t deal of  difference.  Dreamers are taken  there only when the
inorganic beings are sure the  dreamers are going to stay in that world.  We
know this through the old sorcerers' stories."
     "I assure you, don Juan, that I have no intention whatsoever of staying
there. You talk as if  I am just about to be lured by promises of service or
promises of power. I am not interested in either, and that's that."
     "At  this level,  it isn't that easy anymore. You've  gone  beyond  the
point  where you could simply quit. Besides, you had the misfortune of being
singled out by  a watery inorganic being.  Remember how you tumbled with it?
And how it felt? I told you then that  watery inorganic beings  are the most
annoying. They are dependent and possessive, and once they sink their hooks,
they never give up."
     "And what does that mean in my case, don Juan?"
     "It means real trouble. The specific inorganic being who's running  the
show is the  one  you grabbed that fatal  day. Over the years, it  has grown
familiar with you. It knows you intimately."
     I sincerely  remarked to don Juan that the mere idea that  an inorganic
being knew me intimately made me sick to my stomach.
     "When dreamers realize that  the inorganic beings  have no appeal,"  he
said, "it is usually too late for them, because by then the inorganic beings
have them in the bag."
     I  felt  in the  depths  of me  that he was talking  abstractly,  about
dangers that might exist theoretically but not in practice.  I  was secretly
convinced there was no danger of any sort.
     "I am not going to allow the inorganic beings to lure me in any way, if
that's what you're thinking," I said.
     "I am thinking that  they are going to trick you," he said.  "Like they
tricked the nagual Rosendo.  They are going to set you up, and you won't see
the trap  or even suspect it. They  are smooth operators. Now they have even
invented a little girl."
     "But there is  no  doubt  in my  mind that  the  little girl exists," I
insisted.
     "There is no little girl," he snapped. "That bluish blob of energy is a
scout. An explorer caught  in the inorganic beings' realm.  I've said to you
that  the  inorganic beings  are  like  fishermen;  they  attract and  catch
awareness."
     Don Juan  said that he believed, without  a doubt, that the bluish blob
of energy was from a  dimension entirely  different  from ours, a scout that
got stranded and caught like a fly in a spider's web.
     I  did not  appreciate his  analogy.  It  worried  me to the  point  of
physical discomfort. I did mention this to don Juan, and  he told me that my
concern  with the prisoner scout was making him feel  very close to despair.
"Why does this bother you?" I asked.
     "Something is brewing in  that confounded world," he said. "And I can't
figure out what it is."
     While I remained with don Juan and his  companions, I  did not dream at
all about the inorganic beings' world. As usual, my practice was to focus my
dreaming attention on the items of  my dreams and to change dreams. As a way
to offset  my  concerns, don Juan made  me  gaze at  clouds  and  at faraway
mountain peaks. The result was an immediate feeling  of being level with the
clouds, or the feeling that I was actually at the faraway mountain peaks.
     "I am very pleased, but very worried," don Juan said as a comment on my
effort.  "You are  being taught marvels, and you don't  even  know it. And I
don't mean that you are being taught by me."
     "You are talking about the inorganic beings, true?"
     "Yes,  the  inorganic  beings.  I  recommend  that  you don't  gaze  at
anything; gazing was the old sorcerers' technique. They were  able to get to
their energy bodies  in the blink of an eye, simply by gazing at objects  of
their  predilection.  A very impressive  technique,  but  useless  to modern
sorcerers.  It does nothing to increase our sobriety or our capacity to seek
freedom. All  it does is  pin us down  to  concreteness, a most  undesirable
state."
     Don Juan  added that, unless I kept myself in  check, by the time I had
merged the second attention with the  attention  of my  everyday life, I was
going to be an insufferable man. There was, he said, a dangerous gap between
my mobility in the second  attention  and  my insistence on immobility in my
awareness of the daily world. He remarked that the  gap between the  two was
so  great that  in my daily state  I was nearly  an idiot, and in the second
attention I was a lunatic.
     Before I went home,  I  took  the  liberty  of  discussing  my dreaming
visions  of the  shadows' world  with Carol  Tiggs,  although don  Juan  had
advised  me not to discuss them with anybody. She was most understanding and
most interested, since she was my total counterpart. Don Juan was definitely
annoyed with  me for having revealed my troubles to her.  I  felt worse than
ever. Self-pity possessed me, and I began to complain about always doing the
wrong thing.
     "You haven't done anything yet," don Juan snapped at  me. "That much, I
know."
