The Active Side of Infinity (26 page)

I related to don Juan my two recollections in all their detail, sparing
nothing. He didn't make any comments. He nodded a few times.

"In both recollections, don Juan," I said, feeling myself the
urgency of my voice, "I was as
hysterical as anyone could be.
My body was trembling. I was sick to my stomach. I don't want to say it was as
if
I were in the experiences, because that's not the truth. I
was
in
the experiences
themselves both times. And when I couldn't take
them anymore, I jumped into my life now. For
me, that was a
jump into the future. I had the power of going over time. My jump into the past
was not abrupt; the event developed slowly, as memories do. It was at
the end that I did jump abruptly into the future: my life now."

"Something in you has begun to collapse for sure," he finally
said. "It has been collapsing all
along, but it
repaired itself very quickly every time its supports failed. My feeling is that
it is now
collapsing totally."

After another long silence, don Juan explained that the sorcerers of
ancient Mexico believed
that, as he had told me already, we
had two minds, and only one of them was truly ours. I had
always
understood don Juan as saying that there were two parts to our minds, and one
of them was always silent because expression was denied to it by the force of
the other part. Whatever
don Juan had said, I had taken as a
metaphorical way to explain, perhaps, the apparent dominance of the left
hemisphere of the brain over the right, or something of the like.

"There is a secret option to the
recapitulation"
, don
Juan said.

"Just like I told you that there is a secret option to dying, an
option that only sorcerers take. In
the case of dying, the secret
option is that human beings could retain their life force and
relinquish
only their awareness, the product of their lives. In the case of the
recapitulation,
the
secret option that only sorcerers take is to choose to
enhance their true minds.

"The haunting memory of your recollections," he went on,
"could come only from your true
mind. The other mind that we all have and share is, I
would say, a cheap model: economy
strength,
one size fits all. But this is a subject that we will discuss later. What is at
stake now is
the advent of a
disintegrating force. But not a force that is disintegrating you-I don't mean
it that way. It is disintegrating what the sorcerers call the
foreign
installation,
which exists in you and in
every other human being. The effect of the force that is descending on
you, which is
disintegrating the
foreign
installation,
is that it pulls sorcerers out of their
syntax."

I had listened carefully to don Juan, but I couldn't say that I had
understood what he had said.
For some strange reason, which was to
me as unknown as the cause of my vivid recollections, I
couldn't
ask him any questions.

"I know how difficult it is for you," don Juan said all of a
sudden, "to deal with this facet of
your life.
Every sorcerer that I know has gone through it. The males going through it
suffer
infinitely
more damage than the females. I suppose it's the condition of women to be more
durable. The sorcerers of ancient Mexico, acting as
a
group, tried their best to buttress the impact
of this disintegrating force. In our day, we have
no means of acting as a group, so we must brace
ourselves to face in solitude a force that will sweep us away from
language, for there is no way to
describe
adequately what is going on."

Don Juan was right in that I was at a loss for explanations or ways of
describing the effect that
those recollections had had on me. Don
Juan had told me that sorcerers face the unknown in the most common incidents
one can imagine. When they are confronted with it, and cannot interpret
what
they are perceiving, they have to rely on an outside source for direction. Don
Juan had
called that source
infinity,
or the
voice of
the spirit,
and had said that if sorcerers don't try to be rational about
what can't be rationalized, the
spirit
unerringly tells them what's
what.

Don Juan had guided me to accept the idea that
infinity
was a
force that had a voice and was
conscious of itself. Consequently, he
had prepared me to be ready to listen to that voice and act efficiently always,
but without antecedents, using as little as possible the railings of the a
priori. I
waited impatiently for the
voice of the spirit
to
tell me the meaning of my recollections, but
nothing
happened.

I was in a bookstore one day when a girl recognized me and came over to
talk to me. She was
tall and slim, and had an insecure, little girl's
voice. I was trying to make her feel at ease when I was suddenly accosted by an
instantaneous energetic change. It was as if an alarm had been
triggered
in me, and as it had happened in the past, without any volition on my part
whatsoever, I
recollected another completely forgotten event in my
life. The memory of my grandparents' house
flooded me. It
was a veritable avalanche so intense that it was devastating, and once more, I
had
to retreat to
a
corner. My body shook, as if I had
taken a chill.

I must have been eight years old. My grandfather was talking to me. He
had begun by telling
me that it was his utmost duty to set
me straight. I had two cousins who were my age: Alfredo
and
Luis. My grandfather demanded mercilessly that I admit that my cousin Alfredo
was really
beautiful. In my vision, I heard my grandfather's raspy,
constricted voice.

"Alfredo doesn't need any introductions," he had said to me on
that occasion. "He needs only
to be present and the doors
will fly open for him because everybody practices the cult of beauty.
Everybody
likes beautiful people. They envy them, but they certainly seek their company.
Take it
from me. I am handsome, wouldn't you say?" I
sincerely agreed with my grandfather. He was
certainly a
very handsome man, small-boned, with laughing blue eyes and an exquisitely
chiseled
face with beautiful cheekbones. Everything seemed to be
perfectly balanced in his face-his nose,
his mouth, his
eyes, his pointed jaw. He had blond hair growing on his ears, a feature that
gave him an elflike appearance. He knew everything about himself, and he
exploited his attributes to
the maximum. Women adored him; first,
according to him, for his beauty, and second, because he
posed
no threat to them. He, of course, took full advantage of all this.

