The Second Ring of Power. ©1977 by Carlos Castaneda.

Chapter 01 - An Appointment With Knowledge.

I had not seen don Juan for several months. It was the autumn of 1971. I had the certainty that he was at don Genaro's house in central Mexico and I made the necessary preparations for a six- or seven-day drive to visit him. On the second day of my journey, however, on an impulse, I stopped at don Juan's place in Sonora in the mid-afternoon. I parked my car, and walked a short distance to the house. To my surprise, I found him there.

"Don Juan! I did not expect to find you here," I said.

He laughed. My surprise seemed to delight him. He was sitting on an empty milk crate by the front door. He appeared to have been waiting for me. There was an air of accomplishment in the ease with which he greeted me. He took off his hat, and flourished it in a comical gesture. Then he put it on again, and gave me a military salute. He was leaning against the wall, sitting on the crate as if it were a saddle.

"Sit down, sit down," he said in a jovial tone. "Good to see you again."

"I was going to go all the way to central Mexico for nothing," I said. "And then I would have had to drive back to Los Angeles. Finding you here has saved me days and days of driving."

"Somehow you would have found me," he said in a mysterious tone, "but let us say that you owe me the six days that you would have needed to get there; days which you should use in doing something more interesting than pressing down on the gas pedal of your car."

There was something engaging in don Juan's smile. His warmth was contagious.

"Where is your writing gear?" he asked.

I told him that I had left it in the car. He said that I looked unnatural without it, and made me go back and get it.

"I have finished writing a book," I said.

He gave me a long, strange look that produced an itching in the pit of my stomach. It was as if he were pushing my middle section with a soft object. I felt like I was going to get ill, but then he turned his head to the side and I regained my original feeling of well-being.

I wanted to talk about my book but he made a gesture that indicated that he did not want me to say anything about it. He smiled. His mood was light and charming, and he immediately engaged me in a casual conversation about people and current events.

Finally I managed to steer the conversation onto the topic of my interest. I began by mentioning that I had reviewed my early notes, and had realized that he had been giving me a detailed description of the sorcerers' world from the beginning of our association. In light of what he had said to me in those stages, I had begun to question the role of hallucinogenic plants.

"Why did you make me take those power plants so many times?" I asked.

He laughed, and mumbled very softly, "Cause you are dumb."

I heard him the first time but I wanted to make sure, and pretended I had not understood.

"I beg your pardon?" I asked.

"You know what I said," he replied and stood up.

He tapped me on the head as he walked by me.

"You are rather slow," he said. "And there was no other way to jolt you."

"So none of that was absolutely necessary?" I asked.

"It was in your case. There are other types of people, however, that do not seem to need them."

He stood next to me, staring at the top of the bushes by the left side of his house. Then he sat down again, and talked about Eligio, his other apprentice. He said that Eligio had taken psychotropic plants only once since he became his apprentice, and yet he was perhaps even more advanced than I was.

"To be sensitive is a natural condition of certain people," he said. "You are not. But neither am I. In the final analysis sensitivity matters very little."

"What is the thing that matters then?" I asked.

He seemed to search for an appropriate answer.

"What matters is that a warrior be impeccable," he finally said. "But that is only a way of talking; a way of beating around the bush. You have already accomplished some tasks of sorcery and I believe this is the time to mention the source of everything that matters. So I will say that what matters to a warrior is arriving at the totality of oneself."

"What is the totality of oneself, don Juan?"

"I said that I was only going to mention it. There are still a lot of loose ends in your life that you must tie together before we can talk about the totality of oneself."

He ended our conversation there. He made a gesture with his hands to signal that he wanted me to stop talking. Apparently there was something or somebody nearby. He tilted his head to the left, as if to listen. I could see the whites of his eyes as he focused on the bushes beyond the house to his left. He listened attentively for a few moments and then stood up. He came to me and whispered in my ear that we had to leave the house and go for a walk.

"Is there something wrong?" I asked, also in a whisper.

"No. Nothing is wrong," he said. "Everything is rather right."

He led me into the desert chaparral. We walked for perhaps half an hour, and then came to a small circular area free from vegetation; a spot about twelve feet in diameter where the reddish dirt was packed and perfectly flat. There were no signs, however, that machinery had cleared and flattened the area. Don Juan sat down in the center of it, facing the southeast. He pointed to a place about five feet away from him and asked me to sit there, facing him.

"What are we going to do here?" I asked.

"We have an appointment here tonight," he replied.

He scanned the surroundings with a quick glance, turning around on his seat until he was again facing the southeast.

His movements had alarmed me. I asked him who we had the appointment with.

"With knowledge," he said. "Let us say that knowledge is prowling around here."

He did not let me hook on to that cryptic answer. He quickly changed the subject. In a jovial tone he urged me to be natural; that is to take notes, and talk as we would have done at his house.

What was most pressing on my mind at that time was the vivid sensation I had had six months before of 'talking' to a coyote. That event meant to me that for the first time I had been capable of visualizing, or apprehending through my senses, and in sober consciousness, the sorcerers' description of the world; a description in which communicating with animals through speech was a matter of course.

"We are not going to engage ourselves in dwelling on any experience of that nature," don Juan said upon hearing my question. "It is not advisable for you to indulge in focusing your attention on past events. We may touch on them, but only in reference."

"Why is that so, don Juan?"

"You do not have enough personal power yet to seek the sorcerers' explanation."

"Then there is a sorcerers' explanation!"

"Certainly. Sorcerers are men. We are creatures of thought. We seek clarifications."

"I was under the impression that my great flaw was to seek explanations."

"No. Your flaw is to seek convenient explanations; explanations that fit you and your world. What I object to is your reasonableness. A sorcerer explains things in his world too, but he is not as stiff as you."

"How can I arrive at the sorcerers' explanation?"

"By accumulating personal power. Personal power will make you slide with great ease into the sorcerers' explanation. The explanation is not what you would call an explanation. Nevertheless, it makes the world and its mysteries, if not clear, at least less awesome. That should be the essence of an explanation. But that is not what you seek. You are after the reflection of your ideas."

I lost my momentum to ask questions. But his smile urged me to keep on talking. Another issue of great importance to me was his friend don Genaro and the extraordinary effect that his actions had had on me. Every time I had come into contact with him, I had experienced the most outlandish sensory distortions.

Don Juan laughed when I voiced my question.

"Genaro is stupendous," he said. "But for the time being, there is no sense in talking about him or about what he does to you. Again, you do not have enough personal power to unravel that topic. Wait until you have it, then we will talk."

"What if I never have it?"

"If you never have it, we will never talk."

"At the rate I am going, will I ever have enough of it?" I asked.

"That is up to you," he replied. "I have given you all the information necessary. Now it is your responsibility to gain enough personal power to tip the scales."

"You are talking in metaphors," I said. "Give it to me straight. Tell me exactly what I should do. If you have already told me, let us say that I have forgotten it."

Don Juan chuckled and lay down, putting his arms behind his head.

"You know exactly what you need," he said.

I told him that sometimes I thought I knew, hut that most of the time I had no self-confidence.

"I am afraid that you are confusing issues," he said. "The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to himself.

"Perhaps you are chasing rainbows. You are after the self-confidence of the average man, when you should be after the humbleness of a warrior. The difference between the two is remarkable. Self-confidence entails knowing something for sure; humbleness entails being impeccable in one's actions and feelings."

"I have been trying to live in accordance with your suggestions," I said. "I may not be the best, but I am the best of myself. Is that impeccability?"

"No. You must do better than that. You must push yourself beyond your limits, all the time."

"But that would be insane, don Juan. No one can do that."

"There are lots of things that you do now which would have seemed insane to you ten years ago. Those things themselves did not change, but your idea of yourself changed. What was impossible before is perfectly possible now, and perhaps your total success in changing yourself is only a matter of time.

"In this affair, the only possible course that a warrior has is to act consistently and without reservations. You know enough of the warrior's way to act accordingly, but your old habits and routines stand in your way."

I understood what he meant.

"Do you think that writing is one of the old habits I should change?" I asked. "Should I destroy my new manuscript?"

He did not answer. He stood up, and turned to look at the edge of the chaparral.

I told him that I had received letters from various people telling me that it was wrong to write about my apprenticeship. They had cited as a precedent that the masters of Eastern esoteric doctrines demanded absolute secrecy about their teachings.

"Perhaps those masters are just indulging in being masters," don Juan said without looking at me. "I am not a master. I am only a warrior, so I really do not know what a master feels like."

"But maybe I am revealing things I should not, don Juan."

"It does not matter what one reveals or what one keeps to oneself," he said. "Everything we do, everything we are, rests on our personal power. If we have enough of it, one word uttered to us might be sufficient to change the course of our lives. But if we do not have enough personal power, the most magnificent piece of wisdom can be revealed to us and that revelation will not make a damn bit of difference."

He then lowered his voice as if he were disclosing a confidential matter to me.

"I am going to utter perhaps the greatest piece of knowledge anyone can voice," he said. "Let me see what you can do with it.

"Do you know that at this very moment you are surrounded by eternity? And do you know that you can use that eternity, if you so desire?"

After a long pause, during which he urged me with a subtle movement of his eyes to make a statement, I said that I did not understand what he was talking about.

"There! Eternity is there!" he said, pointing to the horizon.

Then he pointed to the zenith. "Or there, or perhaps we can say that eternity is like this." He extended both arms to point to the east and west.

We looked at each other. His eyes held a question.

"What do you say to that?" he asked, coaxing me to ponder upon his words.

I did not know what to say.

"Do you know that you can extend yourself forever in any of the directions I have pointed to?" he went on. "Do you know that one moment can be eternity? This is not a riddle; it is a fact, but only if you mount that moment and use it to take the totality of yourself forever in any direction."

He stared at me.

"You did not have this knowledge before," he said, smiling. "Now you do. I have revealed it to you. But it does not make a bit of difference because you do not have enough personal power to utilize my revelation.

"Yet if you did have enough power, my words alone would serve as the means for you to round up the totality of yourself, and get the crucial part of it out of the boundaries in which it is contained."

He came to my side and poked my chest with his fingers. It was a very light tap.

"These are the boundaries I am talking about," he said. "One can get out of them. We are a feeling; an awareness encased here."

He slapped my shoulders with both hands. My pad and pencil fell to the ground. Don Juan put his foot on the pad and stared at me, and then laughed.

I asked him if he minded my taking notes. He said no in a reassuring tone and moved his foot away.

"We are luminous beings," he said, shaking his head rhythmically. "And for a luminous being only personal power matters. But if you ask me what personal power is, I have to tell you that my explanation will not explain it."

Don Juan looked at the western horizon and said that there were still a few hours of daylight left.

"We have to be here for a long time," he explained. "So, we either sit quietly or we talk. It is not natural for you to be silent, so let us keep on talking. This spot is a power place and it must become used to us before nightfall. You must sit here as naturally as possible without fear or impatience. It seems that the easiest way for you to relax is to take notes, so write to your heart's content.

"And now, suppose you tell me about your dreaming."

His sudden shift caught me unprepared. He repeated his request. There was a great deal to say about it. Dreaming entailed cultivating a peculiar control over one's dreams to the extent that the experiences undergone in them and those lived in one's waking hours acquired the same pragmatic valence. The sorcerers' allegation was that under the impact of dreaming, the ordinary criteria to differentiate a dream from reality become inoperative.

Don Juan's praxis of dreaming was an exercise that consisted of finding one's hands in a dream. In other words, one had to deliberately dream that one was looking for and could find one's hands in a dream by simply dreaming that one lifted one's hands to the level of the eyes.

After years of unsuccessful attempts, I had finally accomplished the task. Looking at it in retrospect, it had become evident to me that I had succeeded only after I had gained a degree of control over the world of my everyday life.

Don Juan wanted to know the salient points. I began telling him that the difficulty of setting up the command to look at my hands seemed to be, quite often, insurmountable. He had warned me that the early stage of the preparatory facet, which he called 'setting up dreaming', consisted of a deadly game that one's mind played with itself; and that some part of myself was going to do everything it could to prevent the fulfillment of my task. That could include, don Juan had said, plunging me into a loss of meaning, melancholy, or even a suicidal depression.

I did not go that far, however. My experience was rather on the light, comical side. Nonetheless, the result was equally frustrating. Every time I was about to look at my hands in a dream something extraordinary would happen. I would begin to fly; or my dream would turn into a nightmare; or it would simply become a very pleasant experience of bodily excitation. Everything in the dream would extend far beyond the 'normal' in matters of vividness, and therefore be terribly absorbing. My original intention of observing my hands was always forgotten in light of the new situation.

One night, quite unexpectedly, I found my hands in my dreams. I dreamed that I was walking on an unknown street in a foreign city, and suddenly I lifted up my hands and placed them in front of my face. It was as if something within myself had given up, and had permitted me to watch the backs of my hands.

Don Juan's instructions had been that as soon as the sight of my hands would begin to dissolve or change into something else, I had to shift my view from my hands to any other element in the surroundings of my dream. In that particular dream I shifted my view to a building at the end of the street. When the sight of the building began to dissipate I focused my attention on the other elements of the surroundings in my dream. The end result was an incredibly clear composite picture of a deserted street in some unknown foreign city.

Don Juan made me continue with my account of other experiences in dreaming. We talked for a long time.

At the end of my report Don Juan stood up and went to the bushes. I also stood up. I was nervous. It was an unwarranted sensation since there was nothing precipitating fear or concern. Don Juan returned shortly. He noticed my agitation.

"Calm down," he said, holding my arm gently.

He made me sit down and put my notebook on my lap. He coaxed me to write. His argument was that I should not disturb the power place with unnecessary feelings of fear or hesitation.

"Why do I get so nervous?" I asked.

"It is natural," he said. "Something in you is threatened by your activities in dreaming. As long as you did not think about those activities, you were all right. But now that you have revealed your actions you are about to faint.

"Each warrior has his own way of dreaming. Each way is different. The only thing which we all have in common is that we play tricks in order to force ourselves to abandon the quest. The countermeasure is to persist in spite of all the barriers and disappointments."

He asked me then if I was capable of selecting topics for dreaming. I said that I did not have the faintest idea of how to do that.

"The sorcerers' explanation of how to select a topic for dreaming," he said, "is that a warrior chooses the topic by deliberately holding an image in his mind while he shuts off his internal dialogue. In other words, if he is capable of not talking to himself for a moment, and then holds the image or the thought of what he wants in dreaming, even if only for an instant, then the desired topic will come to him. I am sure you have done that, although you were not aware of it."

There was a long pause, and then don Juan began to sniff the air. It was as if he were cleaning his nose. He exhaled three or four times through his nostrils with great force. The muscles of his abdomen contracted in spasms which he controlled by taking in short gasps of air.

"We will not talk about dreaming any more," he said. "You might become obsessed. If one is to succeed in anything, the success must come gently; with a great deal of effort, but with no stress or obsession."

He stood up and walked to the edge of the bushes. He leaned forward and peered into the foliage. He seemed to be examining something in the leaves without getting too close to them.

"What are you doing?" I asked, unable to contain my curiosity.

He turned to me, smiled, and raised his brow.

"The bushes are filled with strange things," he said as he sat down again.

His tone was so casual that it scared me more than if he had let out a sudden yell. My notebook and pencil fell from my hands. He laughed and mimicked me and said that my exaggerated reactions were one of the loose ends that still existed in my life.

I wanted to raise a point, but he would not let me talk.

"There is only a bit of daylight left," he said. "There are other things we ought to touch upon before the twilight sets in."

He then added, that judging by my production in dreaming, I must have learned how to stop my internal dialogue at will. I told him that I had.

At the beginning of our association don Juan had delineated another procedure: walking for long stretches without focusing the eyes on anything. His recommendation had been to not look at anything directly; but rather, to slightly cross the eyes and keep a peripheral view of everything that presented itself to the eyes.

He had insisted, although I had not understood at the time, that if one kept one's unfocused eyes at a point just above the horizon, it was possible to notice, all at once, everything in almost the total 180-degree range in front of one's eyes. He had assured me that that exercise was the only way of shutting off the internal dialogue. He used to ask me for reports on my progress, and then he stopped inquiring about it.

I told don Juan that I had practiced the technique for years without noticing any change; but I had expected none anyway. One day, however, I had the shocking realization that I had just walked for about ten minutes without having said a single word to myself.

I mentioned to don Juan that on that occasion I also became cognizant that stopping the internal dialogue involved more than merely curtailing the words I said to myself. My entire thought processes had stopped, and I had felt I was practically suspended, floating. A sensation of panic had ensued from that awareness and I had to resume my internal dialogue as an antidote.

"I have told you that the internal dialogue is what grounds us," don Juan said. "The world is such and such, or so and so, only because we talk to ourselves about its being such and such or so and so."

Don Juan explained that the passageway into the world of sorcerers opens up after the warrior has learned to shut off the internal dialogue.

"To change our idea of the world is the crux of sorcery," he said. "And stopping the internal dialogue is the only way to accomplish it. The rest is just padding. Now you are in the position to know that nothing of what you have seen or done, with the exception of stopping the internal dialogue, could by itself have changed anything in you, or in your idea of the world. The provision is, of course, that that change should not be deranged. Now you can understand why a teacher does not clamp down on his apprentice. That would only breed obsession and morbidity."

He asked for details of other experiences I had had in shutting off the internal dialogue. I recounted everything that I could remember.

We talked until it became dark and I could no longer take notes in a comfortable manner. I had to pay attention to my writing, and that altered my concentration. Don Juan became aware of it and began to laugh. He pointed out that I had accomplished another sorcery task; writing without concentrating.

The moment he said it, I realized that I really did not pay attention to the act of taking notes. It seemed to be a separate activity I had nothing to do with. I felt odd. Don Juan asked me to sit by him in the center of the circle. He said it was too dark, and I was no longer safe sitting so close to the edge of the chaparral. I felt a chill up my back and jumped to his side.

He made me face the southeast, and asked me to command myself to be silent and without thoughts. I could not do it at first and had a moment of impatience. Don Juan turned his back to me and told me to lean on his shoulder for support. He said that once I had quieted down my thoughts, I should keep my eyes open, facing the bushes towards the southeast. In a mysterious tone he added that he was setting up a problem for me, and that if I resolved it I would be ready for another facet of the sorcerers' world.

