ht away. He was ecstatic, watching Genaro's antics. "He was referring to some sophisticated use of awareness," he finally replied, still staring at Genaro. Genaro completed a circle around the rock and came back and sat down by me. He was panting heavily, almost wheezing, out of breath. Don Juan seemed fascinated by what Genaro had done. Again I had the feeling that they were amusing themselves at my expense, that both of them were up to something I knew nothing about. Suddenly, don Juan began his explanation. His voice soothed me. He said that after much toiling, seers arrived at the conclusion that the consciousness of adult human beings, matured by the process of growth, can no longer be called awareness, because it has been modified into something more intense and complex, which seers call attention. "How do seers know that man's awareness is being cultivated and that it grows?" I asked. He said that at a given time in the growth of human beings a band of the emanations inside their cocoons becomes very bright; as human beings accumulate experience, it begins to glow. In some instances, the glow of this band of emanations increases so dramatically that it fuses with the emanations from the outside. Seers, witnessing an enhancement of this kind, had to surmise that awareness is the raw material and attention the end product of maturation. "How do seers describe attention?" I asked. "They say that attention is the harnessing and enhancing of awareness through the process of being alive," he replied. He said that the danger of definitions is that they simplify matters to make them understandable; in this case, in defining attention, one runs the risk of transforming a magical, miraculous accomplishment into something commonplace. Attention is man's greatest single accomplishment. It develops from raw animal awareness until it covers the entire gamut of human alternatives. Seers perfect it even further until it covers the whole scope of human possibilities. I wanted to know if there was a special significance to alternatives and possibilities in the seers' view. Don Juan replied that human alternatives are everything we are capable of choosing as persons. They have to do with the level of our day-to-day range, the known; and owing to that fact, they are quite limited in number and scope. Human possibilities belong to the unknown. They are not what we are capable of choosing but what we are capable of attaining. He said that an example of human alternatives is our choice to believe that the human body is an object among objects. An example of human possibilities is the seers' achievement in viewing man as an egglike luminous being. With the body as an object one tackles the known, with the body as a luminous egg one tackles the unknown; human possibilities have, therefore, nearly an inexhaustible scope. "Seers say that there are three types of attention," don Juan went on. "When they say that, they mean it just for human beings, not for all the sentient beings in existence. But the three are not just types of attention, they are rather three levels of attainment. They are the first, second, and third attention, each of them an independent domain, complete in itself." He explained that the first attention in man is animal awareness, which has been developed, through the process of experience, into a complex, intricate, and extremely fragile faculty that takes care of the day-today world in all its innumerable aspects, in other words, everything that one can think about is part of the first attention. "The first attention is everything we are as average men," he continued. "By virtue of such an absolute rule over our lives, the first attention is the most valuable asset that the average man has. Perhaps it is even our only asset. "Taking into account its true value, the new seers started a rigorous examination of the first attention through seeing. Their findings molded their total outlook and the outlook of all their descendants, even though most of them do not understand what those seers really saw." He emphatically warned me that the conclusions of the new seers' rigorous examination had very little to do with reason or rationality, because in order to examine and explain the first attention, one must see it. Only seers can do that. But to examine what seers see in the first attention is essential. It allows the first attention the only opportunity it will ever have to realize its own workings. "In terms of what seers see, the first attention is the glow of awareness developed to an ultra shine," he continued. "But it is a glow fixed on the surface of the cocoon, so to speak. It is a glow that covers the known. "The second attention, on the other hand, is a more complex and specialized state of the glow of awareness. It has to do with the unknown. It comes about when unused emanations inside man's cocoon are utilized. "The reason I called the second attention specialized is that in order to utilize those unused emanations, one needs uncommon, elaborate tactics that require supreme discipline and concentration." He said that he had told me before, when he was teaching me the art of dreaming, that the concentration needed to be aware that one is having a dream is the forerunner of the second attention. That concentration is a form of consciousness that is not in the same category as the consciousness needed to deal with the daily world. He said that the second attention is also called the left-side awareness; and it is the