ous."
     "What are you talking about, don Juan?"
     "You've done, unwittingly,  two things  that  worry the hell out of me.
You traveled  with  your energy body to a place outside this world the first
time  you dreamt. And  you  walked there! And  then  you traveled  with your
energy  body to  another place  outside  this world,  but parting  from  the
awareness of the daily world."
     "Why would that  worry you, don  Juan?" '"Dreaming is too easy for you.
And that is a damnation if we don't watch it. It leads to the human unknown.
As I  said  to  you, modern-day  sorcerers  strive to  get  to  the nonhuman
unknown."
     "What can the nonhuman unknown be?"
     "Freedom from  being human. Inconceivable  worlds that are outside  the
band of man but that  we  still can perceive. This is where modern sorcerers
take the side road. Their predilection  is what's outside  the human domain.
And what are  outside that  domain are all-inclusive worlds, not merely  the
realm  of birds or the realm of animals  or the realm  of man, even if it be
the unknown man. What I am talking  about are worlds, like  the one where we
live; total worlds with endless realms."
     "Where are  those  worlds,  don Juan?  In different  positions  of  the
assemblage point?"
     "Right. In different positions of the assemblage  point, but  positions
sorcerers arrive  at with a movement  of the assemblage point, not a  shift.
Entering into those worlds is  the type of dreaming only  sorcerers of today
do. The old sorcerers  stayed away from it, because it requires a great deal
of detachment  and no  self-importance  whatsoever.  A  price they  couldn't
afford to pay.
     "For the  sorcerers who practice dreaming today, dreaming is freedom to
perceive worlds beyond the imagination."
     "But, what's the point of perceiving all that?"
     "You already asked  me, today, the same question. You speak like a true
merchant.  What's the risk?  you  ask.  What's  the percentage  gain  to  my
investment? Is it going to better me?"
     "There is  no way to answer  that. The merchant mind does commerce. But
freedom  cannot  be an investment. Freedom is  an adventure with no end,  in
which we risk our lives  and much more for a few moments of something beyond
words, beyond thoughts or feelings."
     "I didn't  ask that question  in that spirit,  don Juan. What I want to
know is  what  can be the driving force to  do all this for a lazy  bum like
myself?"
     "To seek freedom is the only  driving force  I know. Freedom to fly off
into that infinity out there. Freedom to dissolve;  to lift  off; to be like
the flame of a candle, which, in spite of  being up against  the  light of a
billion stars, remains intact,  because  it never pretended to be  more than
what it is: a mere candle."


        5. THE WORLD OF INORGANIC BEINGS

     Faithful to my  agreement to wait for don Juan to initiate any  comment
on  dreaming,  only  in  cases  of  necessity  did  I  ask him  for  advice.
Ordinarily,  though, he not only  seemed reluctant to  touch the subject but
was somehow displeased with me about it. In my estimation, a confirmation of
his  disapproval was  the fact that  whenever  we talked  about my  dreaming
activities, he always minimized the import of anything I had accomplished.
     For  me, at that  time, the animate existence  of  inorganic beings had
become the most crucial aspect  of my dreaming practices. After encountering
them in  my  dreams, and  especially after my bout with  them  in the desert
around  don Juan's  house,  I  should  have been more willing to  take their
existence as a serious affair.  But all these events had quite the  opposite
effect on me. I became adamant and doggedly denied the possibility that they
existed.
     Then I  had  a  change of heart  and  decided to conduct  an  objective
inquiry about them. The method of this inquiry required that I first compile
a  record of everything that transpired in my  dreaming  sessions, then  use
that  record as  a matrix  to find  out if my dreaming proved  or  disproved
anything about the inorganic beings. I actually wrote down hundreds of pages
of meticulous but meaningless details, when it should  have been clear to me
that the evidence of their existence had been gathered almost as soon  as  I
had started my inquiry.
     It took but a few sessions for me to discover that what I thought to be
don Juan's casual recommendation - to suspend judgment and let the inorganic
beings come to me - was, in fact,  the  very procedure used by the sorcerers
of  antiquity to attract them. By leaving me to find it out for myself,  don
Juan was simply  following his  sorcery  training. He had remarked  time and
time  again  that  it is  very  difficult  to  make  the  self  give  up its
strongholds  except through practice. One of  the  self's strongest lines of
defense is indeed  our rationality, and this  is not only  the  most durable
line  of defense when it comes to sorcery actions and explanations but  also
the  most threatened.  Don  Juan believed that  the existence  of  inorganic
beings is a foremost assailant of our rationality.