     Was  he right!  On my next  dreaming session,  at home, all hell  broke
loose.  I reached the shadows'  world, as I had done on countless occasions;
the difference was  the presence of  the blue energy shape. It was among the
other shadow  beings.  I felt  it  was possible that the blob had been there
before and  I  hadn't  noticed it.  As soon  as  I spotted  it, my  dreaming
attention was inescapably attracted to that blob  of energy. In a matter  of
seconds,  I was next  to  it. The other shadows came to me,  as usual, but I
paid no attention to them.
     All of a sudden, the blue, round  shape turned  into the little girl  I
had seen before. She  craned  her thin, delicate, long neck to one side  and
said in a barely  audible  whisper, "Help  me!"  Either  she said that  or I
fantasized  that  she said  it. The  result  was  the same: I  stood frozen,
galvanized by  genuine concern. I experienced a chill,  but not in my energy
mass. I felt a chill in another part of me. This  was the first  time  I was
completely  aware  that  my  experience  was  thoroughly  separate  from  my
sensorial feelings.  I  was  experiencing  the shadows' world,  with all the
implications of what I normally  consider experiencing: I was able to think,
to assess,  to make  decisions;  I  had  psychological continuity; in  other
words, I was myself. The  only  part of me that was missing was my sensorial
self. I  had  no bodily  sensations.  All  my input came through  seeing and
hearing.  My  rationality  then  considered a  strange  dilemma:  seeing and
hearing  were not  physical faculties  but  qualities of the  visions  I was
having.
     "You  are  really  seeing  and  hearing,"  the  emissary's voice  said,
erupting  into my  thoughts.  "That  is the  beauty  of this  place. You can
experience everything through seeing and hearing, without having to breathe.
Think of it! You don't have to breathe! You can go anywhere in the  universe
and not breathe."
     A most disquieting ripple of emotion went through me, and, again, I did
not  feel  it there,  in the shadows'  world. I felt it in  another place. I
became enormously agitated by the obvious yet veiled realization  that there
was a live connection between the me  that was  experiencing and a source of
energy, a source of sensorial feeling located somewhere else. It occurred to
me that this somewhere else was my actual physical body, which was asleep in
my bed.
     At  the instant of this thought, the shadow beings  scurried away,  and
the  little girl  was alone in  my field of vision. I watched her and became
convinced  that I  knew  her. She seemed to falter as  if she were about  to
faint. A boundless wave of affection for her enveloped me.
     I tried to speak to her,  but  I was incapable  of uttering sounds.  It
became clear  to me then  that all my dialogues with the  emissary  had been
elicited and accomplished by the emissary's  energy. Left to my own devices,
I was  helpless. I attempted next to direct my thoughts  to the little girl.
It  was useless.  We were  separated  by  a  membrane  of energy I could not
pierce.
     The   little  girl  seemed  to  understand  my  despair   and  actually
communicated with  me, directly into my  thoughts. She told me, essentially,
what don Juan had already said: that she was a scout  caught in the webs  of
that world. Then she added  that she had adopted the shape of a  little girl
because that shape was familiar to me and to her and that she needed my help
as much  as I needed hers.  She said this to  me in one clump  of  energetic
feeling,  which  was  like  words that  came  to  me all at  once. I  had no
difficulty understanding her, although this  was  the first time anything of
the sort had happened to me.
     I  did not know what to do.  I tried to convey to  her  my sensation of
incapacity. She  seemed to comprehend me instantly. She silently appealed to
me with a  burning look. She even smiled  as if to let me know  that she had
left  it up  to me to extricate  her from her bonds. When  I retorted, in  a
thought, that I had no abilities whatsoever, she gave me the impression of a
hysterical child in the throes of despair.
     I frantically tried to talk  to her.  The little  girl  actually cried,
like  a child  her age  would  cry, out  of desperation and fear. I couldn't
stand  it. I charged at her,  but with no effective  result.  My energy mass
went through her. My idea was to lift her up and take her with me.
     I attempted the same maneuver over and  over until  I  was exhausted. I
stopped to consider my next  move. I was  afraid that my dreaming  attention
was going to wane, and then  I  would lose sight of her. I doubted that  the
inorganic beings would bring  me back to  that specific part of their realm.
It seemed to me that this was  going to be my last visit to them: the  visit
that counted.
     Then  I  did  something  unthinkable.  Before  my  dreaming   attention
vanished,  I  yelled  loud and clear my intent  to merge my energy  with the
energy of that prisoner scout and set it free.


