The Art of Dreaming (15 page)

Don Juan had
said that inorganic beings are always poised to teach. But he had not told me
that
dreaming
is what they are poised to teach. He had stated that the
dreaming
emissary, since it is a voice, is the perfect bridge between that world and
ours. I found out that the
dreaming
emissary was not only a teacher's
voice but the voice of a most subtle salesman. It repeated on and on, at the
proper time and occasion, the advantages of its world. Yet it also taught me
invaluable things about
dreaming
. Listening to what it said, I
understood the old sorcerers' preference for concrete practices.

"For
perfect
dreaming
, the first thing you have to do is shut off your
internal dialogue," it said to me one time. "For best results in
shutting it off, put between your fingers some two- or threeinch-long quartz
crystals or a couple of smooth, thin river pebbles. Bend your fingers slightly,
and press the crystals or pebbles with them."

The
emissary said that metal pins, if they were the size and width of one's
fingers, were equally effective. The procedure consisted of pressing at least
three thin items between the fingers of each hand and creating, an almost
painful pressure in the hands. This pressure had the strange property of
shutting off the internal dialogue. The emissary's expressed preference was for
quartz crystals; it said that they gave the best results, although with
practice anything was suitable.

"Falling
asleep at a moment of total silence guarantees a perfect entrance into
dreaming
,"
said the emissary's voice, "and it also guarantees the enhancing of one's
dreaming
attention."

"Dreamers
should wear a gold ring," said the emissary to me another time,
"preferably fitted a bit tight."

The
emissary's explanation was that such a ring serves as a bridge for surfacing
from
dreaming
back into the daily world or for sinking from our daily
awareness into the inorganic beings' realm.

"How
does this bridge work?" I asked. I had not understood what was involved.

"The
contact of the fingers on the ring lays the bridge down," the emissary
said. "If a dreamer comes into my world wearing a ring, that ring attracts
the energy of my world and keeps it; and when it's needed, that energy
transports the dreamer back to this world, by the ring releasing it into the
dreamer's fingers.

"The pressure
of that ring around a finger serves equally well to ensure a dreamer's return
to his world. It gives him a constant, familiar sense on his finger."

During
another
dreaming
session, the emissary said that our skin is the perfect
organ for transposing energy waves from the mode of the daily world to the mode
of the inorganic beings and vice versa. It recommended that I keep my skin cool
and free from pigments or oils. It also recommended that dreamers wear a tight
belt or headband or necklace to create a pressure point that serves as a skin
center of energy exchange. The emissary explained that the skin automatically
screens energy, and that what we need to do to make the skin not only screen
but exchange energy from one mode to the other is to express our intent out
loud, in
dreaming
.

One day the
emissary's voice gave me a fabulous bonus. It said that, in order to ensure the
keenness and accuracy of our
dreaming
attention, we must bring it from
behind the roof of the mouth, where an enormous reservoir of attention is
located in all human beings. The emissary's specific directions were to
practice and learn the discipline and control necessary to press the tip of the
tongue on the roof of the mouth while
dreaming
. This task is as
difficult and consuming, the emissary said, as finding one's hands in a dream.
But, once it is accomplished, this task gives the most astounding results in
terms of controlling the
dreaming
attention.

I received
a profusion of instructions on every conceivable subject, instructions that I
promptly forgot if they were not endlessly repeated to me. I sought don Juan's
advice on how to resolve this problem of forgetting.

His comment
was as brief as I had expected. "Focus only on what the emissary tells you
about
dreaming
," he said.

Whatever
the emissary's voice repeated enough times, I grasped with tremendous interest
and fervor. Faithful to don Juan's recommendation, I only followed its guidance
when it referred to
dreaming
and I personally corroborated the value of
its instruction. The most vital piece of information for me was that the
dreaming
attention comes from behind the roof of the mouth. It took a great deal of
effort on my part to feel in
dreaming
that I was pressing the roof of my
mouth with the tip of my tongue. Once I accomplished this, my
dreaming
attention took on a life of its own and became, I may say, keener than my
normal attention to the daily world.

It did not
take much for me to deduce how deep must have been the involvement of the old
sorcerers with the inorganic beings. Don Juan's commentaries and warnings about
the danger of such an involvement became more vital than ever. I tried my best
to live up to his standards of self-examination with no indulgence. Thus, the
emissary's voice and what it said became a superchallenge for me. I had to
avoid, at all cost, succumbing to the temptation of the emissary's promise of
knowledge, and I had to do this all by myself since don Juan continued to
refuse to listen to my accounts.

"You
must give me at least a hint about what I should do," I insisted on one
occasion when I was bold enough to ask him.

"I
can't," he said with finality, "and don't ask again. I've told you,
in this instance, dreamers have to be left alone."

"But
you don't even know what I want to ask you."

"Oh yes
I do. You want me to tell you that it is all right to live in one of those
tunnels, if for no other reason than just to know what the emissary's voice is
talking about."

I admitted
that this was exactly my dilemma. If nothing else, I wanted to know what was implied
in the statement that one can live inside those tunnels.

"I
went through the same turmoil myself," don Juan went on, "and no one
could help me, because this is a superpersonal and final decision, a final
decision made the instant you voice your desire to live in that world. In order
to get you to voice that desire, the inorganic beings are going to cater to
your most secret wishes."

"This
is really diabolical, don Juan."