     In my dreaming practices, I had an established course, which I followed
every single  day  without  deviation.  I aimed  first  at  observing  every
conceivable  item of  my  dreams, then  at  changing dreams. I  can  say  in
sincerity  that I  observed  universes of detail in dreams upon dreams. As a
matter of course, at one  given moment my  dreaming attention began to wane,
and  my  dreaming sessions  ended  either  in my  falling asleep and  having
regular dreams, in which I  had  no dreaming attention whatsoever,  or in my
waking up and not being able to sleep at all.
     From time to time, however, as don Juan  had described it, a current of
foreign energy, a scout, as he called it, was injected into my dreams. Being
forewarned helped  me to adjust  my  dreaming attention and be on the alert.
The first time I noticed foreign  energy, I was dreaming about shopping in a
department store. I was going from counter to  counter looking for antiques.
I  finally  found  one.  The  incongruence  of  looking  for  antiques in  a
department store was  so  obvious that it made me chuckle, but  since  I had
found one, I forgot about that incongruence. The antique was the handle of a
walking stick. The  salesman told  me that it was  made of iridium, which he
called one of the  hardest substances in the world. It was  a  carved piece:
the head and shoulders of a monkey. It looked like jade  to me. The salesman
was insulted when I insinuated that it might be jade, and to prove his point
he hurled the object, with  all  his  strength, against the cement floor. It
did  not break but bounced like a ball and then sailed away, spinning like a
Frisbee. I followed it. It  disappeared behind some trees. I ran to look for
it, and I found it,  stuck on  the ground. It had  been  transformed into an
extraordinarily beautiful, deep green and black, full-length walking stick.
     I coveted  it. I grabbed it and struggled to pull it out of  the ground
before anyone  else came  along. But,  hard as  I tried, I could not make it
budge.  I  was afraid I  would break it  if I  attempted  to pry it loose by
shaking  it back and  forth. So I began to dig around it with my bare hands.
As I kept on digging, it kept on melting, until only a puddle of green water
was left in its place. I stared at the water; it suddenly seemed to explode.
It turned into a white bubble, and then it was gone. My dream continued into
other  images  and details,  which  were not outstanding, although they were
crystal clear.
     When I told don  Juan about this dream, he said, "You isolated a scout.
Scouts are more  numerous  when our  dreams are average,  normal  ones.  The
dreams of dreamers are strangely  free from scouts. When they  appear,  they
are identifiable by the strangeness and incongruity surrounding them."
     "Incongruity, in what manner, don Juan?"
     "Their presence doesn't make any sense."
     "Very few things make sense in a dream."
     "Only  in average dreams are things nonsensical. I would say  that this
is  so because more  scouts are injected then,  because average  people  are
subject to a greater barrage from the unknown."
     "Do you know why is that so, don Juan?"
     "In my opinion, what takes place is a balance of forces. Average people
have  stupendously  strong barriers  to  protect  themselves  against  those
onslaughts. Barriers  such  as worries  about the  self.  The  stronger  the
barrier, the greater the attack.
     "Dreamers, by  contrast,  have fewer barriers and fewer scouts in their
dreams.  It seems that in dreamers'  dreams  nonsensical  things  disappear,
perhaps to ensure that dreamers catch the presence of scouts."
     Don Juan advised me to  pay  close attention and remember every  single
possible detail  of  the dream  I had had. He even made me repeat what I had
told him.
     "You  baffle me," I  said. "You don't want to hear  anything  about  my
dreaming,  and  then  you  do. Is  there  any order  to  your  refusals  and
acceptances?"
     "You bet there is order behind all this," he said. "Chances are, you'll
do the same  someday to another dreamer. Some items are  of  key  importance
because they are associated with the spirit. Others are entirely unimportant
by reason of being associated with our indulging personality."
     "The first scout you isolate will always  be present, in any form, even
iridium. By the way, what's iridium?"
     "I don't really know," I said in total sincerity.
     "There you are! And what will you say if it turns out to be one  of the
strongest substances in the world?"
     Don  Juan's  eyes shone with delight, while I nervously laughed at that
absurd possibility, which, I learned later, is true.
     I began to notice from then  on the presence of incongruous items in my
dreams.  Once I  had accepted don Juan's categorization of foreign energy in
dreams,  I  totally agreed with  him  that incongruous  items  were  foreign
invaders  of  my dreams. Upon  isolating them, my  dreaming attention always
focused on  them with  an  intensity  that  did not  occur  under any  other
circumstances.
