ion of  sorcerers, the universe is
predatorial, and  sorcerers  more  than anyone else  have to  take this into
account in their daily sorcery activities. His  idea was  that consciousness
is intrinsically compelled to grow, and the only way it can  grow is through
strife, through life-or-death confrontations.
     "The awareness of sorcerers grows when they  do dreaming,"  he went on.
"And the moment  it  grows, something  out  there  acknowledges its  growth,
recognizes it and makes a bid for it. The inorganic beings  are  the bidders
for that new, enhanced awareness. Dreamers have to be forever on their toes.
They are prey the moment they venture out in that predatorial universe."
     "What do you suggest I do to be safe, don Juan?"
     "Be on your toes every second! Don't let anything or anybody decide for
you. Go to the inorganic beings' world only when you want to go."
     "Honestly, don Juan, I wouldn't know how to  do that. Once  I isolate a
scout, a tremendous pull is exerted on me to go. I don't  have a  chance  in
hell to change my mind."
     "Come on! Who do you think  you're kidding? You can definitely stop it.
You haven't tried to, that's all."
     I earnestly insisted that it was impossible for me to stop.  He did not
pursue  the subject any longer, and  I  was thankful for that.  A disturbing
feeling  of  guilt had  begun  to gnaw at me.  For some  unknown reason, the
thought of consciously stopping the pull of the scouts had never occurred to
me.
     As  usual, don  Juan was  correct. I found out that  I could change the
course of my dreaming by  intending that course. After all, I did intend for
the scouts  to  transport me  to their  world.  It  was  feasible that  if I
deliberately intended the opposite,  my dreaming would follow  the  opposite
course.
     With practice,  my capacity to intend  my  journeys into the  inorganic
beings' realm became extraordinarily keen.  An increased  capacity to intend
brought  forth  an  increased  control  over  my  dreaming  attention.  This
additional control  made  me more  daring. I  felt that I could journey with
impunity, because I could stop the journey any time I wanted to.
     "Your confidence is very scary" was don Juan's comment when I told him,
at  his request,  about  the  new  aspect  of my  control  over  my dreaming
attention.
     "Why  should  it be  scary?" I  asked.  I  was  truly convinced  of the
practical value of what I had found out.
     "Because yours is the confidence  of a fool," he  said. "I am  going to
tell you a sorcerers' story that is apropos. I didn't witness it myself, but
my teacher's teacher, the nagual Elias, did."
     Don  Juan  said  that  the nagual Elias and  the love of  his  life,  a
sorceress named Amalia, were lost, in  their youth, in the inorganic beings'
world.
     I  had  never heard  don Juan talk about sorcerers  being the  love  of
anybody's  life.  His  statement  startled  me.  I   asked  him  about  this
inconsistency.
     "It's  not an inconsistency.  I have  simply refrained all  along  from
telling  you  stories of  sorcerers' affection," he  said.  "You've been  so
oversaturated with love all your life that I wanted to give you a break.
     "Well, the nagual Elias and the love of his life, the witch Amalia, got
lost in the inorganic beings' world," don Juan went on. "They went there not
in dreaming but with their physical bodies."
     "How did that happen, don Juan?"
     "Their teacher, the  nagual Rosendo, was very close  in temperament and
practice  to  the  old sorcerers. He intended to help Elias and Amalia,  but
instead  he pushed  them across some  deadly  boundaries. The nagual Rosendo
didn't have that crossing in mind. What he  wanted  to do was to put his two
disciples into the  second attention, but what he got as a result was  their
disappearance."
     Don Juan said that he was not going to go into the details of that long
and complicated story. He was only going to tell me how they  became lost in
that world. He stated that the nagual Rosendo's miscalculation was to assume
that the inorganic beings are not, in  the slightest, interested  in  women.
His  reasoning was  correct and was guided  by the sorcerers' knowledge that
the  universe is  markedly female and that  maleness,  being an  offshoot of
femaleness, is almost scarce, thus, coveted.
     Don Juan made a digression and commented that  perhaps that scarcity of
males is the reason for men's unwarranted dominion on  our  planet. I wanted
to remain on that topic,  but he went ahead with his story. He said that the
nagual  Rosendo's  plan  was  to  give  instruction  to  Elias  and   Amalia
exclusively in the second attention. And to that effect, he followed the old
sorcerers'  prescribed  technique.  He  engaged a  scout,  in dreaming,  and
commanded  it to  transport  his  disciples  into the  second  attention  by
displacing their assemblage points on the proper position.