I posed a weak question about the nature of the problem. He chuckled softly. I waited for his answer; and then something in me was turned off. I felt I was suspended. My ears seemed to unplug and a myriad of noises in the chaparral became audible. There were so many that I could not distinguish them individually. I felt I was falling asleep and then all at once something caught my attention.

It was not something which involved my thought processes. It was not a vision or a feature of the environment either, yet my awareness had been engaged by something. I was fully awake. My eyes were focused on a spot on the edge of the chaparral, but I was not looking, or thinking, or talking to myself.

My feelings were clear bodily sensations. They did not need words. I felt I was rushing through something indefinite. Perhaps what would have ordinarily been my thoughts were rushing. At any rate, I had the sensation that I had been caught in a landslide, and something was avalanching with me at the crest. I felt the rush in my stomach. Something was pulling me into the chaparral.

I could distinguish the dark mass of the bushes in front of me. It was not, however, an undifferentiated darkness as it would ordinarily be. I could see every individual bush as if I were looking at them in a dark twilight. They seemed to be moving. The mass of their foliage looked like black skirts flowing towards me as if they were being blown by the wind, but there was no wind. I became absorbed in their mesmerizing movements. It was a pulsating ripple that seemed to draw them nearer and nearer to me.

And then I noticed a lighter silhouette which seemed to be superimposed on the dark shapes of the bushes. I focused my eyes on a spot to the side of the lighter silhouette, and I could make out a chartreuse glow on it. Then I looked at it without focusing, and I had the certainty that the lighter silhouette was a man hiding in the underbrush.

I was, at that moment, in a most peculiar state of awareness. I was cognizant of the surroundings and of the mental processes that the surroundings engendered in myself, yet I was not thinking as I ordinarily think.

For instance, when I realized that the silhouette superimposed on the bushes was a man, I recalled another occasion in the desert. I had noticed then, while don Genaro and I were walking in the chaparral at night, that a man was hiding in the bushes behind us. But the instant I had attempted to explain the phenomenon rationally, I lost sight of the man.

This time, however, I felt I had the upper hand, and I refused to explain or to think anything at all. For a moment I had the impression that I could hold the man and force him to remain where he was. I then experienced a strange pain in the pit of my stomach. Something seemed to rip inside me, and I could not hold the muscles of my midsection tense any longer.

At the very moment I let go, the dark shape of an enormous bird, or some sort of flying animal, lurched at me from the chaparral. It was as if the shape of the man had turned into the shape of a bird. I had the clear conscious perception of fear. I gasped and then let out a loud yell and fell on my back.

Don Juan helped me up. His face was very close to mine. He was laughing.

"What was that?" I shouted.

He hushed me, putting his hand over my mouth. He put his lips to my ear, and whispered that we had to leave the area in a calm and collected fashion; as if nothing had happened.

We walked side by side. His pace was relaxed and even. A couple of times he turned around quickly. I did the same, and twice I caught sight of a dark mass that seemed to be following us. I heard a loud eerie shriek behind me. I experienced a moment of sheer terror. Ripples ran through the muscles of my stomach. They came in spasms and grew in intensity until they simply forced my body to run.

The only way of talking about my reaction has to be in don Juan's terminology; and thus I can say that my body, due to the fright I was experiencing, was capable of executing what he had called 'the gait of power'- a technique he had taught me years before, consisting of running in the darkness without tripping or hurting oneself in any way.

I was not fully aware of what I had done, or how I had done it. Suddenly I found myself again at don Juan's house. Apparently he had also run, and we had arrived at the same time. He lit his kerosene lantern, hung it from a beam in the ceiling, and casually asked me to sit down and relax.

I jogged on the same spot for a while until my nervousness became more manageable. Then I sat down. He forcefully ordered me to act as if nothing had happened, and handed me my notebook. I had not realized that in my haste to leave the bushes I had dropped it.

"What happened out there, don Juan?" I finally asked.

"You had an appointment with knowledge," he said, pointing with a movement of his chin to the dark edge of the desert chaparral. "I took you there because I caught a glimpse of knowledge prowling around the house earlier. You might say that knowledge knew that you were coming and was waiting for you. Rather than meeting it here, I felt it was proper to meet it on a power spot. Then I set up a test to see if you had enough personal power to isolate it from the rest of the things around us. You did fine."

"Wait a minute!" I protested. "I saw the silhouette of a man hiding behind a bush, and then I saw a huge bird."

"You did not see a man!" he said emphatically. "Neither did you see a bird. The silhouette in the bushes and what flew to us was a moth. If you want to be accurate in sorcerers' terms, but very ridiculous in your own terms, you could say that tonight you had an appointment with a moth. Knowledge is a moth."

He looked at me piercingly. The light of the lantern created strange shadows on his face. I moved my eyes away.

"Perhaps you will have enough personal power to unravel that mystery tonight," he said. "If not tonight, perhaps tomorrow. Remember, you still owe me six days."

Don Juan stood up and walked to the kitchen in the back of the house. He took the lantern and set it against the wall on the short round stump that he used as a bench. We sat down on the floor opposite each other, and served ourselves some beans and meat from a pot that he had placed in front of us. We ate in silence.

He gave me furtive glances from time to time, and seemed on the verge of laughing. His eyes were like two slits. When he looked at me he would open them a bit and the moistness of the corneas reflected the light of the lantern. It was as if he were using the light to create a mirror reflection. He played with it, shaking his head almost imperceptibly every time he focused his eyes on me. The effect was a fascinating quiver of light. I became aware of his maneuvers after he had executed them a couple of times. I was convinced that he was acting with a definite purpose in mind. I felt compelled to ask him about it.

"I have an ulterior reason," he said reassuringly. "I am soothing you with my eyes. You do not seem to be getting more nervous, do you?"

I had to admit that I felt quite at ease. The steady flicker in his eyes was not menacing, and it had not scared or annoyed me in any way.

"How do you soothe me with your eyes?" I asked.

He repeated the imperceptible shake of his head. The corneas of his eyes were indeed reflecting the light of the kerosene lantern.

"Try to do it yourself," he said casually as he gave himself another serving of food. "You can soothe yourself."

I tried to shake my head. My movements were awkward.

"You will not soothe yourself bobbing your head like that," he said and laughed. "You will give yourself a headache instead. The secret is not in the head shake but in the feeling that comes to the eyes from the area below the stomach. This is what makes the head shake."

He rubbed his umbilical region.

After I had finished eating I slouched against a pile of wood and some burlap sacks. I tried to imitate his head shake. Don Juan seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. He giggled and slapped his thighs.

Then a sudden noise interrupted his laughter. I heard a strange deep sound- like tapping on wood- that came from the chaparral. Don Juan jutted his chin, signaling me to remain alert.

"That is the little moth calling you," he said in an unemotional tone.

I jumped to my feet. The sound ceased instantaneously. I looked at don Juan for an explanation. He made a comical gesture of helplessness, shrugging his shoulders.

"You have not fulfilled your appointment yet," he added.

I told him that I felt unworthy, and that perhaps I should go home and come back when I felt stronger.

"You are talking nonsense," he snapped. "A warrior takes his lot, whatever it may be, and accepts it in ultimate humbleness. He accepts in humbleness what he is; not as grounds for regret, but as a living challenge.

"It takes time for every one of us to understand that point and fully live it. I, for instance, hated the mere mention of the word 'humbleness.' I am an Indian and we Indians have always been humble, and have done nothing else but lower our heads. I thought humbleness was not in the warrior's way. I was wrong!

"I know now that the humbleness of a warrior is not the humbleness of a beggar. The warrior lowers his head to no one, but at the same time he does not permit anyone to lower his head to him.

"The beggar, on the other hand, falls to his knees at the drop of a hat and scrapes the floor for anyone he deems to be higher; but at the same time, he demands that someone lower than him scrape the floor for him.

"That is why I told you earlier today that I did not understand what masters felt like. I know only the humbleness of a warrior, and that will never permit me to be anyone's master."

We were quiet for a moment. His words had caused me a profound agitation. I was moved by them; and at the same time I felt concerned with what I had witnessed in the chaparral. My conscious assessment was that don Juan was holding out on me, and that he must have known what was really taking place.

I was involved in those deliberations when the same strange tapping noise jolted me out of my thoughts. Don Juan smiled and then began to chuckle.

"You like the humbleness of a beggar," he said softly. "You bow your head to reason."

"I always think that I am being tricked," I said. "That is the crux of my problem."

"You are right. You are being tricked," he retorted with a disarming smile. "That cannot be your problem. The real crux of the matter is that you feel that I am deliberately lying to you, am I correct?"

"Yes. There is something in myself that does not let me believe that what is taking place is real."

"You are right again. Nothing of what is taking place is real."

"What do you mean by that, don Juan?"

"Things are real only after one has learned to agree on their realness. What took place this evening, for instance, cannot possibly be real to you because no one could agree with you about it."

"Do you mean that you did not see what happened?"

"Of course I did. But I do not count. I am the one who is lying to you, remember?"

Don Juan laughed until he coughed and choked. His laughter was friendly even though he was making fun of me.

"Do not pay too much attention to all my gibberish," he said reassuringly. "I am just trying to relax you, and I know that you feel at home only when you are muddled up."

His expression was deliberately comical and we both laughed. I told him that what he had just said made me feel more afraid than ever.

"You are afraid of me?" he asked.

"Not of you, but of what you represent."

"I represent the warrior's freedom. Are you afraid of that?"

"No. But I am afraid of the awesomeness of your knowledge. There is no solace for me; no haven to go to."

"You are again confusing issues. Solace, haven, fear: all of them are moods that you have learned without ever questioning their value. As one can see, the black magicians have already engaged all your allegiance."

"Who are the black magicians, don Juan?"

"Our fellow men are the black magicians. And since you are with them, you too are a black magician. Think for a moment. Can you deviate from the path that they have lined up for you?

"No. Your thoughts and your actions are fixed forever in their terms. That is slavery. I, on the other hand, brought you freedom. Freedom is expensive, but the price is not impossible. So, fear your captors- your masters. Do not waste your time and your power fearing me."

I knew that he was right, and yet, in spite of my genuine agreement with him, I also knew that my lifelong habits would unavoidably make me stick to my old path. I did indeed feel like a slave.

After a long silence don Juan asked me if I had enough strength for another bout with knowledge.

"Do you mean with the moth?" I asked half in jest.

His body contorted with laughter. It was as if I had just told him the funniest joke in the world.

"What do you really mean when you say that knowledge is a moth?" I asked.

"I have no other meanings," he replied. "A moth is a moth. I thought that by now, with all your accomplishments, you would have had enough power to 'see'. You caught sight of a man instead and that was not true seeing."

From the beginning of my apprenticeship, don Juan had depicted the concept of seeing as a special capacity that one could develop and which would allow one to apprehend the 'ultimate' nature of things.

Over the years of our association I had developed a notion that what he meant by seeing was: an intuitive grasp of things; or the capacity to understand something at once; or perhaps the ability to see through human interactions and discover covert meanings and motives.

"I should say that tonight, when you faced the moth, you were half looking and half seeing," don Juan proceeded. "In that state, although you were not altogether your usual self, you were still capable of being fully aware in order to operate your knowledge of the world."

Don Juan paused and looked at me. I did not know what to say at first.

"How was I operating my knowledge of the world?" I asked.

"Your knowledge of the world told you that in the bushes one can only find animals prowling or men hiding behind the foliage. You held that thought, and naturally you had to find ways to make the world conform to that thought."

"But I was not thinking at all, don Juan."

"Let us not call it thinking then. It is rather the habit of having the world always conform to our thoughts. When it does not, we simply make it conform. Moths as large as a man cannot be even a thought, therefore, for you, what was in the bushes had to be a man.

"The same thing happened with the coyote. Your old habits decided the nature of that encounter too. Something took place between you and the coyote, but it was not talk. I have been in the same quandary myself. I have told you that once I talked with a deer. Now you have talked to a coyote, but neither you nor I will ever know what really took place at those times."

"What are you telling me, don Juan?"

"When the sorcerers' explanation became clear to me, it was too late to know what the deer did to me. I said that we talked, but that was not so. To say that we had a conversation is only a way of arranging it so I can talk about it. The deer and I did something, but at the time it was taking place I needed to make the world conform to my ideas; just like you did. I had been talking all my life, just like you, therefore my habits prevailed and were extended to the deer. When the deer came to me, and did whatever it did, I was forced to understand it as talking."

"Is this the sorcerers' explanation?"

"No. This is my explanation for you. But it is not opposed to the sorcerers' explanation."

His statement threw me into a state of great intellectual excitation. For a while I forgot the prowling moth, or even to take notes. I tried to rephrase his statements, and we involved ourselves in a long discussion about the reflexive nature of our world. The world, according to don Juan, had to conform to its description; that is, the description reflected itself.

Another point in his elucidation was that we had learned to relate ourselves to our description of the world in terms of what he called 'habits'. I introduced what I thought was a more engulfing term, intentionality- the property of human consciousness whereby an object is referred to, or is intended.

Our conversation engendered a most interesting speculation. Examined in light of don Juan's explanation, my 'talk' with the coyote acquired a new character. I had indeed 'intended' the dialogue since I have never known another avenue of intentional communication. I had also succeeded in conforming to the description that communication takes place through dialogue, and thus I made the description reflect itself.

I had a moment of great elation. Don Juan laughed and said that to be so moved by words was another aspect of my foolery. He made a comical gesture of talking without sounds.

"All of us go through the same shenanigans," he said after a long pause. "The only way to overcome them is to persist in acting like a warrior. The rest comes of itself and by itself."

"What is the rest, don Juan?"

"Knowledge and power. Men of knowledge have both. And yet none of them could tell how they got to have them, except that they had kept on acting like warriors and at a given moment everything changed."

He looked at me. He seemed undecided. Then he stood up, and said that I had no other recourse than to keep my appointment with knowledge.

I felt a shiver. My heart began to pound fast. I got up. Don Juan moved around me as if he were examining my body from every possible angle. He signaled me to sit down and keep on writing.

"If you get too frightened you will not be able to keep your appointment," he said. "A warrior must be calm and collected, and must never lose his grip."

"I am really scared," I said. "Moth or whatever, there is something prowling around out there in the bushes."

"Of course there is!" he exclaimed. "My objection is that you insist on thinking that it is a man, just like you insist on thinking that you talked with a coyote."

A part of me fully understood his point. There was, however, another aspect of myself that would not let go, and in spite of the evidence clung steadfast to 'reason'.

I told don Juan that his explanation did not satisfy my senses, although I was in complete intellectual agreement with it.

"That is the flaw with words," he said in an assuring tone. "They always force us to feel enlightened, but when we turn around to face the world they always fail us, and we end up facing the world as we always have; without enlightenment. For this reason, a sorcerer seeks to act rather than to talk; and to this effect he gets a new description of the world- a new description where talking is not that important, and where new acts have new reflections."

He sat down by me and gazed into my eyes, and asked me to voice what I had really 'seen' in the chaparral.

I was confronted at the moment with an absorbing inconsistency. I had seen the dark shape of a man, but I had also seen that shape turn into a bird. I had, therefore, witnessed more than my reason would allow me to consider possible. But rather than discarding my reason altogether, something in myself had selected parts of my experience, such as the size and general contour of the dark shape, and held them as reasonable possibilities, while it discarded other parts, such as the dark shape turning into a bird. And thus I had become convinced that I had seen a man.

Don Juan roared with laughter when I expressed my quandary. He said that sooner or later the sorcerers' explanation would come to my rescue, and everything would then be perfectly clear without having to be reasonable or unreasonable.

"In the meantime all I can do for you is to guarantee that that was not a man," he said.

Don Juan's gaze became quite unnerving. My body shivered involuntarily. He made me feel embarrassed and nervous.

"I am looking for marks on your body," he explained. "You may not know it, but this evening you had quite a bout out there."

"What kind of marks are you looking for?"

"Not actual physical marks on your body, but signs- indications in your luminous fibers; areas of brightness. We are luminous beings, and everything we are, or everything we feel, shows in our fibers. Humans have a brightness peculiar only to them. That is the only way to tell them apart from other luminous living beings.

"If you would have seen tonight, you would have noticed that the shape in the bushes was not a luminous living being."

I wanted to ask more but he put his hand on my mouth and hushed me. He then put his mouth to my ear, and whispered that I should listen, and try to hear a soft rustling; the gentle muffled steps of a moth on the dry leaves and branches on the ground.

I could not hear anything. Don Juan stood up abruptly, picked up the lantern, and said that we were going to sit under the ramada by the front door.

Rather than going through the room and out the front door, he led me through the back and around the house on the edge of the chaparral. He explained that it was essential to make our presence obvious. We half circled around the house on the left side. Don Juan's pace was extremely slow. His steps were weak and vacillating. His arm shook as he held the lantern.

I asked him if there was something wrong with him. He winked at me and whispered that the big moth that was prowling around had an appointment with a young man, and that the slow gait of a feeble old man was an obvious way of showing who was the appointee.

When we finally arrived at the front of the house, don Juan hooked the lantern on a beam and made me sit with my back against the wall. He sat to my right.

"We are going to sit here," he said, "and you are going to write and talk to me in a very normal manner. The moth that lurched at you today is around; in the bushes. After a while it will come closer to look at you. That is why I have put the lantern on a beam right above you. The light will guide the moth to find you. When it gets to the edge of the bushes, it will call you. It is a very special sound. The sound by itself may help you."

"What kind of sound is it, don Juan?"

"It is a song. A haunting call that moths produce. Ordinarily it cannot be heard, but the moth out there in the bushes is a rare moth. You will hear its call clearly; and providing that you are impeccable, it will remain with you for the rest of your life."

"What is it going to help me with?"

"Tonight you are going to try to finish what you have started earlier. Seeing happens only when the warrior is capable of stopping the internal dialogue.

"Today out there in the bushes you stopped your talk at will, and you 'saw'. What you 'saw' was not clear. You thought that it was a man. I say it was a moth. Neither of us is correct, but that is because we have to talk. I still have the upper hand because I 'see' better than you, and because I am familiar with the sorcerers' explanation. So I know, although it is not altogether accurate, that the shape you saw tonight was a moth.

"And now you are going to remain silent and thoughtless, and let that little moth come to you again."

I could hardly take notes. Don Juan laughed and urged me to keep on writing as if nothing bothered me. He touched my arm and said that writing was the best protective shield that I had.