        7. THE BLUE SCOUT

     I was  dreaming  an  utterly nonsensical  dream. Carol Tiggs  was by my
side. She was speaking to me, although I could not understand what she said.
Don Juan  was also in  my dream, as  were all the members of his party. They
seemed to be trying to drag me out of a foggy, yellowish world.
     After a serious effort, during  which I lost and regained sight of them
various times,  they  succeeded in extricating  me from  that place. Since I
could not conceive the sense of all that endeavor, I  finally figured that I
was having a normal, incoherent dream.
     My surprise was staggering when I  woke up and found myself in bed,  in
don Juan's house. I was incapable of moving. I had  no energy at  all. I did
not know  what  to think,  although  I immediately  sensed the gravity of my
situation. I had the vague feeling  that  I  had lost  my energy because  of
fatigue caused by dreaming.
     Don Juan's  companions  seemed to be extremely affected by whatever was
happening  to me. They kept  on coming into my  room, one  at  a  time. Each
stayed for a moment, in  complete silence,  until someone else showed up. It
appeared to me that they were taking turns watching over  me. I was too weak
to ask them to explain their behavior.
     During the subsequent days, I began to feel better, and they started to
talk to me about my dreaming. At first,  I did not know what  they wanted of
me.  Then it  dawned  on  me,  because of their  questions,  that  they were
obsessed with the shadow beings. Every one of them appeared to be scared and
said to me more or less  the same  thing. They insisted that they had  never
been in the shadows' world. Some of them even claimed that they did not know
it  existed. Their claims  and reactions  increased my sense of bewilderment
and my fear.
     The  questions  everyone asked were, "Who took you into  that world? Or
how did  you even begin to know how to get there?" When I told them that the
scouts had  shown me that world, they could  not believe me. Obviously, they
had surmised that  I had been there, but since it was not possible for  them
to use their personal experience as a reference point,  they were unable  to
fathom  what I was saying.  Yet they still wanted to  know all  I could tell
them about the shadow beings and their realm.  I obliged them. All  of them,
with the exception of don Juan, sat by my bed, hanging on every word I said.
However, every  time I asked them about my situation,  they  scurried  away,
just like the shadow beings.
     Another disturbing reaction, which they never had before, was that they
frantically avoided any physical contact with me. They kept their  distance,
as if  I were carrying the plague. Their reaction worried me  so much that I
felt obliged to ask them about it. They denied it. They seemed  insulted and
even went so far as to insist  on proving to me that  I was wrong. I laughed
heartily  at the tense situation that ensued. Their  bodies went rigid every
time they tried to embrace me.
     Florinda  Grau, don Juan's closest  cohort,  was the only member of his
party who lavished physical attention on me and tried  to explain to me what
was  going  on. She told  me that  I had been  discharged of energy  in  the
inorganic beings' world and charged again, but  that my new energetic charge
was a bit disturbing to the majority of them.
     Florinda used  to put  me to bed every night, as  if I were an invalid.
She even spoke to  me in baby talk, which all  of them celebrated with gales
of laughter. But regardless of how she made  fun  of me,  I appreciated  her
concern, which seemed to be real.
     I have written about Florinda before in connection with my meeting her.
She was by far the most beautiful woman  I had ever met. Once I said to her,
and I really meant  it, that she could  have been  a fashion magazine model.
"Of a magazine of nineteen ten," she retorted.
     Florinda, although  she was old, was not old  at all. She was young and
vibrant. When I asked don  Juan  about her unusual  youthfulness, he replied
that sorcery kept her in  a vital state. Sorcerers' energy, he remarked, was
seen by the eye as youth and vigor.
     After satisfying  their initial curiosity about the shadows' world, don
Juan's  companions  stopped  coming into  my room,  and  their  conversation
remained  at the  level  of casual inquiries about  my health. Every time  I
tried to get up, however, there was someone around who gently put me back to
bed. I did not want their ministrations, yet it seemed that I needed them; I
was weak. I accepted that.  But  what  really took  its  toll on me was  not
having anyone explain to me what I was  doing  in Mexico when I  had gone to
bed to dream in Los Angeles. I asked them repeatedly. Every one of them gave
me the same answer, "Ask the nagual. He's the only one who can explain it.
     Finally,  Florinda  broke  the ice. "You were lured into a trap; that's
what happened to you," she said.
     "Where was I lured into a trap?"
