The Active Side of Infinity (34 page)

When don
Juan had told me all about this, my reaction had been to ask him if he was
describing a mythical proposition. He had replied
that there was nothing mythical about sorcerers.
Sorcerers were practical beings, and what they described was always
something quite sober and down-to-earth. According to don Juan, the difficulty
in understanding what sorcerers did was that
they proceeded from a different
cognitive system.

Sitting at the back of his house in central Mexico that day, don Juan
said that the
energy body
was of key importance in whatever was
taking place in my life. He
saw
that it was an
energetic fact
that my
energy body,
instead of moving away from me, as it normally
happens, was
approaching me with great speed.

"What does it mean, that it's approaching me, don Juan?" I
asked.

"It means that something is going to knock the daylights out of
you," he said, smiling. "A
tremendous degree of control is
going to come into your life, but not your control, the
energy
body's
control."

"Do you mean, don Juan, that some outside force will control
me?" I asked.

"There are scores of outside forces controlling you at this
moment," don Juan replied. "The
control that I
am referring to is something outside the domain of language. It is your control
and
at the same time it is not. It cannot be classified, but
it can certainly be experienced. And above
all, it can
certainly be manipulated. Remember this: It can be manipulated, to your total
advantage,
of course, which again, is not your advantage, but the
energy body's
advantage.
However, the
energy body
is you, so we could go on forever like
dogs biting their own tails,
trying to describe this. Language is
inadequate. All these experiences are beyond syntax."

Darkness had descended very quickly, and the foliage of the trees that
had been glowing green
a little while before was now very dark
and heavy. Don Juan said that if I paid close attention to the darkness of the
foliage without focusing my eyes, but sort of looked at it from the corner of
my
eye, I would see a fleeting shadow crossing my field of vision.

"This is the appropriate time of day for doing what I am asking
you to do," he said. "It takes a
moment to
engage the necessary attention in you to do it. Don't stop until you catch that
fleeting black shadow."

I did see some strange fleeting black shadow projected on the foliage
of the trees. It was either
one shadow going back and forth or various
fleeting shadows moving from left to right or right to
left or
straight up in the air. They looked like fat black fish to me, enormous fish.
It was as if
gigantic swordfish were flying in the air. I was
engrossed in the sight. Then, finally, it scared me.
It became too
dark to see the foliage, yet I could still see the fleeting black shadows.

"What is it, don Juan?" I asked. "I see fleeting black
shadows all over the place."

"Ah, that's the universe at large," he said,
"incommensurable, nonlinear, outside the realm of
syntax. The
sorcerers of ancient Mexico were the first ones to see those fleeting shadows,
so they
followed them around. They saw them as you're seeing
them, and they
saw
them as energy that flows in the universe. And they
did discover something transcendental."

He stopped talking and looked at me. His pauses were perfectly placed.
He always stopped
talking when I was hanging by a thread.

"What did they discover, don Juan?" I asked.

"They discovered that we have a companion for life," he said,
as clearly as he could. "We have a predator that came from the depths of
the cosmos and took over the rule of our lives.
Human beings
are its prisoners. The predator is our lord and master. It has rendered us
docile,
helpless. If we want to protest, it suppresses our
protest. If we want to act independently, it demands that we don't do so."

It was very dark around us, and that seemed to curtail any expression
on my part. If it had
been daylight, I would have laughed my
head off. In the dark, I felt quite inhibited.

"It's pitch black around us," don Juan said, "but if you
look out of the corner of your eye, you
will still see
fleeting shadows jumping all around you."

He was right. I could still see them. Their movement made me dizzy. Don
Juan turned on the
light, and that seemed to dissipate everything.

"You have arrived, by your effort alone, to what the shamans of
ancient Mexico called the topic of topics," don Juan said. "I have
been beating around the bush all this time, insinuating to
you
that something is holding us prisoner. Indeed we are held prisoner! This was an
energetic
fact
for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico."

"Why has this predator taken over in the fashion that you're
describing, don Juan?" I asked.
"There must be a logical
explanation."

"There is an explanation," don Juan replied, "which is
the simplest explanation in the world.
They took over
because we are food for them, and they squeeze us mercilessly because we are
their
sustenance. Just as we rear chickens in chicken coops,
gallineros,
the
predators rear us in
human coops,
humaneros.
Therefore,
their food is always available to them."

I felt that my head was shaking violently from side to side. I could not
express my profound sense of unease and discontentment, but my body moved to
bring it to the surface. I shook from
head to toe without any volition
on my part.

"No, no, no, no," I heard myself saying. "This is absurd,
don Juan. What you're saying is
something monstrous. It simply can't be
true, for sorcerers or for average men, or for anyone."
"Why
not?" don Juan asked calmly. "Why not? Because it infuriates
you?"

"Yes, it infuriates me," I retorted. "Those claims are
monstrous!"

"Well," he said, "you haven't heard all the claims yet.
Wait a bit longer and see how you feel.
I'm going to
subject you to a blitz. That is, I'm going to subject your mind to tremendous
onslaughts,
and you cannot get up and leave because you're caught. Not because I'm holding
you
prisoner, but because something in you will prevent you
from leaving, while another part of you
is going to go
truthfully berserk. So brace yourself!"

