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The Glow of Awareness

Don Juan, don Genaro, and I had just returned from gathering plants in the surrounding mountains. We were at don Genaro's house, sitting around the table, when don Juan made me change levels of awareness. Don Genaro had been staring at me and began to chuckle. He remarked how odd he thought it was that I had two completely different standards for dealing with the two sides of awareness. My relation with him was the most obvious example. On my right side, he was the respected and feared sorcerer don Genaro, a man whose incomprehensible acts delighted me and at the same time filled me with mortal terror. On my left side, he was plain Genaro, or Genarito, with no don attached to his name, a charming and kind seer whose acts were thoroughly comprehensible and coherent with what I myself did or tried to do.

I agreed with him and added that on my left side, the man whose mere presence made me shake like a leaf was Silvio Manuel, the most mysterious of don Juan's companions. I also said that don Juan, being a true nagual, transcended arbitrary standards and was respected and admired by me in both states.

"But is he feared?" Genaro asked in a quivering voice.

"Very feared," don Juan interjected in a falsetto voice.

We all laughed, but don Juan and Genaro laughed with such abandon that I immediately suspected they knew something they were holding back.

Don Juan was reading me like a book. He explained that in the intermediate stage, before one enters fully into the left-side awareness, one is capable of tremendous concentration, but one is also susceptible to every conceivable influence. I was being influenced by suspicion.

"La Gorda is always in this stage," he said. "She learns beautifully, but she's a royal pain in the neck. She can't help being driven by anything that comes her way, including, of corse, very good things, like keen concentration."

Don Juan explained that the new seers discovered that the transition period is the time when the deepest learning takes place, and that it is also the time when warriors must be supervised and explanations must be given to them so they can evaluate them properly. If no explanations are given to them before they enter into the left side, they will be great sorcerers but poor seers, as the ancient Toltecs were.

Female warriors in particular fall prey to the lure of the left side, he said. They are so nimble that they can go into the left side with no effort, often too soon for their own good.

After a long silence, Genaro fell asleep. Don Juan began to speak. He said that the new seers had had to invent a number of terms in order to explain the second truth about awareness. His benefactor had changed some of those terms to suit himself, and he himself had done the same, guided by the seers' belief that it does not make any difference what terms are used as long as the truths have been verified by seeing.

I was curious to know what terms he had changed, but I didn't know quite how to word my question. He took it that I was doubting his right or his ability to change them and explained that if the terms we propose originate in our reason they can only communicate the mundane agreement of everyday life. When seers propose a term, on the other hand, it is never a figure of speech because it stems from seeing and embraces everything that seers can attain.

I asked him why he had changed the terms.

"It's a nagual's duty always to look for better ways to explain," he replied. "Time changes everything, and every new nagual has to incorporate new words, new ideas, to describe his seeing. '"

"Do you mean that a nagual takes ideas from the world of every day life?" I asked.

"No. I mean that a nagual talks about seeing in ever new ways," he said. "For instance, as the new nagual, you'd have to say that awareness gives rise to perception. You'd be saying the same thing my benefactor said, but in a different way."

"What do the new seers say perception is, don Juan?"

"They say that perception is a condition of alignment; the emanations inside the cocoon become aligned with those outside that fit them. Alignment is what allows awareness to be cultivated by every living creature. Seers make these statements because they see living creatures as they really are: luminous beings that look like bubbles of whitish light."

I asked him how the emanations inside the cocoon fit those outside so as to accomplish perception.

"The emanations inside and the emanations outside," he said, "are the same filaments of light. Sentient beings are minute bubbles made out of those filaments, microscopic points of light, attached to the infinite emanations."

He went on to explain that the luminosity of living beings is made by the particular portion of the Eagle's emanations they happen to have inside their luminous cocoons. When seers see perception, they witness that the luminosity of the Eagle's emanations outside those creatures' cocoons brightens the luminosity of the emanations inside their cocoons. The outside luminosity attracts the inside one; it traps it, so to speak, and fixes it. That fixation is the awareness of every specific being.

Seers can also see how the emanations outside the cocoon exert a particular pressure on the portion of emanations inside. This pressure determines the degree of awareness that every living being has.

I asked him to clarify how the Eagle's emanations outside the cocoon exert pressure on those inside.

"The Eagle's emanations are more than filaments of light," he replied. "Each one of them is a source of boundless energy. Think of it this way: since some of the emanations outside the cocoon are the same as the emanations inside, their energies are like a continuous pressure. But the cocoon isolates the emanations that are inside its web and thereby directs the pressure.

"I've mentioned to you that the old seers were masters of the art of handling awareness," he went on. "What I can add now is that they were the masters of that art because they learned to manipulate the structure of man's cocoon. I've said to you that they unraveled the mystery of being aware. By that I meant that they saw and realized that awareness is a glow in the cocoon of living beings. They rightly called it the glow of awareness."

He explained that the old seers saw that man's awareness is a glow of amber luminosity more intense than the rest of the cocoon. That glow is on a narrow, vertical band on the extreme right side of the cocoon, running along its entire length. The mastery of the old seers was to move that glow, to make it spread from its original setting on the surface of the cocoon inward across its width.

He stopped talking and looked at Genaro, who was still sound asleep.

"Genaro doesn't give a fig about explanations," he said. "He's a doer. My benefactor pushed him constantly to face insoluble problems. So he entered into the left side proper and never had a chance to ponder and wonder."

"Is it better to be that way, don Juan?"

"It depends. For him, it's perfect. For you and for me, it wouldn't be satisfactory, because in one way or another we are called upon to explain. Genaro or my benefactor are more like the old than the new seers: they can control and do what they want with the glow of awareness."

He stood up from the mat where we were sitting and stretched his arms and legs. I pressed him to continue talking. He smiled and said that I needed to rest, that my concentration was waning.

There was a knock at the door. I woke up. It was dark. For a moment I could not remember where I was. There was something in me that was far away, as if part of me were still asleep, yet I was fully awake. Enough moonlight came through the open window so that I could see.

I saw don Genaro get up and go to the door. I realized then that I was at his house. Don Juan was sound asleep on a mat on the floor. I had the distinct impression that the three of us had fallen asleep after returning dead tired from a trip to the mountains.

Don Genaro lit his kerosene lantern. I followed him into the kitchen. Someone had brought him a pot of hot stew and a stack of tortillas.

"Who brought you food?" I asked him. "Do you have a woman around here that cooks for you?"

Don Juan had come into the kitchen. Both of them looked at me, smiling. For some reason their smiles were terrifying to me. I was about to scream in terror, in fact, when don Juan hit me on the back and made me shift into a state of heightened awareness. I realized then that perhaps during my sleep, or as I woke up, I had drifted back to everyday awareness.

The sensation I experienced then, once I was back in heightened awareness, was a mixture of relief and anger and the most acute sadness. I was relieved that I was myself again, for I had come to regard those incomprehensible states as being my true self. There was one simple reason for that?in those states I felt complete; nothing was missing from me. The anger and the sadness were a reaction to impotence. I was more aware than ever of the limitations of my being.

I asked don Juan to explain to me how it was possible for me to do what I was doing. In states of heightened awareness I could look back and remember everything about myself; I could give an account of everything I had done in either state; I could even remember my incapacity to recollect. But once I had returned to my normal, everyday level of awareness I could not recall anything I had done in heightened awareness, even if my life depended on it.

"Hold it, hold it there," he said. "You haven't remembered anything yet. Heightened awareness is only an intermediate state. There is infinitely more beyond that, and you have been there many, many times. Right now you can't remember, even if your life depends on it."

He was right. I had no idea what he was talking about. I pleaded for an explanation.

"The explanation is coming," he said. "It's a slow process, but we'll get to it. It is slow because I am just like you: I like to understand. I am the opposite of my benefactor, who was not given to explaining. For him there was only action. He used to put us squarely against incomprehensible problems and let us resolve them for ourselves. Some of us never did resolve anything, and we ended up very much in the same boat with the old seers: all action and no real knowledge."

"Are those memories trapped in my mind?" I asked.

"No. That would make it too simple," he replied. "The actions of seers are more complex than dividing a man into mind and body. You have forgotten what you've done, or what you've witnessed, because when you were performing what you've forgotten you were seeing."

I asked don Juan to reinterpret what he had just said.

Patiently, he explained that everything I had forgotten had taken place in states in which my everyday awareness had been enhanced, intensified, a condition that meant that other areas of my total being were used.

"Whatever you've forgotten is trapped in those areas of your total being," he said. "To be using those other areas is to see."

"I'm more confused than ever, don Juan," I said.

"I don't blame you," he said. "Seeing is to lay bare the core of everything, to witness the unknown and to glimpse into the unknowable. As such, it doesn't bring one solace. Seers ordinarily go to pieces on finding out that existence is incomprehensibly complex and that our normal awareness maligns it with its limitations."

He reiterated that my concentration had to be total, that to understand was of crucial importance, that the new seers placed the highest value on deep, unemotional realizations.

"For instance, the other day," he went on, "when you understood about la Gorda's and your self-importance, you didn't understand anything really. You had an emotional outburst, that was all. I say this because the next day you were back on your high horse of selfimportance as if you never had realized anything.

"The same thing happened to the old seers. They were given to emotional reactions. But when the time came for them to understand what they had seen, they couldn't do it. To understand one needs sobriety, not emotionality. Beware of those who weep with realization, for they have realized nothing.

"There are untold dangers in the path of knowledge for those without sober understanding," he continued. "I am outlining the order in which the new seers arranged the truths about awareness, so it will serve you as a map. a map that you have to corroborate with your seeing, but not with your eyes."