"We have never talked about moths," he went on. "The time was not right until now. As you already know, your spirit was unbalanced. To counteract that I taught you to live the warrior's way. Well, a warrior starts off with the certainty that his spirit is off balance. Then by living in full control and awareness, but without hurry or compulsion, he does his ultimate best to gain this balance.

"In your case, as in the case of every man, your imbalance was due to the sum total of all your actions. But now your spirit seems to be in the proper light to talk about moths."

"How did you know that this was the right time to talk about moths?"

"I caught a glimpse of the moth prowling around when you arrived. It was the first time it was friendly and open. I had seen it before in the mountains around Genaro's house, but only as a menacing figure reflecting your lack of order."

I heard a strange sound at that moment. It was like a muffled creaking of a branch rubbing against another; or like the sputtering of a small motor heard from a distance. It changed scales, like a musical tone, creating an eerie rhythm. Then it stopped.

"That was the moth," don Juan said. "Perhaps you have already noticed that, although the light of the lantern is bright enough to attract moths, there is not a single one flying around it."

I had not paid attention to it, but once don Juan made me aware of it, I also noticed an incredible silence in the desert around the house.

"Do not get jumpy," he said calmly. "There is nothing in this world that a warrior cannot account for. You see, a warrior considers himself already dead, so there is nothing for him to lose. The worst has already happened to him, therefore he is clear and calm. Judging him by his acts, or by his words, one would never suspect that he has witnessed everything."

Don Juan's words, and above all, his mood, were very soothing to me. I told him that in my day-to-day life I no longer experienced the obsessive fear I used to, but that my body entered into convulsions of fright at the thought of what was out there in the dark.

"Out there, there is only knowledge," he said in a factual tone. "Knowledge is frightening, true; but if a warrior accepts the frightening nature of knowledge he cancels out its awesomeness."

The strange sputtering noise happened again. It seemed closer and louder. I listened carefully. The more attention I paid to it, the more difficult it was to determine its nature. It did not seem to be the call of a bird or the cry of a land animal.

The tone of each sputter was rich and deep. Some were produced in a low key. Others in a high one. They had a rhythm and a specific duration. Some were long. I heard them like a single unit of sound. Others were short and happened in a cluster, like the staccato sound of a machine gun.

"The moths are the heralds, or, better yet, the guardians of eternity," don Juan said after the sound had stopped. "For some reason, or for no reason at all, they are the depositories of the gold dust of eternity."

The metaphor was foreign to me. I asked him to explain it.

"The moths carry a dust on their wings," he said. "A dark gold dust. That dust is the dust of knowledge."

His explanation had made the metaphor even more obscure. I vacillated for a moment, trying to find the best way of wording my question. But he began to talk again.

"Knowledge is a most peculiar affair," he said, "especially for a warrior. Knowledge for a warrior is something that comes at once, engulfs him, and passes on."

"What does knowledge have to do with the dust on the wings of moths?" I asked after a long pause.

"Knowledge comes floating like specks of gold dust; the same dust that covers the wings of moths. So, for a warrior, knowledge is like taking a shower, or being rained on by specks of dark gold dust."

In the most polite manner I was capable of, I mentioned that his explanations had confused me even more. He laughed and assured me that he was making perfect sense, except that my reason would not allow me to be at ease.

"The moths have been the intimate friends and helpers of sorcerers from time immemorial," he said. "I had not touched upon this subject before because of your lack of preparation."

"But how can the dust on their wings be knowledge?"

"You will see."

He put his hand over my notebook, and told me to close my eyes, and become silent and without thoughts. He said that the call of the moth in the chaparral was going to aid me. If I paid attention to it, it would tell me of imminent events. He stressed that he did not know how the communication between the moth and myself was going to be established. Neither did he know what the terms of the communication would be. He urged me to feel at ease and confident, and trust my personal power.

After an initial period of impatience and nervousness I succeeded in becoming silent. My thoughts diminished in number until my mind was perfectly blank. The noises of the desert chaparral seemed to have been turned on as I became more calm.

The strange sound that don Juan said was made by a moth occurred again. It registered as a feeling in my body and not as a thought in my mind. It occurred to me that it was not threatening or malevolent at all. It was sweet and simple. It was like a child's call. It brought back the memory of a little boy that I once knew. The long sounds reminded me of his round blond head; the short staccato sounds of his laughter.

The most anguishing feeling oppressed me, and yet there were no thoughts in my mind. I felt the anguish in my body. I could no longer remain sitting and slid to the floor on my side.

My sadness was so intense that I began to think. I assessed my pain and sorrow, and suddenly found myself in the midst of an internal debate about the little boy. The sputtering sound had ceased. My eyes were closed.

I heard don Juan standing up, and then I felt him helping me to sit up. I did not want to speak. He did not say a word. I heard him moving by me. I opened my eyes. He had knelt in front of me and was examining my face; holding the lantern close to me. He ordered me to put my hands over my stomach. He stood up, went to the kitchen, and brought me some water. He splashed some on my face and gave me the rest to drink.

He sat down next to me and handed me my notes. I told him that the sound had involved me in the most painful reverie.

"You are indulging beyond your limits," he said dryly.

He seemed to immerse himself in thought as if he were searching for an appropriate suggestion to make.

"The problem for tonight is seeing people," he finally said. "First you must stop your internal dialogue. Then you must bring up the image of the person that you want to see. Any thought that one holds in mind in a state of silence is properly a command since there are no other thoughts to compete with it. Tonight the moth in the bushes wants to help you; so it will sing for you. Its song will bring the golden specks, and then you will see the person you have selected."

I wanted to have more details, but he made an abrupt gesture and signaled me to proceed.

After struggling for a few minutes to stop my internal dialogue, I was thoroughly silent. And then I deliberately held the brief thought of a friend of mine. I kept my eyes closed for what I believed to be just an instant, and then I became aware that someone was shaking me by the shoulders.

It was a slow realization. I opened my eyes and found myself lying on my left side. I had apparently fallen asleep so deeply that I did not remember having slumped to the ground. Don Juan helped me to sit up again. He was laughing. He imitated my snoring and said that if he had not witnessed it himself he would not believe that anyone could fall asleep so fast. He said that it was a treat for him to be around me whenever I had to do something that my reason did not understand. He pushed my notebook away from me, and said that we had to start all over.

I followed the necessary steps. The strange sputtering sound happened again. This time, however, it did not come from the chaparral. Rather, it seemed to happen inside of me as if my lips, or legs, or arms were producing it. The sound soon engulfed me. I felt like soft balls were being sputtered out from or against me. It was a soothing, exquisite feeling of being bombarded by heavy cotton puffs.

Suddenly I heard a door blown open by a gust of wind and I was thinking again. I thought that I had ruined another chance.

I opened my eyes and found myself in my room. The objects on my desk were as I had left them. The door was open. There was a strong wind outside. The thought crossed my mind that I should check the water heater. I then heard a rattling on the sliding windows that I had put up myself; and which did not fit well on the window frame. It was a furious rattling as if someone wanted to enter. I experienced a jolt of fright. I stood up from my chair. I felt something pulling me. I screamed.

Don Juan was shaking me by the shoulders. I excitedly gave him an account of my vision. It had been so vivid that I was shivering. I felt that I had just been at my desk, in my full corporeal form.

Don Juan shook his head in disbelief, and said that I was a genius in tricking myself. He did not seem impressed by what I had done. He discarded it flatly and ordered me to start again.

I then heard the mysterious sound again. It came to me, as don Juan had suggested, in the form of a rain of golden specks. I did not feel that they were flat specks or flakes, as he had described them, but rather spherical bubbles. They floated towards me. One of them burst open and revealed a scene to me. It was as if it had stopped in front of my eyes and opened up; disclosing a strange object.

It looked like a mushroom. I was definitely looking at it, and what I was experiencing was not a dream. The mushroom-like object remained unchanged within my field of 'vision', and then it popped as though the light that was shining on it had been turned off. An interminable darkness followed it.

I felt a tremor- a very unsettling jolt- and then I had the abrupt realization that I was being shaken. All at once my senses were turned on. Don Juan was shaking me vigorously and I was looking at him. I must have just opened my eyes at that moment. He sprinkled water on my face. The coldness of the water was very appealing. After a moment's pause he wanted to know what had happened.

I recounted every detail of my vision.

"But what did I see?" I asked.

"Your friend," he retorted.

I laughed and patiently explained that I had 'seen' a mushroom-like figure. Although I had no criteria to judge dimensions, I had had the feeling that it was about a foot long.

Don Juan emphasized that 'feeling' was all that counted. He said that my feelings were the gauge that assessed the state of being of the subject that I was seeing.

"From your description, and your feelings, I must conclude that your friend must be a very fine man," he said. I was baffled by his words.

He said that the mushroom-like formation was the essential shape of human beings when a sorcerer was seeing them from far away. But when a sorcerer was directly facing the person he was seeing, the human quality was shown as an egg-like cluster of luminous fibers.

"You were not facing your friend," he said. "Therefore, he appeared like a mushroom."

"Why is that so, don Juan?"

"No one knows. That simply is the way men appear in this specific type of seeing."

He added that every feature of the mushroom-like formation had a special significance, but that it was impossible for a beginner to accurately interpret that significance.

I then had an intriguing recollection. Some years before while I was in a state of non-ordinary reality elicited by the intake of psychotropic plants, I had experienced or perceived, while I was looking at a water stream, that a cluster of bubbles floated towards me; engulfing me. The golden bubbles I had just envisioned had floated and engulfed me in exactly the same manner. In fact, I could say that both clusters had had the same structure and the same pattern.

Don Juan listened to my commentaries without interest.

"Do not waste your power on trifles," he said. "You are dealing with that immensity out there."

He pointed towards the chaparral with a movement of his hand.

"To turn that magnificence out there into reasonableness does not do anything for you. Here, surrounding us, is eternity itself. To engage in reducing it to a manageable nonsense is petty and outright disastrous."

He then insisted that I should attempt to 'see' another person from my realm of acquaintances. He added that once the vision had terminated I should strive to open my eyes by myself, and surface to the full awareness of my immediate surroundings.

I succeeded in holding the view of another mushroom-like form, but while the first one had been yellowish and small, the second one was whitish, larger, and contorted.

By the time we had finished talking about the two shapes I had 'seen', I had forgotten the 'moth' in the bushes which had been so overwhelming a little while before. I told don Juan that it amazed me that I had such a facility for discarding something so truly uncanny. It was as if I were not the person I knew myself to be.

"I do not see why you make such a fuss out of this," don Juan said. "Whenever the dialogue stops, the world collapses and extraordinary facets of ourselves surface; as though they had been kept heavily guarded by our words. You are like you are because you tell yourself that you are that way."

After a short rest don Juan urged me to continue 'calling' friends. He said that the point was to attempt to 'see' as many times as possible in order to establish a guideline for feeling.

I called thirty-two persons in succession. After each attempt he demanded a careful and detailed rendition of everything I had perceived in my vision. He changed that procedure, however, as I became more proficient in my performance; judging by my stopping the internal dialogue in a matter of seconds; by my being capable of opening my eyes by myself at the end of each experience; and by my resuming ordinary activities without any transition.

I noticed this change while we were discussing the coloration of the mushroom-like formations. He had already made the point that what I called coloration was not a hue, but a glow of different intensities.

I was about to describe a yellowish glow that I had envisioned, when he interrupted me, and he accurately described what I had 'seen.' From that point on he discussed the content of each vision, not as if he had understood what I had said, but as if he had 'seen' it himself. When I called him to comment on it he flatly refused to talk about it.

By the time I had finished calling the thirty-two persons, I had realized that I had 'seen' a variety of mushroom-like shapes and glows, and I had had a variety of feelings towards them; ranging from mild delight to sheer disgust.

Don Juan explained that men were filled with configurations that could be wishes, problems, sorrows, worries, and so on. He asserted that only a profoundly powerful sorcerer could untangle the meaning of those configurations, and that I had to be content with viewing only the general shape of men.

I was very tired. There was something indeed fatiguing about those strange shapes. My overall sensation was one of queasiness. I had not liked them. They had made me feel trapped and doomed.

Don Juan commanded me to write in order to dispel the sensation of somberness. After a long silent interval during which I could not write anything, he asked me to call on people that he himself would select.

A new series of forms emerged. They were not mushroom-like, but looked more like Japanese cups for sake, turned upside down. Some of them had a head-like formation just like the foot of sake cups. Others were more round. Their shapes were appealing and peaceful. I sensed that there was some inherent feeling of happiness about them. They bounced as opposed to the earthbound heaviness that the previous batch had exhibited. Somehow, the mere fact that they were there eased my fatigue.

Among the persons he had selected was his apprentice Eligio. When I summoned the vision of Eligio I got a jolt that shook me out of my visionary state. Eligio had a long white shape that jerked and seemed to leap at me. Don Juan explained that Eligio was a very talented apprentice and that he, no doubt, had noticed that someone was seeing him.

Another of don Juan's selections was Pablito, don Genaro's apprentice. The jolt that the vision of Pablito gave me was even greater than Eligio's.

Don Juan laughed so hard that tears rolled down his cheeks.

"Why are those people shaped differently?" I asked.

"They have more personal power," he replied. "As you might have noticed, they are not pegged down to the ground."

"What has given them that lightness? Were they born that way?"

"We all are born that light and bouncy, but we become earth-bound and fixed. We make ourselves that way. So perhaps we may say that these people are shaped differently because they live like warriors. That is not important though. What is of value is that you are at the edge now. You have called forty-seven people, and there is only one more left in order for you to complete the original forty-eight."

I remembered at that moment that years before he had told me, while discussing corn sorcery and divination, that the number of corn kernels that a sorcerer possessed was forty-eight. He had never explained why.

I asked him again, "Why forty-eight?"

"Forty-eight is our number," he said. "That is what makes us men. I do not know why. Do not waste your power in idiotic questions."

He stood up and stretched his arms and legs. He told me to do the same. I noticed that there was a tinge of light in the sky towards the east. We sat down again. He leaned over and put his mouth to my ear.

"The last person you are going to call is Genaro; the real McCoy," he whispered.

I felt a surge of curiosity and excitation. I breezed through the required steps. The strange sound from the edge of the chaparral became vivid and acquired new strength. I had almost forgotten about it. The golden bubbles engulfed me, and then in one of them I saw don Genaro himself. He was standing in front of me holding his hat in his hand. He was smiling.

I hurriedly opened my eyes and was about to speak to don Juan, but before I could say a word my body stiffened like a board. My hair stood on end, and for a long moment I did not know what to do or say. Don Genaro was standing right in front of me. In person!

I turned to don Juan; he was smiling. Then both of them broke into a giant laugh. I also tried to laugh. I could not. I stood up.

Don Juan handed me a cup of water. I drank it automatically. I thought he was going to sprinkle water on my face. Instead, he refilled my cup.

Don Genaro scratched his head and hid a grin.

"Are you not going to greet Genaro?" don Juan asked.

It took an enormous effort for me to organize my thoughts and my feelings. I finally mumbled some greetings to don Genaro. He took a bow.

"You called me, did you not?" he asked, smiling.

I muttered my amazement at having found him standing there.

"He did call you," don Juan interjected.

"Well, here I am," don Genaro said to me. "What can I do for you?"

Slowly my mind seemed to become organized and finally I had a sudden insight. My thoughts were crystal clear and I 'knew' what had really taken place. I figured that don Genaro had been visiting with don Juan, and that as soon as they had heard my car approaching, don Genaro had slipped into the bushes and had remained in hiding until it got dark.

I believed the evidence was convincing. Don Juan, since he had no doubt engineered the entire affair, gave me clues from time to time thus guiding its development. At the appropriate time, don Genaro had made me notice his presence, and when don Juan and I were walking back to the house, he followed us in the most obvious manner in order to arouse my fear. Then he had waited in the chaparral and made the strange sound whenever don Juan had signaled him. The final signal to come out from behind the bushes must have been given by don Juan while my eyes were closed after he had asked me to 'call' don Genaro. Then don Genaro must have walked to the ramada and waited until I opened my eyes, and then scared me out of my wits.

The only incongruities in my logical explanatory scheme were that I had actually seen the man hiding in the bushes turn into a bird, and that I had first visualized don Genaro as an image in a golden bubble. In my vision he had been dressed exactly as he was in person. Since there was no logical way for me to explain those incongruities, I assumed, as I have always done in similar circumstances, that the emotional stress may have played an important role in determining what I 'believed I saw'.

I began to laugh quite involuntarily at the thought of their preposterous trick. I told them about my deductions. They laughed uproariously. I honestly believed that their laughter was the giveaway.

"You were hiding in the bushes, were you not?" I asked don Genaro.

Don Juan sat down and held his head in both hands.

"No. I was not hiding," don Genaro said patiently. "I was far from here, and then you called. So I came to see you."

"Where were you, don Genaro?"

"Far away."

"How far?"

Don Juan interrupted me and said that don Genaro had showed up as an act of deference to me, and that I could not ask where he had been, because he had been nowhere.

Don Genaro came to my defense and said that it was all right to ask him anything.

"If you were not hiding around the house, where were you, don Genaro?" I asked.

"I was at my house," he said with great candor.

"In central Mexico?"

"Yes! It is the only house I have got."

They looked at each other and again broke into laughter. I knew that they were kidding me, but I decided not to contest the point any further. I thought they must have had a reason for engaging themselves in such an elaborate production. I sat down.

I felt that I was truthfully cut in two. Some part of me was not shocked at all, and could accept any of don Juan or don Genaro's acts at their face value. But there was another part of me that flatly refused. It was my strongest part. My conscious assessment was that I had accepted don Juan's sorcery description of the world merely on an intellectual basis, while my body as a whole entity refused it; thus my dilemma.

But then, over the course of the years of my association with don Juan and don Genaro I had experienced extraordinary phenomena, and those had been bodily experiences not intellectual ones. Earlier that very night I had executed the 'gait of power'; which from the point of view of my intellect was an inconceivable accomplishment. And best of all, I had had incredible visions through no other means than my own volition.

I explained to them the nature of my painful and at the same time bona fide perplexity.

"This guy is a genius," don Juan said to don Genaro, shaking his head in disbelief.

"You are a huge genius, Carlitos," don Genaro said as if he were relaying a message.

They sat down on either side of me; don Juan to my right and don Genaro to my left. Don Juan observed that soon it was going to be morning. At that instant I again heard the moth's call. It had moved. The sound was coming from the opposite direction. I looked at both of them, holding their gaze. My logical scheme began to disintegrate.