vastest field that one can imagine, so vast in fact that it seems limitless. "I wouldn't stray into it for anything in this world," he went on. "It is a quagmire so complex and bizarre that sober seers go into it only under the strictest conditions. "The great difficulty is that the entrance into the second attention is utterly easy and its lure nearly irresistible." He said that the old seers, being the masters of awareness, applied their expertise to their own glows of awareness and made them expand to inconceivable limits. They actually aimed at lighting up all the emanations inside their cocoons, one band at a time. They succeeded, but oddly enough the accomplishment of lighting up one band at a time was instrumental in their becoming imprisoned in the quagmire of the second attention. "The new seers corrected that error," he continued, "and let the mastery of awareness develop to its natural end, which is to extend the glow of awareness beyond the bounds of the luminous cocoon in one single stroke. "The third attention is attained when the glow of awareness turns into the fire from within: a glow that kindles not one band at a time but all the Eagle's emanations inside man's cocoon." Don Juan expressed his awe for the new seers' deliberate effort to attain the third attention while they are alive and conscious of their individuality. He did not consider it worthwhile to discuss the random cases of men and other sentient beings who enter into the unknown and the unknowable without being aware of it; he referred to this as the Eagle's gift. He asserted that for the new seers to enter into the third attention is also a gift, but has a different meaning, it is more like a reward for an attainment. He added that at the moment of dying all human beings enter into the unknowable and some of them do attain the third attention, but altogether too briefly and only to purify the food for the Eagle. "The supreme accomplishment of human beings," he said, "is to attain that level of attention while retaining the life-force, without becoming a disembodied awareness moving like a flicker of light up to the Eagle's beak to be devoured." While listening to don Juan's explanation I had again completely lost sight of everything that surrounded me. Genaro apparently had gotten up and left us, and was nowhere in sight. Strangely, I found myself crouching on the rock, with don Juan squatting by me holding me down by gently pushing on my shoulders. I reclined on the rock and closed my eyes. There was a soft breeze blowing from the west. "Don't fall asleep," don Juan said. "Not for any reason should you fall asleep on this rock." I sat up. Don Juan was staring at me. "Just relax," he went on. "Let the internal dialogue die out." All my concentration was involved in following what he was saying when I got a jolt of fright. I did not know what it was at first; I thought I was going through another attack of distrust. But then it struck me, like a bolt, that it was very late in the afternoon. What I had thought was an hour's conversation had consumed an entire day. I jumped up, fully aware of the incongruity, although I could not conceive what had happened to me. I felt a strange sensation that made my body want to run. Don Juan jumped me, restraining me forcefully. We fell to the soft ground, and he held me there with an iron grip. I had had no idea that don Juan was so strong. My body shook violently. My arms flew every which way as they shook. I was having something like a seizure. Yet some part of me was detached to the point of becoming fascinated with watching my body vibrate, twist, and shake. The spasms finally died out and don Juan let go of me. He was panting with the exertion. He recommended that we climb back up on the rock and sit there until I was all right. I could not help pressing him with my usual question: What had happened to me? He answered that as he talked to me I had pushed beyond a certain limit and had entered very deeply into the left side. He and Genaro had followed me in there. And then I had rushed out in the same fashion I had rushed in. "I caught you right on time," he said. "Otherwise you would have gone straight out to your normal self." I was totally confused. He explained that the three of us had been playing with awareness. I must have gotten scared and run out on them. "Genaro is the master of awareness," don Juan went on. "Silvio Manuel is the master of wilt. The two of them were mercilessly pushed into the unknown. My benefactor did to them what his benefactor did to him. Genaro and Silvio Manuel are very much like the old seers in some respects. They know what they can do, but they don't care to know how they do it. Today, Genaro seized the opportunity to push your glow of awareness and we all ended up in the weird confines of the unknown." I begged him to tell me what had happened in the unknown. "You'll have to remember that yourself," a voice said just by my ear. I was so convinced that it was the voice of seeing that it did not frighten me at all. I did not even obey the impulse to turn around. "I am the voice of seeing and I tell you that you are a peckerhead," the voice said again and chuckled. I turned around. Genaro was sitting behind me. I was so surprised that I laughed perhaps a bit more hysterically than they did. "It's getting dark now," Genaro said to me. "As I promised you earlier today, we are going to have a ball here." Don Juan intervened and said that we should stop for the day, because