     "In the world of the inorganic beings, of  course.  That  has been  the
world you've been dealing with for years. Isn't that so?"
     "Most definitely, Florinda. But can you  tell me about the kind of trap
it was?"
     "Not really. All I can tell you is that you lost all your energy there.
But you fought very well."
     "Why am I sick, Florinda?"
     "You  are not sick with an illness; you were energetically wounded. You
were critical, but now you are only gravely wounded."
     "How did all this happen?"
     "You entered into  a mortal combat  with the inorganic  beings, and you
were defeated."
     "I don't remember fighting anyone, Florinda."
     "Whether  you  remember  or  not  is  immaterial. You  fought  and were
outclassed. You didn't have a chance against those masterful manipulators."
     "I fought the inorganic beings?"
     "Yes. You had a mortal encounter with them. I really don't know how you
have survived their death blow."
     She refused  to tell  me anything  else and hinted that the  nagual was
coming to see me any day.
     The next day don Juan showed up. He was very jovial and  supportive. He
jokingly announced that he was  paying me a  visit in his capacity of energy
doctor. He  examined me by gazing at me from head  to  toe.  "You're  almost
cured," he concluded.
     "What happened to me, don Juan?" I asked.
     "You fell into a trap the inorganic beings set for you," he answered.
     "How did I end up here?"
     "Right  there  is  the big  mystery,  for  sure,"  he said  and  smiled
jovially, obviously trying to make light of a serious matter. "The inorganic
beings snatched  you,  body and all. First they took your energy  body  into
their realm, when  you followed one of their scouts, and then they took your
physical body."
     Don Juan's companions seemed  to be in a state of  shock.  One of  them
asked don  Juan whether the  inorganic beings could abduct anyone.  Don Juan
answered that they certainly could. He  reminded them that the  nagual Elias
was taken into that universe, and he definitely did not intend to go there.
     All of them assented with  a nod. Don Juan  continued speaking to them,
referring to me in the third person.  He said that the combined awareness of
a group of inorganic  beings had first consumed my energy body by forcing an
emotional  outburst  from  me:  to  free the blue scout. Then  the  combined
awareness of the same group of inorganic beings had pulled my inert physical
mass into their  world.  Don Juan added that without the energy body one  is
merely a lump of organic matter that can be easily manipulated by awareness.
     "The inorganic beings are glued together,  like the cells of the body,"
don  Juan  went  on.  "When  they put  their  awareness  together, they  are
unbeatable. It's nothing for  them to yank us out of our moorings and plunge
us into  their  world.  Especially  if we  make  ourselves  conspicuous  and
available, like he did."
     Their sighs  and gasps echoed against the walls. All of them  seemed to
be genuinely frightened and concerned.
     I wanted to  whine  and  blame don  Juan  for  not  stopping  me, but I
remembered how he had  tried to warn me, to deviate me, time and time again,
to no  avail. Don Juan was definitely aware of what was going on in my mind.
He gave a knowing smile.
     "The  reason you think you're  sick," he said,  addressing me, "is that
the inorganic beings discharged your energy and gave you theirs. That should
have  been enough to  kill anyone. As  the  nagual, you have  extra  energy;
therefore, you barely survived."
     I mentioned to don Juan that I remembered  bits  and pieces of quite an
incoherent dream, in  which I was in a yellow-fogged world. He, Carol Tiggs,
and his companions were pulling me out.
     "The  inorganic beings' realm looks like  a  yellow- fog  world to  the
physical  eye,"  he  said. "When you thought you were  having  an incoherent
dream, you  were actually looking  with  your physical eyes, for  the  first
time, at the inorganic beings' universe. And, strange as it may seem to you,
it was also  the first  time  for us. We  knew about  the fog  only  through
sorcerers' stories, not through experience."
     Nothing of  what  he was saying made  sense to me.  Don Juan assured me
that,  because  of  my  lack  of  energy,  a more complete  explanation  was
impossible; I had to be satisfied, he said, with what he  was telling me and
how I  understood it. "I  don't understand it at all," I insisted. "Then you
haven't lost anything," he said. "When  you get stronger, you  yourself will
answer your questions."
     I confessed to don Juan that  I was having hot flashes.  My temperature
rose  suddenly, and,  while I felt hot and sweaty,  I  had extraordinary but
disturbing insights into my situation.
     Don Juan scanned my entire body with his penetrating gaze. He said that
I was in a  state of energetic shock. Losing energy had temporarily affected
me, and what I interpreted as hot flashes were, in essence, blasts of energy
during  which  I  momentarily  regained control  of my energy body and  knew
everything that had happened to me.
