The Active Side of Infinity (36 page)

I attributed my reaction to don Juan's influence. The unavoidable
question that I posed to
myself was: Is he influencing me to see
this, or is there really a foreign mind dictating everything
we
do? I lapsed, perforce, into denial again, and I went insanely from denial to
acceptance to
denial. Something in me knew that whatever don Juan was
driving at was an
energetic fact,
but
something
equally important in me knew that all of that was guff. The end result of my
internal
struggle was a sense of foreboding, the sense of
something imminently dangerous coming at me.

I made extensive anthropological inquiries into the subject of the
flyers
in other cultures, but I
couldn't find any references to them
anywhere. Don Juan seemed to be the only source of
information
about this matter. The next time I saw him, I instantly jumped to talk about
the
flyers.

"I have tried my best to be rational about this subject
matter," I said, "but I can't. There are
moments when I
fully agree with you about the predators."

"Focus your attention on the fleeting shadows that you actually
see," don Juan said with a
smile.

I told don Juan that those fleeting shadows were going to be the end of
my rational life. I saw
them everywhere. Since I had left his
house, I was incapable of going to sleep in the dark. To
sleep
with the lights on did not bother me at all. The moment I turned the lights
off, however,
everything around me began to jump. I never saw complete
figures or shapes. All I saw were
fleeting black shadows.

"The
flyers' mind
has not left you," don Juan said.
"It has been seriously injured. It's trying its
best to
rearrange its relationship with you. But something in you is severed forever.
The
flyer
knows that. The real danger is that the
flyers'
mind
may win by getting you tired and forcing you to quit by playing the
contradiction between what it says and what I say.

"You see, the
flyers' mind
has no competitors," don
Juan continued. "When it proposes
something, it
agrees with its own proposition, and it makes you believe that you've done
something
of worth. The
flyers' mind
will say to you that whatever Juan Matus is
telling you is
pure nonsense, and then the same mind will agree
with its own proposition, 'Yes, of course, it is
nonsense,' you
will say. That's the way they overcome us.

"The
flyers
are an essential part of the universe," he
went on, "and they must be taken as what
they really are-awesome,
monstrous. They are the means by which the universe tests us.

"We are energetic probes created by the universe," he
continued as if he were oblivious to my
presence,
"and it's because we are possessors of energy that has awareness that we
are the means by which the universe becomes aware of itself. The
flyers
are
the implacable challengers. They
cannot be taken as anything else. If
we succeed in doing that, the universe allows us to continue."

I wanted don Juan to say more. But he said only, "The blitz ended
the last time you were here;
there's only so much you could say
about
the flyers.
It's time for another kind of maneuver."

I couldn't sleep that night. I fell into a light sleep in the early
hours of the morning, until don
Juan dragged me out of my bed and took
me for a hike in the mountains. Where he lived, the
configuration
of the land was very different from that of the Sonoran desert, but he told me
not to
indulge in comparison that after walking for a quarter
of a mile, every place in the world was just
the same.

"Sightseeing is for people in cars," he said. "They go at
great speed without any effort on their
part.
Sightseeing is not for walkers. For instance, when you are riding in a car, you
may see a
gigantic mountain whose sight overwhelms you with its
beauty. The sight of the same mountain
will not
overwhelm you in the same manner if you look at it while you're going on foot;
it will
overwhelm you in
a
different way, especially if
you have to climb it or go around it."

It was very hot that morning. We walked on a dry riverbed. One thing
that this valley and the
Sonoran desert had in common was their
millions of insects. The gnats and flies all around me
were like
dive-bombers that aimed at my nostrils, eyes, and ears. Don Juan told me not to
pay
attention to their buzzing.

"Don't try to disperse them with your hand," he uttered in a
firm tone.
"Intend
them away. Set
up an energy
barrier around you. Be silent, and from your silence the barrier will be
constructed.
Nobody knows how this is done. It is one of those things
that the old sorcerers called
energetic facts.
Shut off your internal
dialogue. That's all it takes.

"I want to propose a weird idea to you," don Juan went on as
he kept walking ahead of me.

I had to accelerate my steps to be closer to him so as not to miss
anything he said.

"I have to stress that it's a weird idea that will find endless
resistance in you," he said. "I will tell you beforehand that you
won't accept it easily. But the fact that it's weird should not be a
deterrent.
You are a social scientist. Therefore, your mind is always open to inquiry,
isn't that
so?"

Don Juan was shamelessly making fun of me. I knew it, but it didn't
bother me. Perhaps due
to the fact that he was walking so
fast, and I had to make a tremendous effort to keep up with
him,
his sarcasm just sloughed off me, and instead of making me feisty, it made me
laugh. My
undivided attention was focused on what he was saying,
and the insects either stopped bothering
me because I
had
intended
a barrier of energy around me or because I was so busy
listening to
don Juan that I didn't care about their buzzing around me
anymore.

"The weird idea," he said slowly, measuring the effect of his
words, "is that every human
being on this earth seems to have
exactly the same reactions, the same thoughts, the same
feelings.
They seem to respond in more or less the same way to the same stimuli. Those
reactions
seem to be sort of fogged up by the language they speak,
but if we scrape that off, they are
exactly the same reactions that
besiege every human being on Earth. I would like you to become
curious
about this, as a social scientist, of course, and see if you could formally
account for such
homogeneity."

