Don Juan said that I should sit there at that ancient lookout post and use the pull of the earth to move my assemblage point and recall other states of heightened awareness in which he had taught me stalking.
“In the past few days, I have mentioned many times the four moods of stalking,” he went on. “I have mentioned ruthlessness, cunning, patience, and sweetness, with the hope that you might remember what I taught you about them. It would be wonderful if you could use these four moods as the ushers to bring you into a total recollection.”
He kept quiet for what seemed an inordinately long moment. Then he made a statement which should not have surprised me, but did. He said he had taught me the four moods of stalking in northern Mexico with the help of Vicente Medrano and Silvio Manuel. He did not elaborate but let his statement sink in. I tried to remember but finally gave up and wanted to shout that I could not remember something that never happened.
As I was struggling to voice my protest, anxious thoughts began to cross my mind. I knew don Juan had not said what he had just to annoy me. As I always did when asked to remember heightened awareness, I became obsessively conscious that there was really no continuity to the events I had experienced under his guidance. Those events were not strung together as the events in my daily life were, in a linear sequence. It was perfectly possible he was right. In don Juan’s world, I had no business being certain of anything.
I tried to voice my doubts but he refused to listen and urged me to recollect. By then it was quite dark.
It had gotten windy, but I did not feel the cold. Don Juan had given me a flat rock to place on my sternum. My awareness was keenly tuned to everything around. I felt an abrupt pull, which was neither external nor internal, but rather the sensation of a sustained tugging at an unidentifiable part of myself. Suddenly I began to remember with shattering clarity a meeting I had had years before. I remembered events and people so vividly that it frightened me. I felt a chill.
I told all this to don Juan, who did not seem impressed or concerned. He urged me not to give in to mental or physical fear.
My recollection was so phenomenal that it was as if I were reliving the experience. Don Juan kept quiet. He did not even look at me. I felt numbed. The sensation of numbness passed slowly.
I repeated the same things I always said to don Juan when I remembered an event with no linear existence. “How can this be, don Juan? How could I have forgotten all this?”
And he reaffirmed the same things he always did. “This type of remembering or forgetting has nothing to do with normal memory,” he assured me. “It has to do with the movement of the assemblage point.”
He affirmed that although I possessed total knowledge of what intent is, I did not command that knowledge yet. Knowing what intent is means that one can, at any time, explain that knowledge or use it. A nagual by the force of his position is obliged to command his knowledge in this manner. “What did you recollect?” he asked me. “The first time you told me about the four moods of stalking,” I said.
Some process, inexplicable in terms of my usual awareness of the world, had released a memory which a minute before had not existed. And I recollected an entire sequence of events that had happened many years before.
Just as I was leaving don Juan’s house in Sonora, he had asked me to meet him the following week around noon, across the U.S. border, in Nogales, Arizona, in the Greyhound bus depot.
I arrived about an hour early. He was standing by the door. I greeted him. He did not answer but hurriedly pulled me aside and whispered that I should take my hands out of my pockets. I was dumbfounded. He did not give me time to respond, but said that my fly was open, and it was shamefully evident that I was sexually aroused.
The speed with which I rushed to cover myself was phenomenal. By the time I realized it was a crude joke we were on the street. Don Juan was laughing, slapping me on the back repeatedly and forcefully, as if he were just celebrating the joke. Suddenly I found myself in a state of heightened awareness.
We walked into a coffee shop and sat down. My mind was so clear I wanted to look at everything, see the essence of things.
“Don’t waste energy!” don Juan commanded in a stern voice. “I brought you here to discover if you can eat when your assemblage point has moved. Don’t try to do more than that.”
But then a man sat down at the table in front of me, and all my attention became trapped by him.
“Move your eyes in circles,” don Juan commanded. “Don’t look at that man.”
I found it impossible to stop watching the man. I felt irritated by don Juan’s demands.
“What do you see?” I heard don Juan ask.
I was seeing a luminous cocoon made of transparent wings which were folded over the cocoon itself. The wings unfolded, fluttered for an instant, peeled off, fell, and were replaced by new wings, which repeated the same process.
Don Juan boldly turned my chair until I was facing the wall.