     Theoretically, a powerful scout could displace their assemblage  points
on  the proper  position with no effort at all. What the  nagual Rosendo did
not take into  consideration  was the trickery of the  inorganic beings. The
scout did displace the assemblage points  of his disciples, but it displaced
them on a position from which it was easy  to transport them bodily into the
realm of the inorganic beings. "Is this possible, to be transported bodily?"
I asked.  "It is possible," he assured me. "We are energy that  is kept in a
specific shape and position by  the fixation of the  assemblage point on one
location. If that location is changed, the shape and position of that energy
will change accordingly. All the inorganic beings have to do is to place our
assemblage point on the right location, and off we go, like a bullet, shoes,
hat, and all."
     "Can this happen to any one of us, don Juan?"
     "Most certainly. Especially if  our  sum  total  of  energy  is  right.
Obviously, the  sum total of the  combined energies of  Elias and Amalia was
something the inorganic beings couldn't overlook. It  is absurd to trust the
inorganic beings. They have their own rhythm, and it isn't human."
     I  asked  don Juan  what  exactly  the  nagual Rosendo did to  send his
disciples  to that world. I knew it was stupid of me to ask, knowing that he
was  going to ignore my  question. My  surprise was genuine when he began to
tell me.
     "The steps  are simplicity  itself,"  he said.  "He put  his  disciples
inside  a very  small, closed  space, something like a closet. Then  he went
into dreaming, called  a scout from the inorganic  beings' realm by  voicing
his intent to get one, then voiced his  intent to offer his disciples to the
scout.
     "The  scout, naturally, accepted  the  gift and took them away,  at  an
unguarded  moment, when they  were making love inside  that closet. When the
nagual opened the closet, they were no longer there."
     Don  Juan  explained that  making  gifts  of  their  disciples  to  the
inorganic beings was precisely what the old sorcerers used to do. The nagual
Rosendo did not mean to do that, but he got swayed by the absurd belief that
the inorganic beings were under his control.
     "Sorcerers'  maneuvers are deadly," don Juan went on. "I beseech you to
be  extraordinarily  aware.  Don't  get  involved  in  having  some  idiotic
confidence in yourself."
     "What finally happened to the nagual Elias and Amalia?" I asked.
     "The nagual  Rosendo  had  to go  bodily into that world  and look  for
them," he replied. "Did he find them?"
     "He  did,  after untold struggles. However, he could  not totally bring
them out. So the two young people were always semiprisoners of that realm."
     "Did you know them, don Juan?"
     "Of course I knew them, and I assure you, they were very strange."


        6. THE SHADOWS' WORLD

     You  must be extremely careful,  for you are about  to fall prey to the
inorganic beings," don  Juan  said to me, quite  unexpectedly, after we  had
been talking about something totally unrelated to dreaming.
     His statement  caught me by  surprise. As usual, I attempted to  defend
myself. "You don't have to warn me. I'm very careful," I assured him.
     "The  inorganic beings  are plotting," he said.  "I sense that,  and  I
can't console myself by saying that they set traps at the  beginning and, in
this manner, undesirable dreamers  are effectively and  permanently screened
out."
     The tone of his voice was so urgent that I immediately had  to reassure
him I was not going to fall into any trap.
     "You must seriously consider that  the inorganic beings have astounding
means  at  their disposal,"  he  went  on.  "Their awareness is  superb.  In
comparison,  we  are  children, children with  a lot  of  energy, which  the
inorganic beings covet."
     I wanted  to tell him that, on an  abstract level, I had understood his
point and  his  concern,  but, on a concrete plane, I saw no  reason for his
warning, because I was in control of my dreaming practices.
     A few minutes  of uneasy silence followed  before don Juan spoke again.
He changed the subject and said that he had  to bring to my attention a very
important  issue  of  his dreaming  instruction, an issue that had, so  far,
bypassed my awareness.
     "You  already  understand  that  the  gates  of  dreaming are  specific
obstacles," he said, "but you haven't understood  yet that whatever is given
as  the exercise to  reach and cross a gate  is not really what that gate is
all about."
     "This is not clear to me at all, don Juan."
     "I mean that it's not true to say, for example, that the second gate is
reached and  crossed  when a dreamer learns to wake up  in another dream, or
when a dreamer learns to change  dreams  without  waking  up in the world of
daily life."
     "Why isn't it true, don Juan?"
     "Because the second gate of dreaming is reached and crossed only when a
dreamer learns to isolate and follow the foreign energy scouts."
