whole chapter:
Journeys Through the Dark Sea of Awareness
"WE CAN SPEAK a little more clearly now about inner silence " don Juan said.
His statement was such a non sequitur that it startled me. He had been talking to me all afternoon about the vicissitudes that the Yaqui Indians had suffered after the big Yaqui wars of the twenties, when they were deported by the Mexican government from their native homeland in the state of Sonora, in northern Mexico, to work in sugarcane plantations in central and southern Mexico. The Mexican government had had problems with endemic wars with the Yaqui Indians for years. Don Juan told me some astounding, poignant Yaqui stories of political intrigue and betrayal, deprivation and human misery.
I had the feeling that don Juan was setting me up for something, because he knew that those stories were my cup of tea, so to speak. I had at that time an exaggerated sense of social justice and fair play.
"Circumstances around you have made it possible for you to have more energy," he went on. "You have started the recapitulation of your life; you have looked at your friends for the first time as if they were in a display window; you arrived at your breaking point, all by yourself, driven by your own needs; you canceled your business; and above all, you have accrued enough inner silence. All of these made it possible for you to make a journey through the dark sea of awareness.
"Meeting me in that town of our choice was that journey," he continued. "I know that a crucial question almost reached the surface in you, and that for an instant, you wondered if I really came to your house. My coming to see you wasn't a dream for you. I was real, wasn't I?"
"You were as real as anything could be," I said.
I had nearly forgotten about those events, but I remembered that it did seem strange to me that he had found my apartment. I had discarded my astonishment by the simple process of assuming that he had asked someone for my new address, although, if I had been pressed, I wouldn't have been able to come up with the identity of anyone who would have known where I lived.
"Let us clarify this point," he continued. "In my terms, which are the terms of the sorcerers of ancient Mexico, I was as real as 1 could have been, and as such, I actually went to your place from my inner silence to tell you about the requisite of infinity, and to warn you that you were about to run out of time. And you, in turn, from your inner silence, veritably went to that town of our choice to tell me that you had succeeded in fulfilling the requisite of infinity.
"In your terms, which are the terms of the average man, it was a dream-fantasy in both instances. You had a dream-fantasy that I came to your place without knowing the address, and then you had a dream-fantasy that you went to see me. As far as I'm concerned, as a sorcerer, what you consider your dream-fantasy of meeting me in that town was as real as the two of us talking here today."
I confessed to don Juan that there was no possibility of my framing those events in a pattern of thought proper to Western man. I said that to think of them in terms of dream-fantasy was to create a false category that couldn't stand up under scrutiny, and that the only quasi-explanation that was vaguely possible was another aspect of his knowledge: dreaming.
"No, it is not dreaming," he said emphatically. "This is something more direct, and more mysterious. By the way, I have a new definition of dreaming for you today, more in accordance with your state of being. Dreaming is the act of changing the point of attachment with the dark sea of awareness. If you view it in this fashion, it's a very simple concept, and a very simple maneuver. It takes all you have to realize it, but it's not an impossibility, nor is it something surrounded with mystical clouds.
"Dreaming is a term that has always bugged the hell out of me," he continued, "because it weakens a very powerful act. It makes it sound arbitrary; it gives it a sense of being a fantasy, and this is the only thing it is not. I tried to change the term myself, but it's too ingrained. Maybe someday you could change it yourself, although, as with everything else in sorcery, I am afraid that by the time you could actually do it, you won't give a damn about it because it won't make any difference what it is called anymore."
Don Juan had explained at great length, during the entire time that I had known him, that dreaming was an art, discovered by the sorcerers of ancient Mexico, by means of which ordinary dreams were transformed into bona-fide entrances to other worlds of perception. He advocated, in any way he could, the advent of something he called dreaming attention, which was the capacity to pay a special kind of attention, or to place a special kind of awareness on the elements of an ordinary dream.
I had followed meticulously all his recommendations and had succeeded in commanding my awareness to remain fixed on the elements of a dream. The idea that don Juan proposed was not to set out deliberately to have a desired dream, but to fix one's attention on the component elements of whatever dream presented itself.