I was the kind of nincompoop who could die offright. "Nah, he's all right," Genaro said, patting me on the shoulder. "You'd better ask him," don Juan said to Genaro. "He himself will tell you that he's that kind of nincompoop." "Are you really that kind of nincompoop?" Genaro asked me with a frown. I didn't answer him. And that made them roll around laughing. Genaro rolled all the way to the ground. "He's caught," Genaro said to don Juan, referring to me, after don Juan had swiftly jumped down and helped him to stand up. "He'll never say he's a nincompoop. He's too self-important for that, but he's shivering in his pants with fear of what might happen because he didn't confess he's a nincompoop." Watching them laugh, I was convinced that only Indians could laugh with such joyfulness. But I also became convinced that there was a mile-wide streak of maliciousness in them. They were poking fun at a non-Indian. Don Juan immediately caught my feelings. "Don't let your self-importance run rampant," he said. "You're not special by any standards. None of us are, Indians and non-Indians. The nagual Julian and his benefactor added years of enjoyment to their lives laughing at us." Genaro nimbly climbed back onto the rock and came to my side. "If I were you. I'd feel so frigging embarrassed I'd cry," he said to me. "Cry, cry. Have a good cry and you'll feel better." To my utter amazement I began to weep softly. Then I got so angry that I roared with fury. Only then I felt better. Don Juan patted my back gently. He said that usually anger is very sobering, or sometimes fear is, or humor. My violent nature made me respond only to anger. He added that a sudden shift in the glow of awareness makes us weak. They had been trying to reinforce me, to bolster me. Apparently, Genaro had succeeded by making me rage. It was twilight by then. Suddenly Genaro pointed to a flicker in midair at eye level, in the twilight it appeared to be a large moth flying around the place where we sat. "Be very gentle with your exaggerated nature," don Juan said to me. "Don't be eager. Just let Genaro guide you. Don't take your eyes from that spot." The flickering point was definitely a moth. I could clearly distinguish all its features. I followed its convoluted, tired flight, until I could see every speck of dust on its wings. Something got me out of my total absorption. I sensed a flurry of soundless noise, if that could be possible, just behind me. I turned around and caught sight of an entire row of people on the other edge of the rock, an edge that was a bit higher than the one on which we were sitting. I supposed that the people who lived nearby must have gotten suspicious of us hanging around all day and had climbed onto the rock intending to harm us. I knew about their intentions instantly. Don Juan and Genaro slid down from the rock and told me to hurry down. We left immediately without turning back to see if the men were following us. Don Juan and Genaro refused to talk while we walked back to Genaro's house. Don Juan even made me hush with a fierce grunt, putting his finger to his lips. Genaro did not come into the house, but kept on walking as don Juan dragged me inside. "Who were those people, don Juan?" I asked him, when the two of us were safely inside the house and he had lit the lantern. "They were not people," he replied. "Come on, don Juan, don't mystify me," I said. "They were men; I saw them with my own eyes." "Of course, you saw them with your own eyes," he retorted, "but that doesn't say anything. Your eyes misled you. Those were not people and they were following you. Genaro had to draw them away from you." "What were they, then, if not people?" "Oh, there is the mystery," he said. "It's a mystery of awareness and it can't be solved rationally by talking about it. The mystery can only be witnessed." "Let me witness it then." I said. "But you already have, twice in one day," he said. "You don't remember now. You will, however, when you rekindle the emanations that were glowing when you witnessed the mystery of awareness i'm referring to. In the meantime, let's go back to our explanation of awareness." He reiterated that awareness begins with the permanent pressure that the emanations at large exert on the ones trapped inside the cocoon. This pressure produces the first act of consciousness; it stops the motion of the trapped emanations, which are fighting to break the cocoon, fighting to die. "For a seer, the truth is that all living beings are struggling to die," he went on. "What stops death is awareness." Don Juan said that the new seers were profoundly disturbed by the fact that awareness forestalls death and at the same time induces it by being food for the Eagle. Since they could not explain it, for there is no rational way to understand existence, seers realized that their knowledge is composed of contradictory propositions. "Why did they develop a system of contradictions?" I asked. "They didn't develop anything," he said. "They found unquestionable truths by means of their seeing. Those truths are arranged in terms of supposedly blatant contradictions, that's all. "For example, seers have to be methodical, rational beings, paragons of sobriety, and at the same time they must shy away from all of those qualities in order to be completely free and open to the wonders and mysteries of existence." His example left me baffled, but not to the extreme. I understood what he meant. He himself had sponsored my rationality only to crush