want for yourself?" "No gift for me. I've told you that already." "I insist.
I must offer you a gift, and you must accept it. That is our agreement."
     "Our agreement is that we give you energy. So take it from me. This one
is on me. My gift to you."
     The woman seemed dumbfounded. And I persisted in telling her it was all
right  with me  that she took my energy.  I even told  her  that I liked her
immensely. Naturally, I meant it. There was something supremely  sad and, at
the same time, supremely appealing about her.
     "Let's go back inside the church," she muttered. "If you really want to
make me a  gift,"  I  said,  "take me  for a stroll  in this  town,  in  the
moonlight."
     She shook her head affirmatively. "Provided that you don't say a word,"
she said.
     "Why  not?"  I asked, but I already  knew the  answer.  "Because we are
dreaming," she said. "I'll be taking you deeper into my dream."
     She  explained that as long as we  stayed in the  church, I  had enough
energy to think and converse,  but that beyond the boundaries of that church
it was a different situation. "Why is that?" I asked daringly.
     In  a  most  serious tone,  which not only  increased  her eeriness but
terrified me, the  woman  said, "Because there  is no out  there. This  is a
dream. You are at the fourth gate of dreaming, dreaming my dream."
     She told  me  that  her art was to be capable of projecting her intent,
and that everything I  saw around me was her intent. She  said in  a whisper
that the  church and  the town were the results  of her intent; they did not
exist, yet  they  did. She added,  looking into my eyes, that this is one of
the mysteries of intending in  the second  attention  the twin positions  of
dreaming. It can be done, but it cannot be explained or comprehended.
     She told me then that she came from a line of sorcerers who knew how to
move about in the second attention by projecting their intent. Her story was
that  the  sorcerers  of her  line  practiced  the  art  of projecting their
thoughts in dreaming in order to accomplish the truthful reproduction of any
object or structure or landmark or scenery of their choice.
     She said that the sorcerers  of her  line used to start  by gazing at a
simple object and memorizing every detail of it. They would then close their
eyes and  visualize  the object  and correct their visualization against the
true object until  they could see it, in  its completeness, with their  eyes
shut. The next thing in their developing scheme was to dream with the object
and create  in  the dream, from the point of view of their own perception, a
total materialization of the object. This  act,  the  woman said, was called
the first step to total perception.
     From a  simple  object, those sorcerers went  on  to take more and more
complex items. Their final aim was for  all of them together to  visualize a
total world, then dream  that world and thus re-create  a totally  veritable
realm where they could exist.
     "When  any of the sorcerers of my line were able to do that," the woman
went on, "they could easily pull anyone into their intent, into their dream.
This  is what I am doing  to you  now,  and what I did to all the naguals of
your line."
     The  woman giggled. "You better believe it," she said, as if I did not.
"Whole populations disappeared dreaming like that. This is the reason I said
to you that this church and  this town are one of the mysteries of intending
in the second attention."
     "You say  that whole  populations  disappeared  that  way.  How was  it
possible?" I asked.
     "They visualized and then re-created in dreaming the same scenery," she
replied. "You've never visualized anything, so  it's  very dangerous for you
to go into my dream."
     She warned me, then, that to cross the fourth gate and travel to places
that exist only  in someone else's intent was perilous, since every  item in
such a dream had to be an ultimately personal item.
     "Do you still want to go?" she asked.
     I said yes. Then she told me more about the twin positions. The essence
of her explanation was that if I were, for instance, dreaming of my hometown
and  my dream  had  started when I lay down  on  my right side, I could very
easily stay in the town of  my dream if I would lie on my right side, in the
dream, and dream that I had fallen  asleep. The second dream  not only would
necessarily be a  dream of my hometown, but would be the most concrete dream
one can imagine.
     She was  confident that  in my dreaming training I had gotten countless
dreams of great concreteness, but she assured me that every one  of them had
to be a fluke.  For  the only way to  have absolute control of dreams was to
use the technique of the twin positions.
     "And  don't  ask me why," she added.  "It just happens. Like everything
else."
     She made me stand up and  admonished me again not to talk or stray from
her. She took my  hand gently,  as if I  were a child,  and  headed toward a
clump of dark silhouettes of houses. We were on a cobbled street. Hard river
rocks  had been pounded edgewise into the dirt.  Uneven pressure had created
uneven surfaces.  It seemed that the cobblers  had followed  the contours of
the ground without bothering to level it.
