I spent the day by myself at don Genaro’s house. I slept most of the time. Don Juan came back in the late afternoon and we hiked, in complete silence, to a nearby range of mountains. We stopped at dusk and sat on the edge of a deep gorge until it was almost dark. Then don Juan led me to another place close by, a monumental cliff with a sheer vertical rock wall. The cliff was unnoticeable from the trail that led to it; don Juan, however, had shown it to me several times before. He had made me look over the edge and had told me that the whole cliff was a place of power, especially the base of it, which was a canyon several hundred feet down. Every time I had looked into it I had had a discomforting chill; the canyon was always dark and menacing.
Before we reached the place, don Juan said that I had to go on by myself and meet Pablito on the edge of the cliff. He recommended that I should relax and perform the gait of power in order to wash away my nervous tiredness. Don Juan stepped aside, to the left of the trail, and the darkness simply swallowed him. I wanted to stop and examine where he had gone, but my body did not obey. I began to jog although I was so tired that I could hardly keep on my feet.
When I reached the cliff I could not see anyone there and I went on jogging in place, breathing deeply. After a while I relaxed a bit; I stood motionless with my back against a rock, and I noticed then the shape of a man a few feet away from me. He was sitting, hiding his head in his arms. I had a moment of intense fright and recoiled, but then I explained to myself that the man must be Pablito, and without any hesitation I advanced towards him. I called Pablito’s name out loud. I figured that he must have been uncertain of who I was and had become so scared that he had covered his head not to look. But before I reached him some inexplicable fear took possession of me. My body froze on the spot with my right arm already extended to touch him. The man lifted his head up. It was not Pablito! His eyes were two enormous mirrors, like a tiger’s eyes. My body jumped backwards; my muscles tensed and then released the tension without the slightest influence of my volition, and I performed a backward leap, so fast and so far that under normal conditions I would have plunged into a grandiose speculation about it. As it was, however, my fright was so out of proportion that I had no inclination for pondering, and I would have run out of there had it not been that someone held my arm forcibly. The feeling that someone was holding me by the arm threw me into total panic; I screamed. My outburst, instead of being the shriek I thought it should have been, was a long chilling yell.
I turned to face my assailant. It was Pablito, who was shaking even more than me. My nervousness was at its peak. I could not talk, my teeth chattered and ripples went through my back, making me jerk involuntarily. I had to breathe through my mouth. Pablito said, between chatters, that the nagual had been waiting for him, that he had barely gotten out of its clutches when he bumped into me, and that I had nearly killed him with my yell. I wanted to laugh and made the most weird sounds imaginable. When I regained my calmness I told Pablito that apparently the same thing had happened to me. The end result in my case had been that my fatigue had vanished; I felt instead an uncontainable surge of strength and well-being. Pablito seemed to be experiencing the same sensations; we began to giggle in a nervous silly way.
I heard the sound of soft and careful steps in the distance. I detected the sound before Pablito. He appeared to react to my stiffening. I had the certainty that someone was approaching the place where we were. We turned in the direction of the sound; a moment later the silhouettes of don Juan and don Genaro became visible. They were walking calmly and stopped four or five feet away from us; don Juan was facing me and don Genaro faced Pablito. I wanted to tell don Juan that something had scared me nearly out of my wits, but Pablito squeezed my arm. I knew what he meant. There was something strange about don Juan and don Genaro. As I looked at them my eyes began to get out of focus.
Don Genaro gave a sharp command. I did not understand what he had said, but I “knew” he had meant that we should not cross our eyes. “The darkness has settled on the world,” don Juan said, looking at the sky. Don Genaro drew a half-moon on the hard ground. For a moment it seemed to me that he had used some iridescent chalk, but then I realized that he was not holding anything in his hands; I was perceiving the imaginary half-moon that he had drawn with his finger. He made Pablito and me sit on the inner curve of the convex edge, while he and don Juan sat cross-legged on the extreme ends of the half-moon, six or seven feet away from us.