“What a waste,” he said in a loud sigh, after I described what I had seen. “You have exhausted nearly all your energy. Restrain yourself. A warrior needs focus. Who gives a damn about wings on a luminous cocoon?”
He said that heightened awareness was like a springboard. From it one could jump into infinity. He stressed, over and over, that when the assemblage point was dislodged, it either became lodged again at a position very near its customary one or continued moving on into infinity.
“People have no idea of the strange power we carry within ourselves,” he went on. “At this moment, for instance, you have the means to reach infinity. If you continue with your needless behavior, you may succeed in pushing your assemblage point beyond a certain threshold, from which there is no return.”
I understood the peril he was talking about, or rather I had the bodily sensation that I was standing on the brink of an abyss, and that if I leaned forward I would fall into it.
“Your assemblage point moved to heightened awareness,” he continued, “because I have lent you my energy.”
We ate in silence, very simple food. Don Juan did not allow me to drink coffee or tea.
“While you are using my energy,” he said, “you’re not in your own time. You are in mine. I drink water.”
As we were walking back to my car I felt a bit nauseous. I staggered and almost lost my balance. It was a sensation similar to that of walking while wearing glasses for the first time.
“Get hold of yourself,” don Juan said, smiling.
“Where we’re going, you’ll need to be extremely precise.”
He told me to drive across the international border into the twin city of Nogales, Mexico. While I was driving, he gave me directions: which street to take, when to make right or left-hand turns, how fast to go.
“I know this area,” I said quite peeved. “Tell me where you want to go and I’ll take you there. Like a taxi driver.”
“O.K.,” he said. “Take me to 1573 Heavenward Avenue.”
I did not know Heavenward Avenue, or if such a street really existed. In fact, I had the suspicion he had just concocted a name to embarrass me. I kept silent. There was a mocking glint in his shiny eyes.
“Egomania is a real tyrant,” he said. “We must work ceaselessly to dethrone it.”
He continued to tell me how to drive. Finally he asked me to stop in front of a one-story, light-beige house on a corner lot, in a well-to-do neighborhood.
There was something about the house that immediately caught my eye: a thick layer of ocher gravel all around it. The solid street door, the window sashes, and the house trim were all painted ocher, like the gravel. All the visible windows had closed Venetian blinds. To all appearances it was a typical suburban middle-class dwelling.
We got out of the car. Don Juan led the way. He did not knock or open the door with a key, but when we got to it, the door opened silently on oiled hinges—all by itself, as far as I could detect.
Don Juan quickly entered. He did not invite me in. I just followed him. I was curious to see who had opened the door from the inside, but there was no one there.
The interior of the house was very soothing. There were no pictures on the smooth, scrupulously clean walls. There were no lamps or bookshelves either. A golden yellow tile floor contrasted most pleasingly with the off-white color of the walls. We were in a small and narrow hall that opened into a spacious living room with a high ceiling and a brick fireplace. Half the room was completely empty, but next to the fireplace was a semicircle of expensive furniture: two large beige couches in the middle, flanked by two armchairs covered in fabric of the same color. There was a heavy, round, solid oak coffee table in the center. Judging from what I was seeing around the house, the people who lived there appeared to be well off, but frugal. And they obviously liked to sit around the fire. Two men, perhaps in their mid-fifties, sat in the armchairs. They stood when we entered. One of them was Indian, the other Latin American. Don Juan introduced me first to the Indian, who was nearer to me.
“This is Silvio Manuel,” don Juan said to me. “He’s the most powerful and dangerous sorcerer of my party, and the most mysterious too.”
Silvio Manuel’s features were out of a Mayan fresco. His complexion was pale, almost yellow. I thought he looked Chinese. His eyes were slanted, but without the epicanthic fold. They were big, black, and brilliant. He was beardless. His hair was jet-black with specks of gray in it. He had high cheekbones and full lips. He was perhaps five feet seven, thin, wiry, and he wore a yellow sport shirt, brown slacks, and a thin beige jacket. Judging from his clothes and general mannerisms, he seemed to be Mexican-American.
I smiled and extended my hand to Silvio Manuel, but he did not take it. He nodded perfunctorily.
