abstract
thinkers. They built monumental edifices of abstractions proper to them  and
their time. And just like the modern-day philosophers, they were not  at all
in control of their concatenations. The new seers, on the other hand, imbued
with practicality, were able to see a flux of emanations and to see how  man
and other living beings utilize them to construct their perceivable world.
     "How are those emanations utilized by man, don Juan?"
     "It's so simple it sounds idiotic. For a seer, men are luminous beings.
Our luminosity is made up of that portion of the Eagle's emanations which is
encased  in  our egglike cocoon. That particular  portion,  that  handful of
emanations  that is encased, is what makes us  men.  To perceive is to match
the emanations contained inside our cocoon with those that are outside.
     "Seers can see, for instance, the emanations inside any living creature
and can tell which of the outside emanations would match them."
     "Are the emanations like beams of light?" I asked.
     "No.  Not  at  all.  That  would  be  too  simple. They  are  something
indescribable.  And yet, my personal comment would be to  say that  they are
like filaments of light. What's incomprehensible to normal awareness is that
the filaments are aware. I can't  tell you what that means, because  I don't
know what I am saying. All I can tell you with my  personal comments is that
the  filaments are aware of themselves,  alive and vibrating, that there are
so many of them that numbers  have no  meaning and that each of  them  is an
eternity in itself."

     4 The Glow of Awareness

     Don Juan, don Genaro, and  I had just returned from gathering plants in
the surrounding mountains. We were at don Genaro's house, sitting around the
table, when don Juan made me change levels of awareness. Don Genaro had been
staring  at me and began to chuckle. He remarked  how odd he thought  it was
that I had two completely different standards for dealing with the two sides
of awareness. My relation with him was the most obvious example. On my right
side,  he  was  the respected  and feared sorcerer don Genaro,  a  man whose
incomprehensible acts  delighted  me  and at the same  time filled  me  with
mortal terror.  On my  left side,  he was plain Genaro, or Genarito, with no
don  attached to  his  name,  a  charming  and  kind  seer whose  acts  were
thoroughly comprehensible and  coherent with  what I myself did or  tried to
do.
     I  agreed with him and added that on my left  side, the man  whose mere
presence made me shake like a leaf was Silvio Manuel, the most mysterious of
don Juan's  companions.  I also said  that  don Juan,  being a true  nagual,
transcended arbitrary standards and was respected and admired  by me in both
states.
     "But is he feared?" Genaro asked in a quivering voice.
     "Very feared," don Juan interjected in a falsetto voice.
     We all laughed, but don Juan and Genaro laughed with such abandon  that
I immediately suspected they knew something they were holding back.
     Don  Juan  was  reading  me  like  a book.  He  explained that  in  the
intermediate  stage, before one  enters fully  into the left-side awareness,
one is capable of tremendous  concentration, but one  is also susceptible to
every conceivable influence. I was being influenced by suspicion.
     "La Gorda is always in this  stage,"  he said. "She learns beautifully,
but she's a royal pain in the neck. She can't  help being driven by anything
that comes  her  way,  including,  of  corse,  very good things,  like  keen
concentration."
     Don Juan explained that the  new seers discovered  that  the transition
period  is the time when the deepest learning  takes  place,  and that it is
also the  time when  warriors  must be supervised  and explanations must  be
given to them so they can  evaluate  them properly.  If no explanations  are
given  to them  before  they enter into  the left side,  they will be  great
sorcerers but poor seers, as the ancient Toltecs were.
     Female warriors in particular fall prey  to the lure of  the left side,
he  said. They  are so nimble that they can go  into the left  side with  no
effort, often too soon for their own good.
     After a long silence, Genaro fell asleep.  Don Juan began to speak.  He
said  that the  new  seers  had had to invent  a number of terms in order to
explain the second truth about awareness. His benefactor had changed some of
those terms to suit himself, and he himself had done the same, guided by the
seers'  belief that it does not make any difference what  terms are  used as
long as the truths have been verified by seeing.
     I  was curious  to  know what terms  he had changed, but I didn't  know
quite how to  word my question. He took it that  I was doubting his right or
his  ability  to  change  them and  explained that if  the terms we  propose
originate in our reason they can only communicate the mundane  agreement  of
everyday life. When  seers propose a term, on the other  hand, it is never a
figure of  speech because  it stems from seeing and embraces everything that
seers can attain.
