The Art of Dreaming (27 page)

"One
of the strangest things dreamers find, which you yourself will find
presently," don Juan continued, "is this third type of scout. So far,
you have found samples of only the first two types, but that's because you
haven't looked in the right place."

"And
what is the right place, don Juan?"

"You
have again fallen prey to words; this time the culprit word is "items,"
which you have taken to mean only things, objects. Well, the most ferocious
scout hides behind people in our dreams. A formidable surprise was in store for
me, in my
dreaming
, when I focused my gaze on the dream image of my
mother. After I voiced my intent to
see
, she turned into a ferocious,
frightening bubble of sizzling energy."

Don Juan
paused to let his statements sink in. I felt stupid for being disturbed at the
possibility of finding a scout behind the dream image of my mother.

"It's
annoying that they are always associated with the dream images of our parents
or close friends," he went on. "Perhaps that's why we often feel ill
at ease when we dream of them." His grin gave me the impression that he
was enjoying my turmoil. "A rule of thumb for dreamers is to assume that
the third type of scout is present whenever they feel perturbed by their
parents or friends in a dream. Sound advice is to avoid those dream images.
They are sheer poison."

"Where
does the blue scout stand in relation to the other scouts?" I asked.

"Blue
energy doesn't sizzle," he replied. "It is like ours; it wavers, but
it is blue instead of white. Blue energy doesn't exist in a natural state in
our world.

"And
this brings us to something we've never talked about. What color were the
scouts you've
seen
so far?"

Until the
moment he mentioned it, I had never thought about this. I told don Juan that
the scouts I had seen were either pink or reddish. And he said that the deadly
scouts of the third type were bright orange.

I found out
myself that the third type of scout is outright scary. Every time I found one
of them, it was behind the dream images of my parents, especially of my mother.
Seeing
it always reminded me of the blob of energy that had attacked me
in my first deliberate seeing dream. Every time I found it, the alien exploring
energy actually seemed about to jump on me. My energy body used to react with
horror even before I
saw
it.

During our
next discussion of
dreaming
, I queried don Juan about the total absence
of inorganic beings in my
dreaming
practices.

"Why
don't they show up anymore?" I asked.

"They
only show themselves at the beginning," he explained. "After their
scouts take us to their world, there is no necessity for the inorganic beings'
projections. If we want to
see
the inorganic beings, a scout takes us
there. For no one, and I mean no one, can journey by himself to their
realm."

"Why
is that so, don Juan?"

"Their
world is sealed. No one can enter or leave without the consent of the inorganic
beings. The only thing you can do by yourself once you are inside is, of
course, voice your intent to stay. To say it out loud means to set in motion
currents of energy that are irreversible. In olden times, words were incredibly
powerful. Now they are not. In the inorganic beings' realm, they haven't lost
their power."

Don Juan
laughed and said that he had no business saying anything about the inorganic
beings' world because I really knew more about it than he and all his
companions combined.

"There
is one last issue related to that world that we haven't discussed," he
said.

He paused
for a long while, as if searching for the appropriate words.

"In
the final analysis," he began, "my aversion to the old sorcerers'
activities is very personal. As a nagual, I detest what they did. They cowardly
sought refuge in the inorganic beings' world. They argued that in a predatorial
universe, poised to rip us apart, the only possible haven for us is in that
realm."

"Why
did they believe that?" I asked.

"Because
it's true," he said. "Since the inorganic beings can't lie, the sales
pitch of the
dreaming
emissary is all true. That world can give us
shelter and prolong our awareness for nearly an eternity."

"The
emissary's sales pitch, even if it's the truth, has no appeal to me," I
said.

"Do
you mean you will chance a road that might rip you apart?" he asked with a
note of bewilderment in his voice.

I assured
don Juan that I did not want the inorganic beings' world no matter what
advantages it offered. My statement seemed to please him to no end.

"You
are ready then for one final statement about that world. The most dreadful
statement I can make," he said, and tried smile but did not quite make it.

Don Juan
searched in my eyes, I suppose for a glimmer agreement or comprehension. He was
silent for a moment.

"The
energy necessary to move the assemblage points of sorcerers comes from the
realm of inorganic beings," he said, as if he were hurrying to get it over
with.

My heart
nearly stopped. I felt a vertigo and had to stomp my feet on the ground not to
faint.

"This
is the truth," don Juan went on, "and the legacy of the old sorcerers
to us. They have us pinned down to this day. This is the reason I don't like
them. I resent having to dip into one source alone. Personally, I refuse to do
it. And I have tried to steer you away from it. But with no success, because
something pulls you to that world, like a magnet."

I
understood don Juan better than I could have thought. Journeying to that world
had always meant to me, at an energetic level, a boost of dark energy. I had
even thought of it in those terms, long before don Juan voiced his statement.

"What
can we do about it?" I asked.

"We
can't have dealings with them," he answered, "and yet we can't stay
away from them. My solution has been to take their energy but not give in to
their influence. This is known as the ultimate stalking. It is done by
sustaining the unbending intent of freedom, even though no sorcerer knows what
freedom really is."

"Can
you explain to me, don Juan, why sorcerers have to take energy from the realm
of inorganic beings?"

"There
is no other viable energy for sorcerers. In order to maneuver the assemblage
point in the manner they do, sorcerers need an inordinate amount of
energy."