     The houses were big, whitewashed, one-story, dusty buildings with tiled
roofs. There were people meandering quietly. Dark shadows inside the  houses
gave me  the  feeling  of curious but frightened neighbors gossiping  behind
doors. I could also see the flat mountains around the town.
     Contrary to what had happened to me all along in my dreaming, my mental
processes were unimpaired. My thoughts were not pushed away  by the force of
the events in  the dream. And my mental calculations  told  me I was  in the
dream version of the town where don Juan lived, but at a different  time. My
curiosity  was at its peak. I was  actually with  the death  defier  in  her
dream. But was it  a dream? She herself had said it was a dream. I wanted to
watch everything, to be superalert.  I wanted to  test everything by  seeing
energy. I felt  embarrassed, but  the woman tightened her grip on my hand as
if to signal me that she agreed with me.
     Still  feeling  absurdly bashful,  I automatically stated  out loud  my
intent to  see.  In  my  dreaming practices, I had  been using all along the
phrase "I want to see energy."  Sometimes, I had to  say  it  over and  over
until I got results.  This  time, in the woman's  dream town,  as I began to
repeat  it in my usual manner, the woman  began  to  laugh. Her laughter was
like don Juan's: a deep, abandoned belly laugh.
     "What's so funny?" I asked, somehow contaminated by her mirth.
     "Juan  Matus  doesn't like  the old  sorcerers  in  general and  me  in
particular," the woman said between fits of laughter. "All we have to do, in
order to see in our dreams,  is to  point with our little finger at the item
we  want to see. To make you yell in my  dream  is his way  to send  me  his
message.  You  have to admit  that  he's really clever." She  paused  for  a
moment, then said in  the tone of a revelation, "Of course, to  yell like an
asshole works too."
     The sorcerers' sense of humor bewildered me beyond measure. She laughed
so  hard she seemed to be  unable  to proceed with our walk. I felt  stupid.
When  she calmed down and was  perfectly poised again, she politely told  me
that I could point at anything I wanted in her dream, including herself.
     I pointed  at a house with the little finger of my left hand. There was
no energy in  that house. The house was like any other  item  of  a  regular
dream. I pointed at everything around me with the same result.
     "Point at  me,"  she urged me.  "You  must corroborate that this is the
method dreamers follow in order to see."
     She was thoroughly right. That was the method. The instant I pointed my
finger at  her, she was a blob of  energy. A very peculiar blob of energy, I
may add. Her energetic shape  was exactly  as don Juan had described  it; it
looked like an enormous seashell, curled inwardly along a  cleavage that ran
its length.
     "I am  the only energy-generating being  in this  dream," she said. "So
the proper thing for you to do is just watch everything."
     At that  moment I  was struck, for the  first time, by the immensity of
don  Juan's joke. He had actually contrived to have  me learn to yell in  my
dreaming so that I could yell in the privacy of the  death defier's dream. I
found  that touch  so funny that  laughter spilled out of  me in suffocating
waves.
     "Let's continue our walk," the woman  said softly when  I  had  no more
laughter in me.
     There were only two streets that intersected; each had three  blocks of
houses. We walked the  length of both  streets,  not once  but four times. I
looked at everything and listened with my dreaming attention for any noises.
There were  very few, only dogs barking in  the distance, or people speaking
in whispers as we went by.
     The dogs barking brought me an  unknown and profound  longing. I had to
stop walking.  I  sought relief  by  leaning my shoulder against a wall. The
contact with  the wall was shocking to  me, not because the wall was unusual
but because what I had leaned on was a solid wall, like any other wall I had
ever  touched. I felt it  with my  free hand. I ran my  fingers on its rough
surface. It was indeed a wall!
     Its stunning realness put an immediate end to my longing and renewed my
interest  in  watching everything. I was looking, specifically, for features
that could be correlated  with  the town of my day. However, no  matter  how
intently I  observed,  I had no success. There was a plaza in that town, but
it was in front of the church, facing the portico.
     In the moonlight the mountains around the town were clearly visible and
almost recognizable. I tried  to  orient myself,  observing the moon and the
stars, as if I  were  in the consensual  reality of everyday  life. It was a
waning moon, perhaps a day after full. It was high over the horizon. It must
have been between eight  and  nine in  the evening. I could see Orion to the
right of the  moon;  its  two main stars,  Betelgeuse  and Rigel,  were on a
horizontal straight line with the moon. I estimated it to be early December.