There was a long pause. He stared at me. He was definitely waiting for me to ask him a question.

"Everybody falls prey to the mistake that seeing is done with the eyes," he continued. "But don't be surprised that after so many years you haven't realized yet that seeing is not a matter of the eyes. It's quite normal to make that mistake."

"What is seeing, then?" I asked.

He replied that seeing is alignment. And I reminded him that he had said that perception is alignment. He explained then that the alignment of emanations used routinely is the perception of the day-to-day world, but the alignment of emanations that are never used ordinarily is seeing. When such an alignment occurs one sees. Seeing, therefore, being produced by alignment out of the ordinary, cannot be something one could merely look at. He said that in spite of the fact that I had seen countless times, it had not occurred to me to disregard my eyes. I had succumbed to the way seeing is labeled and described.

"When seers see, something explains everything as the new alignment takes place," he continued. "It's a voice that tells them in their ear what's what. If that voice is not present, what the seer is engaged in isn't seeing. "

After a moment's pause, he continued explaining the voice of seeing. He said that it was equally fallacious to say that seeing was hearing, because it was infinitely more than that, but that seers had opted for using sound as a gauge of a new alignment.

He called the voice of seeing a most mysterious inexplicable thing. "My personal conclusion is that the voice of seeing belongs only to man," he said. "It may happen because talking is something that no one else besides man does. The old seers believed it was the voice of an overpowering entity intimately related to mankind, a protector of man. The new seers found out that that entity, which they called the mold of man, doesn't have a voice. The voice of seeing for the new seers is something quite Incomprehensible; they say it's the glow of awareness playing on the Eagle's emanations as a harpist plays on a harp."

He refused to explain it any further, arguing that later on, as he proceeded with his explanation, everything would become clear to me.

My concentration had been so total while don Juan spoke that I actually did not remember sitting down at the table to eat. When don Juan stopped talking, I noticed that his plate of stew was nearly finished.

Genaro was staring at me with a beaming smile. My plate was in front of me on the table, and it too was empty. There was only a tiny residue of stew left in it, as if I had just finished eating. I did not remember eating it at all, but neither did I remember walking to the table or sitting down.

"Did you like the stew?" Genaro asked me and looked away.

I said I did, because I did not want to admit that I was having problems recollecting.

"It had too much chile for my taste," Genaro said. "You never eat hot food yourself, so I'm sort of worried about what it will do to you. You shouldn't have eaten two servings. I suppose you're a little more piggish when you're in heightened awareness, eh?"

I admitted that he was probably right. He handed me a large pitcher of water to quench my thirst and soothe my throat. When I eagerly drank all of it, both of them broke into howling laughter.

Suddenly, I realized what was going on. My realization was physical. It was a flash of yellowish light that hit me as if a match had been struck right between my eyes. I knew then that Genaro was joking. I had not eaten. I had been so absorbed in don Juan's explanation that I had forgotten about everything else. The plate in front of me was Genaro's.

After dinner don Juan went on with his explanation about the glow of awareness. Genaro sat by me, listening as if he had never heard the explanation before.

Don Juan said that the pressure that the emanations outside the cocoon, which are called emanations at large, exert on the emanations inside the cocoon is the same in all sentient beings. Yet the results of that pressure are vastly different among them, because their cocoons react to that pressure in every conceivable way. There are. however, degrees of uniformity within certain boundaries.

"Now," he went on, "when seers see that the pressure of the emanations at large bears down on the emanations inside, which are always in motion, and makes them stop moving, they know that the luminous being at that moment is fixated by awareness.

"To say that the emanations at large bear down on those inside the cocoon and make them stop moving means that seers see something indescribable, the meaning of which they know without a shadow of doubt. It means that the voice of seeing has told them that the emanations inside the cocoon are completely at rest and match some of those which are outside."

He said that seers maintain, naturally, that awareness always comes from outside ourselves, that the real mystery is not inside us. Since by nature the emanations at large are made to fixate what is inside the cocoon, the trick of awareness is to let the fixating emanations merge with what is inside us. Seers believe that if we let that happen we become what we really are?fluid, forever in motion, eternal.

There was a long pause. Don Juan's eyes had an intense shine. They seemed to be looking at me from a great depth. I had the feeling that each of his eyes was an independent point of brilliance. For an instant he appeared to be struggling against an invisible force, a fire from within that intended to consume him. It passed and he went on talking.

"The degree of awareness of every individual sentient being," he continued, "depends on the degree to which it is capable of letting the pressure of the emanations at large carry it."

After a long interruption, don Juan continued explaining. He said that seers saw that from the moment of conception awareness is enhanced, enriched, by the process of being alive. He said that seers saw, for instance, that the awareness of an individual insect or that of an individual man grows from the moment of conception in astoundingly different ways, but with equal consistency.

"Is it from the moment of conception or from the moment of birth that awareness develops?" I asked.

"Awareness develops from the moment of conception," he replied. "I have always told you that sexual energy is something of ultimate importance and that it has to be controlled and used with great care. But you have always resented what I said, because you thought I was speaking of control in terms of morality; I always meant it in terms of saving and rechanneling energy."

Don Juan looked at Genaro. Genaro nodded his head in approval.

"Genaro is going to tell you what our benefactor, the nagual Julian, used to say about saving and rechanneling sexual energy," don Juan said to me.

"The nagual Julian used to say that to have sex is a matter of energy," Genaro began. "For instance, he never had any problems having sex, because he had bushels of energy. But he took one look at me and prescribed right away that my peter was just for peeing. He told me that I didn't have enough energy to have sex. He said that my parents were too bored and too tired when they made me; he said that I was the result of very boring sex, cojida aburrida. I was born like that, bored and tired. The nagual Julian recommended that people like me should never have sex; this way we can store the little energy we have.

"He said the same thing to Silvio Manuel and to Emilito. He saw that the others had enough energy. They were not the result of bored sex. He told them that they could do anything they wanted with their sexual energy, but he recommended that they control themselves and understand the Eagle's command that sex is for bestowing the glow of awareness. We all said we had understood.

"One day, without any warning at all, he opened the curtain of the other world with the help of his own benefactor, the nagual Ellas, and pushed all of us inside, with no hesitation whatsoever. All of us, except Silvio Manuel, nearly died in there. We had no energy to withstand the impact of the other world. None of us, except Silvio Manuel, had followed the nagual's recommendation."

"What is the curtain of the other world?" I asked don Juan.

"What Genaro said?it is a curtain," don Juan replied. "But you're getting off the subject. You always do. We're talking about the Eagle's command about sex. It is the Eagle's command that sexual energy be used for creating life. Through sexual energy, the eagle bestows awareness. So when sentient beings are engaged in sexual intercourse, the emanations inside their cocoons do their best to bestow awareness to the new sentient being they are creating."

He said that during the sexual act, the emanations encased inside the cocoon of both partners undergo a profound agitation, the culminating point of which is a merging, a fusing of two pieces of the glow of awareness, one from each partner, that separate from their cocoons.

"Sexual intercourse is always a bestowal of awareness even though the bestowal may not be consolidated," he went on. "The emanations inside the cocoon of human beings don't know of intercourse for fun."

Genaro leaned over toward me from his chair across the table and talked to me in a low voice, shaking his head for emphasis.

"The nagual is telling you the truth," he said and winked at me. "Those emanations really don't know."

Don Juan fought not to laugh and added that the fallacy of man is to act with total disregard for the mystery of existence and to believe that such a sublime act of bestowing life and awareness is merely a physical drive that one can twist at will.

Genaro made obscene sexual gestures, twisting his pelvis around, on and on. Don Juan nodded and said that that was exactly what he meant. Genaro thanked him for acknowledging his one and only contribution to the explanation of awareness.

Both of them laughed like idiots, saying that if I had known how serious their benefactor was about the explanation of awareness, I would be laughing with them.

I earnestly asked don Juan what all this meant for an average man in the day-to-day world.

"You mean what Genaro is doing?" he asked me in mock seriousness.

Their glee was always contagious. It took a long time for them to calm down. Their level of energy was so high that next to them, I seemed old and decrepit.

"I really don't know," don Juan finally answered me. "All I know is what it means to warriors. They know that the only real energy we possess is a lifebestowing sexual energy. This knowledge makes them permanently conscious of their responsibility.

"If warriors want to have enough energy to see, they must become misers with their sexual energy. That was the lesson the nagual Julian gave us. He pushed us into the unknown, and we all nearly died. Since everyone of us wanted to see, we, of course, abstained from wasting our glow of awareness."

I had heard him voice that belief before. Every time he did, we got into an argument. I always felt compelled to protest and raise objections to what I thought was a puritanical attitude toward sex.

I again raised my objections. Both of them laughed to tears.

"What can be done with man's natural sensuality?" I asked don Juan.

"Nothing," he replied. "There is nothing wrong with man's sensuality, it's man's ignorance of and disregard for his magical nature that is wrong. It's a mistake to waste recklessly the life-bestowing force of sex and not have children, but it's also a mistake not to know that in having children one taxes the glow of awareness."

"How do seers know that having children taxes the glow of awareness?" I asked.

"They see that on having a child, the parents' glow of awareness diminishes and the child's increases. In some supersensitive, frail parents, the glow of awareness almost disappears. As children enhance their awareness, a big dark spot develops in the luminous cocoon of the parents, on the very place from which the glow was taken away. It is usually on the midsection of the cocoon. Sometimes those spots can even be seen superimposed on the body itself."