I reminded
him of his own statement: that a redeployment of energy is necessary in order
to do
dreaming
.

"That
is correct," he replied. "To start
dreaming
sorcerers need to
redefine their premises and save their energy, but that redefining is valid
only to have the necessary energy to set up
dreaming
. To fly into other
realms, to see energy, to forge the energy body, et cetera, et cetera, is
another matter. For those maneuvers, sorcerers need loads of dark, alien
energy."

"But
how do they take it from the inorganic beings' world?"

"By
the mere act of going to that world. All the sorcerers of our line have to do
this. However, none of us is idiotic enough to do what you've done. But this is
because none of us has your proclivities."

Don Juan
sent me home to ponder what he had revealed to me. I had endless questions, but
he did not want to hear any of them.

"All
the questions you have, you can answer yourself," he said as he waved
good-bye to me.

At home, I
soon realized that it was impossible for me to answer any of my questions. In
fact, I could not even formulate them. Perhaps that was because the boundary of
the second attention had begun to collapse on me; this was when I met Florinda
Grau and Carol Tiggs in the world of everyday life. The confusion of not
knowing them at all yet knowing them so intimately that I would have died for
them at the drop of a hat was most deleterious to me. I had met Taisha Abelar a
few years before, and I was just beginning to get used to the confounded
feeling of knowing her without having the vaguest idea of how. To add two more
people to my overloaded system proved too much for me. I got ill out of fatigue
and had to seek don Juan's aid. I went to the town in southern Mexico where he and his companions lived.

Don Juan
and his fellow sorcerers laughed uproariously at the mere mention of my
turmoils. Don Juan explained to me that they were not really laughing at me but
at themselves. My cognitive problems reminded them of the ones they had had
when the boundary of the second attention had collapsed on them, just as it had
on me. Their awareness, like mine, had not been prepared for it, he said.

"Every
sorcerer goes through the same agony," don Juan went on. "Awareness
is an endless area of exploration for sorcerers and man in general. In order to
enhance awareness, there is no risk we should not run, no means we should
refuse. Bear in mind, however, that only in soundness of mind can awareness be
enhanced."

Don Juan
reiterated, then, that his time was coming to an end and that I had to use my
resources wisely to cover as much ground as I could before he left. Talk like
that used to throw me into states of profound depression. But as the time of
his departure approached, I had begun to react with more resignation. I no
longer felt depressed, but I still panicked.

Nothing
else was said after that. The next day, at his request, I drove don Juan to Mexico City. We arrived around noon and went directly to the hotel del Prado, in the Paseo
Alameda, the place he usually lodged when he was in the city. Don Juan had an
appointment with a lawyer that day, at four in the afternoon. Since we had
plenty of time, we went to have lunch in the famous Cafe Tacuba, a restaurant
in the heart of downtown where it was purported that real meals were served.

Don Juan
was not hungry. He ordered only two sweet tamales, while I gorged myself on a
sumptuous feast. He laughed at me and made signs of silent despair at my
healthy appetite.

"I'm
going to propose a line of action for you," he said in a curt tone when we
had finished our lunch. "It's the last task of the third gate of
dreaming
,
and it consists of stalking the stalkers, a most mysterious maneuver. To stalk
the stalkers means to deliberately draw energy from the inorganic beings' realm
in order to perform a sorcery feat."

"What
kind of sorcery feat, don Juan?"

"A
journey, a journey that uses awareness as an element of the environment,"
he explained. "In the world of daily life, water is an element of the
environment that we use for traveling. Imagine awareness being a similar
element that can be used for traveling. Through the medium of awareness, scouts
from all over the universe come to us, and vice versa; via awareness, sorcerers
go to the ends of the universe."

There had
been certain concepts, among the hosts of concepts don Juan had made me aware
of in the course of his teachings, that attracted my full interest without any
coaxing. This was one. "The idea that awareness is a physical element is
revolutionary," I said in awe.

"I
didn't say it's a physical element," he corrected me. "It's an
energetic element. You have to make that distinction. For sorcerers who see,
awareness is a glow. They can hitch their energy body to that glow and go with
it."

"What's
the difference between a physical and an energetic element?" I asked.

"The
difference is that physical elements are part of our interpretation system, but
energetic elements are not. Energetic elements, like awareness, exist in our
universe. But we, as average people, perceive only the physical elements
because we were taught to do so. Sorcerers perceive the energetic elements for
the same reason: they were taught to do so."

Don Juan
explained that the use of awareness as an energetic element of our environment
is the essence of sorcery, that in terms of practicalities, the trajectory of
sorcery is, first, to free the existing energy in us by impeccably following
the sorcerers' path; second, to use that energy to develop the energy body by
means of
dreaming
; and, third, to use awareness as an element of the
environment in order to enter with the energy body and all our physicality into
other worlds.

"There
are two kinds of energy journeys into other worlds," he went on. "One
is when awareness picks up the sorcerer's energy body and takes it wherever it
may, and the other is when the sorcerer decides, in full consciousness, to use
the avenue of awareness to make a journey. You've done the first kind of
journeying. It takes an enormous discipline to do the second."

After a
long silence, don Juan stated that in the life of sorcerers there are issues
that require masterful handling, and that dealing with awareness, as an
energetic element open to the energy body, is the most important, vital, and
dangerous of those issues.