     Another thing I  noticed was that every time  foreign energy invaded my
dreams,  my  dreaming attention had to work  hard to turn  it  into  a known
object.  The  handicap  of  my  dreaming  attention  was  its  inability  to
accomplish fully  such a  transformation; the  end result  was a bastardized
item, nearly unknown to me. The foreign energy then dissipated quite easily,
the bastardized  item vanished,  turning  into  a blob of  light, which  was
quickly absorbed by other pressing details of my dreams.
     When I asked don Juan to comment on  what was happening to me, he said,
"At this point in  your  dreaming,  scouts are  reconnoiterers sent  by  the
inorganic realm. They are very fast, meaning that they don't stay long."
     "Why do you say that they are reconnoiterers, don Juan?"
     "They come in search  of potential  awareness. They have  consciousness
and  purpose, although  it  is  incomprehensible to  our  minds,  comparable
perhaps  to the consciousness and purpose of trees. The inner speed of trees
and inorganic  beings is incomprehensible  to  us because  it  is infinitely
slower than ours."
     "What makes you say that, don Juan?"
     "Both trees and inorganic beings last longer than we do. They  are made
to stay put. They are immobile, yet they make everything move around them."
     "Do  you mean,  don Juan, that  inorganic  beings  are stationary  like
trees?"
     "Certainly. What you see in dreaming as bright or dark sticks are their
projections. What you hear as the voice of the dreaming emissary  is equally
their projection. And so are their scouts."
     For some unfathomable reason, I was overwhelmed  by these statements. I
was  suddenly  filled  with  anxiety.  I asked don  Juan if trees  also  had
projections like that."
     "They do," he said. "Their projections are, however, even less friendly
to us than those of the inorganic beings. Dreamers  never seek  them, unless
they  are  in a  state  of  profound  amenity with trees,  which  is  a very
difficult state to  attain. We have no friends on this  earth, you know." He
chuckled and added, "It's no mystery why."
     "It may not be a mystery to you, don Juan, but it certainly is to me."
     "We  are destructive. We have antagonized every  living being  on  this
earth. That's why we have no friends."
     I  felt  so  ill  at  ease  that  I  wanted  to stop  the  conversation
altogether. But a compulsive urge made me return to the subject of inorganic
beings. "What do you think I should do to follow the scouts?" I asked.
     "Why in the world would you want to follow them?"
     "I am conducting an objective inquiry about inorganic beings."
     "You're  pulling my leg, aren't you?  I  thought you  were unmovable on
your stand that inorganic beings don't exist."
     His scoffing tone and cackling laughter told me  what his thoughts  and
feelings about my objective inquiry were.
     "I've  changed  my  mind,  don Juan. Now I  want  to  explore all those
possibilities."
     "Remember, the realm of inorganic beings was  the old sorcerers' field.
To  get there, they tenaciously fixed their dreaming attention on the  items
of their dreams. In that fashion, they  were able to isolate the scouts. And
when they had the scouts in focus, they shouted their intent to follow them.
The instant the  old sorcerers  voiced that intent, off they went, pulled by
that foreign energy."
     "Is it that simple, don Juan?"
     He did not answer. He just laughed at me as if daring me to do it.
     At home,  I tired of  searching  for  don  Juan's  true meanings. I was
thoroughly unwilling to consider that  he  might  have described  an  actual
procedure. After  running out of ideas and patience, one day I let my  guard
down. In a  dream I  was  having  then,  I  was baffled by a fish  that  had
suddenly jumped out  of a pond I was walking  by. The  fish twitched  by  my
feet, then flew like a  colored bird,  perching on a branch,  still  being a
fish. The scene was so outlandish that my dreaming attention was galvanized.
I instantly knew it was a scout. A second  later,  when the fish-bird turned
into a point of light,  I shouted my intent to  follow it, and, just as  don
Juan had said, off I went into another world.
     I flew through a seemingly dark tunnel as if I were a weightless flying
insect. The sensation of a tunnel ended abruptly. It was exactly as if I had
been  spewed out of  a tube and  the  impulse had left me smack  against  an
immense physical mass; I was almost touching it. I could  not see the end of
it  in  any direction  I looked. The  entire  thing  reminded  me so much of
science fiction movies that I  was utterly convinced I was  constructing the
view of that mass myself, as one constructs a dream. Why  not? The thought I
had was that, after all, I was asleep, dreaming.