Don Juan spoke first; he said that they were going to show us their allies. He told us that if we would gaze at their left sides, between their hips and their rib bones, we would see something like a rag or a handkerchief hanging from their belts. Don Genaro added that next to the rags on their belts there were two round buttonlike things, and that we should gaze at their belts until we saw the rags and the buttons. Before don Genaro had spoken I had already noticed some flat item, like a piece of cloth, and one round pebble that hung from their belts. Don Juan’s allies were darker and more menacing than don Genaro’s. My reaction was a mixture of curiosity and fear. My reactions were experienced in my stomach and I was not judging anything in a rational manner.
Don Juan and don Genaro reached for their belts and seemed to unhook the dark pieces of cloth. They took them with their left hands; don Juan flung his in the air above his head, but don Genaro let his drop to the ground gently. The pieces of cloth stretched as if the hurling and the dropping had made them spread like perfectly smooth handkerchiefs; they descended slowly, bobbing like kites. The movement of don Juan’s ally was the exact replica of what I had perceived him doing when he had whirled around days before. As the pieces of cloth got closer to the ground, they became solid, round and massive. They first curled as though they had fallen over a door knob, then they expanded. Don Juan’s grew into a voluminous shadow. It took the lead and moved towards us, crushing small rocks and hard lumps of dirt. It came within four or five feet of us to the very dip of the half-moon, between don Juan and don Genaro. At one moment I thought it was going to roll over us and pulverize us. My terror at that instant was like a burning fire. The shadow in front of me was gigantic, perhaps fourteen feet high and six feet across. It moved as if it were feeling its way around with no eyes. It jerked and wobbled. I knew that it was looking for me. Pablito at that moment hid his head against my chest. The sensation that his movement produced in me dispelled some of the awesome attention that I had focused on the shadow. The shadow seemed to become disassociated, judging by its erratic jerks, and then it moved out of sight, merging with the darkness around.
I shook Pablito. He lifted his head and let out a muffled scream. I looked up. A strange man was staring at me. He seemed to have been right behind the shadow, perhaps hiding behind it. He was rather tall and lanky, he had a long face, no hair, and the left side of his head was covered by a rash or an eczema of some sort. His eyes were wild and shiny; his mouth was half open. He wore some strange pajama-like clothing; his pants were too short for him. I could not distinguish whether or not he had shoes on. He stood looking at us for what seemed to be a long time, as if waiting for an opening in order to lurch at us and tear us apart. There was so much intensity in his eyes. It was not hatred or violence but some sort of animal feeling of distrust. I could not stand the tension any longer. I wanted to adapt a fighting position that don Juan had taught me years before and I would have done so had it not been for Pablito, who whispered that the ally could not go over the line that don Genaro had drawn on the ground. I realized then that there was indeed a bright line that seemed to detain whatever was in front of us. After a moment the man moved away to the left, just like the shadow before. I had the sensation that don Juan and don Genaro had called them both back.
There was a short quiet pause. I could not see don Juan or don Genaro any more; they were no longer sitting on the points of the half-moon. Suddenly I heard the sound of two small pebbles hitting the solid rock floor where we were sitting, and in a flash the area in front of us lit up as if a mellow yellowish light had been turned on. In front of us there was a ravenous beast, a giant nauseating-looking coyote or wolf. Its whole body was covered with a white secretion like perspiration or saliva. Its hair was raggedy and wet. Its eyes were wild. It growled with a blind fury that sent chills through me. Its jaw shivered and globs of saliva flew all over the place. It pawed the ground like a mad dog trying to get loose from a chain. Then it stood on its hind legs and moved its front paws and its jaws rabidly. All its fury seemed to be concentrated on breaking some barrier in front of us.
I became aware that my fear of that crazed animal was of a different sort than the fear of the two apparitions I had witnessed before. My dread of that beast was a physical revulsion and horror. I looked on in utter impotence at its rage. Suddenly it seemed to lose its wildness and trotted out of sight.