“And this is Vicente Medrano,” don Juan said, turning to the other man. “He’s the most knowledgeable and the oldest of my companions. He is oldest not in terms of age, but because he was my benefactor’s first disciple.”
Vicente nodded just as perfunctorily as Silvio Manuel had, and also did not say a word.
He was a bit taller than Silvio Manuel, but just as lean. He had a pinkish complexion and a neatly trimmed beard and mustache. His features were almost delicate: a thin, beautifully chiseled nose, a small mouth, thin lips. Bushy, dark eyebrows contrasted with his graying beard and hair. His eyes were brown and also brilliant and laughed in spite of his frowning expression.
He was conservatively dressed in a greenish seersucker suit and open-collared sport shirt. He too seemed to be Mexican-American. I guessed him to be the owner of the house.
In contrast, don Juan looked like an Indian peon. His straw hat, his worn-out shoes, his old khaki pants and plaid shirt were those of a gardener or a handyman.
The impression I had, upon seeing all three of them together, was that don Juan was in disguise. The military image came to me that don Juan was the commanding officer of a clandestine operation, an officer who, no matter how hard he tried, could not hide his years of command.
I also had the feeling that they must all have been around the same age, although don Juan looked much older than the other two, yet seemed infinitely stronger.
“I think you already know that Carlos is by far the biggest indulger I have ever met,” don Juan told them with a most serious expression. “Bigger even than our benefactor. I assure you that if there is someone who takes indulging seriously, this is the man.”
I laughed, but no one else did. The two men observed me with a strange glint in their eyes.
“For sure you’ll make a memorable trio,” don Juan continued. “The oldest and most knowledgeable, the most dangerous and powerful, and the most self-indulgent.”
They still did not laugh. They scrutinized me until I became self-conscious. Then Vicente broke the silence.
“I don’t know why you brought him inside the house,” he said in a dry, cutting tone. “He’s of little use to us. Put him out in the backyard.”
“And tie him,” Silvio Manuel added.
Don Juan turned to me. “Come on,” he said in a soft voice and pointed with a quick sideways movement of his head to the back of the house.
It was more than obvious that the two men did not like me. I did not know what to say. I was definitely angry and hurt, but those feelings were somehow deflected by my state of heightened awareness.
We walked into the backyard. Don Juan casually picked up a leather rope and twirled it around my neck with tremendous speed. His movements were so fast and so nimble that an instant later, before I could realize what was happening, I was tied at the neck, like a dog, to one of the two cinder-block columns supporting the heavy roof over the back porch.
Don Juan shook his head from side to side in a gesture of resignation or disbelief and went back into the house as I began to yell at him to untie me. The rope was so tight around my neck it prevented me from screaming as loud as I would have liked.
I could not believe what was taking place. Containing my anger, I tried to undo the knot at my neck. It was so compact that the leather strands seemed glued together. I hurt my nails trying to pull them apart.
I had an attack of uncontrollable wrath and growled like an impotent animal. Then I grabbed the rope, twisted it around my forearms, and bracing my feet against the cinder-block column, pulled. But the leather was too tough for the strength of my muscles.
I felt humiliated and scared. Fear brought me a moment of sobriety. I knew I had let don Juan’s false aura of reasonableness deceive me.
I assessed my situation as objectively as I could and saw no way to escape except by cutting the leather rope. I frantically began to rub it against the sharp corner of the cinder-block column. I thought that if I could rip the rope before any of the men came to the back, I had a chance to run to my car and take off, never to return.
I puffed and sweated and rubbed the rope until I had nearly worn it through. Then I braced one foot against the column, wrapped the rope around my forearms again, and pulled it desperately until it snapped, throwing me back into the house.
As I crashed backward through the open door, don Juan, Vicente, and Silvio Manuel were standing in the middle of the room, applauding.
“What a dramatic reentry,” Vicente said, helping me up. “You fooled me. I didn’t think you were capable of such explosions.”
Don Juan came to me and snapped the knot open, freeing my neck from the piece of rope around it.
I was shaking with fear, exertion, and anger. In a faltering voice, I asked don Juan why he was tormenting me like this. The three of them laughed and at that moment seemed the farthest thing from threatening.