I asked him if there was anything that could be done to give people a more balanced understanding of the glow of awareness.

"Nothing," he said. "At least, there is nothing that seers can do. Seers aim to be free, to be unbiased witnesses incapable of passing judgment; otherwise they would have to assume the responsibility for bringing about a more adjusted cycle. No one can do that. The new cycle, if it is to come, must come of itself."

The First Attention

The following day we ate breakfast at dawn, then don Juan made me shift levels of awareness.

"Today, let's go to an original setting," don Juan said to Genaro.

"By all means," Genaro said gravely. He glanced at me and then added in a low voice, as if not wanting me to overhear him, "Does he have to. . . perhaps it's too much. . ."

In a matter of seconds my fear and suspicion escalated to unbearable heights. I was sweating and panting. Don Juan came to my side and, with an expression of almost uncontrollable amusement, assured me that Genaro was just entertaining himself at my expense, and that we were going to a place where the original seers had lived thousands of years ago.

As don Juan was speaking to me, I happened to glance at Genaro. He slowly shook his head from side to side. It was an almost imperceptible gesture, as if he were letting me know that don Juan was not telling the truth. I went into a state of nervous frenzy, near hysteria?and stopped only when Genaro burst into laughter.

I marveled how easily my emotional states could escalate to nearly unmanageable heights or drop to nothing.

Don Juan, Genaro, and I left Genaro's house in the early morning and traveled a short distance into the surrounding eroded hills. Presently we stopped and sat down on top of an enormous flat rock, on a gradual slope, in a corn field that seemed to have been recently harvested.

"This is the original setting," don Juan said to me. "We'll come back here a couple more times, during the course of my explanation."

"Very weird things happen here at night," Genaro said. "The nagual Julian actually caught an ally here. Or rather, the ally ..."

Don Juan made a noticeable gesture with his eyebrows and Genaro stopped in midsentence. He smiled at me.

"It's too early in the day for scary stories," Genaro said. "Let's wait until dark."

He stood up and began creeping all around the rock, tiptoeing with his spine arched backward.

"What was he saying about your benefactor's catching an ally here?" I asked don Juan.

He did not answer right away. He was ecstatic, watching Genaro's antics.

"He was referring to some sophisticated use of awareness," he finally replied, still staring at Genaro.

Genaro completed a circle around the rock and came back and sat down by me. He was panting heavily, almost wheezing, out of breath.

Don Juan seemed fascinated by what Genaro had done. Again I had the feeling that they were amusing themselves at my expense, that both of them were up to something I knew nothing about.

Suddenly, don Juan began his explanation. His voice soothed me. He said that after much toiling, seers arrived at the conclusion that the consciousness of adult human beings, matured by the process of growth, can no longer be called awareness, because it has been modified into something more intense and complex, which seers call attention.

"How do seers know that man's awareness is being cultivated and that it grows?" I asked.

He said that at a given time in the growth of human beings a band of the emanations inside their cocoons becomes very bright; as human beings accumulate experience, it begins to glow. In some instances, the glow of this band of emanations increases so dramatically that it fuses with the emanations from the outside. Seers, witnessing an enhancement of this kind, had to surmise that awareness is the raw material and attention the end product of maturation.

"How do seers describe attention?" I asked.

"They say that attention is the harnessing and enhancing of awareness through the process of being alive," he replied.

He said that the danger of definitions is that they simplify matters to make them understandable; in this case, in defining attention, one runs the risk of transforming a magical, miraculous accomplishment into something commonplace. Attention is man's greatest single accomplishment. It develops from raw animal awareness until it covers the entire gamut of human alternatives. Seers perfect it even further until it covers the whole scope of human possibilities.

I wanted to know if there was a special significance to alternatives and possibilities in the seers' view.

Don Juan replied that human alternatives are everything we are capable of choosing as persons. They have to do with the level of our day-to-day range, the known; and owing to that fact, they are quite limited in number and scope. Human possibilities belong to the unknown. They are not what we are capable of choosing but what we are capable of attaining. He said that an example of human alternatives is our choice to believe that the human body is an object among objects. An example of human possibilities is the seers' achievement in viewing man as an egglike luminous being. With the body as an object one tackles the known, with the body as a luminous egg one tackles the unknown; human possibilities have, therefore, nearly an inexhaustible scope.

"Seers say that there are three types of attention," don Juan went on. "When they say that, they mean it just for human beings, not for all the sentient beings in existence. But the three are not just types of attention, they are rather three levels of attainment. They are the first, second, and third attention, each of them an independent domain, complete in itself."

He explained that the first attention in man is animal awareness, which has been developed, through the process of experience, into a complex, intricate, and extremely fragile faculty that takes care of the day-today world in all its innumerable aspects, in other words, everything that one can think about is part of the first attention.

"The first attention is everything we are as average men," he continued. "By virtue of such an absolute rule over our lives, the first attention is the most valuable asset that the average man has. Perhaps it is even our only asset.

"Taking into account its true value, the new seers started a rigorous examination of the first attention through seeing. Their findings molded their total outlook and the outlook of all their descendants, even though most of them do not understand what those seers really saw."

He emphatically warned me that the conclusions of the new seers' rigorous examination had very little to do with reason or rationality, because in order to examine and explain the first attention, one must see it. Only seers can do that. But to examine what seers see in the first attention is essential. It allows the first attention the only opportunity it will ever have to realize its own workings.

"In terms of what seers see, the first attention is the glow of awareness developed to an ultra shine," he continued. "But it is a glow fixed on the surface of the cocoon, so to speak. It is a glow that covers the known.

"The second attention, on the other hand, is a more complex and specialized state of the glow of awareness. It has to do with the unknown. It comes about when unused emanations inside man's cocoon are utilized.

"The reason I called the second attention specialized is that in order to utilize those unused emanations, one needs uncommon, elaborate tactics that require supreme discipline and concentration."

He said that he had told me before, when he was teaching me the art of dreaming, that the concentration needed to be aware that one is having a dream is the forerunner of the second attention. That concentration is a form of consciousness that is not in the same category as the consciousness needed to deal with the daily world.

He said that the second attention is also called the left-side awareness; and it is the vastest field that one can imagine, so vast in fact that it seems limitless.

"I wouldn't stray into it for anything in this world," he went on. "It is a quagmire so complex and bizarre that sober seers go into it only under the strictest conditions.

"The great difficulty is that the entrance into the second attention is utterly easy and its lure nearly irresistible."

He said that the old seers, being the masters of awareness, applied their expertise to their own glows of awareness and made them expand to inconceivable limits. They actually aimed at lighting up all the emanations inside their cocoons, one band at a time. They succeeded, but oddly enough the accomplishment of lighting up one band at a time was instrumental in their becoming imprisoned in the quagmire of the second attention.

"The new seers corrected that error," he continued, "and let the mastery of awareness develop to its natural end, which is to extend the glow of awareness beyond the bounds of the luminous cocoon in one single stroke.

"The third attention is attained when the glow of awareness turns into the fire from within: a glow that kindles not one band at a time but all the Eagle's emanations inside man's cocoon."

Don Juan expressed his awe for the new seers' deliberate effort to attain the third attention while they are alive and conscious of their individuality.

He did not consider it worthwhile to discuss the random cases of men and other sentient beings who enter into the unknown and the unknowable without being aware of it; he referred to this as the Eagle's gift. He asserted that for the new seers to enter into the third attention is also a gift, but has a different meaning, it is more like a reward for an attainment.

He added that at the moment of dying all human beings enter into the unknowable and some of them do attain the third attention, but altogether too briefly and only to purify the food for the Eagle.

"The supreme accomplishment of human beings," he said, "is to attain that level of attention while retaining the life-force, without becoming a disembodied awareness moving like a flicker of light up to the Eagle's beak to be devoured."

While listening to don Juan's explanation I had again completely lost sight of everything that surrounded me. Genaro apparently had gotten up and left us, and was nowhere in sight. Strangely, I found myself crouching on the rock, with don Juan squatting by me holding me down by gently pushing on my shoulders. I reclined on the rock and closed my eyes. There was a soft breeze blowing from the west.

"Don't fall asleep," don Juan said. "Not for any reason should you fall asleep on this rock."

I sat up. Don Juan was staring at me.

"Just relax," he went on. "Let the internal dialogue die out."

All my concentration was involved in following what he was saying when I got a jolt of fright. I did not know what it was at first; I thought I was going through another attack of distrust. But then it struck me, like a bolt, that it was very late in the afternoon. What I had thought was an hour's conversation had consumed an entire day.

I jumped up, fully aware of the incongruity, although I could not conceive what had happened to me. I felt a strange sensation that made my body want to run. Don Juan jumped me, restraining me forcefully. We fell to the soft ground, and he held me there with an iron grip. I had had no idea that don Juan was so strong.

My body shook violently. My arms flew every which way as they shook. I was having something like a seizure. Yet some part of me was detached to the point of becoming fascinated with watching my body vibrate, twist, and shake.

The spasms finally died out and don Juan let go of me. He was panting with the exertion. He recommended that we climb back up on the rock and sit there until I was all right.

I could not help pressing him with my usual question: What had happened to me? He answered that as he talked to me I had pushed beyond a certain limit and had entered very deeply into the left side. He and Genaro had followed me in there. And then I had rushed out in the same fashion I had rushed in.

"I caught you right on time," he said. "Otherwise you would have gone straight out to your normal self."

I was totally confused. He explained that the three of us had been playing with awareness. I must have gotten scared and run out on them.

