The Art of Dreaming (14 page)

"Why
do you say that they are reconnoiterers, don Juan?"

"They
come in search of potential awareness. They have consciousness and purpose,
although it is incomprehensible to our minds, comparable perhaps to the
consciousness and purpose of trees. The inner speed of trees and inorganic
beings is incomprehensible to us because it is infinitely slower than
ours."

"What
makes you say that, don Juan?"

"Both
trees and inorganic beings last longer than we do. They are made to stay put.
They are immobile, yet they make everything move around them."

"Do
you mean, don Juan, that inorganic beings are stationary like trees?"

"Certainly.
What you see in
dreaming
as bright or dark sticks are their projections.
What you hear as the voice of the
dreaming
emissary is equally their
projection. And so are their scouts."

For some
unfathomable reason, I was overwhelmed by these statements. I was suddenly
filled with anxiety. I asked don Juan if trees also had projections like
that."

"They
do," he said. "Their projections are, however, even less friendly to
us than those of the inorganic beings. Dreamers never seek them, unless they
are in a state of profound amenity with trees, which is a very difficult state to
attain. We have no friends on this earth, you know." He chuckled and
added, "It's no mystery why."

"It
may not be a mystery to you, don Juan, but it certainly is to me."

"We
are destructive. We have antagonized every living being on this earth. That's why
we have no friends."

I felt so
ill at ease that I wanted to stop the conversation altogether. But a compulsive
urge made me return to the subject of inorganic beings.

"What
do you think I should do to follow the scouts?" I asked.

"Why
in the world would you want to follow them?"

"I am
conducting an objective inquiry about inorganic beings."

"You're
pulling my leg, aren't you? I thought you were unmovable on your stand that
inorganic beings don't exist."

His
scoffing tone and cackling laughter told me what his thoughts and feelings
about my objective inquiry were.

"I've
changed my mind, don Juan. Now I want to explore all those possibilities."

"Remember,
the realm of inorganic beings was the old sorcerers' field. To get there, they
tenaciously fixed their
dreaming
attention on the items of their dreams.
In that fashion, they were able to isolate the scouts. And when they had the
scouts in focus, they shouted their intent to follow them. The instant the old
sorcerers voiced that intent, off they went, pulled by that foreign
energy."

"Is it
that simple, don Juan?"

He did not
answer. He just laughed at me as if daring me to do it.

At home, I
tired of searching for don Juan's true meanings. I was thoroughly unwilling to
consider that he might have described an actual procedure. After running out of
ideas and patience, one day I let my guard down. In a dream I was having then,
I was baffled by a fish that had suddenly jumped out of a pond I was walking
by. The fish twitched by my feet, then flew like a colored bird, perching on a
branch, still being a fish. The scene was so outlandish that my
dreaming
attention was galvanized. I instantly knew it was a scout. A second later, when
the fish-
bird turned into a point
of light, I shouted my intent to follow it, and, just as don Juan had said, off
I went into another world.

I flew
through a seemingly dark tunnel as if I were a weightless flying insect. The
sensation of a tunnel ended abruptly. It was exactly as if I had been spewed
out of a tube and the impulse had left me smack against an immense physical
mass; I was almost touching it. I could not see the end of it in any direction
I looked. The entire thing reminded me so much of science fiction movies that I
was utterly convinced I was constructing the view of that mass myself, as one
constructs a dream. Why not? The thought I had was that, after all, I was
asleep,
dreaming
.

I settled
down to observe the details of my dream. What I was viewing looked very much
like a gigantic sponge. It was porous and cavernous. I could not feel its
texture, but it looked rough and fibrous. It was dark brownish in color. Then I
had a momentary jolt of doubt about that silent mass being just a dream. What I
was facing did not change shape. It did not move either. As I looked at it fixedly,
I had the complete impression of something real but stationary; it was planted
somewhere, and it had such a powerful attraction that I was incapable of
deviating my
dreaming
attention to examine anything else, including
myself. Some strange force, which I had never before encountered in my
dreaming
,
had me riveted down.

Then I
clearly felt that the mass released my
dreaming
attention; all my
awareness focused on the scout that had taken me there. It looked like a
firefly in the darkness, hovering over me, by my side. In its realm, it was a
blob of sheer energy. I was able to see its energetic sizzling. It seemed to be
conscious of me. Suddenly, it lurched onto me and tugged me or prodded me. I
did not feel its touch, yet I knew it was touching me. That sensation was
startling and new, it was as if a part of me that was not there had been
electrified by that touch, ripples of energy went through it, one after
another.

From that
moment on, everything in my
dreaming
became much more real. I had a very
difficult time keeping the idea that I was
dreaming
a dream. To this
difficulty, I had to add the certainty I had that with its touch the scout had
made an energetic connection with me. I knew what it wanted me to do the
instant it seemed to tug me or shove me.

The first
thing it did was to push me through a huge cavern or opening into the physical
mass I had been facing. Once I was inside that mass, I realized that the
interior was as homogeneously porous as the outside but much softer looking, as
if the roughness had been sanded down. What I was facing was a structure that
looked something like the enlarged picture of a beehive. There were countless
geometric-shaped tunnels going in every direction. Some went up or down, or to
my left or my right; they were at angles with one another, or going up or down
on steep or mild inclines.