My time was May. In May, Orion is nowhere in sight at that time.  I gazed at
the moon  as  long as I could. Nothing shifted. It was the moon  as far as I
could tell. The disparity in time got me very excited.
     As I reexamined the southern horizon, I thought I could distinguish the
bell-like peak  visible  from don Juan's patio. I tried  next  to figure out
where his house  might have been. For  one  instant I thought I found it.  I
became  so  enthralled  that  I pulled  my hand  out of  the  woman's  grip.
Instantly, a  tremendous anxiety possessed me. I knew that I had to go  back
to  the  church, because if I did not I would simply drop dead on the spot I
turned around and bolted for the church. The woman quickly grabbed  my  hand
and followed me.
     As  we approached the church at a running pace, I became aware that the
town  in  that  dreaming  was  behind  the  church. Had  I  taken  this into
consideration,  orientation might have been possible.  As  it was, I  had no
more dreaming  attention.  I focused  all  of  it on the  architectural  and
ornamental details on the back of the church.  I had never seen that part of
the  building in the world of everyday  life, and I thought that  if I could
record  its features  in  my memory, I  could  check  them later against the
details of the real church.
     That was  the  plan I concocted on  the spur  of the moment.  Something
inside  me,  however,  scorned  my  efforts at  validation.  During  all  my
apprenticeship, I  had been  plagued by the need for objectivity,  which had
forced me to check and recheck everything about don Juan's world. Yet it was
not  validation per se that was always  at stake  but  the need to  use this
drive for  objectivity as a  crutch to give me protection  at the moments of
most  intense cognitive disruption;  when it was  time to check  what I  had
validated, I never went through with it.
     Inside the church, the woman and I knelt in front of the small altar on
the left  side, where  we had  been, and the  next instant, I woke up in the
well-illuminated church of my day.
     The woman crossed herself  and stood up. I  did the same automatically.
She took my arm and began to walk toward the door.
     "Wait, wait," I said  and was surprised  that I could talk. I could not
think clearly, yet I wanted to ask  her a convoluted question. What I wanted
to know was how anyone could have  the energy to visualize every detail of a
whole town.
     Smiling, the woman answered my unvoiced question; she said that she was
very good at visualizing because after a lifetime of doing it, she had many,
many lifetimes to perfect it.  She added that the town I had visited and the
church where we had talked were  examples of  her recent visualizations. The
church was the same church where Sebastian had been a  sexton. She had given
herself the task  of  memorizing every detail of every corner of that church
and that town, for that matter, out of a need to survive.
     She ended her talk with a most disturbing afterthought. "Since you know
quite  a  bit  about this  town, even though you've never tried to visualize
it," she said, "you are now helping me to intend it. I bet you won't believe
me if I tell you that this town you are looking at now doesn't really exist,
outside your intent and mine."
     She peered at me  and laughed at  my sense of horror,  for  I  had just
fully  realized what  she  was  saying.  "Are  we still dreaming?"  I asked,
astonished.
     "We  are," she said.  "But this dreaming  is more real than  the other,
because you're helping  me. It  is not possible to explain  it beyond saying
that  it  is happening. Like  everything  else." She pointed all around her.
"There is no way to tell how it happens, but  it does. Remember  always what
I've told you: this is the mystery of intending in the second attention."
     She  gently pulled me closer to her. "Let's stroll to the plaza of this
dream," she said. "But perhaps I should fix myself a little bit so you'll be
more at ease."
     I  looked  at  her  uncomprehendingly  as  she  expertly   changed  her
appearance. She did this with very simple, mundane  maneuvers. She undid her
long  skirt,  revealing the very  average  midcalf  skirt  she  was  wearing
underneath. She then twisted her long braid into a chignon and changed  from
her guaraches into inch-heel shoes she had in a small cloth sack.
     She turned over her reversible black shawl to reveal a beige stole. She
looked like a typical middle-class Mexican woman from the city, perhaps on a
visit to that town.
     She took my arm with a woman's aplomb and led the way to the plaza.
     "What happened to your tongue?" she  said  in English. "Did the cat eat
it?"
     I was totally engrossed in the unthinkable possibility that I was still
in a dream; what is more, I was beginning to believe that if it were true, I
ran the risk of never waking up.
     In a nonchalant tone that  I could not recognize  as  mine, I  said, "I
didn't realize until now that you spoke in English to me  before.  Where did
you learn it?"
     "In  the world out  there.  I  speak  many  languages." She paused  and
scrutinized me. "I've had plenty of time to learn them. Since we're going to
spend a lot of time together, I'll teach you my own language sometime."  She
giggled, no doubt at my look of despair.