"Genaro is the master of awareness," don Juan went on. "Silvio Manuel is the master of wilt. The two of them were mercilessly pushed into the unknown. My benefactor did to them what his benefactor did to him. Genaro and Silvio Manuel are very much like the old seers in some respects. They know what they can do, but they don't care to know how they do it. Today, Genaro seized the opportunity to push your glow of awareness and we all ended up in the weird confines of the unknown."

I begged him to tell me what had happened in the unknown.

"You'll have to remember that yourself," a voice said just by my ear.

I was so convinced that it was the voice of seeing that it did not frighten me at all. I did not even obey the impulse to turn around.

"I am the voice of seeing and I tell you that you are a peckerhead," the voice said again and chuckled.

I turned around. Genaro was sitting behind me. I was so surprised that I laughed perhaps a bit more hysterically than they did.

"It's getting dark now," Genaro said to me. "As I promised you earlier today, we are going to have a ball here."

Don Juan intervened and said that we should stop for the day, because I was the kind of nincompoop who could die offright.

"Nah, he's all right," Genaro said, patting me on the shoulder.

"You'd better ask him," don Juan said to Genaro. "He himself will tell you that he's that kind of nincompoop."

"Are you really that kind of nincompoop?" Genaro asked me with a frown.

I didn't answer him. And that made them roll around laughing. Genaro rolled all the way to the ground.

"He's caught," Genaro said to don Juan, referring to me, after don Juan had swiftly jumped down and helped him to stand up. "He'll never say he's a nincompoop. He's too self-important for that, but he's shivering in his pants with fear of what might happen because he didn't confess he's a nincompoop."

Watching them laugh, I was convinced that only Indians could laugh with such joyfulness. But I also became convinced that there was a mile-wide streak of maliciousness in them. They were poking fun at a non-Indian.

Don Juan immediately caught my feelings.

"Don't let your self-importance run rampant," he said. "You're not special by any standards. None of us are, Indians and non-Indians. The nagual Julian and his benefactor added years of enjoyment to their lives laughing at us."

Genaro nimbly climbed back onto the rock and came to my side.

"If I were you. I'd feel so frigging embarrassed I'd cry," he said to me. "Cry, cry. Have a good cry and you'll feel better."

To my utter amazement I began to weep softly. Then I got so angry that I roared with fury. Only then I felt better.

Don Juan patted my back gently. He said that usually anger is very sobering, or sometimes fear is, or humor. My violent nature made me respond only to anger.

He added that a sudden shift in the glow of awareness makes us weak. They had been trying to reinforce me, to bolster me. Apparently, Genaro had succeeded by making me rage.

It was twilight by then. Suddenly Genaro pointed to a flicker in midair at eye level, in the twilight it appeared to be a large moth flying around the place where we sat.

"Be very gentle with your exaggerated nature," don Juan said to me. "Don't be eager. Just let Genaro guide you. Don't take your eyes from that spot."

The flickering point was definitely a moth. I could clearly distinguish all its features. I followed its convoluted, tired flight, until I could see every speck of dust on its wings.

Something got me out of my total absorption. I sensed a flurry of soundless noise, if that could be possible, just behind me. I turned around and caught sight of an entire row of people on the other edge of the rock, an edge that was a bit higher than the one on which we were sitting. I supposed that the people who lived nearby must have gotten suspicious of us hanging around all day and had climbed onto the rock intending to harm us. I knew about their intentions instantly.

Don Juan and Genaro slid down from the rock and told me to hurry down. We left immediately without turning back to see if the men were following us. Don Juan and Genaro refused to talk while we walked back to Genaro's house. Don Juan even made me hush with a fierce grunt, putting his finger to his lips. Genaro did not come into the house, but kept on walking as don Juan dragged me inside.

"Who were those people, don Juan?" I asked him, when the two of us were safely inside the house and he had lit the lantern.

"They were not people," he replied.

"Come on, don Juan, don't mystify me," I said. "They were men; I saw them with my own eyes."

"Of course, you saw them with your own eyes," he retorted, "but that doesn't say anything. Your eyes misled you. Those were not people and they were following you. Genaro had to draw them away from you."

"What were they, then, if not people?"

"Oh, there is the mystery," he said. "It's a mystery of awareness and it can't be solved rationally by talking about it. The mystery can only be witnessed."

"Let me witness it then." I said.

"But you already have, twice in one day," he said. "You don't remember now. You will, however, when you rekindle the emanations that were glowing when you witnessed the mystery of awareness i'm referring to. In the meantime, let's go back to our explanation of awareness."

He reiterated that awareness begins with the permanent pressure that the emanations at large exert on the ones trapped inside the cocoon. This pressure produces the first act of consciousness; it stops the motion of the trapped emanations, which are fighting to break the cocoon, fighting to die.

"For a seer, the truth is that all living beings are struggling to die," he went on. "What stops death is awareness."

Don Juan said that the new seers were profoundly disturbed by the fact that awareness forestalls death and at the same time induces it by being food for the Eagle. Since they could not explain it, for there is no rational way to understand existence, seers realized that their knowledge is composed of contradictory propositions.

"Why did they develop a system of contradictions?" I asked.

"They didn't develop anything," he said. "They found unquestionable truths by means of their seeing. Those truths are arranged in terms of supposedly blatant contradictions, that's all.

"For example, seers have to be methodical, rational beings, paragons of sobriety, and at the same time they must shy away from all of those qualities in order to be completely free and open to the wonders and mysteries of existence."

His example left me baffled, but not to the extreme. I understood what he meant. He himself had sponsored my rationality only to crush it and demand a total absence of it. I told him how I understood his point.

"Only a feeling of supreme sobriety can bridge the contradictions," he said.

"Could you say, don Juan, that art is that bridge?"

"You may call the bridge between contradictions anything you want?art, affection, sobriety, love, or even kindness."

Don Juan continued his explanation and said that in examining the first attention, the new seers realized that all organic beings, except man, quiet down their agitated trapped emanations so that those emanations can align themselves with their matching ones outside. Human beings do not do that; instead, their first attention lakes an inventory of the Eagle's emanations inside their cocoons.

"What is an inventory, don Juan?" I asked.

"Human beings take notice of the emanations they have inside their cocoons," he replied. "No other creatures do that. The moment the pressure from the emanations at large fixates the emanations inside, the first attention begins to watch itself. It notes everything about itself, or at least it tries to, in whatever aberrant ways it can. This is the process seers call taking an inventory.

"I don't mean to say that human beings choose to take an inventory, or that they can refuse to take it. To take an inventory is the Eagle's command. What is subject to volition, however, is the manner in which the command is obeyed."

He said that although he disliked calling the emanations commands, that is what they are: commands that no one can disobey. Yet the way out of obeying the commands is in obeying them.

"In the case of the inventory of the first attention," he went on, "seers take it, for they can't disobey. But once they have taken it they throw it away. The Eagle doesn't command us to worship our inventory; it commands us to take it, that's all."

"How do seers see that man takes an inventory?" I asked.

"The emanations inside the cocoon of man are not quieted down for purposes of matching them with those outside," he replied. "This is evident after seeing what other creatures do. On quieting down, some of them actually merge themselves with the emanations at large and move with them. Seers can see, for instance, the light of the scarabs' emanations expanding to great size.

"But human beings quiet down their emanations and then reflect on them. The emanations focus on themselves."

He said that human beings carry the command of taking an inventory to its logical extreme and disregard everything else. Once they are deeply involved in the inventory, two things may happen. They may ignore the impulses of the emanations at large, or they may use them in a very specialized way.

The end result of ignoring those impulses after taking an inventory is a unique state known as reason. The result of using every impulse in a specialized way is known as self-absorption.

Human reason appears to a seer as an unusually homogeneous dull glow that rarely if ever responds to the constant pressure from the emanations at large? a glow that makes the egglike shell become tougher, but more brittle.

Don Juan remarked that reason in the human species should be bountiful, but that in actuality it is very rare. The majority of human beings turn to self-absorption.

He asserted that the awareness of all living beings has a degree of self-reflection in order for them to interact. But none except man's first attention has such a degree of self-absorption. Contrary to men of reason, who ignore the impulse of the emanations at large, the self-absorbed individuals use every impulse and turn them all into a force to stir the trapped emanations inside their cocoons.

Observing all this, seers arrived at a practical conclusion. They saw that men of reason are bound to live longer, because by disregarding the impulse of the emanations at large, they quiet down the natural agitation inside their cocoons. The self-absorbed individuals, on the other hand, by using the impulse of the emanations at large to create more agitation, shorten their lives.

"What do seers see when they gaze at self-absorbed human beings?" I asked.

"They see them as intermittent bursts of white light, followed by long pauses of dullness," he said.

Don Juan stopped talking. I had no more questions to ask, or perhaps I was too tired to ask about anything. There was a loud bang that made me jump. The front door flew open and Genaro came in, out of breath. He slumped on the mat. He was actually covered with perspiration.

"I was explaining about the first attention," don Juan said to him.

"The first attention works only with the known," Genaro said. "it isn't worth two plugged nickels with the unknown."

"That is not quite right," don Juan retorted. "The first attention works very well with the unknown. It blocks it; it denies it so fiercely that in the end, the unknown doesn't exist for the first attention.

"Taking an inventory makes us invulnerable. That is why the inventory came into existence in the first place."

"What are you talking about?" I asked don Juan.

He didn't reply. He looked at Genaro as if waiting for an answer.

"But if I open the door," Genaro said, "would the first attention be capable of dealing with what will come in?"

"Yours and mine wouldn't, but his will," don Juan said, pointing at me. "Let's try it."