The sound had a mesmerizing richness and depth. Then I heard muffled steps; soft feet crushing the dry underbrush. The sputtering sound came closer and I huddled against don Juan. He dryly ordered me to 'see' it. I made a supreme effort; not so much to please him as to please myself. I had been sure that don Genaro was the moth. But don Genaro was sitting with me. What, then, was in the bushes? A moth?

The sputtering sound echoed in my ears. I could not stop my internal dialogue altogether. I heard the sound, but I could not feel it in my body as I had done earlier. I heard definite steps. Something was creeping in the dark. There was a loud cracking noise as if a branch had been snapped in two, and suddenly a terrifying memory seized me. Years before I had spent a dreadful night in the wilderness and had been harassed by something; something very light and soft that had stepped on my neck over and over while I crouched on the ground. Don Juan had explained the event as an encounter with 'the ally'; a mysterious force that a sorcerer learned to perceive as an entity.

I leaned closer to don Juan and whispered what I had remembered. Don Genaro crawled on all fours to get closer to us.

"What did he say?" he asked don Juan in a whisper.

"He said that there is an ally out there," don Juan replied in a low voice.

Don Genaro crawled back and sat down. Then he turned to me and said in a loud whisper, "You are a genius."

They laughed quietly. Don Genaro pointed towards the chaparral with a movement of his chin.

"Go out there and grab it," he said. "Take off your clothes and scare the devil out of that ally."

They shook with laughter. The sound in the meantime had ceased. Don Juan ordered me to stop my thoughts, but to keep my eyes open; focused on the edge of the chaparral in front of me. He said that the moth had changed positions because don Genaro was there, and that if it were going to manifest itself to me, it would choose to come from the front.

After a moment's struggle to quiet my thoughts, I perceived the sound again. It was richer than ever. I heard first the muffled steps on dry twigs and then I felt them on my body. At that instant I distinguished a dark mass directly in front of me at the edge of the chaparral.

I felt I was being shaken. I opened my eyes. Don Juan and don Genaro were standing above me, and I was kneeling as if I had fallen asleep in a crouching position. Don Juan gave me some water and I sat down again with my back against the wall.

A short while later it was dawn. The chaparral seemed to wake up. The morning cold was crisp and invigorating.

The moth had not been don Genaro. My rational structure was falling apart. I did not want to ask any more questions, nor did I want to remain quiet. I finally had to talk.

"But if you were in central Mexico, don Genaro, how did you get here?" I asked.

Don Genaro made some ludicrous and utterly hilarious gestures with his mouth.

"I am sorry," he said to me, "my mouth does not want to talk."

He then turned to don Juan and said, grinning, "Why do you not tell him?"

Don Juan vacillated. Then he said that don Genaro, as a consummate artist of sorcery, was capable of prodigious deeds.

Don Genaro's chest swelled as if don Juan's words were inflating it. He seemed to have inhaled so much air that his chest looked twice its normal size. He appeared to be on the verge of floating. He leaped in the air. I had the impression that the air inside his lungs had forced him to jump. He paced back and forth on the dirt floor until he apparently got his chest under control; he patted it and with great force ran the palms of his hands from his pectoral muscles to his stomach as if he were deflating the inner tube of a tire. He finally sat down.

Don Juan was grinning. His eyes were shining with sheer delight.

"Write your notes," he ordered me softly. "Write. Write or you will die!"

Then he remarked that even don Genaro no longer felt that my taking notes was so outlandish.

"That is right!" don Genaro retorted. "I have been thinking of taking up writing myself."

"Genaro is a man of knowledge," don Juan said dryly. "And being a man of knowledge, he is perfectly capable of transporting himself over great distances."

He reminded me that once, years before, the three of us had been in the mountains and that don Genaro, in an effort to help me overcome my stupid reason, had taken a prodigious leap to the peaks of the Sierras ten miles away. I remembered the event, but I also remembered that I could not even conceive that he had jumped.

Don Juan added that don Genaro was capable of performing extraordinary feats at certain times.

"Genaro at certain times is not Genaro, but his double," he said.

He repeated it three or four times. Then both of them watched me as if waiting for my impending reaction.

I had not understood what he meant by 'his double'. He had never mentioned that before. I asked for a clarification.

"There is another Genaro," he explained.

All three of us looked at one another. I became very apprehensive. Don Juan urged me with a movement of his eyes to keep on talking.

"Do you have a twin brother?" I asked, turning to don Genaro.

"Of course," he said. "I have a twin."

I could not determine whether or not they were putting me on. They both giggled with the abandon of children that were pulling a prank.

"You may say," don Juan went on, "that at this moment Genaro is his twin."

That statement brought both of them to the ground with laughter. But I could not enjoy their mirth. My body shivered involuntarily.

Don Juan said in a severe tone that I was too heavy and self-important.

"Let go!" he commanded me dryly. "You know that Genaro is a sorcerer and an impeccable warrior. So he is capable of performing deeds that would be unthinkable for the average man. His double, the other Genaro, is one of those deeds."

I was speechless. I could not conceive that they were just teasing me.

"For a warrior like Genaro," he went on, "to produce the other is not such a farfetched enterprise."

After pondering for a long time what to say next, I asked, "Is the other like the self?"

"The other is the self," don Juan replied.

His explanation had taken an incredible turn, and yet it was not really more incredible than anything else they did.

"What is the other made of?" I asked don Juan after minutes of indecision.

"There is no way of knowing that," he said.

"Is it real or just an illusion?"

"It is real of course."

"Would it be possible then to say that it is made of flesh and blood?" I asked.

"No. It would not be possible," don Genaro answered.

"But if it is as real as I am..."

"As real as you?" don Juan and don Genaro interjected in unison.

They looked at each other and laughed until I thought they were going to get ill. Don Genaro threw his hat on the floor and danced around it. His dance was agile and graceful, and for some inexplicable reason, utterly funny. Perhaps the humor was in the exquisitely 'professional' movements he executed. The incongruity was so subtle and at the same time so remarkable that I doubled up with laughter.

"The trouble with you, Carlitos," he said as he sat down again, "is that you are a genius."

"I have to know about the double," I said.

"There is no way of knowing whether he is flesh and blood," don Juan said. "Because he is not as real as you. Genaro's double is as real as Genaro. Do you see what I mean?"

"But you have to admit, don Juan, that there must be a way to know."

"The double is the self. That explanation should suffice. If you would see, however, you would know that there is a great difference between Genaro and his double. For a sorcerer who 'sees', the double is brighter."

I felt I was too weak to ask any more questions. I put my writing pad down, and for a moment I thought I was going to pass out. I had tunnel vision. Everything around me was dark with the exception of a round spot of clear scenery in front of my eyes.

Don Juan said that I had to get some food. I was not hungry.

Don Genaro announced that he was famished, stood up, and went to the back of the house. Don Juan also stood up, and signaled me to follow. In the kitchen don Genaro gave himself a serving of food, and then became involved in the most comical mimicking of a person who wants to eat but can not swallow. I thought that don Juan was going to die. He roared, kicked, cried, coughed, and choked with laughter. I thought I too was going to split my sides. Don Genaro's antics were priceless.

Don Genaro finally gave up and looked at don Juan and me in succession. He had shiny eyes and a beaming smile.

"It does not work," he said, shrugging his shoulders.

I ate a huge amount of food, and so did don Juan.Then all of us returned to the front of the house. The sunlight was brilliant, the sky was clear, and the morning breeze sharpened the air. I felt happy and strong.

We sat in a triangle facing one another. After a polite silence I decided to ask them to clarify my dilemma. I felt that I was again in top form and wanted to exploit my strength.

"Tell me more about the double, don Juan," I said.

Don Juan pointed at don Genaro, and don Genaro bowed.

"There he is," don Juan said. "There is nothing to tell. He is here for you to witness him."

"But he is don Genaro," I said in a feeble attempt to guide the conversation.

"Surely I am Genaro," he said and perked his shoulders.

"What is a double then, don Genaro?" I asked.

"Ask him," he snapped, pointing to don Juan. "He is the one who talks. I am dumb."

"A double is the sorcerer himself developed through his dreaming," don Juan explained. "A double is an act of power to a sorcerer but only a tale of power to you. In the case of Genaro, his double is indistinguishable from the original. That is because his impeccability as a warrior is supreme. Thus you have never noticed the difference yourself. But in the years that you have known him, you have been with the original Genaro only twice. Every other time you have been with his double."

"But this is preposterous!" I exclaimed.

I felt an anxiety building up in my chest. I became so agitated that I dropped my writing pad, and my pencil rolled out of sight. Don Juan and don Genaro practically dove to the ground, and began the most farcical search for it. I had never seen a more astonishing performance of theatrical magic and sleight of hand- except that there was no stage, or props, or any type of gadgetry; and most likely the performers were not using sleight of hand.

Don Genaro, the head magician, and his assistant, don Juan, produced in a matter of minutes the most astounding, bizarre, and outlandish collection of objects which they found underneath, or behind, or above every object within the periphery of the ramada.

In the style of stage magic, the assistant set up the props, which in this case were the few items on the dirt floor: rocks, burlap sacks, pieces of wood, a milk crate, a lantern, and my jacket. Then the magician, don Genaro, would proceed to find an object which he would throw away as soon as he had attested that it was not my pencil.

The collection of objects found included pieces of clothing, wigs, eyeglasses, toys, utensils, pieces of machinery, women's underwear, human teeth, sandwiches, and religious objects. One of them was outright disgusting. It was a piece of compact human excrement that don Genaro took from underneath my jacket. Finally, don Genaro found my pencil, and handed it to me after dusting it off with the tail of his shirt.

They celebrated their clowning with yells and chuckles. I found myself watching; unable to join them.

"Do not take things so seriously, Carlitos," don Genaro said with a tone of concern. "Otherwise you are going to bust a..."

He made a ludicrous gesture that could have meant anything.

After their laughter subsided I asked don Genaro what a double did, or what a sorcerer did with the double.

Don Juan answered. He said that the double had power, and that it was used to accomplish feats that would be unimaginable under ordinary terms.

"I have told you time and time again that the world is unfathomable," he said to me. "And so are we; and so is every being that exists in this world. It is impossible, therefore, to reason out the double. You have been allowed to witness it, though, and that should be more than enough."

"But there must be a way to talk about it," I said. "You yourself have told me that you explained your conversation with the deer in order to talk about it. Can you not do the same with the double?"

He was quiet for a moment. I pleaded with him. The anxiety I was experiencing was beyond anything I had ever gone through.

"Well, a sorcerer can double up," don Juan said. "That is all one can say."

"But is he aware that he is doubled?"

"Of course he is aware of it."

"Does he know that he is in two places at once?"

Both of them looked at me and then they exchanged a glance.

"Where is the other don Genaro?" I asked.

Don Genaro leaned towards me and stared into my eyes.

"I do not know," he said softly. "No sorcerer knows where his other is."

"Genaro is right," don Juan said. "A sorcerer has no notion that he is in two places at once. To be aware of that would be the equivalent of facing his double, and the sorcerer that finds himself face to face with himself is a dead sorcerer. That is the rule. That is the way power has set things up. No one knows why."

Don Juan explained that by the time a warrior had conquered dreaming and seeing and had developed a double, he must have also succeeded in erasing personal history, self-importance, and routines.

He said that all the techniques which he had taught me, and which I had considered to be empty talk, were in essence means for removing the impracticality of having a double in the ordinary world; by making the self and the world fluid, and thereby placing them outside the bounds of prediction.

"A fluid warrior can no longer make the world chronological," don Juan explained. "And for him, the world and he are no longer objects. He is a luminous being existing in a luminous world. The double is a simple affair for a sorcerer because he knows what he is doing. To take notes is a simple affair for you, but you still scare Genaro with your pencil."

"Can an outsider looking at a sorcerer see that he is in two places at once?" I asked don Juan.

"Certainly. That would be the only way to know it."

"But can one not logically assume that the sorcerer would also notice that he has been in two places?"

"Aha!" don Juan exclaimed. "For once you have got it right. A sorcerer may certainly notice afterwards that he has been in two places at once. But this is only bookkeeping, and has no bearing on the fact that while he is acting he has no notion of his duality."

My mind boggled. I felt that if I did not keep on writing I would explode.

"Think of this," he went on. "The world does not yield to us directly, the description of the world stands in between. So, properly speaking, we are always one step removed, and our experience of the world is always a recollection of the experience. We are perennially recollecting the instant that has just happened; just passed. We recollect, recollect, recollect."

He turned his hand over and over to give me the feeling of what he meant.

"If our entire experience of the world is recollection, then it is not so outlandish to conclude that a sorcerer can be in two places at once. This is not the case from the point of view of his own perception because in order to experience the world, a sorcerer, like every other man, has to recollect: the act he has just performed, the event he has just witnessed, the experience he has just lived. In his awareness there is only a single recollection. But for an outsider looking at the sorcerer, it may appear as if the sorcerer is acting two different episodes at once. The sorcerer, however, recollects two separate single instants because the glue of the description of time is no longer binding him."

When don Juan had finished talking I was sure I was running a temperature.

Don Genaro examined me with curious eyes.

"He is right," he said. "We are always one jump behind."

He moved his hand as don Juan had done. His body started to jerk, and he jumped back on his seat. It was as if he had the hiccups, and the hiccups were forcing his body to jump back. He began to move backwards jumping on his seat, and went all the way to the end of the ramada and back.

The sight of don Genaro leaping backwards on his buttocks, instead of being funny as it should have been, threw me into an attack of fear so intense that don Juan had to strike me repeatedly on the top of my head with his knuckles.

"I just can not grasp all this, don Juan," I said.

"I can not either," don Juan retorted, shrugging his shoulders.

"Neither can I, dear Carlitos," don Genaro added.

My fatigue, the bulk of my sensory experience, the mood of lightness and humor that prevailed, and don Genaro's clowning were too much for my nerves. I could not stop the agitation in my stomach muscles.

Don Juan made me roll on the ground until I had regained my calmness. Then I sat down facing them again.

"Is the double solid?" I asked don Juan after a long silence.

They looked at me.

"Does the double have corporealness?" I asked.

"Certainly," don Juan said. "Solidity; corporealness are memories. Therefore, like everything else we feel about the world, they are memories we accumulate. Memories of the description. You have the memory of my solidity, the same way you have the memory of communicating through words. Thus you talked with a coyote, and you feel me as being solid."

Don Juan put his shoulder next to mine and nudged me lightly.

"Touch me," he said.

I patted him and then I embraced him. I was close to tears.

Don Genaro stood up and came closer to me. He looked like a small child with shiny mischievous eyes. He puckered up his lips and looked at me for a long moment.

"What about me?" he asked, trying to hide a smile. "Are you not going to embrace me too?"

I stood up and extended my arms to touch him. My body seemed to freeze on the spot. I had no power to move. I tried to force my arms to reach him, but my struggle was in vain.

Don Juan and don Genaro stood by, watching me. I felt my body contorting under an unknown pressure.

Don Genaro sat down, and pretended to sulk because I had not embraced him. He pouted and hit the ground with his heels. Then both of them exploded into more roaring laughter.

The muscles of my stomach trembled making my whole body shake. Don Juan pointed out that I was moving my head the way he had recommended earlier, and that that was the chance to soothe myself by reflecting a beam of light on the cornea of my eyes. He forcefully dragged me from under the roof of his ramada to the open field, and manipulated my body into position so that my eyes would catch the eastern sunlight; but by the time he had put my body in place I had stopped shivering. I noticed that I was clutching my notebook only after don Genaro said that the weight of the sheets was giving me the shivers.

I told don Juan that my body was pulling me to leave. I waved my hand to don Genaro. I did not want to give them time to make me change my mind.

"Good-by, don Genaro," I yelled. "I have to go now."

He waved back at me.

Don Juan walked a few yards with me towards my car.

"Do you also have a double, don Juan?" I asked.

"Of course!" he exclaimed.

I had at that moment a maddening thought. I wanted to discard it and leave in a hurry but something in myself kept on needling me. Over the course of the years of our association, it had become customary for me that every time I wanted to see don Juan I would just go to Sonora or central Mexico, and I would always find him waiting for me. I had learned to take that for granted, and it had never occurred to me until then to think anything of it.

"Tell me something, don Juan," I said, half in jest. "Are you yourself or are you your double?"

He leaned over towards me. He was grinning.

"My double," he whispered.

My body leaped in the air as if I had been propelled by a formidable force. I ran to my car.

"I was just kidding," don Juan said in a loud voice. "You can not go yet. You still owe me five more days."

Both of them ran towards my car as I was backing up. They were laughing and jumping up and down.

"Carlitos, call me any time!" don Genaro shouted.

The Second Ring of Power. ©1977 by Carlos Castaneda.

Chapter 02 - The Dreamer And The Dreamed.

I drove to don Juan's house and arrived there in the early morning. I had spent the night in a motel on the way down so I would get to his house before noon.

Don Juan was in the back and came to the front when I called him. He gave me a warm greeting and the impression that he was pleased to see me. He made a comment that I thought was intended to put me at ease but produced the opposite effect.

"I heard you coming," he said as he grinned, "and I ran to the back. I was afraid that if I had stayed here you would have been frightened."

He casually remarked that I was somber and heavy. He said that I reminded him of Eligio who was morbid enough to be a good sorcerer, but too morbid to become a man of knowledge. He added that the only way to counteract the devastating effect of the sorcerers' world was to laugh at it.

He was right in his assessment of my mood. I was indeed worried and frightened. We went for a long walk. It took hours for my feelings to ease up. Walking with him made me feel better than if he had attempted to talk me out of my somberness.

We returned to his house in the late afternoon. I was famished. After eating we sat under his ramada. The sky was clear. The afternoon light made me feel complacent. I wanted to talk.

"I have felt uneasy for months," I said. "There was something truly awesome in what you and don Genaro said and did the last time I was here."

Don Juan did not say anything. He got up and moved around the ramada.

"I have got to talk about this," I said. "It obsesses me and I can not stop pondering upon it."

"Are you afraid?" he asked.

I told him I was not afraid, but baffled; overwhelmed by what I had heard and witnessed. The loopholes in my reason were so gigantic that either I had to repair them, or I had to dispose of my reason altogether.

My comments made him laugh.