     I settled down to observe the details of my dream.  What I  was viewing
looked very  much like a  gigantic sponge.  It  was porous  and cavernous. I
could  not feel its texture, but it looked  rough and  fibrous. It  was dark
brownish  in color.  Then I had a momentary jolt of doubt about that  silent
mass being just a dream. What I was facing did not change shape. It  did not
move either. As I  looked at  it fixedly,  I had the complete  impression of
something  real but stationary; it was planted somewhere, and it had such  a
powerful attraction that  I was incapable of deviating my dreaming attention
to examine anything else, including myself.  Some strange force, which I had
never before encountered in my dreaming, had me riveted down.
     Then I  clearly felt that the mass  released my dreaming attention; all
my awareness focused on the  scout that had taken me there. It looked like a
firefly in  the darkness, hovering over me, by my side. In its realm, it was
a blob of sheer energy. I was able  to see its energetic sizzling. It seemed
to be conscious of me. Suddenly, it lurched onto me and tugged me or prodded
me. I did not feel its touch, yet I knew it  was touching me. That sensation
was startling and new, it was as if a part of me that was not there had been
electrified  by  that  touch,  ripples of  energy went through it, one after
another.
     From that moment on, everything in my dreaming became much more real. I
had a very difficult time keeping the idea that I  was dreaming  a dream. To
this  difficulty,  I had to add the  certainty I had that with its touch the
scout had made an energetic connection with me.  I knew what it wanted me to
do the instant it seemed to tug me or shove me.
     The  first thing it did was to push me through a huge cavern or opening
into the  physical mass I had  been  facing. Once I was inside  that mass, I
realized that the interior was as  homogeneously porous  as  the outside but
much softer  looking, as if  the roughness had been sanded down. What  I was
facing was  a structure that looked something like the enlarged picture of a
beehive.  There were  countless  geometric-shaped  tunnels  going  in  every
direction. Some went up or  down, or to my left or  my  right; they were  at
angles with one another, or going up or down on steep or mild inclines.
     The  light was very  dim, yet  everything was  perfectly  visible.  The
tunnels  seemed to be alive  and conscious;  they sizzled. I stared at them,
and the realization that  I was seeing hit me. Those were tunnels of energy.
At  the  instant of this  realization,  the voice of the  dreaming  emissary
roared inside my ears, so loudly I could not understand what it said. "Lower
it down," I yelled with  unusual impatience and became aware that if I spoke
I blocked my view of the tunnels and entered into a vacuum where all I could
do was hear.
     The emissary modulated its voice and said, "You are inside an inorganic
being. Choose a tunnel and you can even live in it."  The voice  stopped for
an instant, then added, "That is, if you want to do it."
     I  could  not bring  myself  to  say anything. I  was  afraid  that any
statement of mine might be construed as the opposite of what I meant.
     "There are endless advantages for you," the emissary's voice continued.
"You can live  in  as many  tunnels  as you want. And each one  of them will
teach something  different.  The sorcerers of antiquity lived in this manner
and learned marvelous things."
     I sensed without any feeling that the scout was pushing me from behind.
It  appeared to want me  to  move onward. I took the tunnel to my  immediate
right. As  soon as  I was in it, something  made  me aware  that  I was  not
walking on the tunnel; I was hovering  in it, flying. I was a blob of energy
no different from the scout.
     The  voice of the emissary sounded inside my ears again. "Yes, you  are
just a blob  of energy,"  it  said.  Its redundancy  brought me  an  intense
relief. "And you are floating inside one inorganic being," it went on. "This
is the way  the scout wants you to move in this world. When  it touched you,
it changed you forever. You  are practically  one of us  now. If you want to
stay  here, just  voice your intent." The emissary stopped talking, and  the
view  of the tunnel returned to  me. But when  it spoke again, something had
been adjusted; I did not lose sight of that world and I still could hear the
emissary's voice. "The ancient sorcerers learned  everything they knew about
dreaming by staying here among us," it said.
     I was  going to ask  if they had  learned everything they knew  by just
living  inside  those tunnels, but before I voiced my question the  emissary
answered  it.  "Yes,  they learned  everything  by  just living  inside  the
inorganic beings," it  said. "To live inside them, all the old sorcerers had
to do was say they wanted  to, just like all it took for you to get here was
to voice your intent, loud and clear."
     The  scout  pushed  against  me  to  signal  me  to  continue moving. I
hesitated, and it did  something equivalent to shoving me with  such a force
that I shot like a bullet through endless tunnels. I finally stopped because
the scout stopped.  We  hovered  for an  instant;  then  we  dropped into  a
vertical tunnel. I did not feel  the drastic change of direction. As  far as
my  perception was concerned, I was still moving  seemingly parallel  to the
ground.