     I asked him why he had changed the terms.
     "It's a nagual's duty always  to look for  better  ways to explain," he
replied.  "Time changes everything,  and every new nagual has to incorporate
new words, new ideas, to describe his seeing. '"
     "Do you  mean  that a nagual  takes ideas from the  world of  every day
life?" I asked.
     "No.  I mean that a nagual talks  about seeing  in ever new  ways,"  he
said.  "For instance,  as  the new nagual, you'd have to say  that awareness
gives rise to perception. You'd be saying the same thing my benefactor said,
but in a different way."
     "What do the new seers say perception is, don Juan?"
     "They say that perception is  a condition of alignment; the  emanations
inside the cocoon become aligned with those outside that fit them. Alignment
is what  allows awareness to  be cultivated by  every living creature. Seers
make these statements because they see  living creatures as they really are:
luminous beings that look like bubbles of whitish light."
     I  asked him  how the emanations inside the cocoon fit those outside so
as to accomplish perception.
     "The emanations inside  and the emanations outside,"  he said, "are the
same filaments  of  light. Sentient beings  are minute bubbles  made out  of
those  filaments,  microscopic  points  of light, attached to  the  infinite
emanations."
     He went on to explain that the  luminosity  of living beings is made by
the particular portion of the Eagle's emanations they  happen to have inside
their luminous  cocoons. When  seers see  perception, they witness that  the
luminosity  of  the  Eagle's  emanations  outside  those creatures'  cocoons
brightens the luminosity of the emanations inside their cocoons. The outside
luminosity attracts the inside one; it traps it, so to speak,  and fixes it.
That fixation is the awareness of every specific being.
     Seers  can  also  see  how  the emanations outside  the  cocoon exert a
particular  pressure  on  the portion  of  emanations  inside. This pressure
determines the degree of awareness that every living being has.
     I  asked  him to clarify how the Eagle's  emanations outside the cocoon
exert pressure on those inside.
     "The Eagle's emanations are more than filaments of light,"  he replied.
"Each  one  of  them is a  source of boundless energy. Think of it this way:
since  some  of  the emanations  outside  the  cocoon  are the  same  as the
emanations  inside, their energies  are like a continuous  pressure. But the
cocoon isolates the emanations  that are inside its web  and thereby directs
the pressure.
     "I've mentioned to you that the  old seers were masters  of the  art of
handling awareness," he went on. "What  I can add now is that they  were the
masters  of  that art because they  learned  to manipulate the  structure of
man's cocoon.  I've  said  to you that  they  unraveled the mystery of being
aware. By that I meant  that they saw and realized that  awareness is a glow
in  the  cocoon  of  living  beings.  They  rightly called  it  the  glow of
awareness."
     He explained that the old seers saw that man's awareness  is  a glow of
amber luminosity more intense than the rest of the cocoon. That glow is on a
narrow, vertical band on the extreme right side of the cocoon, running along
its entire length. The  mastery  of the old seers was  to move that glow, to
make it spread from its original setting on the surface of the cocoon inward
across its width.
     He stopped talking and looked at Genaro, who was still sound asleep.
     "Genaro doesn't give a fig about explanations," he said. "He's a  doer.
My  benefactor  pushed  him constantly  to  face  insoluble  problems. So he
entered  into  the  left side proper  and  never had  a chance to ponder and
wonder."
     "Is it better to be that way, don Juan?"
     "It depends. For him, it's perfect. For you  and for me, it wouldn't be
satisfactory, because in one way or another we  are called  upon to explain.
Genaro or my benefactor are more like the  old than the new seers:  they can
control and do what they want with the glow of awareness."
     He stood up  from the mat where  we were sitting and stretched his arms
and  legs. I pressed him  to  continue  talking. He  smiled and said that  I
needed to rest, that my concentration was waning.

     There was a knock at the door. I woke up. It was dark. For a  moment  I
could not remember where I was. There was something in me that was far away,
as if part of me were still asleep, yet I was  fully awake. Enough moonlight
came through the open window so that I could see.
     I saw don Genaro get up and go to the door. I realized then that  I was
at  his house. Don  Juan was  sound asleep on a mat  on the floor. I had the
distinct impression that the three of  us  had fallen asleep after returning
dead tired from a trip to the mountains.
     Don Genaro lit his kerosene  lantern. I  followed him into the kitchen.