"Even though he's in heightened awareness?" Genaro asked don Juan.

"That won't make any difference," don Juan answered.

Genaro got up and went to the front door and threw it open. He instantly jumped back. A gust of cold wind came in. Don Juan came to my side, and so did Genaro. Both of them looked at me in amazement.

I wanted to close the front door. The cold was making me uncomfortable. But as I moved toward the door, don Juan and Genaro jumped in front of me and shielded me.

"Do you notice anything in the room?" Genaro asked me.

"No, I don't," I said, and I really meant it.

Except for the cold wind pouring in through the open door, there was nothing to notice in there.

"Weird creatures came in when I opened the door," he said. "Don't you notice anything?"

There was something in his voice that told me he was not joking this time.

The three of us, with both of them flanking me, walked out of the house. Don Juan picked up the kerosene lantern, and Genaro locked the front door. We got inside the car, through the passenger's side. They pushed me in first. And then we drove to don Juan's house in the next town.

Inorganic Beings

The next day I repeatedly asked don Juan to explain our hasty departure from Genaro's house. He refused even to mention the incident. Genaro was no help either. Every time I asked him he winked at me, grinning like a fool.

In the afternoon, don Juan came to the back patio of his house, where I was talking with his apprentices. As if on cue, all the young apprentices left instantly.

Don Juan took me by the arm, and we began to walk along the corridor. He did not say anything; for a while we just strolled around, very much as if we were in the public square.

Don Juan stopped walking and turned to me. He circled me, looking over my entire body. I knew that he was seeing me. I felt a strange fatigue, a laziness I had not felt until his eyes swept over me. He began to talk all of a sudden.

"The reason Genaro and I didn't want to focus on what happened last night," he said, "was that you had been very frightened during the time you were in the unknown. Genaro pushed you, and things happened to you in there."

"What things, don Juan?"

"Things that are still difficult if not impossible to explain to you now," he said. "You don't have enough surplus energy to enter into the unknown and make sense of it. When the new seers arranged the order of the truths about awareness, they saw that the first attention consumes all the glow of awareness that human beings have, and not an iota of energy is left free. That's your problem now. So, the new seers proposed that warriors, since they have to enter into the unknown, have to save their energy. But where are they going to get energy, if all of it is taken? They'll get it, the new seers say, from eradicating unnecessary habits."

He stopped talking and solicited questions. I asked him what eradicating unnecessary habits did to the glow of awareness.

He replied that it detaches awareness from self-reflection and allows it the freedom to focus on something else.

"The unknown is forever present," he continued, "but it is outside the possibility of our normal awareness. The unknown is the superfluous part of the average man. And it is superfluous because the average man doesn't have enough free energy to grasp it.

"After all the time you've spent in the warrior's path, you have enough free energy to grasp the unknown, but not enough energy to understand it or even to remember it."

He explained that at the site of the flat rock, I had entered very deeply into the unknown. But I indulged in my exaggerated nature and became terrified, which was about the worst thing anyone can do. So I had rushed out of the left side, like a bat out of hell; unfortunately, taking a legion of strange things with me.

I told don Juan that he was not getting to the point, that he should come out and tell me exactly what he meant by a legion of strange things.

He took me by the arm and continued strolling around with me.

"In explaining awareness," he said, "I am presumably fitting everything or nearly everything into place. Let's talk a little bit about the old seers. Genaro, as I've told you, is very much like them."

He led me then to the big room. We sat down there and he began his elucidation.

"The new seers were simply terrified by the knowledge that the old seers had accumulated over the years," don Juan said. "It's understandable. The new seers knew that that knowledge leads only to total destruction. Yet they were also fascinated by it?especially by the practices."

"How did the new seers know about those practices?" I asked.

"They are the legacy of the old Toltecs," he said. "The new seers learn about them as they go along. They hardly ever use them, but the practices are there as part of their knowledge."

"What kind of practices are they, don Juan?"

"They are very obscure formulas, incantations, lengthy procedures that have to do with the handling of a very mysterious force. At least it was mysterious to the ancient Toltecs, who masked it and made it more horrifying than it really is."

"What is that mysterious force?" I asked.

"It's a force that is present throughout everything there is," he said. "The old seers never attempted to unravel the mystery of the force that made them create their secret practices; they simply accepted it as something sacred. But the new seers took a close look and called it wilt, the will of the Eagle's emanations, or intent."'

Don Juan went on explaining that the ancient Toltecs had divided their secret knowledge into five sets of two categories each: the earth and the dark regions, fire and water, the above and the below, the loud and the silent, the moving and the stationary. He speculated that there must have been thousands of different techniques, which became more and more intricate as time passed.

"The secret knowledge of the earth," he went on, "had to do with everything that stands on the ground. There were particular sets of movements, words, unguents, potions that were applied to people, animals, insects, trees, small plants, rocks, soil.

"These were techniques that made the old seers into horrid beings. And their secret knowledge of the earth was employed either to groom or to destroy anything that stands on the ground.

"The counterpart of the earth was what they knew as the dark regions. These practices were by far the most dangerous. They dealt with entities without organic life. Living creatures that are present on the earth and populate it together with all organic beings.

"Doubtlessly, one of the most worthwhile findings of the ancient seers, especially for them, was the discovery that organic life is not the only form of life present on this earth."

I did not quite comprehend what he had said. I waited for him to clarify his statements.

"Organic beings are not the only creatures that have life," he said and paused again as if to allow me time to think his statements over.

I countered with a long argument about the definition of life and being alive. I talked about reproduction, metabolism, and growth, the processes that distinguish live organisms from inanimate things.

"You're drawing from the organic," he said. "But that's only one instance. You shouldn't draw all you have to say from one category alone."

"But how else can it be?" I asked.

"For seers, to be alive means to be aware," he replied. "For the average man, to be aware means to be an organism. This is where seers are different. For them, to be aware means that the emanations that cause awareness are encased inside a receptacle.

"Organic living beings have a cocoon that encloses the emanations. But there are other creatures whose receptacles don't look like a cocoon to a seer. Yet they have the emanations of awareness in them and characteristics of life other than reproduction and metabolism."

"Such as what, don Juan?"

"Such as emotional dependency, sadness, joy, wrath, and so forth and so on. And I forgot the best yet, love; a kind of love man can't even conceive."

"Are you serious, don Juan?" I asked in earnest.

"Inanimately serious," he answered with a deadpan expression and then broke into laughter.

"If we take as our clue what seers see," he continued, "life is indeed extraordinary."

"If those beings are alive, why don't they make themselves known to man?" I asked.

"They do, all the time. And not only to seers but also to the average man. The problem is that all the energy available is consumed by the first attention. Man's inventory not only takes it all, but it also toughens the cocoon to the point of making it inflexible. Under those circumstances there is no possible interaction."

He reminded me of the countless times, in the course of my apprenticeship with him, when I had had a firsthand view of inorganic beings. I retorted that I had explained away nearly every one of those instances. I had even formulated the hypothesis that his teachings, through the use of hallucinogenic plants, were geared to force an agreement, on the part of the apprentice, about a primitive interpretation of the world. I told him that I had not formally called it primitive interpretation but in anthropological terms I had labeled it a "world view more proper to hunting and gathering societies."

Don Juan laughed until he was out of breath.

"I really don't know whether you're worse in your normal state of awareness or in a heightened one," he said. "In your normal state you're not suspicious, but boringly reasonable. I think I like you best when you are way inside the left side, in spite of the fact that you are terribly afraid of everything, as you were yesterday."

Before I had time to say anything at all, he stated that he was pitting what the old seers did against the accomplishments of the new seers, as a sort of counterpoint, with which he intended to give me a more inclusive view of the odds I was up against.

He continued then with his elucidation of the practices of the old seers. He said that another of their great findings had to do with the next category of secret knowledge: fire and water. They discovered that flames have a most peculiar quality; they can transport man bodily, just as water does.

Don Juan called it a brilliant discovery. I remarked that there are basic laws of physics that would prove that to be impossible. He asked me to wait until he had explained everything before drawing any conclusions. He remarked that I had to check my excessive rationality, because it constantly affected my states of heightened awareness. It was not a case of reacting every which way to external influences, but of succumbing to my own devices.

He went on explaining that the ancient Toltecs, although they obviously saw, did not understand what they saw. They merely used their findings without bothering to relate them to a larger picture. In the case of their category of fire and water, they divided fire into heat and flame, and water into wetness and fluidity. They correlated heat and wetness and called them lesser properties. They considered flames and fluidity to be higher, magical properties, and they used them as a means for bodily transportation to the realm of nonorganic life. Between their knowledge of that kind of life and their fire and water practices, the ancient seers became bogged down in a quagmire with no way out.

Don Juan assured me that the new seers agreed that the discovery of nonorganic living beings was indeed extraordinary, but not in the way the old seers believed it to be. To find themselves in a one-to-one relation with another kind of life gave the ancient seers a false feeling of invulnerability, which spelled their doom.

I wanted him to explain the fire and water techniques in greater detail. He said that the old seers' knowledge was as intricate as it was useless and that he was only going to outline it.

Then he summarized the practices of the above and the below. The above dealt with secret knowledge about wind, rain, sheets of lightning, clouds, thunder, daylight, and the sun. The knowledge of the below had to do with fog, water of underground springs, swamps, lightning bolts, earthquakes, the night, moonlight, and the moon.

The loud and the silent were a category of secret knowledge that had to do with the manipulation of sound and quiet. The moving and the stationary were practices concerned with mysterious aspects of motion and motionlessness.