There was something in me which was, I felt, a glutton for punishment.
He was right. I wouldn't have left the house for the world. And yet I didn't
like one bit the inanities he was
spouting.

"I want to appeal to your analytical mind," don Juan said.
Think for a moment, and tell me
how you would explain the contradiction
between the intelligence of man the engineer and the stupidity of his systems
of beliefs, or the stupidity of his contradictory behavior. Sorcerers believe
that
the predators have given us our systems of beliefs, our ideas of good and evil,
our social
mores. They are the ones who set up our hopes and
expectations and dreams of success or failure.
They have
given us covetousness, greed, and cowardice. It is the predators who make us
complacent,
routinary, and egomaniacal."

"But how can they do this, don Juan?" I asked, somehow
angered further by what he was
saying. "Do they whisper all that
in our ears while we are asleep?"

"No, they don't do it that way. That's idiotic!" don Juan
said, smiling. "They are infinitely
more efficient
and organized than that. In order to keep us obedient and meek and weak, the
predators
engaged themselves in a stupendous maneuver-stupendous, of course, from the
point of
view of a fighting strategist. A horrendous maneuver
from the point of view of those who suffer it. They gave us their mind! Do you
hear me? The predators give us their mind, which becomes
our
mind. The predators' mind is baroque, contradictory, morose, filled with the
fear of being
discovered any minute now.

"I know that even though you have never suffered hunger," he
went on, "you have food
anxiety, which is none other than the
anxiety of the predator who fears that any moment now its
maneuver
is going to be uncovered and food is going to be denied. Through the mind,
which,
after all, is their mind, the predators inject into the
lives of human beings whatever is convenient
for them. And
they ensure, in this manner, a degree of security to act as a buffer against
their
fear."

"It's not that I can't accept all this at face value, don
Juan," I said. "I could, but there's
something so
odious about it that it actually repels me. It forces me to take a
contradictory stand. If it's true that they eat us, how do they do it?"

Don Juan had a broad smile on his face. He was as pleased as punch. He
explained that
sorcerers
see
infant human beings as
strange, luminous balls of energy, covered from the top to
the
bottom with a glowing coat, something like a plastic cover that is adjusted
tightly over their cocoon of energy. He said that that
glowing coat of
awareness
was what the predators consumed,
and that when a human being reached
adulthood, all that was left of that glowing coat
of
awareness was a narrow fringe that went from the
ground to the top of the toes. That fringe
permitted mankind to continue living, but only barely.

As if I had been in a dream, I heard don Juan Matus explaining that to
his knowledge, man
was the only species that had the glowing coat of
awareness outside that luminous cocoon.
Therefore, he
became easy prey for an awareness of a different order, such as the heavy
awareness
of the predator.

He then made the most damaging statement he had made so far. He said
that this narrow fringe of awareness was the epicenter of self-reflection,
where man was irremediably caught. By
playing on our self-reflection,
which is the only point of awareness left to us, the predators create
flares
of awareness that they proceed to consume in a ruthless, predatory fashion.
They give us
inane problems that force those flares of awareness to
rise, and in this manner they keep us alive in order for them to be fed with
the energetic flare of our pseudoconcerns.

There must have been something to what don Juan was saying, which was so
devastating to me that at that point I actually got sick to my stomach.

After a moment's pause, long enough for me to recover, I asked don
Juan: "But why is it that
the sorcerers of ancient Mexico and all sorcerers today, although they
see
the predators, don't do
anything
about it?"

"There's nothing that you and I can do about it," don Juan
said in a grave, sad voice. "All we can do is discipline ourselves to the
point where they will not touch us. How can you ask your fellow men to go
through those rigors of discipline? They'll laugh and make fun of you, and the
more
aggressive ones will beat the shit out of you. And not so much because they
don't believe it.
Down in the depths of every human being, there's
an ancestral, visceral knowledge about the
predators'
existence."

My analytical mind swung back and forth like a yo-yo. It left me and
came back and left me
and came back again. Whatever don Juan
was proposing was preposterous, incredible. At the same time, it was a most reasonable
thing, so simple. It explained every kind of human
contradiction
I could think of. But how could one have taken all this seriously? Don Juan was
pushing me into the path of an avalanche that would take me down
forever.

I felt another wave of a threatening sensation. The wave didn't stem
from me, yet it was
attached to me. Don Juan was doing something to me,
mysteriously positive and terribly negative
at the same
time. I sensed it as an attempt to cut a thin film that seemed to be glued to
me. His
eyes
were fixed on mine in an unblinking stare. He moved his eyes away and began to
talk
without looking at me anymore.

"Whenever doubts plague you to a dangerous point," he said,
"do something pragmatic about
it. Turn off the light. Pierce
the darkness; find out what you can see."

He got up to turn off the lights. I stopped him.

"No, no, don Juan," I said, "don't turn off the lights.
I'm doing okay."