     I stopped walking. "Are we going to spend a  lot of time  together?"  I
asked, betraying my feelings.
     "Of  course," she replied in  a joyful tone. "You are, and I should say
very generously, going to give  me your  energy,  for  free.  You  said that
yourself, didn't you?" I was aghast.
     "What's  the  problem?" the woman  asked, shifting back  into  Spanish.
"Don't tell me  that you  regret  your decision. We are  sorcerers. It's too
late to change your mind. You are not afraid, are you?"
     I was again more than terrified, but, if I  had been put on the spot to
describe  what terrified me, I  would  not have known.  I  was certainly not
afraid of being with the death defier in  another dream or of losing my mind
or  even my  life. Was I  afraid of evil? I asked myself. But the thought of
evil could not withstand examination. As  a result of all those years on the
sorcerers' path, I knew without the shadow of  a  doubt that in the universe
only  energy exists; evil  is  merely  a concatenation  of the  human  mind,
overwhelmed  by  the  fixation  of  the  assemblage  point  on its  habitual
position. Logically, there was really nothing for me to be afraid of. I knew
that, but I also knew that my  real weakness was to lack the fluidity to fix
my assemblage point instantly on any new position to which it was displaced.
The contact with the death  defier was displacing my  assemblage  point at a
tremendous rate,  and I did not have the prowess to  keep  up with the push.
The  end result  was a vague pseudo-sensation of fearing that I might not be
able to wake up.
     "There is no problem," I said. "Let's continue our dream walk."
     She linked  her arm with  mine, and we reached the park in silence.  It
was not at all a  forced silence. But  my  mind was running in circles.  How
strange,  I thought; only a  while  ago  I had walked with don Juan from the
park  to the church, in the midst of the most terrifying normal fear. Now  I
was walking back from the church to the park with the object of my fear, and
I was more terrified than ever, but in a different, more mature, more deadly
manner.
     To fend off my worries, I began to look around. If this was a dream, as
I  believed it  was, there was a  way to prove or disprove it. I pointed  my
finger at  the houses, at the church,  at  the  pavement  in the  street.  I
pointed  at people.  I pointed  at  everything. Daringly, I even  grabbed  a
couple of people, whom I seemed  to  scare considerably. I felt  their mass.
They  were  as real as  anything I consider real, except  that they  did not
generate  energy. Nothing in that  town generated energy. Everything  seemed
real and normal, yet it was a dream.
     I turned to the woman, who was holding on to my arm, and questioned her
about it.
     "We are dreaming," she said in  her  raspy voice and  giggled. "But how
can people and things around us to be so real, so three-dimensional?"
     "The  mystery  of intending  in  the  second attention!"  she exclaimed
reverently.  "Those  people  out  there  are  so  real that they  even  have
thoughts."
     That was the last  stroke. I did not want to question anything  else. I
wanted to  abandon myself  to that dream.  A  considerable jolt  on  my  arm
brought  me back to  the moment.  We had reached the  plaza. The  woman  had
stopped walking and was pulling  me to sit down on a bench. I  knew I was in
trouble  when I did not feel the bench underneath me  as I sat down. I began
to spin. I thought I was ascending. I caught a most fleeting glimpse  of the
park, as if I were looking at it from above.
     "This  is it!" I yelled. I  thought I was dying. The spinning ascension
turned into a twirling descent into blackness.


        15. FLYING ON THE WINGS OF INTENT

     "Make  an  effort,  nagual,"  a  woman's voice urged me.  "Don't  sink.
Surface, surface. Use your dream-techniques!"
     My  mind  began to  work. I thought it  was  the  voice of  an  English
speaker, and I also thought that if I were to use dreaming techniques, I had
to find a point of departure to energize myself.
     "Open your eyes," the voice said. "Open them now.  Use  the first thing
you see as a point of departure."
     I made a supreme effort  and opened my  eyes. I saw trees and blue sky.
It was  daytime! A blurry  face was peering at me. But I could not focus  my
eyes. I thought that it was the woman in the church looking at me.
     "Use my face," the voice said. It was a familiar voice, but I could not
identify  it. "Make  my face your home base;  then  look at everything," the
voice went on.
     My ears were clearing up, and so  were my eyes. I gazed at the  woman's
face, then at the trees  in  the  park, at the wrought-iron bench, at people
walking by, and back again at her face.