I asked him if he could give me an example of any of the techniques he had outlined. He replied that he had already given me dozens of demonstrations over the years. I insisted that I had rationally explained away everything he had done to me.

He did not answer. He seemed to be either angry at me for asking questions or seriously involved in searching for a good example. After a while he smiled and said that he had visualized the proper example.

"The technique I have in mind has to be put in action in the shallow depths of a stream," he said. "There is one near Genaro's house."

"What will I have to do?"

"You'll have to get a medium-size mirror."

I was surprised at his request. I remarked that the ancient Toltecs did not know about mirrors.

"They didn't," he admitted, smiling. "This is my benefactor's addition to the technique. All the ancient seers needed was a reflecting surface."

He explained that the technique consisted of submerging a shiny surface into the shallow water of a stream. The surface could be any flat object that had some capacity to reflect images.

"I want you to construct a solid frame made of sheet metal for a medium-size mirror," he said. "it has to be waterproof, so you must seal it with tar. You must make it yourself with your own hands. When you have made it, bring it over and we'll proceed."

"What's going to happen, don Juan?"

"Don't be apprehensive. You yourself have asked me to give you an example of an ancient Toltec practice. I asked the same thing of my benefactor. I think everybody asks for one at a certain moment. My benefactor said that he did the same thing himself. His benefactor, the nagual Ellas, gave him an example; my benefactor in turn gave the same one to me, and now I am going to give it to you.

"At the time my benefactor gave me the example I didn't know how he did it. I know now. Someday you yourself will also know how the technique works; you will understand what's behind all this."

I thought that don Juan wanted me to go back home to Los Angeles and construct the frame for the mirror there. I commented that it would be impossible for me to remember the task if I did not remain in heightened awareness.

"There are two things out of kilter with your comment," he said. "One is that there is no way for you to remain in heightened awareness, because you won't be able to function unless I or Genaro or any of the warriors in the nagual's party nurse you every minute of the day, as I do now. The other is that Mexico is not the moon. There are hardware stores here. We can go to Oaxaca and buy anything you need."

We drove to the city the next day and I bought all the pieces for the frame. I assembled it myself in a mechanic's shop for a minimal fee. Don Juan told me to put it in the trunk of my car. He did not so much as glance at it.

We drove back to Genaro's house in the late afternoon and arrived there in the early morning. I looked for Genaro. He was not there. The house seemed deserted.

"Why does Genaro keep this house?" I asked don Juan. "He lives with you, doesn't he?"

Don Juan did not answer. He gave me a strange look and went to light the kerosene lantern. I was alone in the room in total darkness. I felt a great tiredness that I attributed to the long, tortuous drive up the mountains. I wanted to lie down. In the darkness, I could not see where Genaro had put the mats. I stumbled over a pile of them. And then I knew why Genaro kept that house; he took care of the male apprentices Pablito, Nestor, and Benigno, who lived there when they were in their state of normal awareness.

I felt exhilarated; I was no longer tired. Don Juan came in with a lantern. I told him about my realization, but he said that it did not matter, that I would not remember it for too long.

He asked me to show him the mirror. He seemed pleased and remarked about its being light yet solid. He noticed that I had used metal screws to affix an aluminum frame to a piece of sheet metal that I had used as a backing for a mirror eighteen inches long by fourteen inches wide.

"I made a wooden frame for my mirror," he said. "This looks much better than mine. My frame was too cumbersome and at the same time frail.

"Let me explain what we're going to do," he continued after he had finished examining the mirror. "Or perhaps I should say, what we're going to attempt to do. The two of us together are going to place this mirror on the surface of the stream near the house. It is wide enough and shallow enough to serve our purposes.

"The idea is to let the fluidity of the water exert pressure on us and transport us away."

Before I could make any remarks or ask any questions, he reminded me that in the past I had utilized the water of a similar stream and accomplished extraordinary feats of perception. He was referring to the aftereffects of ingesting hallucinogenic plants, which I had experienced various times while being submerged in the irrigation ditch behind his house in northern Mexico.

"Save any questions until I explain to you what the seers knew about awareness," he said. "Then you'll understand everything we're doing in a different light. But first let's go on with our procedure."

We walked to the nearby stream, and he selected a place with flat, exposed rocks. He said that there the water was shallow enough for our purposes.

"What do you expect to happen?" I asked in the midst of a gripping apprehension.

"I don't know. All I know is what we are going to attempt. We will hold the mirror very carefully, but very firmly. We will gently place it on the surface of the water and then let it submerge. We will then hold it on the bottom. I've checked it. There is enough silt there to allow us to dig our fingers underneath the mirror to hold it firmly."

He asked me to squat on a flat rock above the surface in the middle of the gentle stream and made me hold the mirror with both hands, almost at the corners on one side. He squatted facing me and held the mirror the same way I did. We let the mirror sink and then we held it by plunging our arms in the water almost to our elbows.

He commanded me to empty myself of thoughts and stare at the surface of the mirror. He repeated over and over that the trick was not to think at all. I looked intently into the mirror. The gentle current mildly disarranged the reflection of don Juan's face and mine. After a few minutes of steady gazing into the mirror it seemed to me that gradually the image of his face and mine became much clearer. And the mirror grew in size until it was at least a yard square. The current seemed to have stopped, and the mirror looked as clear as if it were placed on top of the water. Even more odd was the crispness of our reflections, it was as if my face had been magnified, not in size but in focus. I could see the pores in the skin of my forehead.

Don Juan gently whispered not to stare at my eyes or his, but to let my gaze wander around without focusing on any part of our reflections.

"Gaze fixedly without staring!" he repeatedly ordered in a forceful whisper.

I did what he said without stopping to ponder about the seeming contradiction. At that moment something inside me was caught in that mirror and the contradiction actually made sense. "It is possible to gaze fixedly without staring," I thought, and the instant that thought was formulated another head appeared next to don Juan's and mine. It was on the lower side of the mirror, to my left.

My whole body trembled. Don Juan whispered to calm down and not show fear or surprise. He again commanded me to gaze without staring at the newcomer. I had to make an unimaginable effort not to gasp and release the mirror. My body was shaking from head to toe. Don Juan whispered again to get hold of myself. He nudged me repeatedly with his shoulder.

Slowly I got my fear under control. I gazed at the third head and gradually realized that it was not a human head, or an animal head either. In fact, it was not a head at all. It was a shape that had no inner mobility. As the thought occurred to me, I instantly realized that I was not thinking it myself. The realization was not a thought either. I had a moment of tremendous anxiety and then something incomprehensible became known to me. The thoughts were a voice in my ear!

"I am seeing!" I yelled in English, but there was no sound. "Yes, you're seeing," the voice in my ear said in Spanish.

I felt that I was encased in a force greater than myself. I was not in pain or even anguished. I felt nothing. I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt, because the voice was telling me so, that I could not break the grip of that force by an act of will or strength. I knew I was dying. I lifted my eyes automatically to look at don Juan, and at the instant our eyes met the force let go of me. I was free. Don Juan was smiling at me as if he knew exactly what I had gone through.

I realized that I was standing up. Don Juan was holding the mirror edgewise to let the water drip off.

We walked back to the house in silence.

"The ancient Toltecs were simply mesmerized by their findings," don Juan said.

"I can understand why," I said.

"So can I," don Juan retorted.

The force that had enveloped me had been so powerful as to incapacitate me for speech, even for thought, for hours afterward. It had frozen me with a total lack of volition. And I had thawed out only by tiny degrees.

"Without any deliberate intervention on our part," don Juan continued, "this ancient Toltec technique has been divided into two parts for you. The first was just enough to familiarize you with what takes place. In the second, we will try to accomplish what the old seers pursued."

"What really took place out there, don Juan?" I asked.

"There are two versions. I'll give you the old seers' version first. They thought that the reflecting surface of a shiny object submerged in water enlarges the power of the water. What they used to do was gaze into bodies of water, and the reflecting surface served them as an aid to accelerate the process. They believed that our eyes are the keys to entering into the unknown; by gazing into water, they were allowing the eyes to open the way."

Don Juan said that the old seers observed that the wetness of water only dampens or soaks, but that the fluidity of water moves. It runs, they surmised, in search of other levels underneath us. They believed that water had been given to us not only for life, but also as a link, a road to the other levels below.

"Are there many levels below?" I asked.

"The ancient seers counted seven levels," he replied.

"Do you know them yourself, don Juan?"

"I am a seer of the new cycle, and consequently I have a different view," he said. "I am just showing you what the old seers did and I'm telling you what they believed."

He asserted that just because he had different views did not mean the old seers' practices were invalid; their interpretations were wrong, but their truths had practical value for them. In the instance of the water practices, they were convinced that it was humanly possible to be transported bodily by the fluidity of water anywhere between this lev-el of ours and the other seven levels below; or to be transported in essence anywhere on this level, along the watercourse of a river in either direction. They used, accordingly, running water to be transported on this level of ours and the water of deep lakes or that of waterholes to be transported to the depths.

"What they pursued with the technique I'm showing you was twofold," he went on. "On the one hand they used the fluidity of the water to be transported to the first level below. On the other, they used it to have a face-to-face meeting with a living being from that first level. The headlike shape in the mirror was one of those creatures that came to look us over."

"So, they really exist!" I exclaimed.

"They certainly do," he retorted.

He said that ancient seers were damaged by their aberrant insistence on staying glued to their procedures, but that whatever they found was valid. They found out that the surest way to meet one of those creatures is through a body of water. The size of the body of water is not relevant; an ocean or a pond serves the same purpose. He had chosen a small stream because he hated to get wet. We could have gotten the same results in a lake or a large river.