“We wanted to test you and find out what sort of a man you really are,” don Juan said.
He led me to one of the couches and politely offered me a seat. Vicente and Silvio Manuel sat in the armchairs, don Juan sat facing me on the other couch.
I laughed nervously but was no longer apprehensive about my situation, nor about don Juan and his friends. All three regarded me with frank curiosity. Vicente could not stop smiling, although he seemed to be trying desperately to appear serious. Silvio Manuel shook his head rhythmically as he stared at me. His eyes were unfocused but fixed on me.
“We tied you down,” don Juan went on, “because we wanted to know whether you are sweet or patient or ruthless or cunning. We found out you are none of those things. Rather you’re a king-sized indulger, just as I had said.
“If you hadn’t indulged in being violent, you would certainly have noticed that the formidable knot in the rope around your neck was a fake. It snaps. Vicente designed that knot to fool his friends.”
“You tore the rope violently. You’re certainly not sweet,” Silvio Manuel said.
They were all quiet for a moment, then began to laugh.
“You’re neither ruthless nor cunning,” don Juan went on. “If you were, you would easily have snapped open both knots and run away with a valuable leather rope. You’re not patient either. If you were, you would have whined and cried until you realized that there was a pair of clippers by the wall with which you could have cut the rope in two seconds and saved yourself all the agony and exertion.
“You can’t be taught, then, to be violent or obtuse. You already are that. But you can learn to be ruthless, cunning, patient, and sweet.”
Don Juan explained to me that ruthlessness, cunning, patience, and sweetness were the essence of stalking. They were the basics that with all their ramifications had to be taught in careful, meticulous steps.
He was definitely addressing me, but he talked looking at Vicente and Silvio Manuel, who listened with utmost attention and shook their heads in agreement from time to time.
He stressed repeatedly that teaching stalking was one of the most difficult things sorcerers did. And he insisted that no matter what they themselves did to teach me stalking, and no matter what I believed to the contrary, it was impeccability which dictated their acts.
“Rest assured we know what we’re doing. Our benefactor, the nagual Julian, saw to it,” don Juan said, and all three of them broke into such uproarious laughter that I felt quite uncomfortable. I did not know what to think.
Don Juan reiterated that a very important point to consider was that, to an onlooker, the behavior of sorcerers might appear malicious, when in reality their behavior was always impeccable.
“How can you tell the difference, if you’re at the receiving end?” I asked.
“Malicious acts are performed by people for personal gain,” he said. “Sorcerers, though, have an ulterior purpose for their acts, which has nothing to do with personal gain. The fact that they enjoy their acts does not count as gain. Rather, it is a condition of their character. The average man acts only if there is the chance for profit. Warriors say they act not for profit but for the spirit.”
I thought about it. Acting without considering gain was truly an alien concept. I had been reared to invest and to hope for some kind of reward for everything I did.
Don Juan must have taken my silence and thoughtfulness as skepticism. He laughed and looked at his two companions.
“Take the four of us, as an example,” he went on. “You, yourself, believe that you’re investing in this situation and eventually you are going to profit from it. If you get angry with us, or if we disappoint you, you may resort to malicious acts to get even with us. We, on the contrary, have no thought of personal gain. Our acts are dictated by impeccability—we can’t be angry or disillusioned with you.”
Don Juan smiled and told me that from the moment we had met at the bus depot that day, everything he had done to me, although it might not have seemed so, was dictated by impeccability. He explained that he needed to get me into an unguarded position to help me enter heightened awareness. It was to that end that he had told me my fly was open.
“It was a way of jolting you,” he said with a grin. “We are crude Indians, so all our jolts are somehow primitive. The more sophisticated the warrior, the greater his finesse and elaboration of his jolts. But I have to admit we got a big kick out of our crudeness, especially when we tied you at the neck like a dog.”
The three of them grinned and then laughed quietly as if there was someone else inside the house whom they did not want to disturb.
In a very low voice don Juan said that because I was in a state of heightened awareness, I could understand more readily what he was going to tell me about the two masteries: stalking and intent. He called them the crowning glory of sorcerers old and new, the very thing sorcerers were concerned with today, just as sorcerers had been thousands of years before. He asserted that stalking was the beginning, and that before anything could be attempted on the warrior’s path, warriors must learn to stalk; next they must learn to intend, and only then could they move their assemblage point at will.