     In spite of the fact that her face changed every time I gazed at her, I
began to experience a minimum  of  control. When I was more in possession of
my faculties, I realized that  a  woman was sitting on the bench, holding my
head on  her lap. And she  was not the woman  in the  church;  she was Carol
Tiggs. "What are you doing here?" I gasped.  My fright and surprise were  so
intense that I wanted to jump up and  run, but my body was  not ruled at all
by  my  mental  awareness.  Anguishing  moments  followed, in which  I tried
desperately but uselessly to get up. The world around me  was too clear  for
me  to believe I  was still dreaming, yet  my impaired motor control made me
suspect  that  this was really  a dream.  Besides, Carol's  presence was too
abrupt; there were no antecedents to justify it.
     Cautiously,  I attempted to  will  myself  to  get  up,  as I had  done
hundreds of times in dreaming, but nothing  happened. If I ever needed to be
objective,  this was the time. As carefully as I could, I  began  to look at
everything within my field of vision  with  one  eye first. I  repeated  the
process with the  other eye. I took the consistency between the images of my
two eyes  as an indication that I was in  the consensual reality of everyday
life.
     Next, I examined  Carol. I  noticed at that moment that I could move my
arms.  It  was only my  lower body that was veritably  paralyzed. I  touched
Carol's  face and hands; I embraced her. She was solid and, I believed,  the
real  Carol Tiggs. My relief was enormous, because for  a moment I'd had the
dark suspicion that she was the death defier masquerading as Carol.
     With utmost  care, Carol helped me  to sit up on the bench.  I had been
sprawled on  my  back,  half on the bench and half on  the ground. I noticed
then something totally out of  the norm. I was wearing faded blue Levi's and
worn brown leather boots. I also had on a Levi's jacket and a denim shirt.
     "Wait a minute," I said to Carol. "Look at me! Are these my clothes? Am
I myself?"
     Carol laughed and shook me by  the shoulders, the way she always did to
denote camaraderie, manliness, that she was one of the boys.
     "I'm  looking at  your beautiful self," she  said in  her funny  forced
falsetto. "Oh massa, who else could it possibly be?"
     "How  in the  hell can I be  wearing Levi's and boots?" I  insisted. "I
don't own any."
     "Those are my  clothes you are wearing.  I found  you  naked!"  "Where?
When?"
     "Around the church, about an hour ago. I came to the plaza here to look
for  you. The nagual  sent me  to  see if I  could find you.  I  brought the
clothes, just in case."
     I told  her  that I felt terribly vulnerable  and  embarrassed  to have
wandered around without my clothes.
     "Strangely enough, there was no one around," she assured me, but I felt
she was saying it just to ease my discomfort. Her playful smile told me so.
     "I  must  have  been with  the death defier all last night, maybe  even
longer," I said. "What day is it today?"
     "Don't worry  about  dates,"  she  said, laughing. "When you  are  more
centered, you'll count the days yourself."
     "Don't humor  me, Carol Tiggs.  What day is  it  today?" My voice was a
gruff, no-nonsense voice that did not seem to belong to me.
     "It's the day  after the big fiesta," she said and slapped me gently on
my shoulder. "We all have been looking for you since  last night." "But what
am I doing here?"
     "I took you to the hotel across the plaza. I couldn't carry you all the
way to the nagual's house; you ran out of the room a few minutes ago, and we
ended up here." "Why didn't  you ask the nagual  for help?" "Because this is
an affair that concerns only you and me. We must solve it together."
     That shut me up.  She made perfect sense to  me. I asked  her one  more
nagging question. "What did I say when you found me?"
     "You said that you had been so deeply into the second attention and for
such a long time that you were not quite rational yet. All you  wanted to do
was to fall asleep." "When did I lose my motor control?"
     "Only a moment  ago. You'll get it back. You yourself  know that it  is
quite  normal,  when  you enter  into  the  second attention and  receive  a
considerable energy jolt, to lose control of your  speech or of your limbs."
"And  when did  you  lose  your lisping,  Carol?"  I caught  her  totally by
surprise. She peered at me and broke into a hearty laugh. "I've been working
on it for a long time,"  she confessed. "I think that it's terribly annoying
to hear a grown woman lisping. Besides, you hate it."
     Admitting that I detested her lisping was not difficult. Don Juan and I
had  tried to cure  her, but we  had  concluded  she  was not interested  in
getting  cured.  Her  lisping made her extremely cute  to everyone,  and don
Juan's  feelings  were that she loved  it and  was not  going to give it up.