"The other life comes to find out what's going on when human beings call," he continued. "That Toltec technique is like a knock on their door. The old seers said the shiny surface on the bottom of the water served as a bait and a window. So humans and those creatures meet at a window."

"Is that what happened to me there?" I asked.

"The old seers would've said that you were being pulled by the power of the water and the power of the first level, plus the magnetic influence of the creature at the window."

"But I heard a voice in my ear saying that I was dying," I said.

"The voice was right. You were dying, and you would have if I hadn't been there. That is the danger of practicing the Toltecs' techniques. They are extremely effective but most of the time they are deadly."

I told him that I was ashamed to confess that I was terrified. Seeing that shape in the mirror and having the sensation of an enveloping force around me had proved too much for me the day before.

"I don't want to alarm you," he said, "but nothing has happened to you yet. If what happened to me is going to be the guideline of what will happen to you, you'd better prepare yourself for the shock of your life. It's better to shake in your boots now than to die of fright tomorrow."

My fear was so terrifying that I couldn't even voice the questions that came to my mind. I had a hard lime swallowing. Don Juan laughed until he was coughing. His face got purple. When I got my voice back, every one of my questions prompted another attack of coughing laughter.

"You have no idea how funny this all is to me," he finally said. "I'm not laughing at you. It's just the situation. My benefactor made me go through the same motions, and looking at you I can't help seeing myself."

I told him that I felt sick to my stomach. He said that that was fine, that it was natural to be scared, and that to control fear was wrong and senseless. The ancient seers got trapped by suppressing their terror when they should have been scared out of their wits. Since they did not want to stop their pursuits or abandon their comforting constructs they controlled their fear instead.

"What else are we going to do with the mirror?" I asked.

"That mirror is going to be used for a face-to-face meeting between you and that creature you only gazed at yesterday."

"What happens in a face-to-face meeting?"

"What happens is that one form of life, the human form, meets another form of life. The old seers said that in this case, it is a creature from the first level of the fluidity of water."

He explained that the ancient seers surmised that the seven levels below ours were levels of the fluidity of water. For them a spring had untold significance, because they thought that in such a case the fluidity of water is reversed and goes from the depth to the surface. They took that to be the means whereby creatures from other levels, these other forms of life, come to our plane to peer at us, to observe us.

"In this respect those old seers were not mistaken," he went on. "They hit the nail right on the head. Entities that the new seers call allies do appear around waterholes."

"Was the creature in the mirror an ally?" I asked.

"Of course. But not one that can be utilized. The tradition of the allies, which I have acquainted you with in the past, comes directly from the ancient seers. They did wonders with allies, but nothing they did was worth anything when the real enemy came along: their fellow men."

"Since those creatures are allies, they must be very dangerous," I said.

"As dangerous as we men are, no more, no less."

"Can they kill us?"

"Not directly, but they certainly can frighten us to death. They can cross the boundaries themselves, or they can just come to the window. As you may have realized by now, the ancient Toltecs didn't stop at the window, either. They found weird ways to go beyond it."

The second stage of the technique proceeded very much as had the first except that it took perhaps twice as long for me to relax and stop my internal turmoil. When that was done, the reflection of don Juan's face and mine became instantly clear. I gazed from his reflection to mine for perhaps an hour. I expected the ally to appear any moment, but nothing happened. My neck hurt. My back was stiff and my legs were numb. I wanted to kneel on the rock to relieve the pain in my lower back. Don Juan whispered that the moment the ally showed its shape my discomfort would vanish.

He was absolutely right. The shock of witnessing a round shape appear on the edge of the mirror dispelled every discomfort of mine.

"What do we do now?" I whispered.

"Relax and don't focus your gaze on anything, not even for an instant," he replied. "Watch everything that appears in the mirror. Gaze without staring."

I obeyed him. I glanced at everything within the frame of the mirror. There was a peculiar buzzing in my ears. Don Juan whispered that I should move my eyes in a clockwise direction if I felt that I was being enveloped by an unusual force; but under no circumstances, he stressed, should I lift my head to look at him.

After a moment I noticed that the mirror was reflecting more than the reflection of our faces and the round shape. Its surface had become dark. Spots of an intense violet light appeared. They grew large. There were also spots of jet blackness. Then it turned into something like a flat picture of a cloudy sky at night, in the moonlight. Suddenly, the whole surface came into focus, as if it were a moving picture. The new sight was a three-dimensional, breathtaking view of the depths.

I knew that it was absolutely impossible for me to fight off the tremendous attraction of that sight. It began to pull me in.

Don Juan whispered forcefully that I should roll my eyes for dear life. The movement brought immediate relief. I could again distinguish our reflections and that of the ally. Then the ally disappeared and reappeared again on the other end of the mirror.

Don Juan commanded me to grip the mirror with all my might. He warned me to be calm and not make any sudden movements.

"What's going to happen?" I whispered.

"The ally will try to come out," he replied.

As soon as he had said that I felt a powerful tug. Something jerked my arms. The tug was from underneath the mirror. It was like a suction force that created a uniform pressure all around the frame.

"Hold the mirror tightly but don't break it," don Juan ordered. "Fight the suction. Don't let the ally sink the mirror too deep."

The force pulling down on us was enormous. I felt that my fingers were going to break or be crushed against the rocks on the bottom. Don Juan and I both lost our balance at one point and had to step down from the flat rocks into the stream. The water was quite shallow, but the thrashing of the ally's force around the frame of the mirror was as frightening as if we had been in a large river. The water around our feet was being swirled around madly, but the images in the mirror were undisturbed.

"Watch out!" don Juan yelled. "Here it comes!"

The tugging changed into a thrust from underneath. Something was grabbing the edge of the mirror; not the outer edge of the frame where we were holding it, but from the inside of the glass. It was as if the glass surface were indeed an open window and something or somebody were just climbing through it.

Don Juan and I fought desperately either to push the mirror down when it was being thrust up or pull it up when it was being tugged downward. In a stoopedover position we slowly moved downstream from the original spot. The water was deeper and the bottom was covered with slippery rocks.

"Let's lift the mirror out of the water and shake him loose," don Juan said in a harsh voice.

The loud thrashing continued unremittingly. It was as if we had caught an enormous fish with our bare hands and it was swimming around wildly.

It occurred to me that the mirror was in essence a hatch. A strange shape was actually trying to climb up through it. It was leaning on the edge of the hatch with a mighty weight and was big enough to displace the reflection of don Juan's face and mine. I could not see us anymore. I could only distinguish a mass trying to push itself up.

The mirror was not resting on the bottom anymore. My fingers were not compressed against the rocks. The mirror was in mid-depth, held by the opposing forces of the ally's tugs and ours. Don Juan said he was going to extend his hands underneath the mirror and that I should very quickly grab them in order to have a better leverage to lift the mirror with our forearms. When he let go it tilled to his side. I quickly reached for his hands but there was nothing underneath. I vacillated a second too long and the mirror flew out of my hands.

"Grab it! Grab it!" don Juan yelled.

I caught the mirror just as it was going to land on the rocks. I lifted it out of the water, but not quickly enough. The water seemed to be like glue. As I pulled the mirror out, I also pulled a portion of a heavy rubbery substance that simply pulled the mirror out of my hands and back into the water.

Don Juan, displaying extraordinary nimbleness, caught the mirror and lifted it up edgewise without any difficulty.

Never in my life had I had such an attack of melancholy. It was a sadness that had no precise foundation; I associated it with the memory of the depths I had seen in the mirror. It was a mixture of pure longing for those depths plus an absolute fear of their chilling solitude.

Don Juan remarked that in the life of warriors it was extremely natural to be sad for no overt reason. Seers say that the luminous egg, as a field of energy, senses its final destination whenever the boundaries of the known are broken. A mere glimpse of the eternity outside the cocoon is enough to disrupt the coziness of our inventory. The resulting melancholy is sometimes so intense that it can bring about death.

He said that the best way to get rid of melancholy is to make fun of it. He commented in a mocking tone that my first attention was doing everything to restore the order that had been disrupted by my contact with the ally. Since there was no way of restoring it by rational means, my first attention was doing it by focusing all its power on sadness.

I told him that the fact remained the melancholy was real. Indulging in it, moping around, being gloomy, were not part of the feeling of aloneness that I had felt upon remembering those depths.

"Something is finally getting through to you," he said. "You're right. There is nothing more lonely than eternity. And nothing is more cozy for us than to be a human being. This indeed is another contradiction? how can man keep the bonds of his humanness and still venture gladly and purposefully into the absolute loneliness of eternity? Whenever you resolve this riddle, you'll be ready for the definitive journey."

I knew then with total certainty the reason for my sadness. It was a recurrent feeling with me, one that I would always forget until I again realized the same thing: the puniness of humanity against the immensity of that thing-in-itself which I had seen reflected in the mirror.

"Human beings are truly nothing, don Juan," I said.

"I know exactly what you're thinking," he said. "Sure, we're nothing, but that's exactly what makes it the ultimate challenge, that we nothings could actually face the loneliness of eternity."

He abruptly changed the subject, leaving me with my mouth open, my next question unsaid. He began to discuss our bout with the ally. He said that first of all, the struggle with the ally had been no joke. It had not really been a matter of life or death, but it had not been a picnic either.

"I chose that technique," he went on, "because my benefactor showed it to me. When I asked him to give me an example of the old seers' techniques, he nearly split a gut laughing; my request reminded him so much of his own experience. His benefactor, the nagual Elias, had also given him a harsh demonstration of the same technique."

