The Art of Dreaming (21 page)

Every
detail they described about the little girl I corroborated myself. Her eyes
were so bright and overpowering that they had actually caused me something like
pain. I had felt the weight of her look on my chest.

A serious
query, which don Juan's companions had and which I echoed myself, was about the
implications of this event. All agreed that the scout was a portion of foreign
energy that had filtered through the walls separating the second attention and
the attention of the daily world.

They
asserted that since they were not
dreaming
and yet all of them had seen the alien energy
projected into the figure of a human child; that child had existence.

They argued
that there must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of cases in which foreign
energy slips unnoticed through natural barriers into our human world, but that
in the history of their lineage there was no mention whatsoever of an event of
this nature. What worried them the most was that there were no sorcerers'
stories about it.

"Is
this the first time in the history of mankind that this has happened?" one
of them asked don Juan.

"I
think it happens all the time," he replied, "but it has never
happened in such an overt, volitional way."

"What
does it mean to us?" another one of them asked don Juan.

"Nothing
to us, but everything to him," he said and pointed at me.

All of them
then entered into a most disturbing silence. Don Juan paced back and forth for
a moment. Then he stopped in front of me and peered at me, giving all the
indications of someone who cannot find words to express an overwhelming realization.

"I
can't even begin to assess the scope of what you've done," don Juan
finally said to me in a tone of bewilderment. "You fell into a pitfall,
but it wasn't the kind of pitfall I was worrying about. Your pitfall was
designed for you alone, and it was deadlier than anything I could have thought
of. I worried about your falling prey to flattery and being served. What I
never counted on was that the shadow beings would set a trap using your
inherent aversion to chains."

Don Juan
had once made a comparison of his reaction and mine, in the sorcerers' world,
to the things that pressed us the most. He said, without making it sound like a
complaint, that although he wanted and tried to, he had never been able to
inspire the kind of affection his teacher, the nagual Julian, inspired in
people.

"My
unbiased reaction, which I am putting on the table for you to examine, is to be
able to say, and mean it: it's not my fate to evoke blind and total affection.
So be it!"

"Your
unbiased reaction," he went on, "is that you can't stand chains, and
you would forfeit your life to break them."

I sincerely
disagreed with him and told him that he was exaggerating. My views were not
that clear.

"Don't
worry," he said laughing, "sorcery is action. When the time comes,
you'll act your passion the same way I act mine. Mine is to acquiesce to my
fate, not passively, like an idiot, but actively, like a warrior. Yours is to
jump without either capriciousness or premeditation to cut someone else's
chains."

Don Juan
explained that upon merging my energy with the scout I had truthfully ceased to
exist. All my physicalness had then been transported into the inorganic beings'
realm and, had it not been for the scout who guided don Juan and his companions
to where I was, I would have died or remained in that world, inextricably lost.

"Why
did the scout guide you to where I was?" I asked.

"The
scout is a sentient being from another dimension," he said. "It's a
little girl now, and as such she told me that in order to get the necessary
energy to break the barrier that had trapped her in the inorganic beings'
world, she had to take all of yours. That's her human part now. Something
resembling gratitude drove her to me. When I saw her, I knew instantly that you
were done for."

"What
did you do then, don Juan?"

"I
rounded up everyone I could get hold of, especially Carol Tiggs, and off we
went into the inorganic beings' realm."

"Why
Carol Tiggs?"

"In
the first place, because she has endless energy, and, in the second place,
because she had to familiarize herself with the scout. All of us got something
invaluable out of this experience. You and Carol Tiggs got the scout. And the
rest of us got a reason to round up our physicality and place it on our energy
bodies; we became energy."

"How
did all of you do that, don Juan?"

"We
displaced our assemblage points, in unison. Our impeccable intent to save you
did the work. The scout took us, in the blink of an eye, to where you were
lying, half dead, and Carol dragged you out."

His
explanation made no sense to me. Don Juan laughed when I tried to raise that
point.

"How
can you understand this when you don't even have enough energy to get out of
your bed?" he retorted.

I confided
to him that I was certain I knew infinitely more than I rationally admitted but
that something was keeping a tight lid on my memory.

"Lack
of energy is what has put a tight lid on your memory," he said. "When
you have sufficient energy, your memory will work fine."

"Do
you mean that I can remember everything if I want to?"

"Not
quite. You may want as much as you like, but if your energy level is not on a
par with the importance of what you know, you might as well kiss your knowledge
good-bye: it'll never be available to you."

"So
what's the thing to do, don Juan?"

"Energy
tends to be cumulative; if you follow the warrior's way impeccably, a moment
will come when your memory opens up."

I confessed
that hearing him talk gave me the absurd sensation that I was indulging in
feeling sorry for myself, that there was nothing wrong with me.