it and demand a total absence of it. I told him how I understood his point. "Only a feeling of supreme sobriety can bridge the contradictions," he said. "Could you say, don Juan, that art is that bridge?" "You may call the bridge between contradictions anything you want-- art, affection, sobriety, love, or even kindness." Don Juan continued his explanation and said that in examining the first attention, the new seers realized that all organic beings, except man, quiet down their agitated trapped emanations so that those emanations can align themselves with their matching ones outside. Human beings do not do that; instead, their first attention lakes an inventory of the Eagle's emanations inside their cocoons. "What is an inventory, don Juan?" I asked. "Human beings take notice of the emanations they have inside their cocoons," he replied. "No other creatures do that. The moment the pressure from the emanations at large fixates the emanations inside, the first attention begins to watch itself. It notes everything about itself, or at least it tries to, in whatever aberrant ways it can. This is the process seers call taking an inventory. "I don't mean to say that human beings choose to take an inventory, or that they can refuse to take it. To take an inventory is the Eagle's command. What is subject to volition, however, is the manner in which the command is obeyed." He said that although he disliked calling the emanations commands, that is what they are: commands that no one can disobey. Yet the way out of obeying the commands is in obeying them. "In the case of the inventory of the first attention," he went on, "seers take it, for they can't disobey. But once they have taken it they throw it away. The Eagle doesn't command us to worship our inventory; it commands us to take it, that's all." "How do seers see that man takes an inventory?" I asked. "The emanations inside the cocoon of man are not quieted down for purposes of matching them with those outside," he replied. "This is evident after seeing what other creatures do. On quieting down, some of them actually merge themselves with the emanations at large and move with them. Seers can see, for instance, the light of the scarabs' emanations expanding to great size. "But human beings quiet down their emanations and then reflect on them. The emanations focus on themselves." He said that human beings carry the command of taking an inventory to its logical extreme and disregard everything else. Once they are deeply involved in the inventory, two things may happen. They may ignore the impulses of the emanations at large, or they may use them in a very specialized way. The end result of ignoring those impulses after taking an inventory is a unique state known as reason. The result of using every impulse in a specialized way is known as self-absorption. Human reason appears to a seer as an unusually homogeneous dull glow that rarely if ever responds to the constant pressure from the emanations at large-- a glow that makes the egglike shell become tougher, but more brittle. Don Juan remarked that reason in the human species should be bountiful, but that in actuality it is very rare. The majority of human beings turn to self-absorption. He asserted that the awareness of all living beings has a degree of self-reflection in order for them to interact. But none except man's first attention has such a degree of self-absorption. Contrary to men of reason, who ignore the impulse of the emanations at large, the self-absorbed individuals use every impulse and turn them all into a force to stir the trapped emanations inside their cocoons. Observing all this, seers arrived at a practical conclusion. They saw that men of reason are bound to live longer, because by disregarding the impulse of the emanations at large, they quiet down the natural agitation inside their cocoons. The self-absorbed individuals, on the other hand, by using the impulse of the emanations at large to create more agitation, shorten their lives. "What do seers see when they gaze at self-absorbed human beings?" I asked. "They see them as intermittent bursts of white light, followed by long pauses of dullness," he said. Don Juan stopped talking. I had no more questions to ask, or perhaps I was too tired to ask about anything. There was a loud bang that made me jump. The front door flew open and Genaro came in, out of breath. He slumped on the mat. He was actually covered with perspiration. "I was explaining about the first attention," don Juan said to him. "The first attention works only with the known," Genaro said. "it isn't worth two plugged nickels with the unknown." "That is not quite right," don Juan retorted. "The first attention works very well with the unknown. It blocks it; it denies it so fiercely that in the end, the unknown doesn't exist for the first attention. "Taking an inventory makes us invulnerable. That is why the inventory came into existence in the first place." "What are you talking about?" I asked don Juan. He didn't reply. He looked at Genaro as if waiting for an answer. "But if I open the door," Genaro said, "would the first attention be capable of dealing with what will come in?" "Yours and mine wouldn't, but his will," don Juan said, pointing at me. "Let's try it." "Even though he's in heightened awareness?" Genaro asked don Juan. "That won't make any difference," don Juan answered. Genaro got up and went to the front door and threw it open. He instantly jumped back. A gust of cold wind came