     "Why then is the idea of changing dreams given at all?"
     "Waking up in another dream or changing dreams is the drill  devised by
the old  sorcerers to exercise a dreamer's  capacity to isolate and follow a
scout."
     Don  Juan  stated that following  a scout is a high accomplishment  and
that when dreamers are able to perform it, the second gate is flung open and
the universe that  exists behind  it becomes accessible to them. He stressed
that this universe is  there  all  the  time but that we cannot go  into  it
because  we lack energetic prowess and that, in essence, the second gate  of
dreaming is the  door into the  inorganic beings' world, and dreaming is the
key that opens that door.
     "Can  a dreamer isolate a scout directly, without having to go  through
the drill of changing dreams?" I asked.
     "No, not at all," he said.  "The drill  is essential. The question here
is  whether this is the only drill  that  exists. Or  can a  dreamer  follow
another drill?"
     Don Juan looked at me quizzically. It seemed  that he actually expected
me to answer the question.  "It's too difficult to  come up  with a drill as
complete as the one  the old sorcerers devised," I said, without knowing why
but with irrefutable authority.
     Don Juan admitted that I  was  absolutely  right and said that  the old
sorcerers had devised a series of perfect drills to go  through the gates of
dreaming  into  the  specific  worlds  that  exist  behind  every  gate.  He
reiterated that dreaming, being  the  old sorcerers'  invention,  has to  be
played by their rules. He described  the rule of the second gate in terms of
a  series  of  three steps: one, through  practicing the  drill of  changing
dreams, dreamers  find out about  the scouts; two, by following  the scouts,
they enter into another  veritable universe; and three, in that universe, by
means of their actions, dreamers find out, on  their own, the governing laws
and regulations of that universe.
     Don  Juan said  that in  my dealings  with the inorganic  beings, I had
followed the  rule  so  well  that he feared  devastating  consequences.  He
thought that the unavoidable reaction  on the  part  of the inorganic beings
was going to be an attempt to keep me in their world.
     "Don't you think that you are exaggerating, don Juan?" I asked. I could
not believe that the picture was  as  bleak as he was painting it. "I am not
exaggerating at all," he said, in a dry, serious tone.
     "You'll see. The  inorganic beings don't let anyone go,  not  without a
real fight."
     "But what makes you think they want me?"
     "They've already shown you  too many things. Do you really believe that
they are going to all this trouble just to entertain themselves?"
     Don  Juan  laughed at his own  remark. I did  not find him  amusing.  A
strange fear made me ask  him whether  he thought I should interrupt or even
discontinue my dreaming practices.
     "You have to  continue your  dreaming  until you  have gone through the
universe behind the  second  gate," he  said.  "I  mean that  you alone must
either accept or reject the lure  of  the inorganic  beings. That is  why  I
remain aloof and hardly ever comment on your dreaming practices."
     I confessed to him that I had been at a loss  to explain  why he was so
generous in elucidating other aspects of his knowledge and so  miserly  with
dreaming.
     "I was  forced to teach you dreaming," he said,  "only because that  is
the  pattern set out by the  old  sorcerers. The path of dreaming  is filled
with pitfalls,  and  to  avoid  those  pitfalls or to fall into them  is the
personal and individual  affair of each dreamer, and I may  add that it is a
final affair."
     "Are  those  pitfalls  the  result of  succumbing  to  adulation  or to
promises of power?" I asked.
     "Not  only  succumbing to those, but succumbing to anything  offered by
the  inorganic  beings.  There is no way  for  sorcerers to accept  anything
offered by them, beyond a certain point."
     "And what is that certain point, don Juan?"
     "That  point depends on us as individuals. The challenge is for each of
us to take only what is needed from that world, nothing more. To know what's
needed is  the virtuosity of sorcerers, but to take  only what's  needed  is
their  highest accomplishment. To fail to understand this simple rule is the
surest way of plummeting into a pitfall."
     "What happens if you fall, don Juan?"
     "If  you  fall,  you pay  the  price,  and  the  price  depends on  the
circumstances and the  depth  of the  fall. But there is  really  no way  of
talking about  an eventuality of  this  sort, because  we  are not  facing a
problem  of  punishment. Energetic  currents  are  at stake  here, energetic
currents  which  create circumstances that  are more  dreadful  than  death.
Everything in the  sorcerers' path is a matter of life or death,  but in the
path of dreaming this matter is enhanced a hundred fold."