"Do not throw away your reason yet," he said. "It is not time for it. It will happen though, but I do not think that now is the moment."

"Should I try to find an explanation for what happened, then?" I asked.

"Certainly!" he retorted. "It is your duty to put your mind at ease. Warriors do not win victories by beating their heads against walls, but by overtaking the walls. Warriors jump over the walls. They do not demolish them."

"How can I jump over this one?" I asked.

"First of all, I think it is deadly wrong for you to regard anything in such a serious fashion," he said as he sat down by my side. "There are three kinds of bad habits which we use over and over when confronted with unusual life situations.

"First, we may disregard what is happening, or has happened, and feel as if it had never occurred. That one is the bigot's way.

"Second, we may accept everything at its face value and feel as if we know what is going on. That is the pious man's way.

"Third, we may become obsessed with an event because either we cannot disregard it, or we cannot accept it wholeheartedly. That is the fool's way... Your way?

There is a fourth; the correct one; the warrior's way. A warrior acts as if nothing had ever happened, because he does not believe in anything. Yet he accepts everything at its face value. He accepts without accepting, and disregards without disregarding. He never feels as if he knows. Neither does he feel as if nothing had ever happened. He acts as if he is in control, even though he might be shaking in his boots. To act in such a manner dissipates obsession."

We were quiet for a long time. Don Juan's words were like a balm to me.

"Can I talk about don Genaro and his double?" I asked.

"It depends on what you want to say about him," he replied. "Are you going to indulge in being obsessed?"

"I want to indulge in explanations," I said. "I am obsessed because I have not dared come to see you, and I have not been able to talk about my qualms and doubts with anyone."

"Do you not talk with your friends?"

"I do, but how could they help me?"

"I never thought that you needed help. You must cultivate the feeling that a warrior needs nothing. You say you need help. Help for what? You have everything needed for the extravagant journey that is your life. I have tried to teach you that the real experience is to be a man, and that what counts is being alive. Life is the little detour that we are taking now. Life in itself is sufficient, self-explanatory, and complete.

"A warrior understands this and lives accordingly. Therefore, one may say without being presumptuous that the experience of experiences is being a warrior."

He seemed to wait for me to say something. I hesitated for a moment. I wanted to select my words carefully.

"If a warrior needs solace," he went on, "he simply chooses anyone and expresses to that person every detail of his turmoil. After all, the warrior is not seeking to be understood or helped. By talking he is merely relieving himself of his pressure; that is, providing that the warrior is given to talking; if he is not, he tells no one. But you are not living like a warrior altogether. Not yet anyway. And the pitfalls that you encounter must be truly monumental. You have all my sympathy."

He was not being facetious. Judging by the concern in his eyes, he seemed to be one who had been there himself. He stood up and patted me on the head. He walked back and forth the length of the ramada, and looked casually to the chaparral around the house. His movements evoked a sensation of restlessness in me.

In order to relax I began to talk about my dilemma. I felt that it was inherently too late for me to pretend to be an innocent bystander. Under his guidance I had trained myself to achieve strange perceptions, such as 'stopping the internal dialogue', and controlling my dreams. Those were instances that could not be faked.

I had followed his suggestions, although never to the letter, and had partially succeeded in disrupting daily routines, assuming responsibility for my acts, erasing personal history, and had finally arrived at a point which years before I had dreaded. I was capable of being alone without disrupting my physical or emotional well-being.

That was perhaps my single most astounding triumph. From the point of view of my former expectations and moods, to be alone and not 'go out of my mind' was an inconceivable state. I was keenly aware of all the changes that had taken place in my life, and in my view of the world. And I was also aware that it was somehow superfluous to be affected so profoundly by don Juan and don Genaro's revelation about the 'double'.

"What is wrong with me, don Juan?" I asked.

"You indulge," he snapped. "You feel that indulging in doubts and tribulations is the sign of a sensitive man. Well, the truth of the matter is that you are the farthest thing from being sensitive. So why pretend? I told you the other day that a warrior accepts in humbleness what he is."

"You make it sound as if I were confusing myself deliberately," I said.

"We do confuse ourselves deliberately," he said. "All of us are aware of our doings. Our puny reason deliberately makes itself into the monster it fancies itself to be. It is too little, though, for such a big mold."

I explained to him that my dilemma was perhaps more complex than what he was making it out to be. I said that as long as he and don Genaro were men like myself, their superior control made them models for my own behavior. But if they were in essence men drastically different than I, then I could not conceive of them any longer as models but as oddities which I could not possibly aspire to emulate.

"Genaro is a man," don Juan said in a reassuring tone. "He is no longer a man like yourself, true. But that is his accomplishment. And it should not give rise to fear on your part. If he is different, the more reason to admire him."

"But his difference is not a human difference," I said.

"And what do you think it is? The difference between a man and a horse?"

"I do not know. But he is not like me."

"He was at one time, though."

"But can his change be understood by me?"

"Of course. You yourself are changing."

"Do you mean that I will develop a double?"

"No one develops a double. That is only a way of talking about it. You, for all the talking you do, are a sap for words. You get trapped by their meanings. Now you think that one develops a double through evil means, I suppose. All of us luminous beings have a double. All of us! A warrior learns to be aware of it, that is all. There are seemingly insurmountable barriers protecting that awareness. But that is expected. Those barriers are what makes arriving at that awareness such a unique challenge."

"Why am I so afraid of it, don Juan?"

"Because you are thinking that the double is what the word says; a double, or another you. I chose those words in order to describe it. The double is oneself and cannot be faced in any other way."

"What if I do not want to have it?"

"The double is not a matter of personal choice. Neither is it a matter of personal choice who is selected to learn the sorcerers' knowledge that leads to that awareness. Have you ever asked yourself, why you in particular?"

"All the time. I have asked you that question hundreds of times, but you have never answered it."

"I did not mean that you should ask it as a question that begs an answer, but in the sense of a warrior's pondering on his great fortune; the fortune of having found a challenge.

"To make it into an ordinary question is the device of a conceited ordinary man who wants to be either admired or pitied for it. I have no interest in that kind of question because there is no way of answering it. The decision of picking you was a design of power. No one can discern the designs of power. Now that you have been selected there is nothing that you can do to stop the fulfillment of that design."

"But you yourself told me, don Juan, that one can always fail."

"That is true. One can always fail. But I think that you are referring to something else. You want to find a way out. You want to have the freedom to fail and quit on your own terms. Too late for that. A warrior is in the hands of power and his only freedom is to choose an impeccable life. There is no way to fake triumph or defeat. Your reason may want you to fail altogether in order to obliterate the totality of yourself. But there is a countermeasure which will not permit you to declare a false victory or defeat. If you think that you can retreat to the haven of failure, you are out of your mind. Your body will stand guard and will not let you go either of those ways."

He began to chuckle softly.

"Why do you laugh?" I asked.

"You are in a terrible spot," he said. "It is too late for you to retreat but too soon to act. All you can do is witness. You are in the miserable position of an infant who cannot return to the mother's womb, but neither can he run around and act. All an infant can do is witness; and listen to the stupendous tales of action being told to him. You are at that precise point now. You cannot go back to the womb of your old world, but you cannot act with power either. For you there is only witnessing acts of power and listening to tales; tales of power.

"The double is one of those tales. You know that, and that is why your reason is so taken by it. You are beating your head against a wall if you pretend to understand. All that I can say about it, by way of explanation, is that the double, although it is arrived at through dreaming, is as real as it can be."

"According to what you have told me, don Juan, the double can perform acts. Can the double then...?"

He did not let me continue with my line of reasoning. He reminded me that it was inappropriate to say that he had told me about the double, when I could say that I had witnessed it.

"Obviously the double can perform acts," I said.

"Obviously!" he replied.

"But can the double act in behalf of the self?"

"It is the self, damn it!"

I found it very difficult to explain myself. I had in mind that if a sorcerer could perform two actions at once, his capacity for utilitarian production had to double. He could work two jobs, be in two places, see two persons, and so on, at once.

Don Juan listened patiently.

"Let me put it this way," I said. "Hypothetically, can don Genaro kill someone hundreds of miles away by letting his double do it?"

Don Juan looked at me. He shook his head and moved his eyes away.

"You are filled with tales of violence," he said. "Genaro cannot kill anyone, simply because he no longer has any interest in his fellow men. By the time a warrior is capable of conquering seeing and dreaming, and having the awareness of his luminosity, there is no such interest left in him."

I pointed out that at the beginning of my apprenticeship he had made the statement that a sorcerer, aided by his 'ally', could be transported over hundreds of miles to deliver a blow to his enemies.

"I am responsible for your confusion," he said. "But you must remember that on another occasion I told you that, with you, I was not following the steps my own teacher prescribed. He was a sorcerer, and I should have properly plunged you into that world. I did not because I am no longer concerned with the ups and downs of my fellow men. Yet, my teacher's words stuck with me. I talked to you many times in the manner he himself would have talked.

"Genaro is a man of knowledge. The purest of them all. His actions are impeccable. He is beyond ordinary men; and beyond sorcerers. His double is an expression of his joy and his humor. Thus he cannot possibly use it to create or resolve ordinary situations. As far as I know, the double is the awareness of our state as luminous beings. It can do anything, and yet it chooses to be unobtrusive and gentle.

"It was my error to mislead you with borrowed words. My teacher was not capable of producing the effects Genaro does. For my teacher, unfortunately, certain things were, as they are for you, only tales of power."

I was compelled to defend my point. I said that I was speaking in a hypothetical sense.

"There is no hypothetical sense when you speak about the world of men of knowledge," he said. "A man of knowledge cannot possibly act towards his fellow men in injurious terms; hypothetically or otherwise."

"But, what if his fellow men are plotting against his security and well-being? Can he then use his double to protect himself?"

He clicked his tongue in disapproval.

"What incredible violence in your thoughts," he said. "No one can plot against the security and well-being of a man of knowledge. He 'sees'. Therefore he would take steps to avoid anything like that. Genaro, for example, has taken a calculated risk in joining you. But there is nothing that you could do to endanger his security. If there is anything, his 'seeing' will let him know. Now, if there is something about you that is inherently injurious to him, and his 'seeing' cannot reach it, then it is his fate and neither Genaro nor anyone else can avoid that. So you see, a man of knowledge is in control without controlling anything."

We were quiet. The sun was about to reach the top of the heavy tall bushes on the west side of the house. There were about two hours of daylight left.

Don Juan casually said, "Call Genaro- will you not?"

My body jumped. My initial reaction was to drop everything and run for my car. Don Juan broke into a belly laugh. I told him that I did not have to prove anything to myself, and that I was perfectly content to talk to him. Don Juan could not stop laughing. Finally he said that it was a shame that don Genaro was not there to enjoy a great scene.

"Look. If you are not interested in calling Genaro, I am," he said in a resolute tone. "I like his company."

I had a terrible sour taste on the roof of my mouth. Beads of perspiration ran down from my brow and my upper lip. I wanted to say something but there was really nothing to say.

Don Juan gave me a long, scrutinizing look.

"Come on," he said. "A warrior is always ready. To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born a reasonable being. We make ourselves into one or the other.

"Pull yourself together. I do not want Genaro to see you shivering like this."

He stood up, and paced back and forth on the clean floor of the ramada. I could not remain impassive. My nervousness was so intense that I could not write any more, and I jumped to my feet.

Don Juan made me jog on the spot facing the west. He had made me perform the same movements before on various occasions. The idea was to draw 'power' from the impending twilight by raising one's arms to the sky with the fingers stretched like a fan, and then clasp them forcefully when the arms were in the mid point between the horizon and the zenith.

The exercise worked, and I became almost instantly calm and collected. I could not avoid wondering, however, what had happened to the old 'me' that could never have relaxed so completely by performing those simple and idiotic movements.

I wanted to focus all my attention on the procedure that don Juan was doubtlessly going to follow to call don Genaro. I anticipated some portentous acts. Don Juan stood on the edge of the ramada facing the southeast, cupped his hands around his mouth, and yelled, "Genaro! Come here!"

A moment later don Genaro emerged from the chaparral. Both of them were beaming. They practically danced in front of me.

Don Genaro greeted me effusively and then sat down on the milk crate.

There was something dreadfully wrong with me. I was calm; unruffled. Some incredible state of indifference and aloofness had taken over my entire being. It was almost as if I were watching myself from a hiding place.

In a very nonchalant manner I proceeded to tell don Genaro that during my last visit he had nearly scared me to death, and that not even during my experiences with psychotropic plants had I been in such a complete state of chaos. Both of them celebrated my statements as if they were meant to be funny. I laughed with them.

They obviously were aware of my state of emotional numbness. They watched me and humored me as if I were drunk.

There was something inside me that fought desperately to turn the situation into something familiar. I wanted to be concerned and afraid.

Don Juan finally splashed some water on my face, and urged me to sit down and take notes. He said, as he had done before, that either I took notes or I died. The mere act of putting down some words brought back my familiar mood. It was as if something became crystal clear again; something that a moment before had been opaque and numb.

The advent of my usual self also meant the advent of my usual fears. Strangely enough, I was less afraid of being afraid than of being unafraid. The familiarity of my old habits, no matter how unpleasant they were, was a delightful respite.

I fully realized then that don Genaro had just emerged from the chaparral. My usual processes were beginning to function. I started by refusing to think or speculate about the event. I made the resolution of not asking him anything. I was going to be a silent witness this time.

"Genaro has come again exclusively for you," don Juan said.

Don Genaro was leaning against the wall of the house, and was resting his back against it while he sat on a tilted milk crate. He looked as if he were riding on horseback. His hands were in front of him which gave the impression that he was holding the reins of a horse.

"That is right, Carlitos," he said and brought the milk crate to rest on the ground.

He dismounted, whirling his right leg over an imaginary neck of a horse, and then jumped to the ground. His movements were so perfectly executed that he gave me the unquestionable sensation that he had arrived on horseback. He came to my side and sat down to my left.

"Genaro has come because he wants to tell you about the other," don Juan said.

He made a gesture of giving don Genaro the floor. Don Genaro bowed. He turned slightly to face me.

"What would you like to know, Carlitos?" he asked in a high-pitched voice.

"Well, if you are going to tell me about the double, tell me everything," I said, feigning casualness.

Both of them shook their heads and glanced at each other.

"Genaro is going to tell you about the dreamer and the dreamed," don Juan said.

"As you know, Carlitos," don Genaro said with the air of an orator warming up, "the double begins in dreaming."

He gave me a long look and smiled. His eyes swept from my face to my notebook and pencil.

"The double is a dream," he said, scratched his arms and then stood up.

He walked to the edge of the ramada and stepped out into the chaparral. He stood by a bush showing three fourths of his profile to us. He was apparently urinating. After a moment I noticed that there seemed to be something wrong with him. He appeared to be trying desperately to urinate but could not. Don Juan's laughter was the clue that don Genaro was clowning again. Don Genaro contorted his body in such a comical fashion that he had don Juan and me practically in hysterics.

Don Genaro came back to the ramada and sat down. His smile radiated a rare warmth.

"When you can not, you just can not," he said and shrugged his shoulders.

Then after a moment's pause he added, sighing, "Yes, Carlitos, the double is a dream."

"Do you mean that he is not real?" I asked.

"No. I mean that he is a dream," he retorted.

Don Juan intervened and explained that don Genaro was referring to the first emergence of the awareness that we are luminous beings.

"Each one of us is different, and thus the details of our struggles are different," don Juan said. "The steps that we follow to arrive at the double are the same, though. Especially the beginning steps- which are muddled and uncertain."

Don Genaro agreed and made a comment on the uncertainty that a sorcerer had at that stage.

"When it first happened to me, I did not know it had happened," he explained. "One day I had been picking plants in the mountains. I had gone into a place that was worked by other herb collectors. I had two huge sacks of plants. I was ready to go home, but before I did I decided to take a moment's rest.

"I lay down on the side of the trail in the shade of a tree and I fell asleep. I heard then the sound of people coming down the hill and woke up. I hurriedly ran for cover and hid behind some bushes a short distance across the road from where I had fallen asleep. While I hid there I had the nagging impression I had forgotten something. I looked to see if I had my two sacks of plants. I did not have them.

"I looked across the road to the place where I had been sleeping and I nearly dropped my pants with fright. I was still there asleep! It was me! I touched my body. I was myself!

"By that time the people that were coming down the hill were upon the me that was asleep, while the me that was fully awake looked helplessly from my hiding place. Darn it! They were going to find me there and take my sacks away. But they went by me as if I were not there at all.

"My vision had been so vivid that I went wild. I screamed and then I woke up again. Darn it! It had been a dream!"

Don Genaro stopped his account and looked at me as if waiting for a question or a comment.

"Tell him where you woke up the second time," don Juan said.

"I woke up by the road," don Genaro said, "where I had fallen asleep. But for one moment I did not quite know where I really was. I can almost say that I was still looking at myself waking up, then something pulled me to the side of the road and I found myself rubbing my eyes."

There was a long pause. I did not know what to say.

"And what did you do next?" don Juan asked.

I realized, when both of them began to laugh, that he was teasing me. He was imitating my questions.

Don Genaro went on talking. He said that he was stunned for a moment and then went to check everything.

"The place where I had hid was there exactly as I had seen it," he said. "And the people who had walked by me were down the road a short distance away. I know it because I ran downhill after them. They were the same people I had seen. I followed them until they got to town. They must have thought I was mad. I asked them if they had seen my friend sleeping by the side of the road. They all said they had not."

"You see," don Juan said, "all of us go through the same doubts. We are afraid of being mad. Unfortunately for us, of course, all of us are already mad."

"You are a tinge madder than us, though," don Genaro said to me and winked. "And more suspicious."

They teased me about my suspiciousness. And then don Genaro began to talk again.

"All of us are dense beings," he said. "You are not the only one, Carlitos. I was a bit shook up by my dream for a couple of days, but then I had to work for my living and take care of too many things and really had no time for pondering upon the mystery of my dreams. So I forgot about it in no time at all. I was very much like you.

"But one day, a few months later, after a terribly tiring day, I fell asleep like a log in mid-afternoon. It had just started to rain and a leak in the roof woke me up. I jumped out of bed and climbed on top of the house to fix the leak before it began to pour. I felt so fine and strong that I finished in one minute and I did not even get wet. I thought that the snooze I had taken had done me a lot of good.

"When I was through I went back into the house to get something to eat and I realized that I could not swallow. I thought I was sick. I mashed some roots and leaves, and wrapped them around my neck, and went to my bed.