     We changed directions many times with the same perceptual effect on me.
I began to formulate a thought about my incapacity to feel that I was moving
up  or down  when I  heard the  emissary's voice.  "I think  you'll  be more
comfortable if you crawl rather than fly," it said.  "You can also move like
a spider or a fly, straight up or down or upside down."
     Instantaneously,  I  settled down.  It was as if  I had been fluffy and
suddenly I got some weight, which grounded me. I could not feel the tunnel's
walls,  but  the emissary  was  right about my being  more comfortable  when
crawling.
     "In this world you don't have to  be pinned down by  gravity," it said.
Of  course, I was  able to realize that myself.  "You  don't have to breathe
either," the voice went on. "And, for your convenience alone, you can retain
your eyesight and see as you see in your  world." The emissary  seemed to be
deciding  whether to add  more.  It  coughed, just  like a man  clearing his
throat,  and  said, "The eyesight  is never impaired;  therefore,  a dreamer
always speaks about his dreaming in terms of what he sees."
     The scout pushed  me  into a tunnel to  my right. It was somehow darker
than the others. To me, at a preposterous level,  it seemed cozier  than the
others, more friendly or even known to me. The  thought crossed my mind that
I was like that tunnel or that the tunnel was like me.
     "You two have met before," the emissary's voice said.
     "I beg your pardon," I  said. I  had understood what  it said,  but the
statement was incomprehensible."
     "You two  wrestled, and  because  of  that you  now carry each  other's
energy." I  thought that the emissary's voice carried a  touch of  malice or
even sarcasm.
     "No, it isn't  sarcasm,"  the emissary  said. "I am glad that you  have
relatives here among us."
     "What  do  you  mean  by  relatives?"  I  asked.  "Shared energy  makes
kinship," it replied. "Energy is like blood."
     I was unable to  say anything else. I clearly felt pangs of fear. "Fear
is  something that is absent in this world," the emissary said. And that was
the only statement that was not true.
     My  dreaming ended  there.  I  was  so  shocked  by  the  vividness  of
everything, and  by the impressive clarity and continuity  of the emissary's
statements, that  I could not  wait to  tell  don  Juan.  It  surprised  and
disturbed me that he did not want to hear my account. He did not say so, but
I had the impression that  he believed all of  it  had  been a product of my
indulging personality.
     "Why are you behaving like this with me?" I asked. "Are you  displeased
with me?"
     "No. I am  not  displeased  with  you," he said. "The problem is that I
can't talk  about this part of your dreaming. You are completely by yourself
in  this case. I have  said to you  that inorganic beings  are real. You are
finding out how real  they are.  But what you do  with  this finding is your
business, yours alone. Someday you'll see the reason for my staying away."
     "But  isn't  there  something  you  can tell  me  about that  dream?" I
insisted.
     "What I can say  is that it  wasn't a dream. It was a journey into  the
unknown. A necessary journey, I may add, and an ultrapersonal one."
     He changed the subject  then and  began to talk about other aspects  of
his  teachings.  From  that  day  on, in spite of  my  fear  and  don Juan's
reluctance to advise  me,  I became a  regular dream traveler to that spongy
world. I discovered right away that the greater  my  capacity to observe the
details of my dreams,  the greater my  facility to isolate  the scouts. If I
chose to acknowledge the  scouts as foreign energy, they  remained within my
perceptual field for a while. Now, if I chose to turn the scouts into  quasi
known objects,  they stayed even longer, changing shapes erratically. But if
I followed them, by revealing out loud my intent to go with them, the scouts
veritably transported  my dreaming attention to a  world  beyond what I  can
normally imagine.
     Don Juan had said that inorganic beings are always poised to teach. But
he  had  not told me that dreaming is what they are  poised to teach. He had
stated  that  the  dreaming emissary,  since  it is a voice,  is the perfect
bridge between that world and ours. I found  out  that the dreaming emissary
was not  only a teacher's  voice but the voice of a most subtle salesman. It
repeated  on and on, at the proper time and  occasion, the advantages of its
world. Yet it also taught me invaluable things  about dreaming. Listening to
what it said,  I  understood  the  old  sorcerers'  preference for  concrete
practices.