     I reassured don  Juan  that  I always exercised the utmost  care in  my
dreaming practices, and that I was extremely disciplined and conscientious.
     "I know  that  you  are,"  he  said. "But I  want  you to be  even more
disciplined and handle everything related to dreaming  with kid gloves.  Be,
above all, vigilant. I can't foretell where the attack will come from."
     "Are you seeing, as a seer, imminent danger for me, don Juan?"
     "I have seen  imminent  danger for you since the day you walked in that
mysterious city, the first time I helped you round up your energy body."
     "But  do you  know  specifically  what I should  do  and  what I should
avoid?"
     "No, I  don't. I only know that  the universe behind the second gate is
the closest to our own, and our own universe is pretty crafty and heartless.
So the two can't be that different."
     I persisted in asking him  to tell me what was in store  for me. And he
insisted that, as  a sorcerer, he sensed a state  of general danger but that
he could not be more specific.
     "The universe of the  inorganic beings is  always ready  to strike," he
went on. "But so is our own universe. That's why  you have to go into  their
realm exactly as if you were venturing into a war zone."
     "Do you mean, don Juan, that dreamers always have  to be afraid of that
world?"
     "No. I don't mean that. Once a dreamer goes through the universe behind
the second  gate,  or  once  a dreamer refuses  to consider it  as a  viable
option, there are no more headaches."
     Don Juan stated that only then are dreamers free to continue. I was not
sure what he meant; he explained that the universe behind the second gate is
so powerful and aggressive that it serves  as a natural screen or  a testing
ground where dreamers are probed for  their weaknesses. If they survive  the
tests, they  can  proceed to  the next  gate;  if  they  do not, they remain
forever trapped in that universe.
     I was left choking with  anxiety but, in spite of my coaxing, that  was
all he  said.  When I went home, I  continued my  journeys  to the inorganic
beings'  realm, exerting great care.  My carefulness seemed only to increase
my  sense of enjoying  those journeys.  I got to  the point  that  the  mere
contemplation  of  the  inorganic  beings' world  was  enough  to  create an
exultation impossible to describe. I feared that my delight was going to end
sooner or  later, but it was not  so. Something unexpected made it even more
intense.
     On  one  occasion, a  scout  guided me very roughly  through  countless
tunnels, as if searching for something, or as if  it were trying to draw all
my energy out and exhaust me. By the time it finally stopped, I felt as if I
had run a marathon.  I seemed to be at the edge of that world. There were no
more tunnels, only blackness  all around me. Then  something lit up the area
right in front of me; there, light shone from  an indirect source. It  was a
subdued light that rendered  everything  diffusely gray or  brownish. When I
became used to the light, I vaguely distinguished some dark,  moving shapes.
After a while, it seemed to me that focusing  my dreaming attention on those
moving shapes made them substantial. I  noticed that there were three types:
some of them were round, like balls;  others were like bells; and others yet
like gigantic, undulating candle flames.  All  of them  were basically round
and the same size. I  judged that they were three  to four feet in diameter.
There were hundreds, perhaps even thousands of them.
     I  knew that I  was having a  strange, sophisticated vision,  yet those
shapes  were so real that I found myself reacting with genuine queasiness. I
got the nauseating feeling of being over  a nest  of giant, round, brown and
grayish bugs. I felt somehow safe, though, hovering above them. I  discarded
all these considerations, however, the moment I realized that it was idiotic
of  me  to  feel  safe  or  ill at ease, as  if  my  dream were  a real-life
situation. However, as I observed those buglike shapes squirm, I became very
disturbed at the idea that they were about to touch me.
     "We are the mobile unit of our world,"  the emissary's voice said,  all
of a sudden. "Don't be afraid.  We  are  energy,  and, for  sure,  we're not
intending  to touch you.  It would be impossible anyway. We are separated by
real boundaries."
     After a long pause, the voice added, "We want you to join us. Come down
to  where we are. And don't be ill at ease. You are not ill at ease with the
scouts and certainly not with me. The scouts and I are just like the others.
I am bell-shaped, and scouts are like candle flames."
     That last statement was definitely a cue  of sorts for my energy  body.
On hearing it, my queasiness and fear vanished. I descended  to their level,
and the  balls and bells and candle flames surrounded me. They came so close
to me that they would have touched me had I had a physical body. Instead, we
went through one another, like encapsulated air puffs.