Then don Juan had showed me energetically what the sorcerers of ancient Mexico considered to be the origin of dreaming: the displacement of the assemblage point. He said that the assemblage point was displaced very naturally during sleep, but that to see the displacement was a bit difficult because it required an aggressive mood, and that such an aggressive mood had been the predilection of the sorcerers of ancient Mexico. Those sorcerers, according to don Juan, had found all the premises of their sorcery by means of this mood.
"It is a very predatory mood," don Juan went on. "It's not difficult at all to enter into it, because man is a predator by nature. You could see, aggressively, anybody in this little village, or perhaps someone far away, while they are asleep; anyone would do for the purpose at hand. What's important is that you arrive at a complete sense of indifference. You are in search of something, and you are out to get it. You're going to go out looking for a person, searching like a feline, like an animal of prey, for someone to descend on."
Don Juan had told me, laughing at my apparent chagrin, that the difficulty with this technique was the mood, and that I couldn't be passive in the act of seeing, for the sight was not something to watch but to act upon. It might have been the power of his suggestion, but that day, when he had told me all this, I felt astoundingly aggressive. Every muscle of my body was filled to the brim with energy, and in my dreaming practice I did go after someone. I was not interested in who that someone might have been. I needed someone who was asleep, and some force I was aware of, without being fully conscious of it, had guided me to find that someone.
I never knew who the person was, but while I was seeing that person, I felt don Juan's presence. It was a strange sensation of knowing that someone was with me by an undetermined sensation of proximity that was happening at a level of awareness that
wasn't part of anything that 1 had ever experienced. 1 could only focus my attention on the individual at rest. 1 knew that he was a male, but I don't know how 1 knew that. I knew that he was asleep because the ball of energy that human beings ordinarily are was a little bit flat; it was expanded laterally.
And then I saw the assemblage point at a position different from the habitual one, which is right behind the shoulder blades. In this instance, it had been displaced to the right of where it should have been, and a bit lower. I calculated that in this case it had moved to the side of the ribs. Another thing that I noticed was that there was no stability to it. It fluctuated erratically and then abruptly went back to its normal position. I had the clear sensation that, obviously, my presence, and don Juan's, had awakened the individual. I had experienced a profusion of blurred images right after that, and then I woke up back in the place where I had started.
Don Juan had also told me all along that sorcerers were divided into two groups: one group was dreamers; the other was stalkers. The dreamers were those who had a great facility for displacing the assemblage point. The stalkers were those who had a great facility for maintaining the assemblage point fixed on that new position. Dreamers and stalkers complemented each other, and worked in pairs, affecting one another with their given proclivities.
Don Juan had assured me that the displacement and the fixation of the assemblage point could be realized at will by means of the sorcerers' iron-handed discipline. He said that the sorcerers of his lineage believed that there were at least six hundred points within the luminous sphere that we are, that when reached at will by the assemblage point, can each give us a totally inclusive world; meaning that, if our assemblage point is displaced to any of those points and remains fixed on it, we will perceive a world as inclusive and total as the world of everyday life, but a different world nevertheless.
Don Juan had further explained that the art of sorcery is to manipulate the assemblage point and make it change positions at
will on the luminous spheres that human beings are. The result of this manipulation is a shift in the point of contact with the dark sea of awareness, which brings as its concomitant a different bundle of zillions of energy fields in the form of luminous filaments that converge on the assemblage point. The consequence of new energy fields converging on the assemblage point is that awareness of a different sort than that which is necessary for perceiving the world of everyday life enters into action, turning the new energy fields into sensory data, sensory data that is interpreted and perceived as a different world because the energy fields that engender it are different from the habitual ones.
He had asserted that an accurate definition of sorcery as a practice would be to say that sorcery is the manipulation of the assemblage point for purposes of changing its focal point of contact with the dark sea of awareness, thus making it possible to perceive other worlds.
Don Juan had said that the art of the stalkers enters into play after the assemblage point has been displaced. Maintaining the assemblage point fixed in its new position assures sorcerers that they will perceive whatever new world they enter in its absolute completeness, exactly as we do in the world of ordinary affairs. For the sorcerers of don Juan's lineage, the world of everyday life was but one fold of a total world consisting of at least six hundred folds.