"And then again when I got to my bed I nearly dropped my pants. I was there in bed asleep! I wanted to shake myself and wake me up, but I knew that that was not the thing one should do. So I ran out of the house. I was panic-stricken. I roamed around the hills aimlessly. I had no idea where I was going, and although I had lived all my life there I got lost. I walked in the rain and did not even feel it. It seemed that I could not think. Then the lightning and thunder became so intense that I woke up again."

He paused for a moment.

"Do you want to know where I woke up?" he asked me.

"Certainly," don Juan answered.

"I woke up in the hills in the rain," he said.

"But how did you know that you had woken up?" I asked.

"My body knew it," he replied.

"That was a stupid question," don Juan interjected. "You yourself know that something in the warrior is always aware of every change. It is precisely the aim of the warrior's way to foster and maintain that awareness. The warrior cleans it, shines it, and keeps it running."

He was right. I had to admit to them that I knew that there was something in me that registered and was aware of everything I did. And yet it had nothing to do with the ordinary awareness of myself. It was something else which I could not pin down. I told them that perhaps don Genaro could describe it better than I.

"You are doing very well yourself," don Genaro said. "It is an inner voice that tells you what is what. And at that time it told me that I had woken up a second time. Of course, as soon as I woke up I became convinced that I must have been dreaming. Obviously it had not been an ordinary dream, but it had not been dreaming proper either. So I settled for something else; walking in my sleep, half awake, I suppose. I could not understand it in any other way."

Don Genaro said that his benefactor had explained to him that what he had gone through was not a dream at all, and that he should not insist on regarding it as walking in his sleep.

"What did he tell you that it was?" I asked.

They exchanged a glance.

"He told me it was the bogeyman," don Genaro replied, affecting the tone of a small child.

I explained to them that I wanted to know if don Genaro's benefactor explained things in the same way they themselves did.

"Of course he did," don Juan said.

"My benefactor explained that the dream in which one was watching oneself asleep," don Genaro went on, "was the time of the double. He recommended that rather than wasting my power in wondering and asking myself questions, I should use the opportunity to act; and that when I had another chance I should be prepared.

"My next chance took place at my benefactor's house. I was helping him with the housework. I had lain down to rest and as usual I fell sound asleep. His house was definitely a place of power for me and helped me.

I was suddenly aroused by a loud noise and awakened. My benefactor's house was large. He was a wealthy man and had many people working for him. The noise seemed to be the sound of a shovel digging in gravel. I sat up to listen and then I stood up. The noise was very unsettling to me but I could not figure out why.

I was pondering whether to go and check it out when I noticed that I was asleep on the floor. This time I knew what to expect and what to do; and I followed the noise. I walked to the back of the house. There was no one there. The noise seemed to come from beyond the house. I kept on following it. The more I followed it the quicker I could move. I ended up at a distant place, witnessing incredible things."

He explained that at the time of those events he still was in the beginning stages of his apprenticeship and had done very little in the realm of 'dreaming', but that he had an uncanny facility to dream that he was looking at himself.

"Where did you go, don Genaro?" I asked.

"That was the first time that I had really moved in dreaming" he said. "I knew enough about it to behave correctly, though. I did not look at anything directly, and ended up in a deep ravine where my benefactor had some of his power plants."

"Do you think it works better if one knows very little about dreaming?" I asked.

"No!" don Juan interjected. "Each of us has a facility for something in particular. Genaro's knack is for dreaming."

"What did you see in the ravine, don Genaro?" I asked.

"I saw my benefactor doing some dangerous maneuvers with people. I thought I was there to help him and hid behind some trees. Yet I could not have known how to help. I was not dumb though, and I realized that the scene was there for me to watch; not to act in."

"When and how and where did you wake up?"

"I do not know when I woke up. It must have been hours later. All I know is that I followed my benefactor and the other men. And when they were about to reach my benefactor's house, the noise that they made, because they were arguing, woke me up. I was at the place where I had seen myself asleep.

"Upon waking up, I realized that whatever I had seen and done was not a dream. I had actually gone some distance away guided by the sound."

"Was your benefactor aware of what you were doing?"

"Certainly. He had been making the noise with the shovel to help me accomplish my task. When he walked into the house he pretended to scold me for falling asleep. I knew that he had seen me. Later on, after his friends had left, he told me that he had noticed my glow hiding behind the trees."

Don Genaro said that those three instances set him off on the path of 'dreaming', and that it took him fifteen years to have his next chance.

"The fourth time was a more bizarre and a more complete vision," he said. "I found myself asleep in the middle of a cultivated field. I saw myself lying there on my side sound asleep. I knew that it was dreaming because I had set myself to do dreaming every night.

"Usually, every time I had seen myself asleep, I was at the site where I had gone to sleep. This time I was not in my bed, and I knew I had gone to bed that night. In this dreaming it was daytime.

"So, I began to explore. I moved away from the place where I was lying and oriented myself. I knew where I was. I was actually not too far from my house; perhaps a couple of miles away. I walked around looking at every detail of the place. I stood in the shade of a big tree a short distance away and peered across a flat strip of land to some corn fields on the side of a hill.

"Something quite unusual struck me then. The details of the surroundings did not change or vanish no matter how long I peered at them. I got scared and ran back to where I was sleeping. I was still there exactly as I had been before. I began to watch myself. I had an eerie feeling of indifference towards the body I was watching.

"Then I heard the sound of people approaching. People always seemed to be around for me. I ran up ahead to a small hill and carefully watched from there. There were ten people coming to the field where I was. They were all young men.

"I ran back to where I was lying, and went through one of the most agonizing times of my life while I faced myself lying there snoring like a pig. I knew that I had to awaken me, but I had no idea how. I also knew that it was deadly for me to awaken myself. But if those young men were to find me there they were going to be very upset.

"All those deliberations that were going through my mind were not really thoughts. They were more appropriately scenes in front of my eyes. My worrying, for instance, was a scene in which I looked at myself while I had the sensation of being boxed in. I call that worrying. It has happened to me a number of times after that first time.

"Well, since I did not know what to do, I stood looking at myself,and waited for the worst. A bunch of fleeting images went past me in front of my eyes. I hung on to one in particular; the sight of my house and my bed. The image became very clear. Oh, how I wished to be back in my bed!

"Something shook me then. It felt like someone was hitting me and I woke up. I was on my bed! Obviously, I had been dreaming. I jumped out of bed, and ran to the place of my dreaming. It was exactly as I had seen it. The young men were working there. I watched them for a long time. They were the same ones I had seen.

"I came back to the same place at the end of the day after everybody had gone, and stood at the very spot where I had seen myself asleep. Someone had lain there. The weeds were crumpled,"

Don Juan and don Genaro were observing me. They looked like two strange animals. I felt a shiver in my back. I was on the verge of indulging in the very rational fear that they were not really men like myself, but don Genaro laughed.

"In those days," he said, "I was just like you, Carlitos. I wanted to check everything. I was as suspicious as you are."

He paused, raised his finger, and shook it at me. Then he faced don Juan.

"Were you not as suspicious as this guy?" he asked.

"Not a chance," don Juan said. "He is the champ."

Don Genaro turned to me and made a gesture of apology.

"I think I was wrong," he said. "I was not as suspicious as you."

They chuckled softly as if they did not want to make noise. Don Juan's body convulsed with muffled laughter.

"This is a place of power for you," don Genaro said in a whisper. "You have written your fingers off right where you are sitting. Have you ever done some heavy dreaming here?"

"No he has not," don Juan said in a low voice. "But he has done some heavy writing."

They doubled up. It seemed that they did not want to laugh out loud. Their bodies shook. Their soft laughter was like a rhythmical cackle.

Don Genaro sat up straight and slid closer to me. He patted me on the shoulder repeatedly, and said that I was a rascal. Then he pulled my left arm with great force towards him. I lost my balance and fell forward. I almost hit my face on the hard ground. I automatically put my right arm in front and buffered my fall.

One of them held me down by pressing on my neck. I was not sure who. The hand that was holding me felt like don Genaro's. I had a moment of devastating panic. I felt I was fainting. Perhaps I did. The pressure in my stomach was so intense that I vomited.

My next clear perception was that somebody was helping me to sit up. Don Genaro was squatting in front of me. I turned around to look for don Juan. He was nowhere in sight. Don Genaro had a beaming smile. His eyes were shiny. They were looking fixedly at mine.

I asked him what he had done to me, and he said that I was in pieces. His tone was reproachful, and he seemed to be annoyed or dissatisfied with me. He repeated various times that I was in pieces and that I had to come together again. He tried to feign a severe tone, but he laughed in the middle of his harangue. He was telling me that it was just terrible that I was spread all over the place, and that he would have to use a broom to sweep all my pieces into one heap.

Then he added that I might get the pieces in the wrong places and end up with my penis where my thumb should be. He cracked up at that point. I wanted to laugh and had a most unusual sensation. My body fell apart! It was as if I had been a mechanical toy that simply broke up into pieces. I had no physical feelings whatever, and neither had I any fear or concern. Coming apart was a scene that I witnessed from the point of view of the perceiver, and yet I did not perceive anything from a sensorial point of reference.

The next thing I became aware of was that don Genaro was manipulating my body. I then had a physical sensation; a vibration so intense that it made me lose sight of everything around me.

I felt once more that someone was helping me to sit up. I again saw don Genaro squatting in front of me. He pulled me up by my armpits and helped me walk around. I could not figure out where I was. I had the feeling I was in a dream, and yet I had a complete sense of sequential time. I was keenly aware that I had just been with don Genaro and don Juan in the ramada of don Juan's house.

Don Genaro walked with me; propping me by holding my left armpit. The scenery I was watching changed constantly. I could not determine, however, the nature of what I was observing. What was in front of my eyes was rather like a feeling or a mood, and the center from where all those changes radiated was definitely in my stomach.

I had made that connection not as a thought or a realization, but as a bodily sensation that suddenly became fixed and predominant. The fluctuations around me came from my stomach. I was creating a world; an endless run of feelings and images. Everything I knew was there. That in itself was a feeling, not a thought or a conscious assessment.

I tried to keep tabs for a moment because of my nearly invincible habit of assessing everything. But at a certain instant my processes of bookkeeping ceased, and a nameless something enveloped me; feelings and images of every sort.

At one point something in me began again the tabulation, and I noticed that one image kept on repeating itself; don Juan and don Genaro- who were trying to reach me. The image was fleeting. It passed by me fast. It was something comparable to seeing them from the window of a fast-moving vehicle. They seemed to be trying to catch me as I went by. The image became clearer and it lasted longer as it kept on recurring.

I consciously realized at one point that I was deliberately isolating it from among a myriad of other images. I sort of breezed through the rest to come to that particular scene.

Finally I was capable of sustaining it by thinking about it. Once I had begun to think, my ordinary processes took over. They were not as defined as in my ordinary activities, but clear enough to know that the scene or feeling I had isolated was that of don Juan and don Genaro in the ramada of don Juan's house, and they were holding me by the armpits.

I wanted to keep on fleeing through other images and feelings, but they would not let me. I struggled for a moment. I felt bouncy and happy. I knew that I liked both of them, and I also knew then that I was not afraid of them.

I wanted to joke with them but I did not know how, and I kept on laughing and patting them on their shoulders. I had another peculiar awareness. I was certain that I was 'dreaming'. If I focused my eyes on anything, it immediately became blurry.

Don Juan and don Genaro were talking to me. I could not keep their words straight, and I could not distinguish which of them was talking.

Don Juan then turned my body around and pointed to a lump on the ground. Don Genaro pulled me closer to it and made me go around it. The lump was a man lying on the ground. He was lying on his stomach with his face turned to his right. They kept on pointing out the man to me as they spoke. They pulled me and twisted me around him. I could not focus my eyes on him at all, but finally I had a feeling of quietness and sobriety and I looked at the man.

I had a slow awakening into the realization that the man lying on the ground was me. My realization did not bring any terror or discomfort. I simply accepted it without emotion. At that moment I was not completely asleep, but neither was I completely awake and in sober consciousness.

I also became more aware of don Juan and don Genaro, and could tell them apart when they talked to me. Don Juan said that we were going to go to the round power place in the chaparral. As soon as he said it the image of the place popped in my mind. I saw the dark masses of bushes around it. I turned to my right. Don Juan and don Genaro were also there. I had a jolt and the feeling that I was afraid of them. Perhaps because they looked like two menacing shadows. They came closer to me. As soon as I saw their features my fears vanished. I liked them again.

It was as if I were drunk and did not have a firm grip on anything. They grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me in unison. They ordered me to wake up. I could hear their voices clearly and separately. I had then a unique moment. I held two images in my mind, two dreams. I felt that something in me was deeply asleep and was waking up and I found myself lying on the floor of the ramada with don Juan and don Genaro shaking me. But I also was at the power place and don Juan and don Genaro were still shaking me.

There was one crucial instant in which I was neither in one place nor the other, but I was rather in both places as an observer seeing two scenes at once. I had the incredible sensation that at that instant I could have gone either way. All I had to do at that moment was to change perspective; and rather than watch either scene from the outside, feel it from the point of view of the subject.

There was something very warm about don Juan's house. I preferred that scene.

I next had a terrifying seizure so shocking that my entire ordinary awareness came back to me at once. Don Juan and don Genaro were pouring buckets of water on me. I was in the ramada of don Juan's house.

Hours later we sat in the kitchen. Don Juan had insisted that I had to proceed as if nothing had happened. He gave me some food and said that I had to eat a great deal to compensate for my expenditure of energy.

It was after nine in the evening when I looked at my watch after we had sat down to eat. My experience had lasted several hours. From the point of view of my recollection, however, it seemed that I had just fallen asleep for a short while.

Even though I was completely myself, I still was numb. It was not until I had begun to write in my notebook that I regained my usual awareness. It was a surprise to me that taking notes could bring about instantaneous sobriety. The moment I was myself again, a barrage of reasonable thoughts immediately came to my mind. Those thoughts purported to explain the phenomenon I had experienced. I 'knew' on the spot that don Genaro had hypnotized me the moment he pinned me down on the ground, but I did not attempt to figure out how he had done it.

They both laughed hysterically when I expressed my thoughts. Don Genaro examined my pencil and said that the pencil was the key to wind up my mainspring. I felt quite belligerent. I was tired and irritable. I found myself practically yelling at them while their bodies shook with laughter.

Don Juan said that it was permissible to miss the boat, but not by such a wide margin; and that don Genaro had come exclusively to help me and show me the mystery of the dreamer and the dreamed.

My irritability came to a peak. Don Juan signaled don Genaro with a movement of his head. Both of them stood and took me around the house. There don Genaro demonstrated his great repertoire of animal grunts and cries. He asked me to choose one and he taught me how to reproduce it.

After hours of practice I got to the point where I could imitate it quite well. The end result was that they themselves had enjoyed my clumsy attempts and laughed until they were practically weeping; and I had released my tension by reproducing the loud cry of an animal. I told them that there was something truly awesome in my imitation. The relaxation of my body was unequaled.

Don Juan said that if I would perfect the cry I could turn it into an affair of power, or I could simply use it to relieve my tension whenever I needed to. He suggested I should go to sleep, but I was afraid to fall asleep. I sat with them by the kitchen fire for a while and then, quite unintentionally, I fell into a deep sleep.

I woke up at dawn. Don Genaro was sleeping by the door. He seemingly woke up at the same time I did. They had covered me up and folded my jacket as a pillow. I felt very calm and rested. I commented to don Genaro that I had felt exhausted the night before. He said that so had he. He whispered as if he were confiding in me and told me that don Juan was even more exhausted because he was older.

"You and I are young," he said with a glint in his eyes. "But he is old. He must be about three hundred now."

I sat up hurriedly. Don Genaro covered his face with his blanket and roared with laughter. Don Juan came into the room at that moment.

I had a feeling of completeness and peace. For once, nothing really mattered. I was so at ease that I wanted to weep.

Don Juan said that the night before I had begun to be aware of my luminosity. He admonished me not to indulge in the sense of well-being I was having because it would turn into complacency.

"At this moment," I said, "I do not want to explain anything. It does not matter what don Genaro did to me last night."

"I did not do anything to you," don Genaro retorted. "Look, it is me, Genaro. Your Genaro! Touch me!"

I embraced don Genaro and we both laughed like two children.

He asked me if I thought it was strange that I could embrace him then when last time I had seen him there I had been unable to touch him. I assured him that those issues were no longer pertinent to me.

Don Juan's comment was that I was indulging in being broad-minded and good.

"Watch out!" he said. "A warrior never lets his guard down. If you keep on being so happy you are going to drain the little power you have left."

"What should I do?" I asked.

"Be yourself," he said. "Doubt everything. Be suspicious."

"But I do not like to be that way, don Juan."

"It is not a matter of whether you like it or not. What matters is; what can you use as a shield? A warrior must use everything available to him to close his mortal gap once it opens. So it is of no importance that you really do not like to be suspicious or ask questions. That is your only shield now.

"Write. Write or you will die. To die with elation is a crappy way of dying."

"How should a warrior die, then?" don Genaro asked in exactly my own tone of voice.

"A warrior dies the hard way," don Juan said. "His death must struggle to take him. A warrior does not give himself to it."

Don Genaro opened his eyes to an enormous size, and then blinked.

"What Genaro showed you yesterday is of utmost importance," don Juan went on. "You ca not slough it off with piousness. Yesterday you told me that you had been driven wild with the idea of the double. But look at you now. You do not care any more.

"That is the trouble with people that go wild. They go wild both ways. Yesterday you were all questions. Today you are all acceptance."

I pointed out that he always found a flaw in what I did, regardless of how I did it.

"That is not true!" he exclaimed. "There is no flaw in the warrior's way. Follow it and your acts cannot be criticized by anyone. Take yesterday as an example. The warrior's way would have been, first, to ask questions without fear and without suspicion, and then let Genaro show you the mystery of the dreamer; without fighting him, or draining yourself. Today the warrior's way would be to assemble what you have learned without presumptuousness and without piousness. Do that and no one can find flaws in it."

I thought by his tone that don Juan must have been terribly annoyed with my blunderings. But he smiled at me and then giggled as if his own words had made him laugh.