Someone had brought him a pot of hot stew and a stack of tortillas.
     "Who brought you food?"  I asked him. "Do you have a woman  around here
that cooks for you?"
     Don Juan had come into the kitchen. Both of them looked at me, smiling.
For some reason their smiles were terrifying to me. I was about to scream in
terror,  in fact, when don  Juan hit me on the back and made me shift into a
state of heightened awareness. I realized then that perhaps during my sleep,
or as I woke up, I had drifted back to everyday awareness.
     The  sensation  I  experienced then,  once  I  was  back  in heightened
awareness, was  a mixture of relief and  anger and the most acute sadness. I
was  relieved  that I  was  myself  again, for I  had  come  to regard those
incomprehensible states as being my true self.  There  was one simple reason
for that-- in those states I felt complete; nothing was missing from me. The
anger and the sadness were  a reaction to impotence. I  was more  aware than
ever of the limitations of my being.
     I asked don Juan to explain to me how it was possible for me to do what
I was  doing. In  states of  heightened  awareness I  could  look  back  and
remember  everything about myself;  I could give an  account of everything I
had done in either  state; I could even remember my incapacity to recollect.
But once  I had returned to  my normal, everyday level  of awareness I could
not  recall anything  I had  done in heightened awareness,  even if my  life
depended on it.
     "Hold  it, hold it there,"  he said. "You  haven't  remembered anything
yet. Heightened awareness is only an intermediate state. There is infinitely
more  beyond  that, and you have been there many,  many times. Right now you
can't remember, even if your life depends on it."
     He was right. I had no idea what he was talking about. I pleaded for an
explanation.
     "The explanation  is coming," he said. "It's a slow  process, but we'll
get to it. It is slow because I am just like you: I like to understand. I am
the  opposite of  my benefactor, who was  not given  to explaining.  For him
there  was  only action. He used to put us squarely against incomprehensible
problems and let us resolve them for ourselves. Some of us never did resolve
anything, and we ended up very much in the same boat with the old seers: all
action and no real knowledge."
     "Are those memories trapped in my mind?" I asked.
     "No. That would make  it too simple," he replied. "The actions of seers
are more complex than dividing a man into  mind and body. You have forgotten
what you've done, or what you've witnessed, because when you were performing
what you've forgotten you were seeing."
     I asked don Juan to reinterpret what he had just said.
     Patiently, he explained that everything I had forgotten had taken place
in states in which my  everyday awareness had  been enhanced, intensified, a
condition that meant that other areas of my total being were used.
     "Whatever  you've  forgotten  is trapped in those areas  of  your total
being," he said. "To be using those other areas is to see."
     "I'm more confused than ever, don Juan," I said.
     "I  don't blame  you,"  he said. "Seeing  is to  lay bare  the core  of
everything, to witness  the unknown  and to glimpse into the  unknowable. As
such, it doesn't  bring one solace. Seers ordinarily go to pieces on finding
out that existence is incomprehensibly complex and that our normal awareness
maligns it with its limitations."
     He reiterated that my concentration had to be total, that to understand
was of  crucial importance, that the  new seers  placed the highest value on
deep, unemotional realizations.
     "For instance, the other day,"  he went on, "when you understood  about
la Gorda's and your self-importance, you  didn't understand anything really.
You had an emotional outburst, that was all. I say this because the next day
you were back  on your  high horse of  selfimportance  as  if  you never had
realized anything.
     "The same thing happened to the old seers. They were given to emotional
reactions. But when the time came for them to understand what they had seen,
they  couldn't do it.  To understand  one  needs sobriety, not emotionality.
Beware of those who weep with realization, for they have realized nothing.
     "There are untold dangers in the  path of knowledge for  those  without
sober understanding," he continued.  "I  am outlining the order in which the
new  seers arranged  the  truths about awareness, so it  will serve you as a
map. a map that you have  to corroborate with your seeing, but not with your
eyes."
     There was a long pause. He stared at me.  He was definitely waiting for
me to ask him a question.
     "Everybody  falls  prey  to  the mistake  that seeing is done  with the
eyes,"  he  continued. "But don't be surprised  that after so many years you
haven't  realized yet that  seeing is not  a matter of  the eyes. It's quite
normal to make that mistake."
     "What is seeing, then?" I asked.