Don Juan went back again to the topic under discussion: my journeys through the dark sea of awareness, and said that what 1 had done from my inner silence was very similar to what is done in dreaming when one is asleep. However, when journeying through the dark sea of awareness, there was no interruption of any sort caused by going to sleep, nor was there any attempt whatsoever at controlling one's attention while having a dream. The journey through the dark sea of awareness entailed an immediate response. There was an overpowering sensation of the here and now. Don Juan lamented the fact that some idiotic sorcerers had given the name dreaming-awake to this act of reaching the dark sea of aware-ness directly, making the term dreaming even more ridiculous.
"When you thought that you had the dream-fantasy of going to that town of our choice," he continued, "you had actually placed your assemblage point directly on a specific position on the dark sea of awareness that allows the journey. Then the dark sea of awareness supplied you with whatever was necessary to carry on that journey. There's no way whatsoever to choose that place at will. Sorcerers say that inner silence selects it unerringly. Simple, isn't it?"
He explained to me then the intricacies of choice. He said that choice, for warrior-travelers, was not really the act of choosing, but rather the act of acquiescing elegantly to the solicitations of infinity.
"Infinity chooses," he said. "The art of the warrior-traveler is to have the ability to move with the slightest insinuation, the art of acquiescing to every command of infinity. For this, a warrior-traveler needs prowess, strength, and above everything else, sobriety. All those three put together give, as a result, elegance!"
After a moment's pause, I went back to the subject that intrigued me the most.
"But it's unbelievable that I actually went to that town, don Juan, in body and soul," I said.
"It is unbelievable, but it's not unlivable," he said. "The universe has no limits, and the possibilities at play in the universe at large are indeed incommensurable. So don't fall prey to the axiom, 'I believe only what I see,' because it is the dumbest stand one can possibly take."
Don Juan's elucidation had been crystal clear. It made sense, but I didn't know where it made sense; certainly not in my daily world of usual affairs. Don Juan assured me then, unleashing a great trepidation in me, that there was only one way in which sorcerers could handle all this information: to taste it through experience, because the mind was incapable of taking in all that stimulation.
"What do you want me to do, don Juan?" I asked.
"You must deliberately journey through the dark sea of awareness," he replied, "but you'll never know how this is done. Let's say that inner silence does it, following inexplicable ways, ways that cannot be understood, but only practiced."
Don Juan had me sit down on my bed and adopt the position that fostered inner silence. I usually fell asleep instantly whenever I adopted this position. However, when I was with don Juan, his presence always made it impossible for me to fall asleep; instead, I entered into a veritable state of complete quietude. This time, after an instant of silence, I found myself walking. Don Juan was guiding me by holding my arm as we walked.
We were no longer in his house; we were walking in a Yaqui town 1 had never been in before. I knew of the town's existence; I had been close to it many times, but I had been made to turn around by the sheer hostility of the people who lived around it. It was a town where it was nearly impossible for a stranger to enter. The only non-Yaquis who had free access to that town were the supervisors from the federal bank because of the fact that the bank bought the crops from the Yaqui farmers. The endless negotiations of the Yaqui farmers revolved around getting cash advances from the bank on the basis of a near-speculation process about future crops.
I instantly recognized the town from the descriptions of people who had been there. As if to increase my astonishment, don Juan whispered in my ear that we were in the Yaqui town in question. I wanted to ask him how we had gotten there, but I couldn't articulate my words. There were a large number of Indians talking in argumentative tones; tempers seemed to flare. I didn't understand a word of what they were saying, but the moment I conceived of the thought that I couldn't understand, something cleared up. It was very much as if more light went into the scene. Things became very defined and neat, and I understood what the people were saying although I didn't know how; I didn't speak their language. The words were definitely understandable to me, not singularly, but in clusters, as if my mind could pick up whole patterns of thought.
I could say in earnest that I got the shock of a lifetime, not so much because I understood what they were saying but because of the content of what they were saying. Those people were indeed warlike. They were not Western men at all. Their propositions were propositions of strife, warfare, strategy. They were measuring their strength, their striking resources, and lamenting the fact that they had no power to deliver their blows. I registered in my body the anguish of their impotence. All they had were sticks and stones to fight high-technology weapons. They mourned the fact that they had no leaders. They coveted, more than anything else one could imagine, the rise of some charismatic fighter who could galvanize them.
I heard then the voice of cynicism; one of them expressed a thought that seemed to devastate everyone equally, including me, for 1 seemed to be an indivisible part of them. He said that they were defeated beyond salvation, because if at a given moment one of them had the charisma to rise up and rally them, he would be betrayed because of envy and jealousy and hurt feelings.