I knew exactly what he was talking about. I knew, without knowing how, what moving the assemblage point could accomplish. But I did not have the words to explain what I knew. I tried repeatedly to voice my knowledge to them. They laughed at my failures and coaxed me to try again.
“How would you like it if I articulate it for you?” don Juan asked. “I might be able to find the very words you want to use but can’t.”
From his look, I decided he was seriously asking my permission. I found the situation so incongruous that I began to laugh.
Don Juan, displaying great patience, asked me again, and I got another attack of laughter. Their look of surprise and concern told me my reaction was incomprehensible to them. Don Juan got up and announced that I was too tired and it was time for me to return to the world of ordinary affairs.
“Wait, wait,” I pleaded. “I am all right. I just find it funny that you should be asking me to give you permission.”
“I have to ask your permission,” don Juan said, “because you’re the only one who can allow the words pent up inside you to be tapped. I think I made the mistake of assuming you understand more than you do. Words are tremendously powerful and important and are the magical property of whoever has them.
“Sorcerers have a rule of thumb: they say that the deeper the assemblage point moves, the greater the feeling that one has knowledge and no words to explain it. Sometimes the assemblage point of average persons can move without a known cause and without their being aware of it, except that they become tongue-tied, confused, and evasive.”
Vicente interrupted and suggested I stay with them a while longer. Don Juan agreed and turned to face me.
“The very first principle of stalking is that a warrior stalks himself,” he said. “He stalks himself ruthlessly, cunningly, patiently, and sweetly.”
I wanted to laugh, but he did not give me time. Very succinctly he defined stalking as the art of using behavior in novel ways for specific purposes. He said that normal human behavior in the world of everyday life was routine. Any behavior that broke from routine caused an unusual effect on our total being. That unusual effect was what sorcerers sought, because it was cumulative.
He explained that the sorcerer seers of ancient times, through their seeing, had first noticed that unusual behavior produced a tremor in the assemblage point. They soon discovered that if unusual behavior was practiced systematically and directed wisely, it eventually forced the assemblage point to move.
“The real challenge for those sorcerer seers,” don Juan went on, “was finding a system of behavior that was neither petty nor capricious, but that combined the morality and the sense of beauty which differentiates sorcerer seers from plain witches.”
He stopped talking, and they all looked at me as if searching for signs of fatigue in my eyes or face.
“Anyone who succeeds in moving his assemblage point to a new position is a sorcerer,” don Juan continued. “And from that new position, he can do all kinds of good and bad things to his fellow men. Being a sorcerer, therefore, can be like being a cobbler or a baker. The quest of sorcerer seers is to go beyond that stand. And to do that, they need morality and beauty.”
He said that for sorcerers stalking was the foundation on which everything else they did was built.
“Some sorcerers object to the term stalking,” he went on, “but the name came about because it entails surreptitious behavior.
“It’s also called the art of stealth, but that term is equally unfortunate. We ourselves, because of our nonmilitant temperament, call it the art of controlled folly. You can call it anything you wish. We, however, will continue with the term stalking since it’s so easy to say stalker and, as my benefactor used to say, so awkward to say controlled folly maker.”
At the mention of their benefactor, they laughed like children.
I understood him perfectly. I had no questions or doubts. If anything, I had the feeling that I needed to hold onto every word don Juan was saying to anchor myself. Otherwise my thoughts would have run ahead of him.
I noticed that my eyes were fixed on the movement of his lips as my ears were fixed on the sound of his words. But once I realized this, I could no longer follow him. My concentration was broken. Don Juan continued talking, but I was not listening. I was wondering about the inconceivable possibility of living permanently in heightened awareness. I asked myself what would the survival value be? Would one be able to assess situations better? Be quicker than the average man, or perhaps more intelligent?
Don Juan suddenly stopped talking and asked me what I was thinking about.
“Ah, you’re so very practical,” he commented after I had told him my reveries. “I thought that in heightened awareness your temperament was going to be more artistic, more mystical.”