Hearing her speak without lisping was tremendously rewarding and exciting to
me. It proved to me that she was  capable of  radical  changes on her own, a
thing neither don Juan nor I was ever sure about.
     "What else did the nagual say to you when he sent  you to look for me?"
I asked.
     "He  said you  were  having  a  bout  with  the  death  defier."  In  a
confidential tone, I revealed to  Carol that the death defier  was a  woman.
Nonchalantly, she said that she knew it.
     "How  can you know it?" I shouted.  "No one has ever known  this, apart
from don Juan. Did he tell you that himself?"
     "Of course he  did," she replied, unperturbed by my shouting. "What you
have overlooked is that I also met the woman in the church. I met her before
you did. We amiably chatted in the church for quite a while."
     I believed Carol was telling me the  truth. What she was describing was
very much what don Juan would do. He would in all likelihood send Carol as a
scout in order to draw conclusions.
     "When did you  see the death defier?" I asked. "A couple of weeks ago,"
she replied in  a matter-of-fact tone. "It was no great event for me. I  had
no energy to give her, or at least not the energy that woman wants."
     "Why did you see her then? Is dealing  with the  nagual woman also part
of the death defier's and sorcerers' agreement?"
     "I saw her because the nagual said that you and I  are interchangeable,
and for no other reason. Our energy bodies have merged many times. Don't you
remember?  The woman  and  I talked  about the  ease with which we  merge. I
stayed with her maybe  three or four hours, until the nagual came in and got
me out."
     "Did you stay  in the  church all that time?" I asked, because  I could
hardly believe that they had knelt in  there for  three  or four hours  only
talking about the merging of our energy bodies.
     "She took me into another facet of her intent,"  Carol conceded after a
moment's thought. "She made me see how she actually escaped her captors."
     Carol related then a  most intriguing story. She said that according to
what the woman in the  church had made her see, every  sorcerer of antiquity
fell, inescapably, prey to the inorganic beings. The inorganic beings, after
capturing them, gave them power to  be the intermediaries  between our world
and their realm, which people called the netherworld.
     The death  defier was unavoidably caught  in the nets of the  inorganic
beings.  Carol  estimated  that he  spent perhaps  thousands  of years  as a
captive,  until  the moment  he was  capable  of transforming himself into a
woman.  He had clearly  seen  this as his  way out of  that world the day he
found  out  that  the  inorganic  beings  regard  the  female  principle  as
imperishable. They believe that the female  principle has such  a pliability
and its scope is so vast that its members are impervious to traps and setups
and can  hardly be held  captive. The death  defier's transformation was  so
complete and so detailed that  she was instantly spewed out of the inorganic
beings' realm.
     "Did she tell you that the  inorganic beings  are still after  her?"  I
asked.
     "Naturally  they are after her," Carol assured me.  "The woman told  me
she has to fend off her pursuers  every moment  of her life." "What can they
do to her?"
     "Realize she was  a man  and pull her back to captivity,  I suppose.  I
think  she  fears them  more  than  you  can  think it's  possible  to  fear
anything."
     Nonchalantly, Carol told me that the woman in the church was thoroughly
aware of  my run-in with the inorganic  beings and  that she also knew about
the blue scout.
     "She  knows everything  about you  and  me," Carol continued. "And  not
because I told her anything, but  because  she is part of  our lives and our
lineage. She mentioned that she had always followed all of us, you and me in
particular."
     Carol  related  to me the instances that the woman knew  in which Carol
and I had  acted together.  As she  spoke, I began to  experience  a  unique
nostalgia for the very person  who was in front of me: Carol Tiggs. I wished
desperately to embrace her. I  reached out to her, but I lost my balance and
fell off the bench.
     Carol helped me up from the pavement and anxiously examined my legs and
the pupils of my eyes, my neck and  my lower back. She said that I was still
suffering from an energetic jolt.
     She  propped  my  head  on  her  bosom and caressed  me as if I were  a
malingering child she was humoring.
     After  a  while  I  did  feel better;  I even began to regain my  motor
control.
     "How  do you like  the clothes I  am  wearing?" Carol asked me all of a
sudden. "Am I overdressed for the occasion? Do I look all right to you?"
     Carol  was always exquisitely  dressed.  If there was anything  certain
about her, it was her impeccable taste in clothes. In fact, as long as I had
known  her, it had been a running joke between  don Juan and  the rest of us
that  her  only  virtue was  her  expertise at buying beautiful  clothes and
wearing them with grace and style.