in. Don Juan came to my side, and so did Genaro. Both of them looked at me in amazement. I wanted to close the front door. The cold was making me uncomfortable. But as I moved toward the door, don Juan and Genaro jumped in front of me and shielded me. "Do you notice anything in the room?" Genaro asked me. "No, I don't," I said, and I really meant it. Except for the cold wind pouring in through the open door, there was nothing to notice in there. "Weird creatures came in when I opened the door," he said. "Don't you notice anything?" There was something in his voice that told me he was not joking this time. The three of us, with both of them flanking me, walked out of the house. Don Juan picked up the kerosene lantern, and Genaro locked the front door. We got inside the car, through the passenger's side. They pushed me in first. And then we drove to don Juan's house in the next town. 6 Inorganic Beings The next day I repeatedly asked don Juan to explain our hasty departure from Genaro's house. He refused even to mention the incident. Genaro was no help either. Every time I asked him he winked at me, grinning like a fool. In the afternoon, don Juan came to the back patio of his house, where I was talking with his apprentices. As if on cue, all the young apprentices left instantly. Don Juan took me by the arm, and we began to walk along the corridor. He did not say anything; for a while we just strolled around, very much as if we were in the public square. Don Juan stopped walking and turned to me. He circled me, looking over my entire body. I knew that he was seeing me. I felt a strange fatigue, a laziness I had not felt until his eyes swept over me. He began to talk all of a sudden. "The reason Genaro and I didn't want to focus on what happened last night," he said, "was that you had been very frightened during the time you were in the unknown. Genaro pushed you, and things happened to you in there." "What things, don Juan?" "Things that are still difficult if not impossible to explain to you now," he said. "You don't have enough surplus energy to enter into the unknown and make sense of it. When the new seers arranged the order of the truths about awareness, they saw that the first attention consumes all the glow of awareness that human beings have, and not an iota of energy is left free. That's your problem now. So, the new seers proposed that warriors, since they have to enter into the unknown, have to save their energy. But where are they going to get energy, if all of it is taken? They'll get it, the new seers say, from eradicating unnecessary habits." He stopped talking and solicited questions. I asked him what eradicating unnecessary habits did to the glow of awareness. He replied that it detaches awareness from self-reflection and allows it the freedom to focus on something else. "The unknown is forever present," he continued, "but it is outside the possibility of our normal awareness. The unknown is the superfluous part of the average man. And it is superfluous because the average man doesn't have enough free energy to grasp it. "After all the time you've spent in the warrior's path, you have enough free energy to grasp the unknown, but not enough energy to understand it or even to remember it." He explained that at the site of the flat rock, I had entered very deeply into the unknown. But I indulged in my exaggerated nature and became terrified, which was about the worst thing anyone can do. So I had rushed out of the left side, like a bat out of hell; unfortunately, taking a legion of strange things with me. I told don Juan that he was not getting to the point, that he should come out and tell me exactly what he meant by a legion of strange things. He took me by the arm and continued strolling around with me. "In explaining awareness," he said, "I am presumably fitting everything or nearly everything into place. Let's talk a little bit about the old seers. Genaro, as I've told you, is very much like them." He led me then to the big room. We sat down there and he began his elucidation. "The new seers were simply terrified by the knowledge that the old seers had accumulated over the years," don Juan said. "It's understandable. The new seers knew that that knowledge leads only to total destruction. Yet they were also fascinated by it-- especially by the practices." "How did the new seers know about those practices?" I asked. "They are the legacy of the old Toltecs," he said. "The new seers learn about them as they go along. They hardly ever use them, but the practices are there as part of their knowledge." "What kind of practices are they, don Juan?" "They are very obscure formulas, incantations, lengthy procedures that have to do with the handling of a very mysterious force. At least it was mysterious to the ancient Toltecs, who masked it and made it more horrifying than it really is." "What is that mysterious force?" I asked. "It's a force that is present throughout everything there is," he said. "The old seers never attempted to unravel the mystery of the force that made them create their secret practices; they simply accepted it as something sacred. But the new seers took a close look and called it wilt, the will of the Eagle's emanations, or intent."' Don Juan went on explaining that the ancient Toltecs had divided their secret knowledge into five sets of two categories each: the earth and the dark regions, fire and water, the above and the below, the loud and the silent, the moving and the stationary. He