1 wanted to comment to don Juan on what was happening to me, but 1 couldn't voice a single word. Only don Juan could talk.
"The Yaquis are not unique in their pettiness," he said in my ear. "It is a condition in which human beings are trapped, a condition that is not even human, but imposed from the outside."
1 felt my mouth opening and closing involuntarily as 1 tried desperately to ask a question that I could not even conceive of. My mind was blank, void of thoughts. Don Juan and 1 were in the middle of a circle of people, but none of them seemed to have noticed us. I did not record any movement, reaction, or furtive glance that may have indicated that they were aware of us.
The next instant, I found myself in a Mexican town built around a railroad station, a town located about a mile and a half east of where don Juan lived. Don Juan and 1 were in the middle of the street by the government bank. Immediately afterward, I saw one of the strangest sights I had ever been witness to in don Juan's world. I was seeing energy as it flows in the universe, but I wasn't seeing human beings as spherical or oblong blobs of energy. The people around me were, in one instant, the normal beings of everyday life, and in the next instant, they were strange creatures. It was as if the ball of energy that we are were transparent; it was like a halo around an insectlike core. That core did not have a primate's shape. There were no skeletal pieces, so I wasn't seeing people as if I had X-ray vision that went to the bone core. At the core of people there were, rather, geometric shapes made of what seemed to be hard vibrations of matter. That core was like letters of the alphabet-a capital T seemed to be the main structural support. An inverted thick L was suspended in front of the T; the Greek letter for delta, which went almost to the floor, was at the bottom of the vertical bar of the T, and seemed to be a support for the whole structure. On top of the letter T, I saw a ropelike strand, perhaps an inch in diameter; it went through the top of the luminous sphere, as if what I was seeing were indeed a gigantic bead hanging from the top like a drooping gem.
Once, don Juan had presented to me a metaphor to describe the energetic union of strands of human beings. He had said that the sorcerers of ancient Mexico described those strands as a curtain made from beads strung on a string. I had taken this description literally, and thought that the string went through the conglomerate of energy fields that we are from head to toe. The attaching string I was seeing made the round shape of the energy fields of human beings look more like a pendant. I didn't see, however, any other creature being strung by the same string. Every single creature that I saw was a geometrically patterned being that had a sort of string on the upper part of its spherical halo. The string reminded me immensely of the segmented wormlike shapes that some of us see with the eyelids half closed when we are in sunlight.
Don Juan and I walked in the town from one end to the other, and I saw literally scores of geometrically patterned creatures. My ability to see them was unstable in the extreme. I would see them for an instant, and then I would lose sight of them and I would be faced with average people. Soon, I became exhausted, and I could see only normal people. Don Juan said that it was time to go back home, and again, something in me lost my usual sense of continuity. 1 found myself in don Juan's house without having the slightest notion as to how I had covered the distance from the town to the house. I lay down in my bed and tried desperately to recollect, to call back my memory, to probe the depths of my very being for a clue as to how I had gone to the Yaqui town, and to the railroad-station town. 1 didn't believe that they had been dream-fantasies, because the scenes were too detailed to be anything but real, and yet they couldn't possibly have been real.
"You're wasting your time," don Juan said, laughing. "1 guarantee you that you will never know how we got from the house to the Yaqui town, and from the Yaqui town to the railroad station, and from the railroad station to the house. There was a break in the continuity of time. That is what inner silence does."
He patiently explained to me that the interruption of that flow of continuity that makes the world understandable to us is sorcery. He remarked that I had journeyed that day through the dark sea of awareness, and that I had seen people as they are, engaged in people's business. And then I had seen the strand of energy that joins specific lines of human beings.
Don Juan reiterated to me over and over that I had witnessed something specific and inexplicable. I had understood what people were saying, without knowing their language, and I had seen the strand of energy that connected human beings to certain other beings, and I had selected those aspects through an act of intending it. He stressed the fact that this intending I had done was not something conscious or volitional; the intending had been done at a deep level, and had been ruled by necessity. I needed to become cognizant of some of the possibilities of journeying through the dark sea of awareness, and my inner silence had guided intent-a perennial force in the universe-to fulfill that need.