Don Juan collected a series of plants. Some of them could hardly be
seen. They seemed to be
more in the realm of algae, moss. I
held his bag open, and we didn't speak anymore. When he had
enough
plants, he headed back for his house, walking as fast as he could. He said that
he wanted
to clean and separate those plants and put them in a
proper order before they dried up too much.

I was deeply involved in thinking about the task he had delineated for
me. I began by trying to
review in my mind if I knew of any
articles or papers written on this subject. I thought that I
would
have to research it, and I decided to begin my research by reading all the
works available
on "national character." 1 got enthusiastic about the topic,
in a haphazard way, and I really
wanted to
start for home right away, for I wanted to take his task to heart, but before
we reached
his house, don Juan sat
down on a high ledge overlooking the valley. He didn't say anything for a
while. He was not out of breath. I couldn't
conceive of why he had stopped to sit down.

"The task of the day, for you," he said abruptly, in a
foreboding tone, "is one of the most
mysterious
things of sorcery, something that goes beyond language, beyond explanations. We
went for a hike today, we talked, because the mystery of sorcery must be
cushioned in the
mundane. It must stem from nothing, and go back
again to nothing. That's the art of warrior-
travelers: to
go through the eye of a needle unnoticed. So, brace yourself by propping your
back against this rock wall, as far as possible from the edge. I will be by
you, in case you faint or fall
down."

"What are you planning to do, don Juan?" I asked, and my alarm
was so patent that I noticed it and lowered my voice.

"I want you to cross your legs and enter into
inner silence
,
" he said. "Let's say that you want
to find out
what articles you could look for to discredit or substantiate what I have asked
you to
do in your academic milieu. Enter into
inner silence,
but don't fall asleep. This is not a journey
through the
dark
sea of awareness.
This is
seeing from inner silence."

It was rather difficult for me to enter into
inner silence
without
falling asleep. I fought a
nearly invincible desire to fall
asleep. I succeeded, and found myself looking at the bottom of the
valley
from an impenetrable darkness around me. And then, I saw something that chilled
me to the marrow of my bones. I
saw
a gigantic shadow, perhaps fifteen
feet across, leaping in the air
and then landing with a silent thud. I
felt the thud in my bones, but I didn't hear it.

"They are really heavy," don Juan said in my ear. He was
holding me by the left arm, as hard
as he could.

I saw; something that looked like a mud shadow wiggle on the ground, and
then take another
gigantic leap, perhaps fifty feet long, and land
again, with the same ominous silent thud. I fought
not to lose my
concentration. I was frightened beyond anything I could rationally use as a
description.
I kept my eyes fixed on the jumping shadow on the bottom of the valley. Then I
heard a most peculiar buzzing, a mixture of the sound of flapping wings and the
buzzing of a radio whose dial has not quite picked up the frequency of a radio
station, and the thud that followed was something unforgettable. It shook don
Juan and me to the core-a gigantic black
mud shadow had
just landed by our feet.

"Don't be frightened," don Juan said imperiously. "Keep
your
inner silence
and it will move
away."

I was shivering from head to toe. I had the clear knowledge that if I
didn't keep my
inner
silence alive, the mud shadow would
cover me up like a blanket and suffocate me. Without losing
the
darkness around me, I screamed at the top of my voice. Never had I been so
angry, so utterly
frustrated. The mud shadow took another leap,
clearly to the bottom of the valley. I kept on
screaming,
shaking my legs. I wanted to shake off whatever might come to eat me. My state
of
nervousness was so intense that I lost track of time.
Perhaps I fainted.

When I came to my senses, I was lying in my bed in don Juan's house.
There was a towel,
soaked in icy-cold water, wrapped around my
forehead. I was burning with fever. One of don
Juan's female
cohorts rubbed my back, chest, and forehead with rubbing alcohol, but this did
not
relieve me. The heat I was experiencing came from within
myself. It was wrath and impotence
that generated it.

Don Juan laughed as if what was happening to me was the funniest thing
in the world. Peals of laughter came out of him in an endless barrage.

"1 would never have thought that you would take
seeing
a
flyer
so much to heart," he said. He took me by the hand and led me to the back
of his house, where he dunked me in a huge tub of water, fully clothed-shoes,
watch, everything.

"My watch, my watch!" I screamed.

Don Juan twisted with laughter. "You shouldn't wear a watch when
you come to see me," he
said. "Now you've fouled up your
watch!"

I took off my watch and put it by the side of the tub. I remembered that
it was waterproof and
that nothing would happen to it.

Being dunked in the tub helped me enormously. When don Juan pulled me
out of the freezing
water, I had gained a degree of control.

"That sight is preposterous!" I kept on repeating, unable to
say anything else.

The predator don Juan had described was not something benevolent. It
was enormously
heavy, gross, indifferent. I felt its disregard for
us. Doubtless, it had crushed us ages ago, making
us, as don
Juan had said, weak, vulnerable, and docile. I took off my wet clothes, covered
myself
with a poncho, sat in my bed, and veritably wept my head
off, but not for myself. I had my wrath,
my
unbending
intent,
not to let them eat me. I wept for my fellow men, especially for my
father. I
never knew until that instant that I loved him so much.