I told him that I was just holding back; not wanting to burden them with my probes. I was indeed overwhelmed by what don Genaro had done. I had been convinced, although it no longer mattered, that don Genaro had been waiting in the bushes for don Juan to call him. Then later on he had cashed in on my fright and used it to stun me. After being held forcibly on the ground I must have undoubtedly passed out, and then don Genaro must have mesmerized me.

Don Juan argued that I was too strong to be subdued that easily.

"What took place then?" I asked him.

"Genaro came to see you to tell you something very exclusive," he said. "When he came out of the bushes, he was Genaro the double. There is another way to talk about this that would explain it better, but I can not use it now."

"Why not, don Juan?"

"Because you are not ready yet to talk about the totality of oneself. For the time being I can only say that this Genaro here is not the double now."

He pointed to don Genaro with a movement of his head. Don Genaro blinked repeatedly.

"The Genaro of last night was the double. And as I told you already, the double has inconceivable power. He showed you a most important issue. In order to do that he had to touch you. The double simply tapped you on the neck on the same spot the ally walked over you years ago. Naturally you went out like a light.

And naturally too, you indulged like a son of a bitch. It took us hours to round you up. Thus you dissipated your power; and when the time came for you to accomplish a warrior's feat you did not have enough sap."

"What was that warrior's feat, don Juan?"

"I told you that Genaro came to show you something; the mystery of luminous beings as dreamers. You wanted to know about the double. It begins in dreams. But then you asked, 'What is the double?' And I said the double is the self. The self dreams the double. That should be simple, except that there is nothing simple about us.

"Perhaps the ordinary dreams of the self are simple, but that does not mean that the self is simple. Once it has learned to dream the double, the self arrives at this weird crossroad, and a moment comes when one realizes that it is the double who dreams the self."

I had written down everything he had said. I had also paid attention to what he was saying, but had failed to understand him.

Don Juan repeated his statements.

"The lesson last night, as I told you, was about the dreamer and the dreamed; or who dreams whom."

"I beg your pardon," I said.

Both of them broke into laughter.

"Last night," don Juan proceeded, "you almost chose to wake up at the power place."

"What do you mean, don Juan?"

"That would have been the feat. If you had not indulged in your stupid ways, you would have had enough power to tip the scales; and you would have, no doubt, scared yourself to death. Fortunately, or unfortunately, as the case may be, you did not have enough power. In fact, you wasted your power in worthless confusion to the point that you almost did not have enough to survive.

"So, as you may very well understand, to indulge in your little quirks is not only stupid and wasteful, but also injurious. A warrior that drains himself cannot live. The body is not an indestructible affair. You might have gotten gravely ill. You did not simply because Genaro and I deviated some of your crap."

The full impact of his words was beginning to take hold of me.

"Last night Genaro guided you through the intricacies of the double," don Juan went on. "Only he can do that for you. And it was not a vision or a hallucination when you saw yourself lying on the ground. You could have realized that with infinite clarity if you had not gotten lost in your indulging. And you could have known then that you yourself are a dream; that your double is dreaming you in the same fashion that you dreamed him last night."

"But how can that be possible, don Juan?"

"No one knows how it happens. We only know that it does happen. That is the mystery of us as luminous beings. Last night you had two dreams and you could have awakened in either one, but you did not have enough power even to understand that."

They looked at me fixedly for a moment.

"I think he understands," don Genaro said.

The Second Ring of Power. ©1977 by Carlos Castaneda.

Chapter 03 - The Secret Of The Luminous Beings.

Don Genaro delighted me for hours with some preposterous instructions on how to manage my daily world. Don Juan said that I should be very careful and serious-minded about the recommendations made by don Genaro because, although they were funny, they were not a joke.

Around noon don Genaro stood up and without saying a word walked into the bushes. I was also going to get up, but don Juan gently held me down and in a solemn voice announced that don Genaro was going to try one more thing with me.

"What is he up to?" I asked. "What is he going to do to me?"

Don Juan assured me that I did not have to worry.

"You are approaching a crossroad," he said. "A certain crossroad that every warrior comes to."

I had the idea that he was talking about my death. He seemed to anticipate my question and signaled me not to say anything.

"We will not discuss this matter," he said. "Suffice it to say that the crossroad I am referring to is the sorcerers' explanation. Genaro believes you are ready for it."

"When are you going to tell me about it?"

"I do not know when. You are the recipient, therefore it is up to you. You will have to decide when."

"What is wrong with right now?"

"To decide does not mean to choose an arbitrary time," he said. "To decide means that you have trimmed your spirit impeccably, and that you have done everything possible to be worthy of knowledge and power.

"Today, however, you must solve a little riddle for Genaro. He has gone ahead of us, and he will be waiting somewhere in the chaparral. No one knows the spot where he will he, nor the specific time to go to him. If you are capable of determining the right time to leave the house, you will also be capable of guiding yourself to where he is."

I told don Juan that I could not imagine anyone being able to solve such a riddle.

"How can leaving the house at a specific time guide me to where don Genaro is?" I asked.

Don Juan smiled and began to hum a tune. He seemed to enjoy my agitation.

"That is the problem which Genaro has set up for you," he said. "If you have enough personal power, you will decide with absolute certainty the right time to leave the house. How leaving at the precise time will guide you is something that no one knows. And yet, if you have enough power, you yourself will attest that this is so."

"But how am I going to be guided, don Juan?"

"No one knows that either."

"I think don Genaro is pulling my leg."

"You better watch out then," he said. "If Genaro is pulling your leg he is liable to yank it out."

Don Juan laughed at his own joke. I could not join him. My fear about the inherent danger of don Genaro's manipulations was too real.

"Can you give me some clues?" I asked.

"There are no clues!" he said cuttingly.

"Why does don Genaro want to do this?"

"He wants to test you," he replied. "Let us say that it is very important for him to know whether you can take the sorcerers' explanation. If you solve the riddle, the implication will be that you have stored enough personal power and you are ready. But if you flub it, it will be because you do not have enough power, and in that case the sorcerers' explanation will not make any sense to you.

"I think that we should give you the explanation regardless of whether you understand it or not. That is my idea. Genaro is a more conservative warrior. He wants things in their proper order and he will not give in until he thinks you are ready."

"Why do you not just tell me about the sorcerers' explanation yourself?"

"Because Genaro must be the one who helps you."

"Why is that so, don Juan?"

"Genaro does not want me to tell you why," he said. "Not yet."

"Would it hurt me to know the sorcerers' explanation?" I asked.

"I do not think so."

"Please, don Juan, tell me then."

"You must be joking. Genaro has precise ideas on this matter, and we must honor and respect them."

He made an imperative gesture to quiet me.

After a long unnerving pause I ventured a question. "But how can I solve this riddle, don Juan?"

"I really do not know that. Thus I can not advise you what to do," he said. "Genaro is most efficient. He designed the riddle just for you. Since he is doing this for your benefit, he is attuned to you alone. Therefore only you can pick the precise time to leave the house. He will call you himself, and guide you by means of his call."

"What will his call be like?"

"I do not know. His call is for you; not for me. He will be tapping your will directly. In other words, you must use your will in order to know the call.

"Genaro feels that he must make sure at this point that you have stored sufficient personal power to enable you to turn your will into a functioning unit."

'Will' was another concept which don Juan had delineated with great care, but without making it clear. I had gathered from his explanations that 'will' was a force that emanated from the umbilical region through an unseen opening below the navel; an opening he had called the 'gap'. 'Will' was allegedly cultivated only by sorcerers. It came to the practitioners veiled in mystery, and purportedly gave them the capacity to perform extraordinary acts.

I remarked to don Juan that there was no chance that anything so vague could ever be a functioning unit in my life.

"That is where you are wrong," he said. "The will develops in a warrior in spite of every opposition of the reason."

"Can don Genaro, being a sorcerer, not know whether I am ready or not without testing me?" I asked.

"He certainly can," he said. "But that knowledge will not be of any value or consequence because it has nothing to do with you. You are the one who is learning. Therefore you yourself must claim knowledge as power; not Genaro. Genaro is not concerned with his knowing as much as with your knowing.

You must find out whether or not your will works. This is a very difficult point to make. In spite of what Genaro or I know about you, you must prove to yourself that you are in the position to claim knowledge as power.

In other words, you yourself have to be convinced that you can exercise your 'will'. If you are not, then you must become convinced today. If you cannot perform this task, then Genaro's conclusion will be that regardless of what he might see about you, you are not ready yet."

I experienced an overwhelming apprehension.

"Is all this necessary?" I asked.

"It is Genaro's request and must be obeyed," he said in a firm but friendly tone.

"But what does don Genaro have to do with me?"

"You may find that out today," he said and smiled.

I pleaded with don Juan to get me out of that intolerable situation and explain all the mysterious talk. He laughed and patted my chest, and made a joke about a Mexican weight lifter who had enormous pectoral muscles but could not do heavy physical labor because his back was weak.

"Watch those muscles," he said. "They should not be just for show."

"My muscles have nothing to do with what you are talking about," I said in a belligerent mood.

"They do," he replied. "The body must be perfection before the will is a functioning unit."

Don Juan had again deviated the direction of my probing. I felt restless and frustrated.

I stood up and went to the kitchen and drank some water. Don Juan followed me, and suggested that I should practice the animal cry that don Genaro had taught me. We walked to the side of the house. I sat on a pile of wood and involved myself in reproducing it. Don Juan made some corrections and gave me some pointers about my breathing. The end result was a state of complete physical relaxation.

We returned to the ramada and sat down again. I told him that sometimes I felt irked with myself because I was so helpless.

"There is nothing wrong with the feeling of being helpless," he said. "All of us are most familiar with it. Remember that we have spent an eternity as helpless infants. I have already told you that at this very moment you are like an infant who can not get out of the crib by himself; much less act on his own. Genaro gets you out of your crib, let us say, by picking you up. But an infant wants to act, and since he can not, he complains. There is nothing wrong with that, but to indulge in protesting and complaining is another matter."

Don Juan demanded that I keep myself relaxed. He suggested that I ask him questions for a while until I was in a better frame of mind.

For a moment I was at a loss and could not decide what to ask.

Don Juan unrolled a straw mat and told me to sit on it. Then he filled a large gourd with water and put it in a carrying net. He seemed to be preparing for a journey. He sat down again and urged me with a movement of his eyebrows to begin my questions.

I asked him to tell me more about the moth.

He gave me a long scrutinizing look and chuckled.

"That was an ally," he said. "You know that."

"But what actually is an ally, don Juan?"

"There is no way of saying exactly what an ally is; just as there is no way of saying exactly what a tree is."

"A tree is a living organism," I said.

"That does not tell me much," he said. "I can also say that an ally is a force; a tension. I have told you that already, but that does not say much about an ally.

"Just like in the case of a tree, the only way to know 'what an ally is' is by experiencing it. Over the years I have struggled to prepare you for the momentous encounter with an ally. You may not realize this, but it took you years of preparation to meet tree. To meet ally is no different. A teacher must acquaint his disciple with ally little by little; piece by piece. You have over the course of the years stored a great amount of knowledge about it, and now you are capable of putting that knowledge together to experience ally the way you experience tree."

"I have no idea that I am doing that, don Juan."

"Your reason is not aware of it because it cannot accept the possibility of ally to begin with. Fortunately it is not the reason which puts ally together. It is the body. You have perceived ally in many degrees and on many occasions. Each of those perceptions was stored in your body. The sum of those pieces is the ally. I do not know any other way of describing it."

I said that I could not conceive that my body was acting by itself as if it were an entity separate from my reason.

"It is not, but we have made it so," he said. "Our reason is petty and it is always at odds with our body. This of course is only a way of talking, but the triumph of a man of knowledge is that he has joined the two together. Since you are not a man of knowledge, your body does things now that your reason cannot comprehend. The ally is one of those things. You were not mad, and neither were you dreaming when you perceived the ally that night- right here."

I asked him about the frightening idea which he and don Genaro had implanted in me; that the ally was an entity waiting for me at the edge of a small valley in the mountains of northern Mexico. They had told me that sooner or later I had to keep my appointment with the ally and wrestle with it.

"Those are ways of talking about mysteries for which there are no words," he said. "Genaro and I said that at the edge of that plain the ally was waiting for you. That statement was true, but it does not have the meaning that you want to give it.

"The ally is waiting for you. That is for sure, but it is not at the edge of any plain. It is right here, or there, or in any other place. The ally is waiting for you just like death is waiting for you; everywhere and nowhere."

"Why is the ally waiting for me?"

"For the same reason that death waits for you," he said, "because you were born. There is no possibility of explaining at this point what is meant by that. You must first experience the ally. You must perceive it in its full force. Then the sorcerers' explanation may throw light upon it. So far you have had enough power to clarify at least one point; that the ally is a moth.

"Some years ago you and I went to the mountains, and you had a bout with something. I had no way of telling you then what was taking place. You saw a strange shadow flying back and forth in front of the fire. You yourself said that it looked like a moth. Although you did not know what you were talking about, you were absolutely correct. The shadow was a moth.

Then on another occasion something frightened you out of your wits after you had fallen asleep; again, in front of a fire. I had warned you not to fall asleep, but you disregarded my warning. That act left you at the mercy of the ally and the moth stepped on your neck. Why you survived will always be a mystery to me. You did not know then, but I had given you up for dead. Your blunder was that serious.

"From then on, every time we have been in the mountains or in the desert, even if you did not notice it, the moth always followed us. All in all then, we can say that for you the ally is a moth. But I cannot say that it is really a moth the way we know moths. Calling the ally a moth is again only a way of talking; a way of making that immensity out there understandable."

"Is the ally a moth for you too?" I asked.

"No. The way one understands the ally is a personal matter," he said.

I mentioned that we were back where we had started. He had not told me what an ally really was.

"There is no need to be confused," he said. "Confusion is a mood one enters into, but one can also get out of it. At this point there is no way of clarifying anything. Perhaps later on today we will be able to consider these matters in detail. It is up to you, or rather, it is up to your personal power."

He refused to say one more word. I became quite upset with the fear that I was going to fail the test. Don Juan took me to the back of his house and made me sit on a straw mat at the edge of an irrigation ditch. The water moved so slowly that it almost seemed stagnant. He commanded me to sit quietly, shut off my internal dialogue, and look at the water.

He said that years before he had discovered that I had a certain affinity for bodies of water; a feeling that was most convenient for the endeavors I was involved in. I remarked that I was not particularly fond of bodies of water, but neither did I dislike them. He said that that was precisely why water was beneficial for me. I was indifferent towards it. Under conditions of stress water could not trap me, and neither could it reject me.

He sat slightly behind me to my right, and admonished me to let go and not be afraid because he was there to help me if there was any need.

I had a moment of fear. I looked at him, waiting for further instructions. He forcibly turned my head towards the water and ordered me to proceed. I had no idea what he wanted me to do, so I simply relaxed.

As I looked at the water, I caught sight of the reeds on the opposite side. Unconsciously I rested my unfocused eyes on them. The slow current made them quiver. The water had the color of the desert dirt. I noticed that the ripples around the reeds looked like furrows or crevices on a smooth surface. At one instant the reeds became gigantic. The water was a smooth flat ocher surface.

Then in a matter of seconds I was sound asleep; or perhaps I entered into a perceptual state for which I had no parallel. The closest way of describing it would be to say that I went to sleep and had a portentous dream.

I felt that I could have gone on with it indefinitely if I had wanted to, but I deliberately ended it by engaging myself in a conscious self-dialogue. I opened my eyes. I was lying on the straw mat. Don Juan was a few feet away. My dream had been so magnificent that I began to recount it to him. He signaled me to be quiet.

With a long twig he pointed to two long shadows that some dry branches of desert chaparral cast on the ground. The tip of his twig followed the outline of one of the shadows as if it were drawing it. Then it jumped to the other and did the same with it. The shadows were about a foot long and over an inch wide. They were from five to six inches apart from each other.

The movement of the twig forced my eyes out of focus and I found myself looking with crossed eyes at four long shadows. Suddenly the two shadows in the middle merged into one and created an extraordinary perception of depth. There was some inexplicable roundness and volume in the shadow thus formed. It was almost like a transparent tube; a round bar of some unknown substance. I knew that my eyes were crossed and yet they seemed to be focused on one spot. The view there was crystal clear. I could move my eyes without dispelling the image.

I continued watching but without letting my guard down. I experienced a curious compulsion to let go and immerse myself in the scene. Something in what I was observing seemed to pull me, but something in myself surfaced and I began a semiconscious dialogue. Almost instantly I became aware of my surroundings in the world of everyday life.

Don Juan was watching me. He appeared to be puzzled. I asked him if there was something wrong. He did not answer. He helped me to sit up. It was only then that I realized that I had been lying on my back looking at the sky, and don Juan had been leaning over my face.

My first impulse was to tell him that I had actually seen the shadows on the ground while I had been looking at the sky, but he put his hand over my mouth. We sat in silence for a while. I had no thoughts. I experienced an exquisite sense of peace, and then quite abruptly I had an unyielding urge to get up and go into the chaparral to look for don Genaro.

I made an attempt to speak to don Juan. He jutted his chin and twisted his lips as a silent command not to talk. I tried to assess my predicament in a rational manner. I was enjoying my silence so much, however, that I did not want to bother with logical considerations.

After a moment's pause, I again felt the imperious need to walk into the bushes. I followed a trail. Don Juan tagged along behind me as if I were the leader.

We walked for about an hour. I succeeded in remaining without any thoughts. Then we came to a hillside. Don Genaro was there sitting near the top of a rock wall. He greeted me effusively and had to yell his words. He was about fifty feet above the ground. Don Juan made me sit down and then sat next to me.

Don Genaro explained that I had found the place where he had been waiting because he had guided me with a sound he had been making. As he voiced his words I realized that I had indeed been hearing a peculiar sound I thought to be a buzzing in my ears. It had seemed to be more of an internal affair; a bodily condition; a feeling of sound so undetermined that it was beyond the realm of conscious assessment and interpretation.

I believed that don Genaro had a small instrument in his left hand. From where I sat I could not distinguish it clearly. It looked like a jew's-harp. With it he produced a soft eerie sound which was practically indiscernible. He kept on playing it for a moment, as if allowing me time to fully realize what he had just said.

Then he showed me his left hand. There was nothing in it. He was not holding any instrument. It had appeared to me that he was playing some instrument because of the manner in which he had put his hand to his mouth. Actually the sound was being produced with his lips and the edge of his left hand between the thumb and index finger.