Don Juan turned to Vicente and asked him to answer my question. Vicente cleared his throat and dried his hands by rubbing them against his thighs. He gave the clear impression of suffering from stage fright. I felt sorry for him. My thoughts began to spin. And when I heard him stammering, an image burst into my mind—the image I had always had of my father’s timidity, his fear of people. But before I had time to surrender myself to that image, Vicente’s eyes flared with some strange inner luminosity. He made a comically serious face at me and then spoke with authority and a professorial manner.
“To answer your question,” he said, “there is no survival value in heightened awareness; otherwise the whole human race would be there. They are safe from that, though, because it’s so hard to get into it. There is always, however, the remote possibility that an average man might enter into such a state. If he does, he ordinarily succeeds in confusing himself, sometimes irreparably.”
The three of them exploded with laughter. “Sorcerers say that heightened awareness is the portal of intent,” don Juan said. “And they use it as such. Think about it.”
I was staring at each of them in turn. My mouth was open, and I felt that if I kept it open I would be able to understand the riddle eventually. I closed my eyes and the answer came to me. I felt it. I did not think it. But I could not put it into words, no matter how hard I tried.
“There, there,” don Juan said, “you’ve gotten another sorcerer’s answer all by yourself, but you still don’t have enough energy to flatten it and turn it into words.”
The sensation I was experiencing was more than just that of being unable to voice my thoughts; it was like reliving something I had forgotten ages ago: not to know what I felt because I had not yet learned to speak, and therefore lacked the resources to translate my feelings into thoughts.
“Thinking and saying exactly what you want to say requires untold amounts of energy,” don Juan said and broke into my feelings.
The force of my reverie had been so intense it had made me forget what had started it. I stared dumbfounded at don Juan and confessed I had no idea what they or I had said or done just a moment before. I remembered the incident of the leather rope and what don Juan had told me immediately afterward, but I could not recall the feeling that had flooded me just moments ago.
“You’re going the wrong way,” don Juan said. “You’re trying to remember thoughts the way you normally do, but this is a different situation. A second ago you had an overwhelming feeling that you knew something very specific. Such feelings cannot be recollected by using memory. You have to recall them by intending them back.”
He turned to Silvio Manuel, who had stretched out in the armchair, his legs under the coffee table. Silvio Manuel looked fixedly at me. His eyes were black, like two pieces of shiny obsidian. Without moving a muscle, he let out a piercing birdlike scream. “Intent!!” he yelled. “Intent!! Intent!!!” With each scream his voice became more and more inhuman and piercing. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I felt goose bumps on my skin. My mind, however, instead of focusing on the fright I was experiencing, went directly to recollecting the feeling I had had. But before I could savor it completely, the feeling expanded and burst into something else. And then I understood not only why heightened awareness was the portal of intent, but I also understood what intent was. And, above all, I understood that that knowledge could not be turned into words. That knowledge was there for everyone. It was there to be felt, to be used, but not to be explained. One could come into it by changing levels of awareness, therefore, heightened awareness was an entrance. But even the entrance could not be explained. One could only make use of it.
There was still another piece of knowledge that came to me that day without any coaching: that the natural knowledge of intent was available to anyone, but the command of it belonged to those who probed it.
I was terribly tired by this time, and doubtlessly as a result of that, my Catholic upbringing came to bear heavily on my reactions. For a moment I believed that intent was God.
I said as much to don Juan, Vicente, and Silvio Manuel. They laughed. Vicente, still in his professorial tone, said that it could not possibly be God, because intent was a force that could not be described, much less represented.
“Don’t be presumptuous,” don Juan said to me sternly. “Don’t try to speculate on the basis of your first and only trial. Wait until you command your knowledge, then decide what is what.”
Remembering the four moods of stalking exhausted me. The most dramatic result was a more than ordinary indifference. I would not have cared if I had dropped dead, nor if don Juan had. I did not care whether we stayed at that ancient lookout post overnight or started back in the pitch-dark.
Don Juan was very understanding. He guided me by the hand, as if I were blind, to a massive rock, and helped me sit with my back to it. He recommended that I let natural sleep return me to a normal state of awareness.
(Carlos Castaneda, The Power of Silence)