"You
can say that again. But not just because of what you are thinking. For you, the
diabolical part is the temptation to give in, especially when such great
rewards are at stake. For me, the diabolical nature of the inorganic beings'
realm is that it might very well be the only sanctuary dreamers have in a
hostile universe."

"Is it
really a haven for dreamers, don Juan?"

"It
definitely is for some dreamers. Not for me. I don't need props or railings. I
know what I am. I am alone in a hostile universe, and I have learned to say. So
be it!"

That was
the end of our exchange. He had not said what I wanted to hear, yet I knew that
even the desire to know what it was like to live in a tunnel meant almost to
choose that way of life. I was not interested in such a thing. I made my
decision right then to continue my
dreaming
practices without any
further implications. I quickly told don Juan about it.

"Don't
say anything," he advised me. "But do understand that if you choose
to stay, your decision is final. You'll stay there forever."

It is
impossible for me to judge objectively what took place during the countless
times I dreamt of that world. I can say that it appeared to be a world as real
as any dream can be real. Or I can say that it appeared to be as real as our
daily world is real.
Dreaming
of that world, I became aware of what don
Juan had said to me many times: that under the influence of
dreaming
,
reality suffers a metamorphosis. I found myself then facing the two options
which, according to don Juan, are the options faced by all dreamers: either we
carefully revamp or we completely disregard our system of sensory input
interpretation.

For don
Juan, to revamp our interpretation system meant to intend its reconditioning.
It meant that one deliberately and carefully attempts to enlarge its
capabilities. By living in accordance with the sorcerers' way, dreamers save
and store the necessary energy to suspend judgment and thus facilitate that
intended revamping. He explained that if we choose to recondition our
interpretation system, reality becomes fluid, and the scope of what can be real
is enhanced without endangering the integrity of reality.
Dreaming
,
then, indeed opens the door into other aspects of what is real.

If we
choose to disregard our system, the scope of what can be perceived without
interpretation grows inordinately. The expansion of our perception is so
gigantic that we are left with very few tools for sensory interpretation and,
thus, a sense of an infinite realness that is unreal or an infinite unrealness
that could very well be real but is not.

For me, the
only acceptable option was reconstructing and enlarging my interpretation
system. In
dreaming
the inorganic beings' realm, I was faced with the
consistence of that world from dream to dream, from isolating the scouts
through listening to the dreaming emissary's voice to going through tunnels. I
went through them without feeling anything, yet being aware that space and time
were constant, although not in terms discernible by rationality under normal
conditions. However, by noticing the difference or the absence or profusion of
detail in each tunnel, or by noticing the sense of distance between tunnels, or
by noticing the apparent length or width of each tunnel in which I traveled, I
arrived at a sense of objective observation.

The area
where this reconstruction of my interpretation system had the most dramatic
effect was the knowledge of how I related to the world of the inorganic beings.
In that world, which was real to me, I was a blob of energy. Thus, I could whiz
in the tunnels, like a fast-moving light, or I could crawl on their walls, like
an insect. If I flew, a voice told me not arbitrary but consistent information
about details on the walls on which I had focused my
dreaming
attention.
Those details were intricate protuberances, like the Braille system of writing.
When I crawled on the walls, I could see the same details with greater accuracy
and hear the voice giving me more complex descriptions.

The
unavoidable consequence for me was the development of a dual stand. On the one
hand, I knew I was
dreaming
a dream; on the other, I knew I was involved
in a pragmatic journey, as real as any journey in the world. This bona fide
split was a corroboration of what don Juan had said: that the existence of
inorganic beings is the foremost assailant of our rationality.

Only after
I had really suspended judgment did I get any relief. At one moment, when the
tension of my untenable position - seriously believing in the attestable
existence of inorganic beings, while seriously believing that it was only a
dream - was about to destroy me, something in my attitude changed drastically,
but without any solicitation on my part.

Don Juan
maintained that my energy level, which had been steadily growing, one day
reached a threshold that allowed me to disregard assumptions and prejudgments about
the nature of man, reality, and perception. That day I became enamored with
knowledge, regardless of logic or functional value, and, above all, regardless
of personal convenience.

When my
objective inquiry into the subject of inorganic beings no longer mattered to
me, don Juan himself brought up the subject of my dream journey into that
world. He said, "I don't think you are aware of the regularity of your
meetings with inorganic beings."

He was
right. I had never bothered to think about it. I commented on the oddity of my
oversight.

"It
isn't an oversight," he said. "It's the nature of that realm to
foster secretiveness. Inorganic beings veil themselves in mystery, darkness.
Think about their world: stationary, fixed to draw us like moths to a light or
a fire.

"There
is something the emissary hasn't dared to tell you so far: that the inorganic
beings are after our awareness or the awareness of any being that falls into
their nets. They'll give us knowledge, but they'll extract a payment: our total
being."

"Do
you mean, don Juan, that the inorganic beings are like fishermen?"

"Exactly.
At one moment, the emissary will show you men who got caught in there or other
beings that are not human that also got caught in there."

Revulsion
and fear should have been my response. Don Juan's revelations affected me
deeply, but in the sense of creating uncontainable curiosity. I was nearly
panting.

"Inorganic
beings can't force anyone to stay with them," don Juan went on. "To
live in their world is a voluntary affair. Yet they are capable of imprisoning
any one of us by catering to our desires, by pampering and indulging us. Beware
of awareness that is immobile. Awareness like that has to seek movement, and it
does this, as I've told you, by creating projections, phantasmagorical
projections at times."