     He replied  that seeing is alignment. And  I reminded him  that he  had
said that perception is alignment. He explained then that  the  alignment of
emanations used routinely is the perception of the day-to-day world, but the
alignment of emanations that are never used ordinarily  is seeing. When such
an alignment occurs one sees. Seeing, therefore, being produced by alignment
out of the ordinary, cannot  be  something one could merely look at. He said
that  in spite  of the fact that I had  seen  countless  times,  it had  not
occurred to me  to disregard  my eyes. I had succumbed to the  way seeing is
labeled and described.
     "When  seers see, something explains  everything  as  the new alignment
takes  place,"  he  continued.  "It's a  voice  that tells them in their ear
what's what. If that voice is not present, what the seer is engaged in isn't
seeing. "
     After a moment's pause, he continued explaining the voice of seeing. He
said that it was equally fallacious  to say that seeing was hearing, because
it  was infinitely  more than that, but that seers had opted for using sound
as a gauge of a new alignment.
     He called the voice of seeing a most mysterious inexplicable thing. "My
personal conclusion is that the voice of  seeing belongs  only to  man,"  he
said. "It may happen because talking is something that  no one  else besides
man does. The old seers believed  it was the voice of an overpowering entity
intimately related to mankind,  a protector of man. The new  seers found out
that  that entity, which they called  the mold of man, doesn't have a voice.
The  voice of seeing  for the new seers is something quite Incomprehensible;
they say it's the glow  of awareness playing on the Eagle's  emanations as a
harpist plays on a harp."
     He refused  to  explain  it any further, arguing that  later  on, as he
proceeded with his explanation, everything would become clear to me.

     My concentration had been so total while don Juan spoke that I actually
did  not  remember sitting down at the  table to eat.  When don Juan stopped
talking, I noticed that his plate of stew was nearly finished.
     Genaro was staring at me with a beaming smile. My plate was in front of
me on the table, and it too was empty. There was only a tiny residue of stew
left in  it, as if I had just finished eating. I did not remember  eating it
at all, but neither did I remember walking to the table or sitting down.
     "Did you like the stew?" Genaro asked me and looked away.
     I  said  I  did, because  I did not  want  to admit that I  was  having
problems recollecting.
     "It had too much  chile for my taste," Genaro said. "You never eat  hot
food yourself,  so I'm sort  of worried  about  what it  will do to you. You
shouldn't have eaten  two servings.  I suppose you're a little  more piggish
when you're in heightened awareness, eh?"
     I  admitted that he was probably right. He handed me a large pitcher of
water to quench  my thirst and soothe my throat. When I eagerly drank all of
it, both of them broke into howling laughter.
     Suddenly, I realized what was going on. My realization was physical. It
was a  flash of  yellowish light that hit me as if  a match had been  struck
right between my eyes. I knew then that Genaro was joking. I had  not eaten.
I had been so absorbed in don Juan's explanation  that I had forgotten about
everything else. The plate in front of me was Genaro's.
     After dinner don  Juan  went on  with his explanation about the glow of
awareness.  Genaro  sat  by  me,  listening  as if he  had  never heard  the
explanation before.
     Don Juan said that the pressure that the emanations outside the cocoon,
which are called emanations  at  large,  exert on the  emanations inside the
cocoon is the same in all sentient beings.  Yet the results of that pressure
are  vastly  different  among  them,  because  their  cocoons react to  that
pressure in every conceivable way. There are, however, degrees of uniformity
within certain boundaries.
     "Now," he went  on, "when seers see that the pressure of the emanations
at large bears down  on the  emanations  inside, which are always in motion,
and makes them stop moving, they know that the luminous being at that moment
is fixated by awareness.
     "To  say that  the emanations at large  bear down on  those inside  the
cocoon  and  make   them  stop  moving  means   that  seers  see   something
indescribable, the meaning of which they know without a shadow of  doubt. It
means that the voice of seeing has told them  that the emanations inside the
cocoon are completely at rest and match some of those which are outside."
     He  said that  seers maintain, naturally, that  awareness  always comes
from outside ourselves, that the  real  mystery  is not inside  us. Since by
nature the emanations at large are made to fixate what is inside the cocoon,
the trick of awareness is to let the fixating emanations merge with  what is
inside us. Seers believe that if we let that happen we become what we really
are-- fluid, forever in motion, eternal.
