intending

After being overcome with fear, Castaneda is led back to the church by don Juan to finally meet the death defier. He finds himself kneeling next to the mysterious sorcerer, who now appears as a dark, alluring Indian woman between thirty-five and forty years old. Her strangely familiar, raspy voice mesmerizes him. Overcoming his fear, he offers her his energy as a gift but refuses any “gift of power” in return. She explains that she cannot take it for free and must make a payment. She then induces a shift in his awareness, plunging him into the second attention where the church appears as it did in a much earlier time. She reveals that this is not the past, but her *intent*—a fully materialized dream of the past that he is now a part of. She explains this is the mystery of the fourth gate of dreaming: traveling to places that exist only in someone else’s intent. She also reveals the proper way to see energy in a dream is to point with the little finger, a trick don Juan had withheld as a joke at her expense. After a walk through her dream town, she pulls Castaneda into a second dream—her intent of the present-day town—which feels completely real, though nothing in it generates energy except for her. The experience ends when he feels himself pulled into a black, spinning vortex.