Don Juan said that as he had made the frame for his mirror out of wood, he should have asked me to do the same, but he wanted to know what would happen if the frame was sturdier than his or his benefactor's. Both of their frames broke, and both times the ally came out.

He explained that during his own bout the ally ripped the frame apart. He and his benefactor were left holding two pieces of wood while the mirror sank and the ally climbed out of it.

His benefactor knew what kind of trouble to expect. In the reflection of mirrors, allies are not really frightening because one sees only a shape, a mass of sorts. But when they are out, besides being truly fearsome-looking things, they are a pain in the neck. He remarked that once the allies get out of their level it is very difficult for them to go back. The same prevails for man. If seers venture into a level of those creatures, chances are they are never heard of again.

"My mirror was shattered with the ally's force," he said. "There was no more window and the ally couldn't go back, so it came after me. It actually ran after me, rolling on itself. I scrambled on all fours at top speed, screaming with terror. I went up and down hills like a possessed man. The ally was inches away from me the whole time."

Don Juan said that his benefactor ran after him, but he was too old and could not move fast enough; he had the good sense, however, to tell don Juan to backtrack, and in that way was able to take measures to get rid of the ally. He shouted that he was going to build a fire and that don Juan should run in circles until everything was ready. He went ahead to gather dry branches while don Juan ran around a hill, driven mad with fear.

Don Juan confessed that the thought had occurred to him, as he ran around in circles, that his benefactor was actually enjoying the whole thing. He knew that his benefactor was a warrior capable of finding delight in any conceivable situation. Why not also in this one? For a moment he got so angry at his benefactor that the ally stopped chasing him, and don Juan, in no uncertain terms, accused his benefactor of malice. His benefactor didn't answer, but made a gesture of genuine horror as he looked past don Juan at the ally, which was looming over the two of them. Don Juan forgot his anger and began running around in circles again.

"My benefactor was indeed a devilish old man," don Juan said, laughing. "He had learned to laugh internally. It wouldn't show on his face, so he could pretend to be weeping or raging when he was really laughing. That day, as the ally chased me in circles, my benefactor stood there and defended himself from my accusations. I only heard bits of his long speech every time I ran by him. When he was through with that, I heard bits of another long explanation: that he had to gather a great deal of wood, that the ally was big, that the fire had to be as big as the ally itself, that the maneuver might not work.

"Only my maddening fear kept me going. Finally he must have realized that I was about to drop dead from exhaustion; he built the fire and with the flames he shielded me from the ally."

Don Juan said that they stayed by the fire for the entire night. The worst time for him was when his benefactor had to go away to look for more dry branches and left him alone. He was so afraid that he promised to God that he was going to leave the path of knowledge and become a farmer.

"In the morning, after I had exhausted all my energy, the ally managed to shove me into the fire, and I was badly burned," don Juan added.

"What happened to the ally?" I asked.

"My benefactor never told me what happened to it," he replied. "But I have the feeling that it is still running around aimlessly, trying to find its way back."

"And what happened to your promise to God?"

"My benefactor said not to worry, that it had been a good promise, but that I didn't know yet that there is no one to hear such promises, because there is no God. All there is is the Eagle's emanations, and there is no way to make promises to them."

"What would have happened if the ally had caught you?" I asked.

"I might have died of fright," he said. "If I had known what was entailed in being caught I would've let it catch me. At that time I was a reckless man. Once an ally catches you, you either have a heart attack and die or you wrestle with it. Then after a moment of thrashing around in sham ferocity, the ally's energy wanes. There is nothing that an ally can do to us, or vice versa. We are separated by an abyss.

"The ancient seers believed that at the moment the ally's energy dwindles the ally surrenders its power to man. Power, my eye! The old seers had allies coming out of their ears and their allies' power didn't mean a thing."

Don Juan explained that once again it had been up to the new seers to straighten out this confusion. They had found that the only thing that counts is impeccability, that is, freed energy. There were indeed some among the ancient seers who were saved by their allies, but that had had nothing to do with the allies' power to fend off anything; rather, it was the impeccability of the men that had permitted them to use the energy of those other forms of life.

The new seers also found out the most important thing yet about the allies: what makes them useless or usable to man. Useless allies, of which there are staggering numbers, are those that have emanations inside them for which we have no match inside ourselves. They are so different from us as to be thoroughly unusable. Other allies, which are remarkably few in number, are akin to us, meaning that they possess occasional emanations that match ours.

"How is that kind utilized by man?" I asked.

"We should use another word instead of 'utilize, ' " he replied. "I'd say that what takes place between seers and allies of this kind is a fair exchange of energy."

"How does the exchange take place?" I asked.

"Through their matching emanations," he said. "Those emanations are, naturally, on the left-side awareness of man; the side that the average man never uses. For this reason, allies are totally barred from the world of the right-side awareness, or the side of rationality."

He said that the matching emanations give both a common ground. Then, with familiarity, a deeper link is established, which allows both forms of life to profit. Seers seek the allies' ethereal quality; they make fabulous scouts and guardians. Allies seek the greater energy field of man, and with it they can even materialize themselves.

He assured me that experienced seers play those shared emanations until they bring them into total focus; the exchange lakes place at that time. The ancient seers did not understand this process, and they developed complex techniques of gazing in order to descend into the depths that I had seen in the mirror.

"The old seers had a very elaborate tool to help them in their descent," he went on. "It was a rope of special twine that they tied around their waist. It had a soft butt soaked in resin which fitted into the navel itself, like a plug. The seers had an assistant or a number of them who held them by the rope while they were lost in their gazing. Naturally, to gaze directly into the reflection of a deep, clear pond or lake is infinitely more overwhelming and dangerous than what we did with the mirror."

"But did they actually descend bodily?" I asked.

"You'd be surprised what men are capable of, especially if they control awareness," he replied. "The old seers were aberrant. In their excursions to the depths they found marvels. It was routine for them to encounter allies.

"Of course, by now you realize that to say the depths is a figure of speech. There are no depths, there is only the handling of awareness. Yet the old seers never made that realization."

I told don Juan that from what he had said about his experience with the ally, plus my own subjective impression on feeling the ally's thrashing force in the water, I had concluded that allies are very aggressive.

"Not really," he said. "It is not that they don't have enough energy to be aggressive, but rather that they have a different kind of energy. They are more like an electric current. Organic beings are more like heat waves."

"But why did it chase you for such a long time?" I asked.

"That's no mystery," he said. "They are attracted to emotions. Animal fear is what attracts them the most; it releases the kind of energy that suits them. The emanations inside them are rallied by animal fear. Since my fear was relentless the ally went after it, or rather, my fear hooked the ally and didn't let it go."

He said that it was the old seers who found out that allies enjoy animal fear more than anything else. They even went to the extreme of purposely feeding it to their allies by actually scaring people to death. The old seers were convinced that the allies had human feelings, but the new seers saw it differently. They saw that allies are attracted to the energy released by emotions; love is equally effective, as well as hatred, or sadness.

Don Juan added that if he had felt love for that ally, the ally would have come after him anyway, although the chase would have had a different mood. I asked him whether the ally would have stopped going after him if he had controlled his fear. He answered that controlling fear was a trick of the old seers. They learned to control it to the point of being able to parcel it out. They hooked their allies with their own fear and by gradually doling it out. like food, they actually held the allies in bondage.

"Those old seers were terrifying men," don Juan continued. "I shouldn't use the past tense?they are terrifying even today. Their bid is to dominate, to master everybody and everything."

"Even today, don Juan?" I asked, trying to get him to explain further.

He changed the subject by commenting that I had missed the opportunity of being really scared beyond measure. He said that doubtless the way I had sealed the frame of the mirror with tar had prevented the water from seeping behind the glass. He counted that as the deciding factor that had kept the ally from smashing the mirror.

"Too bad," he said. "You might even have liked that ally. By the way, it was not the same one that came the day before. The second one was perfectly akin to you."

"Don't you have some allies yourself, don Juan?" I asked.

"As you know, I have my benefactor's allies," he said. "I can't say that I have the same feeling for them that my benefactor did. He was a serene but thoroughly passionate man, who lavishly gave away everything he possessed, including his energy. He loved his allies. To him it was no sweat to allow the allies to use his energy and materialize themselves. There was one in particular that could even take a grotesque human form."

Don Juan went on to say that since he was not partial to allies, he had never given me a real taste of them, as his benefactor had done to him while he was still recovering from the wound in his chest. It all began with the thought that his benefactor was a strange man. Having barely escaped from the clutches of the petty tyrant, don Juan suspected that he had fallen into another trap. His intention was to wait a few days to get his strength back and then run away when the old man was not home. But the old man must have read his thoughts, because one day, in a confidential tone, he whispered to don Juan that he ought to get well as quickly as possible so that the two of them could escape from his captor and tormentor. Then, shaking with fear and impotence, the old man flung the door open and a monstrous fish-faced man came into the room, as if he had been listening behind the door. He was a grayish-green, had only one huge unblinking eye, and was as big as a door. Don Juan said that he was so surprised and terrified that he passed out, and it took him years to get out from under the spell of that fright.

"Are your allies useful to you, don Juan?" I asked.

"That's a very difficult thing to decide," he said.

"In some way, I love the allies my benefactor gave me. They are capable of giving back inconceivable affection. But they are incomprehensible to me. They were given to me for companionship in case I am ever stranded alone in that immensity that is the Eagle's emanations."

Continued