I heard then something else coming towards us, or perhaps I sensed it; all of a sudden the shape of a colossal feline loomed in front of us. I first saw its eyes in the darkness; they were huge and fixed like two pools of water reflecting light. It snorted and growled softly. It exhaled air and moved back and forth in front of us without taking its eyes away from us. It did not have the electric glow that the coyote had; I could not distinguish its features clearly, and yet its presence was infinitely more ominous than the other beast’s. It seemed to be gathering strength; I felt that it was so daring that it would go beyond its limits. Pablito must have had a similar feeling, for he whispered that I should duck my head and lie almost flat against the ground. A second later the feline charged. It ran towards us and then it leaped with its paws extended forward. I closed my eyes and hid my head in my arms against the ground. I felt that the beast had ripped the protective line that don Genaro had drawn around us and was actually on top of us. I felt its weight pinning me down; the fur on its belly rubbed against my neck. It seemed that its forelegs were caught in something; it wriggled to set itself free. I felt its jerking and prodding and heard its diabolic puffing and hissing. I knew then that I was lost. I had a vague sense of a rational choice and I wanted to resign myself calmly to my fate of dying there, but I was afraid of the physical pain of dying under such awful circumstances. Then some strange force surged from my body; it was as if my body refused to die and pooled all its strength in one single point, my left arm and hand. I felt an indomitable surge coming through it. Something uncontrollable was taking possession of my body, something that forced me to push the massive malignant weight of that beast off of us. Pablito seemed to have reacted in the same fashion and we both stood up at once; there was so much energy created by both of us that the beast was flung like a rag doll. The exertion had been supreme. I collapsed on the ground, panting for air. The muscles of my stomach were so tense that I could not breathe. I did not pay any attention to what Pablito was doing. I finally noticed that don Juan and don Genaro were helping me to sit up. I saw Pablito spread on the ground face down with his arms outstretched. He seemed to have fainted. After they had made me sit up, don Juan and don Genaro helped Pablito. Both of them rubbed his stomach and back. They made him stand up and after a while he could sit up by himself again.
Don Juan and don Genaro sat on the ends of the half-moon, and then they began to move in front of us as if a rail existed between the two points, a rail that they were using to shift their positions back and forth from one side to the other. Their movements made me dizzy. They finally stopped next to Pablito and began to whisper in his ear. After a moment they stood up, all three of them at once, and walked to the edge of the cliff. Don Genaro lifted Pablito as if he were a child. Pablito’s body was stiff like a board; don Juan held Pablito by the ankles. He whirled him around, seemingly to gain momentum and force, and finally he let go of his legs and hurled his body out over the abyss away from the edge of the cliff.
I saw Pablito’s body against the dark western sky. It described circles, just like don Juan’s body had done days before; the circles were slow. Pablito seemed to be gaining altitude instead of falling down. Then the circling became accelerated; Pablito’s body twirled like a disk for a moment and then it disintegrated. I perceived that it had vanished in thin air.
Don Juan and don Genaro came to my side, squatted by me and proceeded to whisper in my ears. Each said something different, yet I had no trouble in following their commands. It was as if I became “split” the instant they uttered their first words. I felt that they were doing with me what they had done with Pablito. Don Genaro made me whirl and then I had the thoroughly conscious sensation of spinning or floating for a moment. Next I was rushing through the air, plummeting down to the ground at a tremendous speed. I felt, as I was falling, that my clothes were ripping off, then my flesh fell off, and finally only my head remained. I had the very clear sensation that as my body became dismembered I lost my superfluous weight, and thus my falling lost its momentum and my speed decreased. My descent was no longer a vertigo. I began to move back and forth like a leaf. Then my head was stripped of its weight and all that was left of “me” was a square centimeter, a nugget, a tiny pebblelike residue. All my feeling was concentrated there; then the nugget seemed to burst and I was a thousand pieces. I knew, or something somewhere knew, that I was aware of the thousand pieces at once. I was the awareness itself.
Then some part of that awareness began to be stirred; it rose, grew. It became localized, and little by little I regained the sense of boundaries, consciousness or whatever, and suddenly the “me” I knew and was familiar with erupted into the most spectacular view of all the imaginable combinations of “beautiful” scenes; it was as if I were looking at thousands of pictures of the world, of people, of things. The scenes then became blurry. I had the sensation that they were being passed in front of my eyes at a greater speed until I could not single out any of them for examination. Finally it was as if I were witnessing the organization of the world rolling past my eyes in an unbroken, endless chain.