     I  had, at that  point, an unbelievable sensation. Although  I  did not
feel anything with  or  in  my energy body, I was feeling and recording  the
most unusual tickling somewhere  else; soft,  airlike things were definitely
going through me, but  not right there. The sensation was vague and fast and
did not give me  time to  catch it fully.  Instead  of focusing  my dreaming
attention on it, I became entirely absorbed in watching those oversized bugs
of energy.
     At  the  level  where  we  were,  it  seemed  to  me that there  was  a
commonality between the shadow entities and myself: size.
     Perhaps it was because I judged them to  be  the same size as my energy
body that I felt almost cozy with them. On examining them, I  concluded that
I did not mind them at all.  They  were  impersonal, cold,  detached,  and I
liked  that immensely. I wondered for an  instant  whether my disliking them
one minute and liking them the next was a natural consequence of dreaming or
a product of some energetic influence those entities were exerting on me.
     "They are most likable," I said to  the  emissary, at the very moment I
was overpowered by a wave of profound friendship or even affection for them.
     No sooner had I spoken my mind than the dark shapes scurried away, like
bulky guinea pigs, leaving me alone in semidarkness.
     "You  projected  too much feeling and scared them off," the  emissary's
voice said. "Feeling is too hard for them, and for me for that  matter." The
emissary actually laughed shyly.
     My dreaming session ended there. On awakening, my first reaction was to
pack  my  bag  to go  to  Mexico  and see don Juan.  However,  an unexpected
development in my  personal  life made it  impossible  for me to travel,  in
spite  of my frantic preparations to leave. The anxiety resulting  from this
setback  interrupted my dreaming practices  altogether. I did not  engage my
conscious volition to stop them; I had unwittingly put so  much  emphasis on
this specific dream  that I simply knew if I could not get to don Juan there
was no point in continuing dreaming.
     After an interruption that lasted over half a  year, I became more  and
more mystified by what had happened. I  had no idea  that my feelings  alone
were going  to  stop my  practices.  I wondered then if the  desire would be
sufficient to reinstate it. It was! Once  I  had  formulated  the thought of
reentering  dreaming,  my  practices  continued  as if  they  had never been
interrupted. The scout picked  up where we had left off and took me directly
to the vision I'd had during my last session.
     "This  is the shadows'  world," the emissary's  voice said as soon as I
was there. "But,  even though we are shadows, we shed light. Not only are we
mobile but we are the light in the tunnels. We are another kind of inorganic
being that exists  here. There are  three kinds:  one  is  like  an immobile
tunnel,  the other is like a mobile  shadow. We are  the mobile shadows. The
tunnels give us their energy, and we do their bidding."
     The  emissary stopped talking. I felt it was daring me to ask about the
third kind  of inorganic  being. I  also felt  that  if  I did not ask,  the
emissary would not tell  me. "What's  the third kind of inorganic  being?" I
said. The emissary coughed and chuckled. To me, it sounded  like it relished
being  asked. "Oh, that's our most mysterious feature," it said. "The  third
kind is revealed to our visitors only when they choose to stay with us."
     "Why is that so?" I asked.
     "Because it takes a  great deal of  energy  to see them," the  emissary
answered. "And we would have to provide that energy."
     I knew that the  emissary was telling me the truth. I also  knew that a
horrendous danger was  lurking. Yet  I was driven  by  a  curiosity  without
limits. I wanted to see that third kind.
     The  emissary  seemed to be aware  of my mood. "Would  you like  to see
them?" it asked casually. "Most certainly," I said.
     "All you have to do is to say out loud that you want  to stay with us,"
the emissary said  with a nonchalant  intonation. "But if I say that, I have
to stay,  right?" I  asked. "Naturally,"  the  emissary  said in a  tone  of
ultimate conviction. "Everything  you  say out  loud  in  this  world is for
keeps."
     I could  not help thinking that, if the emissary had wanted to trick me
into staying, all it  had  to  do was lie to me. I would not have  known the
difference.
     "I cannot lie to you, because a lie doesn't exist,"  the emissary said,
intruding into my thoughts. "I can  tell you  only about what  exists. In my
world, only intent exists; a lie has no intent  behind it; therefore, it has
no existence."
     I wanted to  argue that there  is intent even behind lies, but before I
could  voice  my argument,  the  emissary  said  that behind  lies  there is
intention but that intention is not intent.
     I  could  not keep my  dreaming  attention focused  on the argument the
emissary was posing. It went to  the shadow beings. Suddenly, I noticed that
they  had  the  appearance  of a herd  of  strange,  childlike  animals. The
emissary's voice  warned me to hold my emotions in  check, for sudden bursts
of  feelings had the capacity to make them  disperse, like a flock of birds.