     "For perfect dreaming, the first thing you have  to do is shut off your
internal dialogue," it said to me one time. "For best results in shutting it
off, put between your fingers some  two- or three-inch-long quartz  crystals
or a couple of smooth,  thin river pebbles. Bend your fingers slightly,  and
press the crystals or pebbles with them."
     The emissary said that metal pins, if they were  the size  and width of
one's fingers, were equally effective.  The procedure consisted of  pressing
at least  three thin items between the fingers of each hand and creating, an
almost painful pressure in the hands. This pressure had the strange property
of shutting off the internal dialogue. The  emissary's expressed  preference
was  for quartz crystals; it said that they gave the best  results, although
with practice anything was suitable.
     "Falling  asleep  at a  moment of total silence  guarantees  a  perfect
entrance into dreaming," said the emissary's voice, "and  it also guarantees
the enhancing of one's dreaming attention."
     "Dreamers  should wear a  gold ring,"  said the emissary to me  another
time, "preferably fitted a bit tight."
     The emissary's explanation was that such a ring  serves as a bridge for
surfacing  from dreaming back into  the daily world or for sinking  from our
daily awareness into the inorganic beings' realm.
     "How does  this bridge  work?" I asked.  I had not  understood what was
involved.
     "The contact of  the fingers  on the ring  lays  the bridge down,"  the
emissary  said. "If a dreamer comes into my  world wearing a ring, that ring
attracts  the energy of my world and keeps  it;  and when it's needed,  that
energy  transports the dreamer back to this  world, by the ring releasing it
into the dreamer's fingers.
     "The pressure  of that  ring  around a  finger  serves equally well  to
ensure a  dreamer's return  to  his world. It gives him a constant, familiar
sense on his finger."
     During another dreaming session, the emissary said that our skin is the
perfect organ for transposing energy waves from the mode  of the daily world
to  the mode  of the inorganic beings and vice versa. It recommended  that I
keep my skin cool  and free from  pigments or oils. It also recommended that
dreamers wear a  tight belt  or headband or  necklace to  create a  pressure
point  that serves as  a  skin  center  of  energy  exchange.  The  emissary
explained that the skin automatically screens energy, and  that what we need
to do to make the skin not only screen but exchange energy from one  mode to
the other is to express our intent out loud, in dreaming.
     One day the emissary's voice gave me a fabulous bonus. It said that, in
order to ensure the keenness and accuracy of our dreaming attention, we must
bring it from behind  the roof of the mouth, where an enormous reservoir  of
attention is located in all human beings. The emissary's specific directions
were to practice and learn the discipline and control necessary to press the
tip of the tongue on the roof of the  mouth while dreaming. This task  is as
difficult and  consuming,  the emissary  said, as finding one's  hands  in a
dream.  But, once it is accomplished,  this task gives  the most  astounding
results in terms of controlling the dreaming attention.
     I  received  a profusion  of instructions on every conceivable subject,
instructions  that I promptly forgot if they were not endlessly  repeated to
me. I sought don Juan's advice on how to resolve this problem of forgetting.
     His  comment  was as  brief  as I had expected. "Focus only on what the
emissary tells you about dreaming," he said.
     Whatever the emissary's  voice repeated enough  times, I  grasped  with
tremendous  interest and  fervor. Faithful to don  Juan's  recommendation, I
only followed its  guidance when  it referred to  dreaming and I  personally
corroborated  the  value  of  its  instruction.  The  most  vital  piece  of
information for  me was that the dreaming  attention  comes from  behind the
roof of  the mouth. It took a  great  deal of effort on my part to  feel  in
dreaming that I was pressing the roof of my mouth with the tip of my tongue.
Once I  accomplished  this, my dreaming attention took on a life of  its own
and became, I may say, keener than my normal attention to the daily world.
     It  did not  take  much for  me to deduce how  deep  must have been the
involvement  of  the  old sorcerers with  the  inorganic beings.  Don Juan's
commentaries and warnings  about the  danger of  such  an involvement became
more  vital  than  ever. I  tried my best  to  live up to  his standards  of
self-examination with  no indulgence. Thus, the emissary's voice and what it
said became a superchallenge for me. I had to avoid, at all cost, succumbing
to the temptation  of the emissary's promise of knowledge,  and I had to  do
this all by  myself  since don Juan  continued  to  refuse  to  listen to my
accounts.
     "You must give me at least a hint about what I  should do,"  I insisted
on one occasion when I was bold enough to ask him.
     "I  can't," he said with finality, "and don't ask again. I've told you,
in this instance, dreamers have to be left alone."