     "Make  an  effort, and  tell me  yourself what happened to  you in  the
inorganic beings' world," he ordered me. I told him that the clear sensation
I got, from time to time, was that he and his companions  had gone into that
world with their physical  bodies and had snatched  me out  of the inorganic
beings' clutches.
     "Right!"  he exclaimed.  "You're doing  fine.  Now, turn that sensation
into a view of what happened."
     I  was  unable to do what he wanted, hard  as I tried. Failing made  me
experience an unusual fatigue, which seemed to dry up the inside of my body.
Before don Juan left the room,  I remarked  to him that I was suffering from
anxiety.
     "That means nothing," he said, unconcerned. "Gain back your energy, and
don't worry about nonsense."
     More than  two  weeks went by, during  which  I  slowly gained  back my
energy. However, I kept on worrying about everything. I worried mainly about
being unknown to myself, especially  about a streak of coldness in me that I
had not  noticed before,  a sort  of indifference,  a detachment that  I had
attributed to my lack of energy until I regained it. Then I realized that it
was  a new feature of my being,  a  feature  that had me  permanently out of
synchronization. To elicit the feelings I was accustomed to, I had to summon
them up and  actually wait a moment until they made  their  appearance in my
mind.
     Another new feature of my being was a strange longing that took hold of
me from  time to time. I longed for  someone I did  not know; it was such an
overpowering and  consuming feeling that, when I experienced  it,  I had  to
move around the room incessantly to alleviate  it. The longing remained with
me until  I  made use  of another newcomer in my  life:  a  rigid control of
myself, so new and powerful that it only added more fuel to my worrying.
     By the end of the fourth week, everybody felt that I was finally cured.
They  cut down their  visits drastically.  I spent much of  the time  alone,
sleeping.  The rest  and  relaxation I was getting was  so complete  that my
energy began to increase remarkably. I felt like my old  self  again. I even
began to exercise.
     One day around noon, after a light lunch, I returned to my room to take
a nap. Just before I sank into a deep sleep, I was tossing in my bed, trying
to find a  more comfortable spot, when a strange pressure on my temples made
me open my eyes. The little girl of the inorganic beings' world was standing
by the foot of my bed, peering at me with her cold, steel blue eyes.
     I  jumped out of  bed and  screamed so loudly that three  of don Juan's
companions were  in  the room before  I had  stopped my  scream.  They  were
aghast. They watched in horror as the little girl came to me and was stopped
by the boundaries of my luminous physical being. We looked at each other for
an eternity.  She  was telling me something, which I could not comprehend at
first but which in the  next moment became as clear as a bell. She said that
for me to understand what she was saying, my awareness had to be transferred
from my physical body into my energy body.
     Don Juan came into the room at  that moment. The little  girl  and  don
Juan stared at each other. Without a word, don Juan turned around and walked
out of  the  room.  The little  girl  swished  past the door after him.  The
commotion this scene created among don Juan's  companions was indescribable.
They lost all their composure. Apparently, all of them  had seen  the little
girl as she left the room with the nagual.
     I myself seemed to  be on the verge of exploding. I felt  faint and had
to sit down. I had experienced the presence of the little girl as  a blow on
my solar  plexus. She bore an astonishing likeness  to my  father.  Waves of
sentiment hit  me. I wondered about the meaning of this until I was actually
sick.
     When don Juan returned to the room, I had gained  minimal control  over
myself. The expectation of hearing what he had to  say about the little girl
was making my breathing very difficult. Everybody was as  excited as I  was.
They all talked to don Juan at once and laughed when they realized what they
were  doing.  Their main interest was  to  find  out whether there  was  any
uniformity in the way  they  had perceived the scout's appearance. Everybody
was in agreement that they had seen  a little  girl, six to seven years old,
very thin, with angular, beautiful features. They also  agreed that her eyes
were  steel  blue and burning  with  a  mute emotion;  her eyes, they  said,
expressed gratitude and loyalty.
     Every  detail they  described  about  the  little girl  I  corroborated
myself. Her  eyes were so  bright  and overpowering that they  had  actually
caused me  something like pain.  I  had  felt the  weight  of her look on my
chest.