"What do you want me to do?" I asked. "Come down to our side and try to push
or pull  us," the emissary's  voice urged me. "The quicker  you learn to  do
that, the quicker  you'll be able to  move  things  around in your  world by
merely looking at them."
     My merchant's  mind went berserk with  anticipation.  I  was  instantly
among them, desperately trying to push them  or pull  them. After a while, I
thoroughly exhausted my  energy. I had then the  impression that  I had been
trying to do something equivalent to lifting a house with the strength of my
teeth.
     Another impression  I  had was that the  more  I  exerted  myself,  the
greater the  number of shadows.  It was as  if they  were  coming from every
corner  to  watch me, or to  feed on me. The moment I had  that thought, the
shadows again scurried away.
     "We are  not feeding on  you," the  emissary said. "We all come to feel
your energy, very much like what you do with sunlight on a cold day."
     The emissary urged me to open up to them by canceling out my suspicious
thoughts. I heard the voice, and, as I listened to  what  it was  saying,  I
realized  that I  was hearing, feeling, and  thinking exactly  as I do in my
daily world. I slowly turned to  see  around me. Taking  the clarity  of  my
perception  as  a  gauge,  I  concluded  that  I  was in a  real world.  The
emissary's voice sounded in my ears. It said that for me the only difference
between perceiving my world and  perceiving theirs was that perceiving their
world started  and ended  in the blink of  an  eye; perceiving mine did not,
because my awareness -  together with the awareness of an  immense number of
beings like me, who held my world in place  with their intent - was fixed on
my world. The emissary added  that perceiving my world started and ended the
same way for the  inorganic beings, in the blink of an  eye, but  perceiving
their world did not, because there were immense  numbers of them holding  it
in place with their intent.
     At that instant the scene started to dissolve. I was like a  diver, and
waking up from that world was like swimming up to reach the surface.
     In  the  following session,  the emissary began its dialogue with me by
restating  that  a  totally  coordinated and  coactive relationship  existed
between  mobile shadows and  stationary  tunnels. It finished its  statement
saying, "We can't exist without each other."
     "I understand what you mean," I said. There was a touch of scorn in the
emissary's voice when it retorted that I could not possibly understand  what
it means to be related in that fashion, which was infinitely more than being
dependent. I intended  to ask the emissary to explain what it meant by that,
but the  next instant I was inside of what I  can only describe as  the very
tissue of the tunnel. I saw some grotesquely merged, glandlike protuberances
that emitted an  opaque  light. The thought  crossed my mind that those were
the  same protuberances  that had  given me  the  impression  of being  like
Braille. Considering  that  they were  energy blobs three to  four  feet  in
diameter, I began to wonder about the actual size of those tunnels.
     "Size here  is not  like size in your  world,"  the emissary said. "The
energy  of this world is  a different  kind  of energy;  its features  don't
coincide with the features of the energy of your world, yet this world is as
real as your own."
     The emissary  went  on to  say that it had told me everything about the
shadow  beings when it  described  and  explained  the  protuberances on the
tunnels' walls. I retorted that I had  heard the explanations but I  had not
paid attention to them because I believed that they did not pertain directly
to dreaming.
     "Everything  here, in this realm,  pertains directly  to dreaming," the
emissary stated.
     I  wanted to  think  about the  reason for my misjudgment, but my  mind
became  blank.  My  dreaming attention  was  waning.  I  was  having trouble
focusing it on  the world  around  me. I braced myself  for waking  up.  The
emissary started  to speak again, and the sound of its voice propped  me up.
My dreaming attention perked up considerably.
     "Dreaming is the  vehicle  that brings  dreamers  to  this  world," the
emissary said, "and  everything sorcerers  know about dreaming was taught to
them by us. Our world is connected to yours by a door called dreams. We know
how to go through that door, but men don't. They have to learn it."
     The emissary's voice went  on explaining what it had  already explained
to me before.
     "The protuberances on the tunnels' walls are shadow beings,"  it  said.
"I  am  one of them.  We  move inside the tunnels, on their  walls, charging
ourselves with the energy of the tunnels, which is our energy."
     An idle thought crossed my mind: I was really incapable of conceiving a
symbiotic relationship such as the one I was witnessing.
     "If you would stay among us, you would certainly learn to feel  what it
is like to be connected as we are connected," the emissary said.
     The emissary seemed to be waiting for my reply. I had the feeling  that
what it really wanted was for me to say that I had decided to stay.