I turned to don Juan to explain to him that I had been fooled by don Genaro's movements. He made a quick gesture, told me not to talk, and told me to pay close attention to what don Genaro was doing. I turned back to look at don Genaro, but he was no longer there. I thought that he must have climbed down. I waited a few moments for him to emerge from behind the bushes.

The rock he had been standing on was a peculiar formation. It was more like a huge ledge on the side of a larger rock wall. I must have taken my eyes away from him for only a couple of seconds. If he had climbed up, I would have caught sight of him before he had reached the top of the rock wall; and if he had climbed down, he would also have been visible from where I was sitting.

I asked don Juan about don Genaro's whereabouts. He replied that he still was standing on the rock ledge. As far as I could judge there was no one there, but don Juan maintained over and over again that don Genaro was still standing on the rock.

He did not seem to be joking. His eyes were steady and fierce. He said in a cutting tone that my senses were not the proper avenue to appraise what don Genaro was doing. He ordered me to shut off my internal dialogue. I struggled for a moment and began to close my eyes. Don Juan lurched at me and shook me by the shoulders. He whispered that I had to keep my view on the rock ledge.

I had a sensation of drowsiness and heard don Juan's words as if they were coming from far away. I automatically looked at the ledge. Don Genaro was there again. That did not interest me. I noticed semi-consciously that it was very difficult for me to breathe, but before I could have a thought about it don Genaro jumped to the ground.

That act did not catch my interest either. He came over to me and helped me stand up; holding me by the arm. Don Juan held my other arm. They propped me up between the two of them. Then it was only don Genaro who was helping me walk. He whispered something in my ear that I could not understand, and suddenly I felt that he pulled my body in some strange way. He grabbed me, in a manner of speaking, by the skin of my stomach and pulled me up to the ledge; or perhaps onto another rock.

I knew that for an instant I was on a rock. I could have sworn that it was the rock ledge. The image was so fleeting, however, that I could not evaluate it in detail. Then I felt that something in me faltered and I fell backwards. I had a faint feeling of anguish or perhaps physical discomfort.

The next thing I knew don Juan was talking to me. I could not understand him. I concentrated my attention on his lips. The sensation I had was dreamlike. I was trying to rip from the inside an enveloping film-like sheet that encased me while don Juan tried to rip it from the outside. Finally it actually popped, and don Juan's words became audible and their meaning crystal clear. He was commanding me to surface by myself. I struggled desperately to gain my sobriety. I had no success. I quite consciously wondered why I was having so much trouble. I fought to talk to myself.

Don Juan seemed to be aware of my difficulty. He urged me to try harder. Something out there was preventing me from engaging myself in my familiar internal dialogue. It was as if a strange force were making me drowsy and indifferent.

I fought against it until I began to lose my breath. I heard don Juan talking to me. My body contorted involuntarily with the tension. I felt as if I were embraced and locked in mortal combat with something that was keeping me from breathing. I did not have fear, but rather some uncontrollable fury possessed me. My wrath mounted to such heights that I growled and screamed like an animal. Then my body was taken by a seizure. I had a jolt that stopped me instantly. I could again breathe normally, and then I realized that don Juan had poured his gourd of water over my stomach and neck; soaking me.

He helped me sit up. Don Genaro was standing on the ledge. He called my name and then jumped to the ground. I saw him plummeting down from a height of fifty feet or so, and I experienced an unbearable sensation around my umbilical region. I had had the same sensation in dreams of falling.

Don Genaro came to me and asked me, smiling, if I had liked his leap. I tried unsuccessfully to say something. Don Genaro called my name again.

"Carlitos! Watch me!" he said.

He swung his arms at his sides four or five times as if to get momentum, and then jumped out of sight; or I thought he did; or perhaps he did something else for which I had no description. He had been five or six feet away from me, and then he vanished as if he had been sucked away by an uncontrollable force.

I felt aloof and tired. I had a sense of indifference and did not want to think or talk to myself. I was not afraid; but inexplicably sad. I wanted to weep. Don Juan hit me repeatedly with his knuckles on the top of my head and laughed as if everything that had happened were a joke. He then demanded that I talk to myself because that was the time when the internal dialogue was desperately needed. I heard him ordering me, "Talk! Talk."

I had an involuntary spasm in the muscles of my lips. My mouth moved without sounds. I remembered don Genaro moving his mouth in a similar way when he was clowning and I wished I could have said, as he had, "My mouth does not want to talk." I tried to voice the words and my lips contorted in a painful way. Don Juan seemed to be on the verge of collapsing with laughter. His enjoyment was contagious and I also laughed. Finally he helped me to stand up. I asked him if don Genaro was coming back. He said that don Genaro had had enough of me for the day.

Later, don Juan and I were sitting near the fire in his earth stove. He had insisted that I eat. I was not hungry, or tired. An unusual melancholy had overtaken me. I felt removed from all the events of the day.

"You almost made it," don Juan said.

Don Juan handed me my writing pad. I made a supreme effort to recapture my usual state. I jotted down some comments. Little by little I brought myself back into my old pattern. It was as if a veil were being lifted. Suddenly I was again involved in my familiar attitude of interest and bewilderment.

"Good, good," don Juan said, patting my head. "I have told you that the true art of a warrior is to balance terror and wonder."

Don Juan's mood was unusual. He seemed almost nervous; anxious. He appeared to be willing to speak on his own accord. I believed that he was preparing me for the sorcerers' explanation, and I became quite anxious myself. His eyes had a strange glimmer that I had seen only a few times before.

After I told him what I thought of his unusual attitude, he said that he was happy for me; that as a warrior he could rejoice in the triumphs of his fellow men if they were triumphs of the spirit. He added that, unfortunately, I was not yet ready for the sorcerers' explanation in spite of the fact that I had successfully solved don Genaro's riddle. His contention was that when he had poured water over my body, I had actually been dying; and my whole achievement had been canceled out by my incapacity to fend off the last of don Genaro's onslaughts.

"Genaro's power was like a tide that engulfed you," he said.

"Did don Genaro want to hurt me?" I asked.

"No," he said. "Genaro wants to help you. But power can be met only with power. He was testing you and you failed."

"But I solved his riddle, did I not?"

"You did fine," he said. "So fine that Genaro had to believe that you were capable of a complete warrior's feat. You almost made it. What floored you this time was not indulging, though."

"What was it then?"

"You are too impatient and violent. Instead of relaxing and going with Genaro, you began to fight him. You can not win against him. He is stronger than you."

Don Juan then volunteered some advice and suggestions about my personal relations with people. His remarks were a serious sequel to what don Genaro had jokingly said to me earlier. He was in a talkative mood, and without any coaxing on my part, he began to explain what had taken place during the last two times I had been there.

"As you know," he said, "the crux of sorcery is the internal dialogue. That is the key to everything. When a warrior learns to stop it, everything becomes possible. The most farfetched schemes become attainable. The passageway to all the weird and eerie experiences that you have had recently was the fact that you could stop talking to yourself.

"You have in complete sobriety witnessed the ally, Genaro's double, and 'the dreamer and the dreamed'; and today you almost learned about the totality of yourself. That was the warrior's feat that Genaro expected you to perform.

"All this has been possible because of the amount of personal power that you have stored. It started the last time you were here when I caught sight of a very auspicious omen. As you arrived, I heard the ally prowling around. First I heard its soft steps, and then I saw the moth looking at you as you got out of your car. The ally was motionless watching you.

"That to me was the best omen. Had the ally been agitated and moving around as if it was displeased with your presence- the way it always had been- the course of the events would have been different. Many times I have caught sight of the ally in an unfriendly state towards you.

"But this time the omen was right, and I knew that the ally had a piece of knowledge for you. That was the reason why I said that you had an appointment with knowledge; an appointment with a moth that had been pending for a long time. For reasons inconceivable to us, the ally selected the form of a moth to manifest itself to you."

"But you said that the ally was formless and that one could only judge its effects," I said.

"That is right," he said. "But the ally is a moth for the onlookers who are associated with you; Genaro and myself. For you the ally is only an effect: a sensation in your body, or a sound, or the golden specks of knowledge. It remains as a fact, nonetheless, that by choosing the form of a moth the ally is telling Genaro and me something of great importance. Moths are the givers of knowledge, and the friends and helpers of sorcerers. It is because the ally chose to be a moth around you that Genaro places such a great emphasis on you.

"That night that you met the moth, as I had anticipated, was a true appointment with knowledge for you. You learned the moth's call, felt the gold dust of its wings, but above all, that night for the first time you were aware that you saw.

"And your body learned that we are luminous beings. You have not yet assessed correctly that monumental event in your life. Genaro demonstrated for you with tremendous force and clarity that we are a feeling, and that what we call our body is a cluster of luminous fibers that have awareness.

"Last night you were back again under the good auspices of the ally. I came to look at you as you arrived, and I knew that I had to call Genaro so he could explain to you the mystery of the dreamer and the dreamed. You believed then, just as you always have, that I was tricking you.

"But Genaro was not hiding in the bushes as you thought. He came over for you even if your reason refuses to believe it."

That part of don Juan's elucidation was indeed the hardest to take at its face value. I could not admit it. I said that don Genaro had been real and of this world.

"Everything that you have witnessed so far has been real and of this world," he said. "There is no other world. Your stumbling block is a peculiar insistence on your part, and that peculiarity of yours is not going to be cured by explanations.

"So today Genaro addressed himself directly to your body. A careful examination of what you did today will reveal to you that your body put things together in a most praiseworthy manner. Somehow you refrained from indulging in your visions at the irrigation ditch. You kept a rare control and aloofness as warriors should. You did not believe anything, but you still acted efficiently and thus you were capable of following Genaro's call. You actually found him without any aid from me.

"When we arrived at the rock ledge, you were imbued with power and you saw Genaro standing where other sorcerers have stood for similar reasons. He walked over to you after jumping from the ledge. He himself was all power. Had you proceeded as you did earlier by the irrigation ditch, you would have seen him as he really is; a luminous being.

"Instead, you got frightened, especially when Genaro made you leap. That leap in itself should have been sufficient to transport you beyond your boundaries; but you did not have the strength, and you fell back into the world of your reason. Then of course, you entered into mortal combat with yourself. Something in you- your will- wanted to go with Genaro, while your reason opposed him. Had I not helped you, you now would be lying dead and buried in that power place. But even with my help the outcome was dubious for a moment."

We were silent for a few minutes. I waited for him to speak. Finally I asked, "Did don Genaro make me leap up to the rock ledge?"

"Do not take that leap in the sense that you understand a leap," he said. "Once again this is only a way of speaking. As long as you think that you are a solid body, you cannot conceive what I am talking about."

He then spilled some ashes on the ground by the lantern covering an area about two feet square, and drew a diagram with his fingers; a diagram that had eight points interconnected with lines. It was a geometrical figure.

He had drawn a similar one years before when he tried to explain to me that it was not an illusion that I had observed the same leaf falling four times from the same tree.

The diagram in the ashes had two epicenters. One he called 'reason', and the other 'will'.

'Reason' was interconnected directly with a point he called 'talking'. Through 'talking', 'reason' was indirectly connected to three other points: 'feeling', 'dreaming' and 'seeing'. The other epicenter, 'will', was directly connected to 'feeling', 'dreaming' and 'seeing'; but only indirectly connected to 'reason' and 'talking'.

I remarked that the diagram was different from the one I had recorded years before.

"The outer form is of no importance," he said. "These points represent a human being, and can be drawn in any way you want."

"Do they represent the body of a human being?" I asked.

"Do not call it the body," he said. "These are eight points on the fibers of a luminous being.

"A sorcerer says, as you can see in the diagram, that a human being is first of all 'will'; because 'will' is directly connected to three points: 'feeling', 'dreaming' and 'seeing'.

"Then next, a human being is 'reason'. This is properly a center that is smaller than 'will'. It is connected only with 'talking'."

"What are the other two points, don Juan?"

He looked at me and smiled.

"You are a lot stronger now than you were the first time we talked about this diagram," he said. "But you are not yet strong enough to know all the eight points. Genaro will someday show you the other two."

"Does everybody have those eight points or only sorcerers?"

"We may say that every one of us brings to the world eight points. Two of them- 'reason' and 'talking'- are known by everyone. 'Feeling' is always vague but somehow familiar. But only in the world of sorcerers does one get fully acquainted with 'dreaming', 'seeing', and 'will'.

"And finally, at the outer edge of that world one encounters the other two. The eight points make the totality of oneself."

He showed me in the diagram that in essence all the points could be made to connect with one another indirectly.

I asked him again about the two mysterious remaining points. He showed me that they were connected only to 'will' and that they were removed from 'feeling', 'dreaming' and 'seeing'; and much more distant from 'talking' and 'reason'. He pointed with his finger to show that they were isolated from the rest and from each other.

"Those two points will never yield to 'talking' or to 'reason'," he said. "Only 'will' can handle them. 'Reason' is so removed from them that it is utterly useless to try figuring them out. This is one of the hardest things to realize. After all, the forte of 'reason' is to reason out everything."

I asked him if the eight points corresponded to areas or to certain organs in a human being.

"They do," he replied dryly and erased the diagram.

He touched my head and said that that was the center of 'reason' and 'talking'. The tip of my sternum was the center of 'feeling'. The area below the navel was 'will'. 'Dreaming' was on the right side against the ribs. 'Seeing' on the left. He said that sometimes in some warriors 'seeing' and 'dreaming' were on the right side.

"Where are the other two points?" I asked.

He gave me a most obscene answer and broke into a belly laugh.

"You are so sneaky," he said. "You think I am a sleepy old goat, do you not?"

I explained to him that my questions created their own momentum.

"Do not try to hurry," he said. "You will know in due time, and then you will be on your own by yourself."

"Do you mean that I will not see you any more, don Juan?"

"Not ever again," he said. "Genaro and I will be then what we always have been; dust on the road."

I had a jolt in the pit of my stomach.

"What are you saying, don Juan?"

"I am saying that we all are unfathomable beings; luminous and boundless. You, Genaro, and I are stuck together by a purpose that is not our decision."

"What purpose are you talking about?"

"Learning the warrior's way. You can not get out of it, but neither can we. As long as our achievement is pending you will find me or Genaro. But once it is accomplished you will fly freely, and no one knows where the force of your life will take you."

"What is don Genaro doing in this?"

"That subject is not in your realm yet," he said. "Today I have to pound the nail that Genaro put in; the fact that we are luminous beings. We are perceivers. We are an awareness. We are not objects. We have no solidity. We are boundless.

"The world of objects and solidity is a way of making our passage on earth convenient. It is only a description that was created to help us. Each of us, or rather our reason, forgets that the description is only a description, and thus we entrap the totality of ourselves in a vicious circle from which we rarely emerge in our lifetime.

"At this moment for instance, you are involved in extricating yourself from the snarls of reason. It is preposterous and unthinkable for you that Genaro just appeared at the edge of the chaparral, and yet you cannot deny that you witnessed it. You perceived it as such."

Don Juan chuckled. He carefully drew another diagram in the ashes and covered it with his hat before I could copy it.

"We are perceivers," he proceeded. "The world that we perceive, though, is an illusion. It was created by a description that was told to us since the moment we were born.

"We the luminous beings are born with two rings of power, but we use only one to create the world. That ring which is hooked very soon after we are born is 'reason', and its companion is 'talking'. Between the two they concoct and maintain the world.

"So, in essence, the world that your 'reason' wants to sustain is the world created by a description, and its dogmatic and inviolable rules; a description which 'reason' learns to accept and defend.

"The secret of the luminous beings is that they have another ring of power which is never used; the 'will'. The trick of the sorcerer is the same trick of the average man. Both have a description.

"One- the average man- upholds it with his 'reason'. The other- the sorcerer- upholds it with his 'will'. Both descriptions have their rules, and the rules are perceivable. But the advantage of the sorcerer is that 'will' is more engulfing than 'reason'.

"The suggestion that I want to make at this point is that from now on you should let yourself perceive whether the description is upheld by your 'reason' or by your 'will'. I feel that is the only way for you to use your daily world as a challenge and a vehicle to accumulate enough personal power in order to get to the totality of yourself.

"Perhaps the next time that you come you will have enough of it. At any rate, wait until you feel like you felt today at the irrigation ditch; that an inner voice is telling you to do so. If you come in any other spirit it will be a waste of time and a danger to you."

I remarked that if I had to wait for that inner voice I would never see them again.

"You would be surprised how well you can perform if your are against the wall," he said.

He stood up and picked up a bundle of firewood. He placed some dry sticks on the earth stove. The flames cast a yellowish glow on the ground. He then turned off the lantern, and squatted in front of his hat which was covering the drawing he had made in the ashes.

He commanded me to sit calmly, shut off my internal dialogue, and keep my eyes on his hat. I struggled for a few moments and then I felt a sensation of floating; of falling off a cliff. It was as if nothing were supporting me; as if I were not sitting or did not have a body.

Don Juan lifted his hat. Underneath there were spirals of ashes. I watched them without thinking. I felt the spirals moving. I felt them in my stomach. The ashes seemed to pile up. Then they were stirred and fluffed, and suddenly don Genaro was sitting in front of me.

The sight forced me instantly into my internal dialogue. I thought that I must have fallen asleep. I began to breathe in short gasps and tried to open my eyes, but my eyes were open.

I heard don Juan telling me to get up and move around. I jumped up and ran to the ramada. Don Juan and don Genaro ran after me. Don Juan brought his lantern. I could not catch my breath. I tried to calm myself as I had done before by jogging in place while I faced the west. I lifted my arms and began breathing. Don Juan came to my side and said that those movements were done only in the twilight.

Don Genaro yelled that it was twilight for me and both of them began to laugh. Don Genaro ran to the edge of the bushes, and then bounced back to the ramada as if he had been attached to a giant rubber band that made him snap back. He repeated the same movement three or four times, and then came to my side. Don Juan had been looking at me fixedly; giggling like a child.

They exchanged a furtive glance. Don Juan said to don Genaro in a loud voice that my reason was dangerous, and that it could kill me if it was not placated.

"For heaven's sake!" don Genaro exclaimed in a roaring voice. "Placate his reason!"

They jumped up and down, and laughed like two children.

Don Juan made me sit down underneath the lantern, and handed me my notebook.

"Tonight we are really pulling your leg," he said in a conciliatory tone. "Do not be afraid. Genaro was hiding under my hat."