     A  serious query, which  don  Juan's companions had and which  I echoed
myself, was about  the implications of this event. All agreed that the scout
was  a  portion  of foreign  energy  that had  filtered  through  the  walls
separating the second attention and the attention of  the daily  world. They
asserted that since they were not dreaming and yet  all of them had seen the
alien  energy projected  into  the figure of  a human child; that child  had
existence.
     They  argued  that there must have  been hundreds, if not thousands, of
cases in  which foreign energy slips unnoticed through natural barriers into
our human  world, but  that in  the history of their  lineage there  was  no
mention  whatsoever of an event of  this nature. What worried them  the most
was that there were no sorcerers' stories about it.
     "Is  this the first  time  in  the  history  of  mankind that  this has
happened?" one of them asked don Juan.
     "I  think  it  happens  all the  time,"  he replied, "but it  has never
happened in such an overt, volitional way."
     "What does it mean to us?" another one of them asked don Juan.
     "Nothing to us, but everything to him," he said and pointed at me.
     All of them then entered into a most disturbing silence. Don Juan paced
back and forth for a moment.  Then  he stopped in front of  me and peered at
me, giving all the indications of  someone who cannot find  words to express
an overwhelming realization.
     "I can't even begin to assess the scope of what you've done,"  don Juan
finally said to me in a tone of bewilderment. "You fell into  a pitfall, but
it  wasn't the  kind  of  pitfall I was  worrying  about.  Your pitfall  was
designed  for you alone,  and  it was deadlier than anything  I  could  have
thought of. I worried about  your falling prey to flattery and being served.
What I never  counted on  was that the shadow beings would set a trap  using
your inherent aversion to chains."
     Don Juan  had once made a comparison  of his reaction and mine,  in the
sorcerers' world, to the things that  pressed us the most.  He said, without
making it sound  like a  complaint, that although he wanted and tried to, he
had never been able to inspire the kind of affection his teacher, the nagual
Julian, inspired in people.
     "My  unbiased reaction, which I  am  putting  on the table  for  you to
examine, is to be able to say, and mean  it: it's not my fate to evoke blind
and total affection. So be it!"
     "Your unbiased reaction," he went on, "is that you can't  stand chains,
and you would forfeit your life to break them."
     I sincerely disagreed with him and told him that he  was  exaggerating.
My views were not that clear.
     "Don't worry,"  he  said laughing,  "sorcery is action. When  the  time
comes, you'll act your passion the same way I act mine. Mine is to acquiesce
to  my fate, not  passively,  like an idiot,  but actively, like a  warrior.
Yours  is to jump  without  either  capriciousness or  premeditation to  cut
someone else's chains."
     Don  Juan  explained that upon merging my energy with  the  scout I had
truthfully  ceased to  exist. All my physicalness had then been  transported
into the  inorganic beings' realm and, had  it  not been for the  scout  who
guided don Juan and  his companions  to where  I was, I  would  have died or
remained in that world, inextricably lost.
     "Why  did the scout guide you to where I was?" I asked. "The scout is a
sentient being  from another  dimension," he said. "It's  a little girl now,
and  as such she told me that in order to get  the necessary energy to break
the barrier that had trapped her in the inorganic beings' world, she  had to
take all of yours. That's her human part now. Something resembling gratitude
drove her to me. When I saw her, I knew instantly that you were done for."
     "What did you do then, don Juan?"
     "I rounded up everyone I could get hold of, especially Carol Tiggs, and
off we went into the inorganic beings' realm."
     "Why Carol Tiggs?"
     "In the first place, because she has endless energy, and, in the second
place, because she had to familiarize herself with the scout. All  of us got
something invaluable out  of this experience.  You and  Carol Tiggs  got the
scout. And the rest of us got a reason to round up our physicality and place
it on our energy bodies; we became energy."
     "How did all of you do that, don Juan?"
     "We displaced our  assemblage points,  in unison. Our impeccable intent
to save you did the work.  The scout took  us,  in the blink of  an  eye, to
where you were lying, half dead, and Carol dragged you out."
     His explanation made no sense to me.  Don Juan laughed when I  tried to
raise that point.
     "How can you understand this when  you don't even have enough energy to
get out of your bed?" he retorted.
     I confided  to him that I was certain  I knew infinitely  more  than  I
rationally admitted but that something was keeping a tight lid on my memory.
     "Lack of energy  is what has  put a tight lid on your memory," he said.
"When you have sufficient energy, your memory will work fine."
     "Do you mean that I can remember everything if I want to?"
     "Not quite. You may  want as much as you like, but if your energy level
is not on a par with the importance of what you know, you might as well kiss
your knowledge good-bye: it'll never be available to you."