The light
was very dim, yet everything was perfectly visible. The tunnels seemed to be
alive and conscious; they sizzled. I stared at them, and the realization that I
was seeing hit me. Those were tunnels of energy. At the instant of this
realization, the voice of the
dreaming
emissary roared inside my ears,
so loudly I could not understand what it said. "Lower it down," I
yelled with unusual impatience and became aware that if I spoke I blocked my
view of the tunnels and entered into a vacuum where all I could do was hear.

The
emissary modulated its voice and said, "You are inside an inorganic being.
Choose a tunnel and you can even live in it." The voice stopped for an
instant, then added, "That is, if you want to do it."

I could not
bring myself to say anything. I was afraid that any statement of mine might be
construed as the opposite of what I meant.

"There
are endless advantages for you," the emissary's voice continued. "You
can live in as many tunnels as you want. And each one of them will teach
something different. The sorcerers of antiquity lived in this manner and
learned marvelous things."

I sensed
without any feeling that the scout was pushing me from behind. It appeared to
want me to move onward. I took the tunnel to my immediate right. As soon as I
was in it, something made me aware that I was not walking on the tunnel; I was
hovering in it, flying. I was a blob of energy no different from the scout.

The voice
of the emissary sounded inside my ears again. "Yes, you are just a blob of
energy," it said. Its redundancy brought me an intense relief. "And
you are floating inside one inorganic being," it went on. "This is
the way the scout wants you to move in this world. When it touched you, it
changed you forever. You are practically one of us now. If you want to stay
here, just voice your intent." The emissary stopped talking, and the view
of the tunnel returned to me. But when it spoke again, something had been
adjusted; I did not lose sight of that world and I still could hear the
emissary's voice. "The ancient sorcerers learned everything they knew
about
dreaming
by staying here among us," it said.

I was going
to ask if they had learned everything they knew by just living inside those
tunnels, but before I voiced my question the emissary answered it. "Yes,
they learned everything by just living inside the inorganic beings," it
said. "To live inside them, all the old sorcerers had to do was say they
wanted to, just like all it took for you to get here was to voice your intent,
loud and clear."

The scout
pushed against me to signal me to continue moving. I hesitated, and it did
something equivalent to shoving me with such a force that I shot like a bullet
through endless tunnels. I finally stopped because the scout stopped. We
hovered for an instant; then we dropped into a vertical tunnel. I did not feel
the drastic change of direction. As far as my perception was concerned, I was
still moving seemingly parallel to the ground.

We changed
directions many times with the same perceptual effect on me. I began to
formulate a thought about my incapacity to feel that I was moving up or down
when I heard the emissary's voice. "I think you'll be more comfortable if
you crawl rather than fly," it said. "You can also move like a spider
or a fly, straight up or down or upside down."

Instantaneously,
I settled down. It was as if I had been fluffy and suddenly I got some weight,
which grounded me. I could not feel the tunnel's walls, but the emissary was
right about my being more comfortable when crawling.

"In
this world you don't have to be pinned down by gravity," it said. Of
course, I was able to realize that myself. "You don't have to breathe
either," the voice went on. "And, for your convenience alone, you can
retain your eyesight and see as you see in your world." The emissary
seemed to be deciding whether to add more. It coughed, just like a man clearing
his throat, and said, "The eyesight is never impaired; therefore, a
dreamer always speaks about his
dreaming
in terms of what he sees."

The scout
pushed me into a tunnel to my right. It was somehow darker than the others. To
me, at a preposterous level, it seemed cozier than the others, more friendly or
even known to me. The thought crossed my mind that I was like that tunnel or
that the tunnel was like me.

"You
two have met before," the emissary's voice said.

"I beg
your pardon," I said. I had understood what it said, but the statement was
incomprehensible."

"You
two wrestled, and because of that you now carry each other's energy." I
thought that the emissary's voice carried a touch of malice or even sarcasm.

"No,
it isn't sarcasm," the emissary said. "I am glad that you have
relatives here among us." "What do you mean by relatives?" I
asked.

"Shared
energy makes kinship," it replied. "Energy is like blood."

I was
unable to say anything else. I clearly felt pangs of fear.

"Fear
is something that is absent in this world," the emissary said.

And that
was the only statement that was not true.

My
dreaming
ended there. I was so shocked by the vividness of everything, and by the
impressive clarity and continuity of the emissary's statements, that I could
not wait to tell don Juan. It surprised and disturbed me that he did not want
to hear my account. He did not say so, but I had the impression that he
believed all of it had been a product of my indulging personality.

"Why
are you behaving like this with me?" I asked. "Are you displeased
with me?"

"No. I
am not displeased with you," he said. "The problem is that I can't
talk about this part of your
dreaming
. You are completely by yourself in
this case. I have said to you that inorganic beings are real. You are finding
out how real they are. But what you do with this finding is your business,
yours alone. Someday you'll see the reason for my staying away."

"But
isn't there something you can tell me about that dream?" I insisted.

"What
I can say is that it wasn't a dream. It was a journey into the unknown. A
necessary journey, I may add, and an ultrapersonal one."

He changed
the subject then and began to talk about other aspects of his teachings. From
that day on, in spite of my fear and don Juan's reluctance to advise me, I
became a regular dream traveler to that spongy world. I discovered right away
that the greater my capacity to observe the details of my dreams, the greater
my facility to isolate the scouts. If I chose to acknowledge the scouts as
foreign energy, they remained within my perceptual field for a while. Now, if I
chose to turn the scouts into quasi known objects, they stayed even longer,
changing shapes erratically. But if I followed them, by revealing out loud my
intent to go with them, the scouts veritably transported my
dreaming
attention to a world beyond what I can normally imagine.