speculated that there must have been thousands of different techniques, which became more and more intricate as time passed. "The secret knowledge of the earth," he went on, "had to do with everything that stands on the ground. There were particular sets of movements, words, unguents, potions that were applied to people, animals, insects, trees, small plants, rocks, soil. "These were techniques that made the old seers into horrid beings. And their secret knowledge of the earth was employed either to groom or to destroy anything that stands on the ground. "The counterpart of the earth was what they knew as the dark regions. These practices were by far the most dangerous. They dealt with entities without organic life. Living creatures that are present on the earth and populate it together with all organic beings. "Doubtlessly, one of the most worthwhile findings of the ancient seers, especially for them, was the discovery that organic life is not the only form of life present on this earth." I did not quite comprehend what he had said. I waited for him to clarify his statements. "Organic beings are not the only creatures that have life," he said and paused again as if to allow me time to think his statements over. I countered with a long argument about the definition of life and being alive. I talked about reproduction, metabolism, and growth, the processes that distinguish live organisms from inanimate things. "You're drawing from the organic," he said. "But that's only one instance. You shouldn't draw all you have to say from one category alone." "But how else can it be?" I asked. "For seers, to be alive means to be aware," he replied. "For the average man, to be aware means to be an organism. This is where seers are different. For them, to be aware means that the emanations that cause awareness are encased inside a receptacle. "Organic living beings have a cocoon that encloses the emanations. But there are other creatures whose receptacles don't look like a cocoon to a seer. Yet they have the emanations of awareness in them and characteristics of life other than reproduction and metabolism." "Such as what, don Juan?" "Such as emotional dependency, sadness, joy, wrath, and so forth and so on. And I forgot the best yet, love; a kind of love man can't even conceive." "Are you serious, don Juan?" I asked in earnest. "Inanimately serious," he answered with a deadpan expression and then broke into laughter. "If we take as our clue what seers see," he continued, "life is indeed extraordinary." "If those beings are alive, why don't they make themselves known to man?" I asked. "They do, all the time. And not only to seers but also to the average man. The problem is that all the energy available is consumed by the first attention. Man's inventory not only takes it all, but it also toughens the cocoon to the point of making it inflexible. Under those circumstances there is no possible interaction." He reminded me of the countless times, in the course of my apprenticeship with him, when I had had a firsthand view of inorganic beings. I retorted that I had explained away nearly every one of those instances. I had even formulated the hypothesis that his teachings, through the use of hallucinogenic plants, were geared to force an agreement, on the part of the apprentice, about a primitive interpretation of the world. I told him that I had not formally called it primitive interpretation but in anthropological terms I had labeled it a "world view more proper to hunting and gathering societies." Don Juan laughed until he was out of breath. "I really don't know whether you're worse in your normal state of awareness or in a heightened one," he said. "In your normal state you're not suspicious, but boringly reasonable. I think I like you best when you are way inside the left side, in spite of the fact that you are terribly afraid of everything, as you were yesterday." Before I had time to say anything at all, he stated that he was pitting what the old seers did against the accomplishments of the new seers, as a sort of counterpoint, with which he intended to give me a more inclusive view of the odds I was up against. He continued then with his elucidation of the practices of the old seers. He said that another of their great findings had to do with the next category of secret knowledge: fire and water. They discovered that flames have a most peculiar quality; they can transport man bodily, just as water does. Don Juan called it a brilliant discovery. I remarked that there are basic laws of physics that would prove that to be impossible. He asked me to wait until he had explained everything before drawing any conclusions. He remarked that I had to check my excessive rationality, because it constantly affected my states of heightened awareness. It was not a case of reacting every which way to external influences, but of succumbing to my own devices. He went on explaining that the ancient Toltecs, although they obviously saw, did not understand what they saw. They merely used their findings without bothering to relate them to a larger picture. In the case of their category of fire and water, they divided fire into heat and flame, and water into wetness and fluidity. They correlated heat and wetness and called them lesser properties. They considered flames and fluidity to be higher, magical properties, and they used them as a means for bodily transportation to the realm of nonorganic life. Between their knowledge of that kind of life and their fire