     There  was a long pause. Don Juan's  eyes had  an  intense shine.  They
seemed to be looking at me from a great  depth.  I had the feeling that each
of his eyes was  an  independent  point  of brilliance.  For an  instant  he
appeared to be  struggling against an invisible  force, a  fire  from within
that intended to consume him. It passed and he went on talking.
     "The  degree of  awareness  of  every  individual  sentient being,"  he
continued, "depends on  the degree to  which  it is capable  of letting  the
pressure of the emanations at large carry it."

     After a  long interruption, don Juan continued explaining. He said that
seers  saw  that  from  the moment  of  conception  awareness  is  enhanced,
enriched,  by the  process  of  being  alive.  He said that seers  saw,  for
instance,  that  the  awareness  of  an  individual  insect  or  that  of an
individual man grows from the moment of conception in astoundingly different
ways, but with equal consistency.
     "Is it from the  moment  of conception or from the moment of birth that
awareness develops?" I asked.
     "Awareness develops from the moment of conception," he replied. "I have
always told you that  sexual energy  is something of ultimate importance and
that it has to  be controlled and used with great care. But you have  always
resented what I said, because you thought I was speaking of control in terms
of morality; I always meant it in terms of saving and rechanneling energy."
     Don Juan looked at Genaro. Genaro nodded his head in approval.
     "Genaro  is going  to tell you  what our benefactor, the nagual Julian,
used to say about saving and rechanneling  sexual energy," don Juan  said to
me.
     "The nagual Julian used to say that to have sex is a matter of energy,"
Genaro began. "For instance, he never had any  problems having  sex, because
he had  bushels of energy. But  he took one look at me and prescribed  right
away that my peter was just for peeing. He told me that I didn't have enough
energy to have sex. He  said that  my parents were  too bored  and too tired
when they made me; he said that I was the result of very  boring sex, cojida
aburrida.  I  was  born  like  that,  bored  and  tired.  The nagual  Julian
recommended that people like me should never have sex; this way we can store
the little energy we have.
     "He said the same  thing to Silvio Manuel  and  to Emilito. He saw that
the others had enough energy. They were not the result of bored sex. He told
them that  they could do anything they wanted with their sexual  energy, but
he  recommended that  they control  themselves  and  understand  the Eagle's
command that sex is for bestowing the glow  of awareness. We all said we had
understood.
     "One  day, without  any warning  at all, he opened the  curtain  of the
other  world with  the  help of  his own benefactor,  the nagual Ellas,  and
pushed  all of us  inside, with no hesitation whatsoever. All of us,  except
Silvio  Manuel, nearly died  in there.  We  had no  energy to withstand  the
impact of  the  other  world. None of us, except Silvio Manuel, had followed
the nagual's recommendation."
     "What is the curtain of the other world?" I asked don Juan.
     "What Genaro said-- it is a  curtain,"  don Juan replied.  "But  you're
getting  off  the subject.  You always do.  We're talking  about the Eagle's
command about sex. It is the Eagle's command that sexual  energy be used for
creating life. Through sexual energy,  the eagle  bestows awareness. So when
sentient  beings  are  engaged in sexual intercourse, the  emanations inside
their cocoons do  their  best  to bestow awareness to the new sentient being
they are creating."
     He said that during the sexual act,  the emanations encased inside  the
cocoon of both  partners undergo a profound agitation, the culminating point
of which is a merging, a fusing of two pieces of the glow of  awareness, one
from each partner, that separate from their cocoons.
     "Sexual  intercourse is always  a bestowal of awareness even though the
bestowal may  not  be  consolidated," he went on. "The emanations inside the
cocoon of human beings don't know of intercourse for fun."
     Genaro leaned over toward me from his chair across the table and talked
to me in a low voice, shaking his head for emphasis.
     "The nagual is telling you the truth," he said and winked at me. "Those
emanations really don't know."
     Don Juan fought not to  laugh and  added that  the fallacy of man is to
act  with total disregard for the mystery of  existence and to  believe that
such a  sublime act  of bestowing life  and  awareness is  merely a physical
drive that one can twist at will.
     Genaro made obscene sexual gestures, twisting his pelvis around, on and
on.  Don Juan nodded and said that that was  exactly  what  he meant. Genaro
thanked  him  for  acknowledging  his  one  and  only  contribution  to  the
explanation of awareness.
     Both  of them laughed  like  idiots, saying  that if  I had  known  how
serious their benefactor was  about the explanation of awareness, I would be
laughing with them.