I suddenly found myself standing on the cliff with don Juan and don Genaro. They whispered that they had pulled me back, and that I had witnessed the unknown that no one can talk about. They said that they were going to hurl me into it once more, and that I should let the wings of my perception unfold and touch the tonal and the nagual at once without being aware of going back and forth from one to the other.
I again had the sensations of being tossed, spinning, and falling down at a tremendous speed. Then I exploded. I disintegrated. Something in me gave out; it released something I had kept locked up all my life. I was thoroughly aware then that my secret reservoir had been tapped and that it poured out unrestrainedly. There was no longer the sweet unity I call “me.” There was nothing and yet that nothing was filled. It was not light or darkness, hot or cold, pleasant or unpleasant. It was not that I moved or floated or was stationary, neither was I a single unit, a self, as I am accustomed to being. I was a myriad of selves which were all “me,” a colony of separate units that had a special allegiance to one another and would join unavoidably to form one single awareness, my human awareness. It was not that I “knew” beyond the shadow of a doubt, because there was nothing I could have “known” with, but all my single awarenesses “knew” that the “I,” the “me,” of my familiar world was a colony, a conglomerate of separate and independent feelings that had an unbending solidarity to one another. The unbending solidarity of my countless awarenesses, the allegiance that those parts had for one another was my life force.
A way of describing that unified sensation would be to say that those nuggets of awareness were scattered; each of them was aware of itself and none was more predominant than the other. Then something would stir them, and they would join and emerge onto an area where all of them had to be pooled in one clump, the “me” I know. As “me” “myself” then I would witness a coherent scene of worldly activity, or a scene that pertained to other worlds and which I thought must have been pure imagination, or a scene that pertained to “pure thinking,” that is, I had views of intellectual systems, or of ideas strung together as verbalizations. In some scenes I talked to myself to my heart’s content. After every one of those coherent views the “me” would disintegrate and be nothing once more.
During one of those excursions into a coherent view I found myself on the cliff with don Juan. I instantly realized that I was then the total “me” I am familiar with. I felt my physicality as real. I was in the world rather than merely viewing it.
Don Juan hugged me like a child. He looked at me. His face was very close. I could see his eyes in the darkness. They were kind. They seemed to hold a question. I knew what it was. The unspeakable was truly unspeakable. “Well?” he asked softly, as if he would need my reaffirmation.
I was speechless. The words “numb,” “bewildered,” “confused,” and so on were not in any way appropriate descriptions of my feelings at that moment. I was not solid. I knew that don Juan had to grab me and keep me forcibly on the ground, otherwise I would have floated in the air and disappeared. I was not afraid of vanishing. I longed for the “unknown” where my awareness was not unified.
Don Juan walked me slowly, pushing down on both of my shoulders, to an area around don Genaro’s house; he made me lie down and then covered me with soft dirt from a pile that he seemed to have prepared beforehand. He covered me up to my neck. With leaves he made a sort of pillow for my head to rest on and told me not to move or fall asleep at all. He said that he was going to sit and keep me company until the earth had again consolidated my form. I felt very comfortable and had a nearly invincible desire to fall asleep, but don Juan would not let me. He demanded that I should talk about anything under the sun except what I had just experienced. I did not know what to talk about at first, then I asked about don Genaro. Don Juan said that don Genaro had taken Pablito and had buried him somewhere around there and was doing with him what he himself was doing with me.
I had the desire to sustain the conversation but something in me was incomplete; I had an unusual indifference, a tiredness that was more like boredom. Don Juan seemed to know how I felt. He began to talk about Pablito and how our fates were interlocked. He said that he became Pablito’s benefactor at the same time that don Genaro became his teacher, and that power had paired Pablito and me step by step. He made the emphatic remark that the only difference between Pablito and me was that while Pablito’s world as a warrior was governed by coercion and fear, mine was governed by affection and freedom. Don Juan explained that such a difference was due to the intrinsically different personalities of the benefactors. Don Genaro was sweet and affectionate and funny, while he himself was dry, authoritarian and direct. He said that my personality demanded a strong teacher but a tender benefactor, and that Pablito was the opposite; he needed a kind teacher and a stern benefactor. We talked for a while longer and then it was morning. When the sun appeared over the mountains on the eastern horizon, he helped me to get up from under the dirt.
(Carlos Castaneda, Tales of Power)