     "But you don't even know what I want to ask you."
     "Oh yes I do.  You want me  to tell you that it is all right to live in
one of  those  tunnels,  if for no other  reason  than just to know what the
emissary's voice is talking about."
     I admitted that this was exactly my dilemma.  If nothing else, I wanted
to know  what  was implied in  the statement that one can live inside  those
tunnels.
     "I went through the same turmoil myself," don Juan went on, "and no one
could help me, because this is a  superpersonal and final decision,  a final
decision made the  instant  you voice your desire to live in that  world. In
order to get  you  to voice  that desire,  the inorganic beings are going to
cater to your most secret wishes."
     "This is really diabolical, don Juan."
     "You can say that again. But not just because of what you are thinking.
For you, the diabolical part  is  the temptation to give in, especially when
such  great  rewards  are  at  stake. For  me, the  diabolical nature of the
inorganic beings' realm is  that it might very  well be the  only  sanctuary
dreamers have in a hostile universe."
     "Is it really a haven for dreamers, don Juan?"
     "It definitely  is for some dreamers. Not for me. I don't need props or
railings.  I know what I am.  I am alone  in a hostile  universe, and I have
learned to say. So be it!"
     That was the end of  our  exchange. He had not said  what  I  wanted to
hear, yet I knew that even  the desire to know what it was like to live in a
tunnel meant almost to choose that way of life. I was not interested in such
a  thing. I made  my  decision right then to continue my  dreaming practices
without any further implications.  I quickly told don Juan  about it. "Don't
say anything," he advised me. "But do understand that if you choose to stay,
your decision is final. You'll stay there forever."
     It is impossible for me to judge objectively what took place during the
countless times I dreamt of that world. I can  say that  it appeared to be a
world as real  as any dream can be real. Or I can say that it appeared to be
as  real as our daily world is real. Dreaming of that world,  I became aware
of what don Juan had said  to  me  many times:  that  under the influence of
dreaming, reality suffers a metamorphosis. I found  myself then  facing  the
two  options  which,  according to don  Juan, are  the options  faced by all
dreamers: either  we carefully revamp or we completely disregard our  system
of sensory input interpretation.
     For don Juan,  to  revamp our interpretation system meant to intend its
reconditioning. It  meant  that one deliberately  and carefully  attempts to
enlarge  its capabilities. By living in accordance with  the sorcerers' way,
dreamers save and store  the necessary energy to suspend  judgment and  thus
facilitate  that intended revamping.  He explained  that  if  we  choose  to
recondition  our interpretation system, reality becomes fluid, and the scope
of what  can  be real  is  enhanced  without  endangering  the  integrity of
reality. Dreaming, then, indeed opens the door into other aspects of what is
real.
     If we  choose to  disregard  our  system,  the  scope  of  what can  be
perceived  without interpretation  grows  inordinately. The expansion of our
perception is so gigantic that  we are  left with very few tools for sensory
interpretation and, thus, a sense of an infinite realness  that is unreal or
an infinite unrealness that could very well be real but is not.
     For me, the  only acceptable option was reconstructing and enlarging my
interpretation system. In  dreaming the inorganic beings' realm, I was faced
with the  consistence of that world from dream to  dream, from isolating the
scouts through  listening to  the dreaming emissary's voice to going through
tunnels. I went through them without  feeling anything, yet being aware that
space  and  time  were  constant,  although  not  in  terms  discernible  by
rationality under normal conditions. However,  by noticing the difference or
the absence  or profusion of detail in each tunnel, or by noticing the sense
of distance  between tunnels, or by noticing the apparent length or width of
each  tunnel in  which  I  traveled,  I  arrived at  a  sense  of  objective
observation.
     The area where this reconstruction of my interpretation  system had the
most dramatic effect was the knowledge of how I related  to the world of the
inorganic beings. In that  world,  which was  real to  me, I  was a blob  of
energy. Thus, I could whiz  in  the tunnels, like a fast-moving light, or  I
could crawl on their walls, like  an insect.  If I flew, a voice told me not
arbitrary but consistent information about details on the  walls on which  I
had  focused   my  dreaming   attention.   Those   details  were   intricate
protuberances, like the Braille  system of  writing.  When  I crawled on the
walls, I could see the same details with greater accuracy and hear the voice
giving me more complex descriptions.
     The unavoidable consequence for me was the development of a dual stand.
On the one hand, I knew I  was dreaming a dream; on the other,  I knew I was
involved in a pragmatic journey,  as real as any journey  in the world. This
bona fide  split was  a  corroboration  of what don  Juan had said: that the
existence of inorganic beings is the foremost assailant of our rationality.