"Your cousin Alfredo is a winner," my grandfather went on.
"He will never have to crash a
party because he'll be the first
one on the list of guests. Have you ever noticed how people stop in
the
street to look at him, and how they want to touch him? He's so beautiful that
I'm afraid he's going to turn out to be an asshole, but that's a different
story. Let us say that he'll be the most
welcome
asshole you have ever met."

My grandfather compared my cousin Luis with Alfredo. He said that Luis
was homely, and a
little bit stupid, but that he had a heart of gold.
And then he brought me into the picture.

"If we are going to proceed with our explanation," he
continued, "you have to admit in
sincerity that Alfredo is
beautiful and Luis is good. Now, let's take you; you are neither handsome
nor
good. You are a veritable son of a bitch. Nobody's going to invite you to a
party. You'll have
to get used to the idea that if you want to be at a
party, you will have to crash it. Doors will never
be open for
you the way they will be open for Alfredo for being beautiful, and for Luis for
being
good, so you will have to get in through the
window."

His analysis of his three grandsons was so accurate that he made me
weep with the finality of
what he had said. The more I wept, the
happier he became. He finished his case with a most deleterious admonition.

"There's no need to feel bad," he said, "because there's
nothing more exciting than getting in
through the window. To do that,

you have to be clever and on your toes. You have to watch everything,
and be prepared for
endless humiliations.

"If you have to go in through the window," he went on,
"it's because you're definitely not on
the list of
guests; therefore, your presence is not welcome at all, so you have to work
your butt off
to stay. The only way I know is by possessing everybody.
Scream! Demand! Advise! Make them
feel that you are in charge! How
could they throw you out if you're in charge?"

Remembering this scene caused a profound upheaval in me. I had buried
this incident so
deeply that I had forgotten all about it. What I
had remembered all along, however, was his admonition to be in charge, which he
must have repeated to me over and over throughout the
years.

I didn't have a chance to examine this event, or ponder it, because
another forgotten memory
surfaced with the same force. In it, I
was with the girl I had been engaged to. At that time, both of us were saving
money to be married and have a house of our own. I heard myself demanding that
we have a joint checking account; I wouldn't have it any other way. I felt an
imperative need to
lecture her on frugality. I heard myself telling
her where to buy her clothes, and what the top
affordable
price should be.

Then I saw myself giving driving lessons to her younger sister and
going veritably berserk
when she said that she was planning to
move out of her parents' house. Forcefully, I threatened
her
with canceling my lessons. She wept, confessing that she was having an affair
with her boss. I
jumped out of the car and began kicking the door.

However, that was not all. I heard myself telling my fiancee's father
not to move to Oregon,
where he planned to go. I shouted at
the top of my voice that it was a stupid move. I really
believed
that my reasonings against it were unbeatable. I presented him with budget
figures in
which
I had meticulously calculated his losses. When he didn't pay any attention to
me, I
slammed the door and left, shaking
with rage. I found my fiancee in the living room, playing her
guitar. I pulled it out of her hands and yelled
at her that she embraced the guitar instead of
playing it, as if it were more than an object.

My desire to impose my will extended all across the board. I made no
distinctions; whoever
was close to me was there for me to
possess and mold, following my whims.

I didn't have to ponder anymore the significance of my vivid visions.
For an unquestionable
certainty invaded me, as if coming
from outside me. It told me that my weak point was the idea
that
1 had to be the man in the director's chair at all times. It had been a deeply
ingrained concept
with me that 1 not only had to be in charge, but 1
had to be in control of any situation. The way in
which 1 had
been brought up had reinforced this drive, which must have been arbitrary at
its
onset, but had turned, in my adulthood, into a deep
necessity.

I was aware, beyond any doubt, that what was at stake was infinity. Don
Juan had portrayed it
as a conscious force that deliberately
intervenes in the lives of sorcerers. And now it was
intervening in
mine. 1 knew that
infinity
was pointing out to me, through the vivid
recollection of
those forgotten experiences, the intensity and the depth of my drive for
control, and thus
preparing me for
something transcendental to myself. 1 knew with frightening certainty that
something was going to bar any possibility of my
being in control, and that 1 needed, more than
anything else, sobriety, fluidity, and abandon in order to face the
things that 1 felt were coming to
me.

Naturally, I told all this to don Juan, elaborating to my heart's
content on my speculations and
inspirational insights about the
possible significance of my recollections.

Don Juan laughed good-humoredly. "All this is psychological
exaggeration on your part,
wishful thinking," he said.
"You are, as usual, seeking explanations with linear cause and effect.
Each
of your recollections becomes more and more vivid, more and more maddening to
you,
because as 1 told you already, you have entered an
irreversible process. Your true mind is
emerging,
waking up from a state of lifelong lethargy.