     "How many shadow beings are in each tunnel?" I asked to change the mood
and immediately  regretted  it  because  the  emissary  began to give  me  a
detailed account  of the numbers and functions of the shadow beings  in each
tunnel.  It  said  that  each  tunnel  had  a specific  number  of dependent
entities, which performed specific functions having to do with the needs and
expectations of the supporting tunnels.
     I did not want the emissary to go into more detail. I reasoned that the
less I  knew about  the tunnel  and shadow beings  the better off I was. The
instant I formulated that thought, the emissary stopped, and my  energy body
jerked  as  if it had been pulled  by a cable. The next  moment, I was fully
awake, in my bed.
     From  then  on,  I  had  no  more fears that could  have interrupted my
practices.  Another idea  had begun to rule me: the  idea  that I had  found
unparalleled excitation. I could hardly wait every day to start dreaming and
have the scout take me to the  shadows' world. The added attraction was that
my visions of the shadows' world became even more true to life  than before.
Judged by the  subjective standards of orderly  thoughts, orderly visual and
auditory sensory input, orderly responses on my part, my experiences, for as
long as they lasted, were as real as any situation in our daily world. Never
had  I had perceptual experiences in  which  the  only difference between my
visions and my everyday world was the speed with which my visions ended. One
instant  I was in  a strange, real world, and the next  instant I  was in my
bed.
     I craved don Juan's  commentaries  and  explanations, but  I was  still
marooned in Los Angeles. The more  I considered my situation, the greater my
anxiety; I even began to sense that something in the inorganic beings' realm
was brewing at tremendous speed.
     As my anxiety grew,  my  body entered into a state of profound  fright,
although my mind was ecstatic in the contemplation of the shadows' world. To
make  things worse,  the  dreaming  emissary's voice  lapsed into  my  daily
consciousness.  One  day while I was attending a class at  the university, I
heard the voice say, over and over, that any attempt on my part  to  end  my
dreaming practices would  be deleterious to  my total  aims. It  argued that
warriors  do not shy away from a challenge and that I had no valid rationale
for  discontinuing  my  practices.  I  agreed with the  emissary.  I had  no
intention of stopping  anything, and the voice was merely reaffirming what I
felt.
     Not only did the emissary change but a new scout appeared on the scene.
On one occasion,  before I  had begun to examine  the items of  my dream,  a
scout literally jumped in front of me and aggressively captured my  dreaming
attention. The notable feature of this scout was that it did not  need to go
through any energetic metamorphosis; it was a blob of energy from the start.
In the blink of an eye, the scout transported me, without my having to voice
my intent to go with it, to another part of the inorganic beings' realm: the
world of the saber-toothed tigers.
     I have  described  in my other works glimpses of those  visions. I  say
glimpses  because  I  did  not  have sufficient energy then to  render these
perceived worlds comprehensible to my linear mind.
     My nightly visions of the saber-toothed tigers occurred regularly for a
long time, until  one night when the aggressive scout that had  taken me for
the first time to that realm suddenly appeared again. Without waiting for my
consent, it took me to the tunnels.
     I heard the emissary's voice. It immediately went into the  longest and
most  poignant  sales  pitch I  had  heard  so far.  It  told me  about  the
extraordinary advantages  of  the  inorganic  beings'  world.  It  spoke  of
acquiring  knowledge  that  would  definitely  stagger  the mind  and  about
acquiring it by the simplest act, of staying  in those marvelous tunnels. It
spoke of incredible  mobility, of endless  time  to  find things, and, above
all, of being pampered by cosmic  servants that would cater to my  slightest
whims.
     "Aware beings from the most  unbelievable  corners  of the cosmos  stay
with us," the emissary said, ending its talk. "And they love their stay with
us. In fact, no one wants to leave."
     The thought that crossed my mind at that moment was that  servitude was
definitely antithetical to me.  I had  never  been at ease with servants  or
with being served.
     The scout took over and made  me glide through many tunnels. It came to
a  halt in a tunnel that seemed somehow larger  than the others. My dreaming
attention became  riveted on die size and configuration of  that tunnel, and
it would have  stayed  glued there had I not  been  made to  turn around. My
dreaming attention  focused  then on a blob  of energy a bit bigger than the
shadow  entities. It  was blue,  like the blue in  the center of a  candle's
flame.  I  knew that  this energy configuration was  not a shadow entity and
that it did not belong there.
     I became  absorbed in sensing  it. The scout signaled  me to leave, but
something was making me impervious  to its cues. I remained, uneasily, where
I  was. However,  the  scout's signaling broke my concentration,  and I lost
sight of the blue shape.