     Only after I had really suspended judgment did I get any relief. At one
moment, when the tension of my  untenable position - seriously  believing in
the attestable existence of inorganic beings, while seriously believing that
it was only  a  dream - was about to  destroy me,  something in  my attitude
changed drastically, but without any solicitation on my part.
     Don  Juan maintained  that  my  energy level,  which had been  steadily
growing,  one  day  reached  a  threshold  that  allowed  me   to  disregard
assumptions  and  prejudgments  about  the   nature  of  man,  reality,  and
perception.  That day I  became enamored with knowledge, regardless of logic
or functional value, and, above all, regardless of personal convenience.
     When  my objective inquiry  into  the  subject of  inorganic  beings no
longer mattered  to  me, don Juan himself brought up the subject of my dream
journey  into  that world.  He  said,  "I don't  think  you are aware of the
regularity of your meetings with inorganic beings."
     He  was  right. I had never bothered to  think about it. I commented on
the oddity of my oversight.
     "It isn't an  oversight," he said. "It's the  nature of  that  realm to
foster secretiveness. Inorganic beings veil themselves in mystery, darkness.
Think about their world:  stationary, fixed to draw us like moths to a light
or a fire.
     "There is something  the emissary hasn't dared to tell you so far: that
the inorganic beings are after our awareness or  the awareness of  any being
that falls into their nets. They'll give us knowledge, but they'll extract a
payment: our total being."
     "Do you mean, don Juan, that the inorganic beings are like fishermen?"
     "Exactly. At one moment, the  emissary will show you men who got caught
in there or other beings that are not human that also got caught in there."
     Revulsion and fear should have been my response. Don Juan's revelations
affected me  deeply, but in the sense of creating uncontainable curiosity. I
was nearly panting.
     "Inorganic beings can't force anyone to stay  with them," don Juan went
on. "To  live in their world is a voluntary affair. Yet they are  capable of
imprisoning  any  one  of  us by catering to  our  desires, by pampering and
indulging us. Beware of awareness that  is immobile. Awareness like that has
to  seek  movement,  and  it  does  this,  as  I've  told  you, by  creating
projections, phantasmagorical projections at times."
     I asked don Juan to explain what "phantasmagorical projections"  meant.
He  said that  inorganic beings hook onto  dreamers' innermost  feelings and
play  them mercilessly. They  create phantoms to please dreamers or frighten
them. He reminded  me  that  I had  wrestled with one  of those phantoms. He
explained that inorganic beings are  superb  projectionists, who delight  in
projecting themselves like pictures on the wall.
     "'The  old  sorcerers were brought down by their inane  trust in  those
projections," he  continued.  "The old sorcerers believed  their allies  had
power. They overlooked the fact their allies were tenuous  energy  projected
through worlds, like in a cosmic movie."
     "You are contradicting yourself, don  Juan. You yourself said that  the
inorganic beings are real. Now you tell me that they are mere pictures."
     "I  meant  to say that the  inorganic beings, in  our  world,  are like
moving pictures projected on a screen; and I may even add that they are like
moving pictures of rarefied energy projected  through the boundaries of  two
worlds."
     "But  what about inorganic  beings in  their world?  Are they also like
moving pictures?"
     "Not  a  chance. That world is as real as our world. The  old sorcerers
portrayed  the  inorganic  beings'  world  as a  blob of caverns  and  pores
floating in some dark space.  And  they portrayed  the  inorganic beings  as
hollow canes bound together, like the cells of our bodies. The old sorcerers
called that immense bundle the labyrinth of penumbra."
     "Then every dreamer sees that world in the same terms, right?"
     "Of course. Every  dreamer sees  it  as  it is. Do  you  think you  are
unique?"
     I confessed that  something  in that world had been giving me all along
the sensation  I was  unique.  What  created this  most  pleasant  and clear
feeling of being exclusive  was not the voice of the  dreaming  emissary, or
anything I could consciously  think about. "That's  exactly what floored the
old sorcerers," don Juan said. "The inorganic  beings did to them  what they
are  doing to  you now; they created  for  them the sense of  being  unique,
exclusive plus a more pernicious sense yet: the sense of having power. Power
and uniqueness are unbeatable as corrupting forces. Watch out!"
     "How did you avoid that danger yourself, don Juan?"
     "I went to that world a few times, and then I never went back."
     Don  Juan explained that in  the opin