     I  found her question very odd  and  made a  comment. "Why would you be
insecure about your  appearance?  It has never  bothered you before. Are you
trying  to  impress  someone?" "I'm trying to  impress you, of  course," she
said. "But  this is not the time,"  I protested. "What's going  on with  the
death defier is the important matter, not your appearance."
     "You'd  be  surprised how important my appearance is." She laughed. "My
appearance is a matter of life or death for both of us."
     "What are you talking about? You remind me of the nagual setting  up my
meeting with the death defier. He nearly  drove me nuts with  his mysterious
talk."
     "Was his mysterious talk justified?" Carol  asked with a deadly serious
expression. "It most certainly was," I admitted.
     "So  is my  appearance.  Humor  me. How  do  you  find  me?  Appealing,
unappealing, attractive, average, disgusting, overpowering, bossy?"
     I thought  for a  moment and  made  my assessment.  I found  Carol very
appealing.  This was quite strange  to  me. I had never consciously  thought
about her appeal. "I find you divinely beautiful,"  I said. "In fact, you're
downright stunning." "Then this must be the right appearance." She sighed.
     I was trying  to  figure out  her meanings, when  she spoke again.  She
asked, "What was your time with the death defier like?"
     I  succinctly  told her  about my  experience, mainly about  the  first
dream. I  said  that I believed the death defier had made  me see that town,
but at another time in the past.
     "But that's not possible," she blurted out. "There is no past or future
in the universe. There is only the moment."
     "I know that it was the past,"  I  said. "It was the same church, but a
different town."
     "Think  for a  moment,"  she  insisted. "In the universe  there is only
energy, and energy has only a here and now, an endless and ever-present here
and now."  "So  what do you think  happened to me,  Carol?" "With the  death
defier's help,  you crossed the  fourth  gate  of dreaming,"  she said. "The
woman in the church took you  into her dream,  into her intent. She took you
into her visualization of this  town.  Obviously,  she visualized it  in the
past,  and  that  visualization  is  still  intact  in her.  As her  present
visualization of this town must be there too."
     After a long silence she asked me another  question. "What else did the
woman do with you?"
     I told Carol about the second dream. The dream of the town as it stands
today.
     "There you are," she said. "Not only  did the woman take you  into  her
past intent but she further helped you cross the fourth  gate by making your
energy body journey to another place that exists today, only in her intent."
     Carol paused and asked me whether the woman in the church had explained
to me what intending in the second attention meant.
     I  did  remember her mentioning but not really explaining what it meant
to intend in the second attention. Carol was dealing with concepts don  Juan
had never spoken about.
     "Where did you get all these novel  ideas?" I asked, truly marveling at
how lucid she was.
     In  a noncommittal tone, Carol assured me that the  woman in the church
had explained to her a great deal about those intricacies.
     "We are intending  in the second  attention now,"  she  continued. "The
woman in the church made us fall asleep; you here, and I in Tucson. And then
we fell asleep again in our dream. But you don't remember that part, while I
do. The  secret of the twin positions. Remember what the woman told you; the
second dream is intending in the second attention: the only way to cross the
fourth gate of dreaming."
     After  a long pause, during which I could not articulate  one word, she
said, "I think  the woman in the church really made you a gift, although you
didn't want to receive one. Her gift  was to add her energy to ours in order
to move backward and forward on the here-and-now energy of the universe."
     I got extremely excited. Carol's  words were precise,  apropos. She had
defined for me something I considered  undefinable, although  I did not know
what it was that she had defined. If I could  have moved, I would have leapt
to hug her. She smiled beatifically as I kept on ranting nervously about the
sense her words made to me. I commented rhetorically that don Juan had never
told me anything similar.
     "Maybe   he   doesn't   know,"   Carol   said,   not  offensively   but
conciliatorily.
     I did not argue with her. I remained  quiet for a while, strangely void
of thoughts. Then my  thoughts and  words erupted out  of me like a volcano.
People went around the  plaza,  staring at us  every so often or stopping in
front of us  to watch us. And we must have been a sight: Carol Tiggs kissing
and caressing my face while I  ranted on  and on about her  lucidity  and my
encounter with the death defier.
     When I was able to walk,  she guided  me across the  plaza to the  only
hotel  in town. She assured me that I did  not yet have the  energy to go to
don Juan's house but that everybody there knew our whereabouts.