     "So what's the thing to do, don Juan?"
     "Energy  tends  to  be  cumulative;  if you  follow  the  warrior's way
impeccably, a moment will come when your memory opens up."
     I confessed that hearing  him talk gave me the  absurd sensation that I
was indulging in feeling sorry for myself, that there was nothing wrong with
me.
     "You are not just indulging," he said. "You were actually energetically
dead  four weeks ago. Now you  are merely stunned. Being stunned and lacking
energy is what makes  you hide your  knowledge. You certainly know more than
any of  us about the inorganic beings' world.  That world was the  exclusive
concern  of the old  sorcerers.  All of us  have told  you that only through
sorcerers' stories do we know about it. I sincerely say that it is more than
strange to me  that  you've become,  in  your  own right,  another source of
sorcerers' stories for us."
     I  reiterated that  it  was impossible  for  me to  believe I had  done
something he  had not.  But I could not believe  either  that  he was merely
humoring me.
     "I am not flattering  or humoring you," he said, visibly annoyed. "I am
stating  a sorcery fact.  Knowing  more  than  any of  us  about that  world
shouldn't  be a  reason for feeling pleased.  There's no  advantage  in that
knowledge; in fact, in spite of all you know, you couldn't save yourself. We
saved you, because we found you. But without the aid of the scout, there was
no point in  even trying  to find you. You were  so infinitely lost in  that
world that I shudder at the mere thought."
     In my  state of mind,  I did not  find  it strange in the least  that I
actually  saw a ripple of emotion going through all of don Juan's companions
and apprentices.  The only one who  remained unaltered was Carol Tiggs.  She
seemed to have fully accepted her role. She was one with me.
     "You did free  the scout,"  don  Juan continued, "but you gave up  your
life. Or, worse yet, you gave up your freedom. The inorganic beings let  the
scout go, in exchange for you."
     "I  can  hardly believe  that, don  Juan.  Not that  I  doubt you,  you
understand, but  you  describe  such  an  underhanded  maneuver  that  I  am
stunned."
     "Don't  consider  it underhanded  and  you have the  whole thing  in  a
nutshell.  The inorganic  beings  are forever  in  search of  awareness  and
energy;  if you supply them with  the possibility of both, what do you think
they'll do? Blow you kisses from across the street?"
     I  knew  that don  Juan  was  right.  However,  I  could not hold  that
certainty for too long; clarity kept drifting away from me.
     Don Juan's  companions continued asking him questions.  They wanted  to
know if he had given any thought to what to do with the scout.
     "Yes, I  have. It is a most  serious problem, which the nagual here has
to resolve," he said, pointing at  me. "He and Carol Tiggs are the only ones
who can free the scout. And he knows it too."
     Naturally, I asked him the only possible question, "How can I free it?"
     "Instead of my  telling  you how, there is a much  better and more just
way of finding out," don Juan said with a big smile. "Ask  the emissary. The
inorganic beings cannot lie, you know."


        8. The third gate of dreaming

     "The  third gate of dreaming is  reached when  you  find  yourself in a
dream, staring at someone else who  is  asleep. And that someone else  turns
out to be you," don Juan said.
     My energy level was so  keyed up at the time that I went to work on the
third  task right away, although he did not offer any more information about
it. The first thing I noticed, in my dreaming practices, was that a surge of
energy immediately rearranged the focus of my dreaming attention. Its  focus
was now on waking  up in  a dream and seeing  myself sleeping; journeying to
the realm of inorganic beings was no longer an issue for me.
     Very soon after, I found myself in a dream looking at  myself asleep. I
immediately reported it to don Juan. The  dream had happened while I  was at
his house.
     "There are two phases to each of  the gates of dreaming," he said. "The
first, as  you know, is to arrive at the gate; the second is to cross it. By
dreaming what you've dreamt,  that you saw  yourself asleep, you  arrived at
the third gate. The second phase is to move around once you've seen yourself
asleep.
     "At the third gate of dreaming," he went on, "you begin to deliberately
merge your dreaming reality with the reality of the daily world. This is the
drill, and sorcerers call it completing the  energy body.  The merge between
the two realities has to be so thorough that you need to be more fluid  than
ever. Examine everything at the third gate with great care and curiosity."