     I earnestly asked don Juan  what all  this meant for  an average man in
the day-to-day world.
     "You mean what Genaro is doing?" he asked me in mock seriousness.
     Their glee was always contagious. It took a long  time for them to calm
down. Their level  of energy was so high that next to them, I seemed old and
decrepit.
     "I  really  don't  know," don Juan finally  answered me. "All I know is
what it means to warriors. They know that the only real energy we possess is
a  lifebestowing  sexual  energy.  This  knowledge  makes  them  permanently
conscious of their responsibility.
     "If warriors want to have enough energy to see, they must become misers
with  their sexual energy. That was the lesson the nagual Julian gave us. He
pushed us  into the unknown, and we all nearly died.  Since  everyone  of us
wanted to see, we, of course, abstained from wasting our glow of awareness."
     I had heard him  voice  that belief  before.  Every time he did, we got
into an argument. I always felt compelled to protest and raise objections to
what I thought was a puritanical attitude toward sex.
     I again raised my objections. Both of them laughed to tears.
     "What can be done with man's natural sensuality?" I asked don Juan.
     "Nothing,"  he replied. "There is nothing wrong  with man's sensuality,
it's man's ignorance of and  disregard for his magical nature that is wrong.
It's a mistake to  waste recklessly the life-bestowing force  of sex and not
have children, but it's also a mistake  not to know  that in having children
one taxes the glow of awareness."
     "How do seers know that having children taxes the glow of awareness?" I
asked.
     "They  see that  on  having  a child,  the parents'  glow of  awareness
diminishes and the child's increases. In some supersensitive, frail parents,
the  glow  of  awareness  almost  disappears.  As   children  enhance  their
awareness, a big dark  spot develops in the luminous cocoon of  the parents,
on  the very place from which the glow  was taken away. It is usually on the
midsection   of  the  cocoon.  Sometimes  those   spots  can  even  be  seen
superimposed on the body itself."
     I  asked him if there was  anything that could be done to give people a
more balanced understanding of the glow of awareness.
     "Nothing," he said.  "At  least,  there is nothing  that seers  can do.
Seers  aim  to  be  free,  to  be  unbiased  witnesses incapable of  passing
judgment;  otherwise  they  would have  to  assume  the  responsibility  for
bringing about a more adjusted  cycle. No one can do that. The new cycle, if
it is to come, must come of itself."

     5 The First Attention

     The following day we ate breakfast at dawn, then don Juan made me shift
levels of awareness.
     "Today, let's go to an original setting," don Juan said to Genaro.
     "By all means," Genaro said gravely. He glanced at me and then added in
a low voice, as  if not wanting me to overhear him, "Does  he  have  to. . .
perhaps it's too much. . ."
     In a matter of seconds  my fear and suspicion escalated  to  unbearable
heights. I was sweating and panting. Don Juan came to  my side  and, with an
expression of almost  uncontrollable amusement, assured me that  Genaro  was
just entertaining himself  at my expense, and that we were going  to a place
where the original seers had lived thousands of years ago.
     As don  Juan was speaking  to  me, I  happened to glance  at Genaro. He
slowly  shook his head from  side to side. It  was an  almost  imperceptible
gesture, as if he were letting  me know that don  Juan was  not  telling the
truth.  I  went into a state of nervous frenzy, near hysteria--  and stopped
only when Genaro burst into laughter.
     I  marveled  how easily my  emotional  states could escalate to  nearly
unmanageable heights or drop to nothing.
     Don  Juan, Genaro, and  I left Genaro's house  in the early morning and
traveled  a short distance  into the surrounding eroded hills. Presently  we
stopped and sat down on top of an enormous flat rock, on a gradual slope, in
a corn field that seemed to have been recently harvested.
     "This is  the original setting," don Juan said  to me. "We'll come back
here a couple more times, during the course of my explanation."
     "Very weird  things  happen  here at night," Genaro  said. "The  nagual
Julian actually caught an ally here. Or rather, the ally ..."
     Don Juan made a noticeable gesture with his eyebrows and Genaro stopped
in midsentence. He smiled at me.
     "It's too early in the day for scary stories," Genaro said. "Let's wait
until dark."
     He stood up and began creeping all  around the rock, tiptoeing with his
spine arched backward.
     "What was he  saying about your benefactor's catching  an ally here?" I
asked don Juan.
     He  did not answer rig