     Suddenly, a considerable force made me  spin around and put me squarely
in front of the blue shape. As I gazed at it, it turned into the figure of a
person: very small,  slender,  delicate,  almost  transparent. I desperately
attempted to  determine  whether it was  a  man or a  woman, but, hard as  I
tried, I could not.
     My attempts  to ask the emissary failed.  It flew away quite  abruptly,
leaving me suspended  in that tunnel,  facing now an unknown person. I tried
to talk to that person the  way I talked to the emissary. I got no response.
I  felt a wave  of  frustration at not being able to break the  barrier that
separated us. Then  I  was besieged by the fear of being  alone with someone
who might have been an enemy.
     I  had  a  variety of  reactions  triggered by  the  presence  of  that
stranger.  I even felt elation, because  I knew that the scout  had  finally
shown me another human being caught in that  world. I only despaired at  the
possibility that  we  were  not able  to  communicate  perhaps  because that
stranger was  one of  the  sorcerers of  antiquity  and belonged  to  a time
different from mine.
     The more  intense my elation and curiosity, the heavier I became, until
a moment  in which I  was so massive that I was back in my body, and back in
the world.  I found myself in Los Angeles, in a  park  by the  University of
California. I was standing on the grass, right in the line of people playing
golf.
     The person in front of me had solidified at the same rate. We stared at
each other for a fleeting instant. It was a girl, perhaps six or seven years
old. I thought I  knew her. On seeing her, my elation  and curiosity grew so
out of proportion  that they triggered  a reversal. I lost mass so fast that
in another instant I  was again a blob of  energy  in  the inorganic beings'
realm. The scout came back for me and hurriedly pulled me away.
     I woke up with a  jolt of  fright. In the process of surfacing into the
daily world, something had let a  message slip through. My mind went  into a
frenzy  trying to put together  what I knew or thought I knew. I spent  more
than forty-eight continuous hours attempting to get at a hidden feeling or a
hidden knowledge that had gotten stuck to  me. The only success I had was to
sense a force - I fancied it to be outside my mind or my body - that told me
not to trust my dreaming anymore.
     After a few days,  a dark and mysterious certainty began to get hold of
me,  a  certainty  that grew  by degrees  until I  had no  doubt  about  its
authenticity: I was sure that the blue blob  of energy was a prisoner in the
inorganic beings' realm.
     I needed  don Juan's  advice more desperately than ever. I knew that  I
was throwing years of work out the window, but I couldn't help it; I dropped
everything I was doing and ran to Mexico.
     "What do you really  want?" don Juan asked  me as a way  to  contain my
hysterical babbling.
     I could not  explain to him what  I wanted  because I did not  know  it
myself.
     "Your problem must be very serious to make you run like this," don Juan
said with a pensive expression.
     "It is, in spite of the fact that  I can't  figure out what my  problem
really is," I said.
     He  asked me  to describe my  dreaming practices in all the detail that
was pertinent. I told him about my vision of  the little girl and how it had
affected me  at  an  emotional level. He instantly advised me to  ignore the
event and regard  it  as  a  blatant attempt,  on the  part of the inorganic
beings,  to  cater  to  my  fantasies.  He  remarked  that  if  dreaming  is
overemphasized, it becomes  what it was  for the old  sorcerers: a source of
inexhaustible indulging.
     For some inexplicable reason,  I  was unwilling  to tell don Juan about
the realm of the shadow entities. It was only when he discarded my vision of
the little  girl that  I felt obliged to describe  to him my visits to  that
world. He was silent for a long time, as if he were overwhelmed.
     When he  finally spoke, he said, "You are more  alone  than I  thought,
because I can't  discuss  your  dreaming  practices at all.  You are at  the
position  of  the old sorcerers. All I can do is  to repeat to you that  you
must exercise all the care you arc able to muster up."
     "Why do you say that I am at the position of the old sorcerers?"
     "I've  told you repeatedly that your  mood  is dangerously like the old
sorcerers'. They were very capable beings; their flaw was that  they took to
the inorganic beings' realm like fish take to the water. You are in the same
boat. You  know things  about  it  that none of us can  even  conceive.  For
instance,  I  never knew  about  the shadows' world;  neither did the nagual
Julian  or the nagual Elias,  in spite of the fact that he spent a long time
in the world of the inorganic beings."
     "But what difference does knowing the shadows' world make?"
     "A  grea