     I complained that his  recommendations  were too  cryptic  and were not
making  any  sense to me. "What do you mean by great care and  curiosity?" I
asked. "Our  tendency at  the  third gate  is to get  lost  in  detail,"  he
replied. "To view things with great  care and curiosity means to resist  the
nearly irresistible temptation to plunge into detail.
     "The given  drill, at the third gate, as I said, is to consolidate  the
energy body. Dreamers begin forging the energy body by fulfilling the drills
of the first  and second gates. When they reach the third  gate,  the energy
body is ready to come out, or perhaps it would be better  to say that it  is
ready  to  act.  Unfortunately,  this  also means  that  it's  ready  to  be
mesmerized by detail."
     "What does it mean to be mesmerized by detail?"
     "The energy  body  is  like a child who's been imprisoned all its life.
The  moment  it is  free,  it soaks up  everything it can  find, and I  mean
everything.  Every  irrelevant,  minute  detail totally absorbs  the  energy
body."
     An  awkward  silence  followed. I  had no  idea  what  to  say.  I  had
understood him perfectly,  I just didn't have anything in  my  experience to
give me an idea of exactly what it all meant.
     "The most asinine detail becomes a world for the energy body," don Juan
explained. "The effort that dreamers have to make to  direct the energy body
is staggering. I know that it sounds awkward to tell you to view things with
care and curiosity, but that is the best way to describe what you should do.
At  the third gate, dreamers have  to avoid a nearly irresistible impulse to
plunge into everything,  and they avoid it by being so curious, so desperate
to  get  into everything that  they don't  let any particular thing imprison
them."
     Don Juan  added that his recommendations, which he  knew sounded absurd
to  the  mind, were directly aimed at my  energy body.  He stressed over and
over that my energy body had to unite all its resources in order to act.
     "But hasn't my energy body been acting all along?" I asked.
     "Part of it has, otherwise you wouldn't have journeyed to the inorganic
beings' realm,"  he replied. "Now your entire energy body has  to be engaged
to perform the drill of the third gate. Therefore, to make things easier for
your energy body, you must hold back your rationality."
     "I am afraid you are barking up the wrong tree," I said. "There is very
little rationality left in me  after all the experiences you've brought into
my life."
     "Don't say anything. At the third gate, rationality is  responsible for
the  insistence  of our  energy  bodies  on being obsessed with  superfluous
detail. At  the  third gate,  then, we need irrational fluidity,  irrational
abandon to counteract that insistence."
     Don  Juan's statement that each gate is an obstacle could not have been
more truthful. I labored to fulfill  the drill of the third gate of dreaming
more intensely  than I  had on the  other two tasks combined.  Don Juan  put
tremendous pressure on  me.  Besides,  something else had  been added to  my
life: a true sense of fear.  I had been normally and even excessively afraid
of one thing or another throughout my life, but there had been nothing in my
experience  comparable  to the fear I felt after my  bout with the inorganic
beings. Yet  all  this wealth of  experience  was  inaccessible to my normal
memory. Only in the presence of don Juan were those memories at my disposal.
     I asked  him about this  strange  situation once  when we  were  at the
National  Museum  of  Anthropology  and History  in Mexico  City.  What  had
prompted  my  question was that, at  the  moment, I had the  odd ability  to
remember everything that had  happened to me in the course of my association
with don Juan. And that  made me feel  so  free, so  daring and light-footed
that I was practically dancing around.
     "It just happens that the presence of the nagual induces a shift of the
assemblage point," he said.
     He guided me then into one of the display rooms of the museum  and said
that my question was apropos to what he had been planning to tell me.
     "My intention was to explain to you that the position of the assemblage
point is like a  vault  where sorcerers keep their records," he said. "I was
tickled pink when your energy body felt my intent and you asked me about it.
The energy body knows immensities. Let me show you how much it knows."
     He instructed me to enter into total silence. He reminded me that I was
already  in  a special state of  awareness,  because my assemblage point had
been made to  shift by his  presence. He assured me that entering into total
silence  was  going to allow the sculptures  in that room to make me see and
hear inconceivable things.  He  added, apparently to  increase my confusion,
that some  of the archaeological  pieces in  that  room had  the capacity to
produce, by themselves,  a  shift of  the  assemblage  point,  and that if I
reached a  state  of total  silence  I would be  actually witnessing  scenes
pertaining to the lives of the people who made those pieces.
     He then began the strangest tour of a museum I have ever taken. He went
around the room, describing and interpreting astounding details of every one
of the  large pieces. According  to him, every  archaeological piece in that
room was a purposeful record left by  the people of antiquity,