     "How would they  know our  whereabouts?" I asked. "The nagual is a very
crafty old sorcerer," she replied,  laughing. "He's the one who told me that
if I found you energetically mangled, I  should put you in the  hotel rather
than risk crossing the town with you in tow."
     Her words and especially her smile made me feel so relieved that I kept
on  walking in a state of bliss. We went around the  corner to  the  hotel's
entrance, half a block down  the street, right  in front of  the church.  We
went  through  the bleak lobby, up the  cement stairway to the second floor,
directly to an unfriendly  room I  had never seen before. Carol said that  I
had been there; however,  I had no recollection of the hotel  or the room. I
was so tired, though, that I could not think about it. I  just sank into the
bed, face down. All I  wanted to do was sleep, yet I was too keyed up. There
were  too many loose  ends, although everything seemed so  orderly. I had  a
sudden surge of nervous excitation and sat up.
     "I never told you that I  hadn't accepted  the death  defier's gift," I
said, facing Carol. "How did you know I didn't?"
     "Oh, but you told me that yourself," she protested as she sat down next
to me. "You were so proud  of it. That was  the  first thing you blurted out
when I found you."
     This was  the only  answer, so far, that did not quite satisfy me. What
she was reporting did not sound like my statement.
     "I think you read  me  wrong,"  I  said. "I  just  didn't want  to  get
anything that would deviate  me from my goal." "Do  you mean you didn't feel
proud of refusing?" "No.  I didn't feel anything. I am  no longer capable of
feeling anything, except fear."
     I stretched my  legs and put my head  on the pillow. I  felt that if  I
closed my eyes or did not keep on talking I would be asleep in an instant. I
told  Carol  how  I  had  argued  with  don  Juan,  at the  beginning  of my
association  with  him,  about  his  confessed motive  for  staying  on  the
warrior's path. He had said that fear kept him going in a straight line, and
that what he feared the most was  to  lose  the  nagual,  the abstract,  the
spirit.
     "Compared with losing the nagual, death is nothing," he had said with a
note of true passion in his voice. "My fear of losing the nagual is the only
real thing I have, because without it I would be worse than dead."
     I  said  to Carol  that I had immediately  contradicted  don  Juan  and
bragged that  since I was  impervious  to fear, if I had  to stay within the
confines of one path, the moving force for me had to be love.
     Don Juan had retorted that when the real pull comes, fear is  the  only
worthwhile  condition for a  warrior. I  secretly resented  him  for what  I
thought was his covert narrow-mindedness.
     "The wheel has done a full turn," I said to Carol, "and look at me now.
I can swear to you that the only  thing that keeps me going  is  the fear of
losing the nagual."
     Carol stared at me with a strange look I had never seen in her. "I dare
to disagree," she  said  softly. "Fear is  nothing compared  with affection.
Fear makes you run wildly; love makes you move intelligently."
     "What are you saying, Carol Tiggs? Are sorcerers people in love now?"
     She did not answer. She lay next to me and put her head on my shoulder.
We stayed there, in that strange, unfriendly room, for a long time, in total
silence.
     "I feel what  you feel," Carol said abruptly. "Now, try to  feel what I
feel. You can do it. But let's do it in the dark."
     Carol stretched her arm up and  turned off  the  light above the bed. I
sat up straight  in one single motion. A jolt of fright  had gone through me
like electricity. As  soon as  Carol turned  off the light, it was nighttime
inside that room. In the middle of great agitation, I asked Carol about it.
     "You're not all together  yet," she said reassuringly. "You had  a bout
of  monumental proportions.  Going so deeply  into  the second attention has
left you  a little mangled, so to  speak. Of course, it's daytime,  but your
eyes can't yet adjust properly to the dim light inside this room."
     More or less convinced, I lay down again. Carol kept on  talking, but I
was not listening. I felt  the sheets. They were real sheets. I ran my hands
on the bed. It was a bed! I leaned over and ran the palms of my hands on the
cold tiles of the floor. I got out of bed and checked every item in the room
and in the bathroom. Everything was perfectly normal, perfectly real. I told
Carol that when she turned off  the  light,  I had the clear sensation I was
dreaming.
     "Give yourself a break," she said. "Cut this investigatory nonsense and
come to bed and rest."
     I  opened  the curtains of the window to  the street.  It  was day-time
outside, but the moment I closed them  it was nighttime inside. Carol begged
me to come back to bed. She feared that I might  run away and end up in  the
street,  as I had done before.  She made sense.  I went  back to bed without
noticing that not  even  for a  second  had it  entered