The Art of Dreaming (29 page)

"Something
nearly, nearly got me," Carol said. I looked at her. She, like me, was
covered with perspiration. "It nearly got you too. What do you think it
is?"

"The
position of the assemblage point," I said with absolute certainty.

She did not
agree with me. "It's the inorganic beings collecting their dues," she
said shivering. "The nagual told me it was going to be horrible, but I
never imagined anything this horrible."

I was in
total agreement with her; we were in a horrifying mess, yet I could not
conceive what the horror of that situation was. Carol and I were not novices;
we had seen and done endless things, some of them outright terrifying. But
there was something in that dream room that chilled me beyond belief.

"We
are
dreaming
, aren't we?" Carol asked.

Without
hesitation, I reassured her that we were, although I would have given anything
to have don Juan there to reassure me of the same thing.

"Why
am I so frightened?" she asked me, as if I were capable of rationally
explaining it.

Before I
could formulate a thought about it, she answered her question herself. She said
that what frightened her was to realize, at a body level, that perceiving is an
all-inclusive act when the assemblage point has been immobilized on one
position. She reminded me that don Juan had told us that the power our daily
world has over us is a result of the fact that our assemblage point is immobile
on its habitual position. This immobility is what makes our perception of the
world so inclusive and overpowering that we cannot escape from it. Carol also
reminded me about another thing the nagual had said: that if we want to break
this totally inclusive force, all we have to do is dispel the fog, that is to
say, displace the assemblage point by intending its displacement.

I had never
really understood what don Juan meant until the moment I had to bring my
assemblage point to another position, in order to dispel that world's fog,
which had begun to swallow me.

Carol and
I, without saying another word, went to the window and looked out. We were in
the country. The moonlight revealed some low, dark shapes of dwelling
structures. By all indications, we were in the utility or supply room of a farm
or a big country house.

"Do
you remember going to bed here?" Carol asked.

"I
almost do," I said and meant it. I told her I had to fight to keep the
image of her hotel room in my mind, as a point of reference.

"I
have to do the same," she said in a frightened whisper. "I know that
if we let go of that memory, we are goners."

Then she
asked me if I wanted us to leave that shack and venture outside. I did not. My
apprehension was so acute that I was unable to voice my words. I could only
give her a signal with my head.

"You
are so very right not to want to go out," she said. "I have the
feeling that if we leave this shack, we'll never make it back."

I was going
to open the door and just look outside, but she stopped me.

"Don't
do that," she said. "You might let the outside in."

The thought
that crossed my mind at that instant was that we had been placed inside a frail
cage. Anything, such as opening the door, might upset the precarious balance of
that cage. At the moment I had that thought, both of us had the same urge. We
took off our clothes as if our lives depended on that; we then jumped into the
high bed without using the two sack steps, only to jump down from it in the
next instant.

It was
evident that Carol and I had the same realization at the same time. She
confirmed my assumption when she said, "Anything that we use belonging to
this world can only weaken us. If I stand here naked and away from the bed and
away from the window, I don't have any problem remembering where I came from.
But if I lie in that bed or wear those clothes or look out the window, I am
done for."

We stood in
the center of the room for a long time, huddled together. A weird suspicion
began to fester in my mind. "How are we going to return to our
world?" I asked, expecting her to know.

"The
reentry into our world is automatic if we don't let the fog set in," she
said with the air of a foremost authority, which was her trademark.

And she was
right. Carol and I woke up, at the same time, in the bed of her room in the Regis Hotel. It was so obvious we were back in the world of daily life that we didn't ask
questions or make comments about it. The sunlight was nearly blinding.

"How
did we get back?" Carol asked. "Or rather, when did we get
back?"

I had no
idea what to say or what to think. I was too numb to speculate, which was all I
could have done.

"Do
you think that we just returned?" Carol insisted. "Or maybe we've
been asleep here all night. Look! We're naked. When did we take our clothes
off?"

"We
took them off in that other world," I said and surprised myself with the
sound of my voice.

My answer
seemed to stump Carol. She looked uncomprehendingly at me and then at her own
naked body.

We sat
there without moving for an endless time. Both of us seemed to be deprived of
volition. But then, quite abruptly, we had the same thought at exactly the same
time. We got dressed in record time, ran out of the room, went down two flights
of stairs, crossed the street, and rushed into don Juan's hotel.

Inexplicably
and excessively out of breath, since we had not really exerted ourselves
physically, we took turns explaining to him what we had done. He confirmed our
conjectures.

"What
you two did was about the most dangerous thing one can imagine," he said.

He
addressed Carol and told her that our attempt had been both a total success and
a fiasco. We had succeeded in transferring our awareness of the daily world to
our energy bodies, thus making the journey with all our physicality, but we had
failed in avoiding the influence of the inorganic beings. He said that
ordinarily dreamers experience the whole maneuver as a series of slow
transitions, and that they have to voice their intent to use awareness as an
element. In our case, all those steps were dispensed with. Because of the
intervention of the inorganic beings, the two of us had actually been hurled
into a deadly world with a most terrifying speed.

"It
wasn't your combined energy that made your journey possible," he
continued. "Something else did that. It even selected adequate clothes for
you."