and water practices, the ancient seers became bogged down in a quagmire with no way out. Don Juan assured me that the new seers agreed that the discovery of nonorganic living beings was indeed extraordinary, but not in the way the old seers believed it to be. To find themselves in a one-to-one relation with another kind of life gave the ancient seers a false feeling of invulnerability, which spelled their doom. I wanted him to explain the fire and water techniques in greater detail. He said that the old seers' knowledge was as intricate as it was useless and that he was only going to outline it. Then he summarized the practices of the above and the below. The above dealt with secret knowledge about wind, rain, sheets of lightning, clouds, thunder, daylight, and the sun. The knowledge of the below had to do with fog, water of underground springs, swamps, lightning bolts, earthquakes, the night, moonlight, and the moon. The loud and the silent were a category of secret knowledge that had to do with the manipulation of sound and quiet. The moving and the stationary were practices concerned with mysterious aspects of motion and motionlessness. I asked him if he could give me an example of any of the techniques he had outlined. He replied that he had already given me dozens of demonstrations over the years. I insisted that I had rationally explained away everything he had done to me. He did not answer. He seemed to be either angry at me for asking questions or seriously involved in searching for a good example. After a while he smiled and said that he had visualized the proper example. "The technique I have in mind has to be put in action in the shallow depths of a stream," he said. "There is one near Genaro's house." "What will I have to do?" "You'll have to get a medium-size mirror." I was surprised at his request. I remarked that the ancient Toltecs did not know about mirrors. "They didn't," he admitted, smiling. "This is my benefactor's addition to the technique. All the ancient seers needed was a reflecting surface." He explained that the technique consisted of submerging a shiny surface into the shallow water of a stream. The surface could be any flat object that had some capacity to reflect images. "I want you to construct a solid frame made of sheet metal for a medium-size mirror," he said. "it has to be waterproof, so you must seal it with tar. You must make it yourself with your own hands. When you have made it, bring it over and we'll proceed." "What's going to happen, don Juan?" "Don't be apprehensive. You yourself have asked me to give you an example of an ancient Toltec practice. I asked the same thing of my benefactor. I think everybody asks for one at a certain moment. My benefactor said that he did the same thing himself. His benefactor, the nagual Ellas, gave him an example; my benefactor in turn gave the same one to me, and now I am going to give it to you. "At the time my benefactor gave me the example I didn't know how he did it. I know now. Someday you yourself will also know how the technique works; you will understand what's behind all this." I thought that don Juan wanted me to go back home to Los Angeles and construct the frame for the mirror there. I commented that it would be impossible for me to remember the task if I did not remain in heightened awareness. "There are two things out of kilter with your comment," he said. "One is that there is no way for you to remain in heightened awareness, because you won't be able to function unless I or Genaro or any of the warriors in the nagual's party nurse you every minute of the day, as I do now. The other is that Mexico is not the moon. There are hardware stores here. We can go to Oaxaca and buy anything you need." We drove to the city the next day and I bought all the pieces for the frame. I assembled it myself in a mechanic's shop for a minimal fee. Don Juan told me to put it in the trunk of my car. He did not so much as glance at it. We drove back to Genaro's house in the late afternoon and arrived there in the early morning. I looked for Genaro. He was not there. The house seemed deserted. "Why does Genaro keep this house?" I asked don Juan. "He lives with you, doesn't he?" Don Juan did not answer. He gave me a strange look and went to light the kerosene lantern. I was alone in the room in total darkness. I felt a great tiredness that I attributed to the long, tortuous drive up the mountains. I wanted to lie down. In the darkness, I could not see where Genaro had put the mats. I stumbled over a pile of them. And then I knew why Genaro kept that house; he took care of the male apprentices Pablito, Nestor, and Benigno, who lived there when they were in their state of normal awareness. I felt exhilarated; I was no longer tired. Don Juan came in with a lantern. I told him about my realization, but he said that it did not matter, that I would not remember it for too long. He asked me to show him the mirror. He seemed pleased and remarked about its being light yet solid. He noticed that I had used metal screws to affix an aluminum frame to a piece of sheet metal that I had used as a backing for a mirror eighteen inches long by fourteen inches wide. "I made a wooden frame for my mirror," he said. "This looks much better than mine. My frame was too cumbersome and at the same time frail. "Let me explain what we're going to do," he continued after he had finished examining the mirror. "Or perhaps I should say, what we're going to attempt to do. The two of us