"Do
you mean, nagual, that the clothes and the bed and the room happened only
because we were being run by the inorganic beings?" Carol asked.

"You
bet your life," he replied. "Ordinarily, dreamers are merely voyeurs.
The way your journey turned out, you two got a ringside seat and lived the old
sorcerers' damnation. What happened to them was precisely what happened to you.
The inorganic beings took them to worlds from which they could not return. I
should have known, but it didn't even enter my mind, that the inorganic beings
would take over and try to set up the same trap for you two."

"Do
you mean they wanted to keep us there?" Carol asked.

"If
you had gotten outside that shack, you'd now be meandering hopelessly in that
world," don Juan said.

He
explained that since we entered into that world with all our physicality, the
fixation of our assemblage points on the position preselected by the inorganic
beings was so overpowering that it created a sort of fog that obliterated any
memory of the world we came from. He added that the natural consequence of such
an immobility, as in the case of the sorcerers of antiquity, is that the
dreamer's assemblage point cannot return to its habitual position.

"Think
about this," he urged us. "Perhaps this is exactly what is happening
to all of us in the world of daily life. We are here, and the fixation of our
assemblage point is so overpowering that it has made us forget where we came
from, and what our purpose was for coming here."

Don Juan
did not want to say any more about our journey. I felt that he was sparing us
further discomfort and fear. He took us to eat a late lunch. By the time we
reached the restaurant, a couple of blocks down Francisco Madero Avenue, it was
six o'clock in the afternoon. Carol and I had slept, if that is what we did,
about eighteen hours.

Only don
Juan was hungry. Carol remarked with a touch of anger that he was eating like a
pig. Quite a few heads turned in our direction on hearing don Juan's laughter.

It was a
warm night. The sky was clear. There was a soft, caressing breeze as we sat
down on a bench in the Paseo Alameda.

"There
is a question that's burning me," Carol said to don Juan. "We didn't
use awareness as a medium for traveling, right?"

"That's
true," don Juan said and sighed deeply. "The task was to sneak by the
inorganic beings, not be run by them."

"What's
going to happen now?" she asked.

"You
are going to postpone stalking the stalkers until you two are stronger,"
he said. "Or perhaps you'll never accomplish it. It doesn't really matter;
if one thing doesn't work, another will. Sorcery is an endless challenge."

He
explained to us again, as if he were trying to fix his explanation in our
minds, that in order to use awareness as an element of the environment,
dreamers first have to make a journey to the inorganic beings' realm. Then they
have to use that journey as a springboard, and, while they are in possession of
the necessary dark energy, they have to intend to be hurled through the medium
of awareness into another world.

"The
failure of your trip was that you didn't have time to use awareness as an
element for traveling," he went on. "Before you even got to the
inorganic beings' world, you two were already in another world."

"What
do you recommend we do?" Carol asked. "I recommend that you see as
little of each other as possible," he said. "I'm sure the inorganic
beings will not pass up the opportunity to get you two, especially if you join
forces."

So Carol
Tiggs and I deliberately stayed away from each other from then on. The prospect
that we might inadvertently elicit a similar journey was too great a risk for
us. Don Juan encouraged our decision by repeating over and over that we had
enough combined energy to tempt the inorganic beings to lure us again.

Don Juan
brought my
dreaming
practices back to
seeing
energy in
energy-generating dreamlike states. In the course of time, I
saw
everything
that presented itself to me. I entered in this manner into a most peculiar
state: I became incapable of rendering intelligently what I saw. My sensation
was always that I had reached states of perception for which I had no lexicon.

Don Juan
explained my incomprehensible and indescribable visions as my energy body using
awareness as an element not for journeying, because I never had enough energy,
but for entering into the energy fields of inanimate matter or of living
beings.

There were no
more
dreaming
practices for me, as I was accustomed to having them. The
next time I saw don Juan, he put me under the guidance of two women of his
party: Florinda and Zuleica, his two closest cohorts. Their instruction was not
at all about the gates of
dreaming
but about different ways to use the
energy body, and it did not last long enough to be influential. They gave me
the impression that they were more interested in checking me out than in
teaching me anything.

"There
is nothing else I can teach you about
dreaming
," don Juan said when
I questioned him about this state of affairs. "My time on this earth is
up. But Florinda will stay. She's the one who will direct, not only you but all
my other apprentices."

"Will
she continue my
dreaming
practices?"

"I
don't know that, and neither does she. It's all up to the spirit. The real
player. We are not players ourselves. We are mere pawns in its hands. Following
the commands of the spirit, I have to tell you what the fourth gate of
dreaming
is, although I can't guide you anymore."

"What's
the point of whetting my appetite? I'd rather not know."

"The
spirit is not leaving that up to me or to you. I have to outline the fourth
gate of
dreaming
for you, whether I like it or not."

Don Juan
explained that, at the fourth gate of
dreaming
, the energy body travels
to specific, concrete places and that there are three ways of using the fourth
gate: one, to travel to concrete places in this world; two, to travel to
concrete places out of this world; and, three, to travel to places that exist
only in the intent of others. He stated that the last one is the most difficult
and dangerous of the three and was, by far, the old sorcerers' predilection.

"What
do you want me to do with this knowledge?" I asked.

"Nothing
for the moment. File it away until you need it."