"You
are not just indulging," he said. "You were actually energetically
dead four weeks ago. Now you are merely stunned. Being stunned and lacking
energy is what makes you hide your knowledge. You certainly know more than any
of us about the inorganic beings' world. That world was the exclusive concern
of the old sorcerers. All of us have told you that only through sorcerers'
stories do we know about it. I sincerely say that it is more than strange to me
that you've become, in your own right, another source of sorcerers' stories for
us."

I
reiterated that it was impossible for me to believe I had done something he had
not. But I could not believe either that he was merely humoring me.

"I am
not flattering or humoring you," he said, visibly annoyed. "I am stating
a sorcery fact. Knowing more than any of us about that world shouldn't be a
reason for feeling pleased. There's no advantage in that knowledge; in fact, in
spite of all you know, you couldn't save yourself. We saved you, because we
found you. But without the aid of the scout, there was no point in even trying
to find you. You were so infinitely lost in that world that I shudder at the
mere thought."

In my state
of mind, I did not find it strange in the least that I actually saw a ripple of
emotion going through all of don Juan's companions and apprentices. The only
one who remained unaltered was Carol Tiggs. She seemed to have fully accepted
her role. She was one with me.

"You
did free the scout," don Juan continued, "but you gave up your life.
Or, worse yet, you gave up your freedom. The inorganic beings let the scout go,
in exchange for you."

"I can
hardly believe that, don Juan. Not that I doubt you, you understand, but you
describe such an underhanded maneuver that I am stunned."

"Don't
consider it underhanded and you have the whole thing in a nutshell. The
inorganic beings are forever in search of awareness and energy; if you supply
them with the possibility of both, what do you think they'll do? Blow you
kisses from across the street?"

I knew that
don Juan was right. However, I could not hold that certainty for too long;
clarity kept drifting away from me.

Don Juan's
companions continued asking him questions. They wanted to know if he had given
any thought to what to do with the scout.

"Yes,
I have. It is a most serious problem, which the nagual here has to
resolve," he said, pointing at me. "He and Carol Tiggs are the only
ones who can free the scout. And he knows it too."

Naturally,
I asked him the only possible question, "How can I free it?"

"Instead
of my telling you how, there is a much better and more just way of finding
out," don Juan said with a big smile. "Ask the emissary. The
inorganic beings cannot lie, you know."

"The
third gate of
dreaming
is reached when you find yourself in a dream,
staring at someone else who is asleep. And that someone else turns out to be
you," don Juan said.

My energy
level was so keyed up at the time that I went to work on the third task right
away, although he did not offer any more information about it. The first thing
I noticed, in my
dreaming
practices, was that a surge of energy
immediately rearranged the focus of my
dreaming
attention. Its focus was
now on waking up in a dream and seeing myself sleeping; journeying to the realm
of inorganic beings was no longer an issue for me.

Very soon
after, I found myself in a dream looking at myself asleep. I immediately
reported it to don Juan. The dream had happened while I was at his house.

"There
are two phases to each of the gates of
dreaming
," he said.
"The first, as you know, is to arrive at the gate; the second is to cross
it. By
dreaming
what you've dreamt, that you saw yourself asleep, you
arrived at the third gate. The second phase is to move around once you've seen
yourself asleep.

"At
the third gate of
dreaming
," he went on, "you begin to
deliberately merge your
dreaming
reality with the reality of the daily
world. This is the drill, and sorcerers call it completing the energy body. The
merge between the two realities has to be so thorough that you need to be more
fluid than ever. Examine everything at the third gate with great care and
curiosity."

I
complained that his recommendations were too cryptic and were not making any
sense to me.

"What
do you mean by great care and curiosity?" I asked.

"Our
tendency at the third gate is to get lost in detail," he replied. "To
view things with great care and curiosity means to resist the nearly
irresistible temptation to plunge into detail.

"The
given drill, at the third gate, as I said, is to consolidate the energy body.
Dreamers begin forging the energy body by fulfilling the drills of the first
and second gates. When they reach the third gate, the energy body is ready to
come out, or perhaps it would be better to say that it is ready to act.
Unfortunately, this also means that it's ready to be mesmerized by
detail."

"What
does it mean to be mesmerized by detail?"

"The
energy body is like a child who's been imprisoned all its life. The moment it
is free, it soaks up everything it can find, and I mean everything. Every
irrelevant, minute detail totally absorbs the energy body."

An awkward
silence followed. I had no idea what to say. I had understood him perfectly, I
just didn't have anything in my experience to give me an idea of exactly what
it all meant.

"The
most asinine detail becomes a world for the energy body," don Juan
explained. "The effort that dreamers have to make to direct the energy
body is staggering. I know that it sounds awkward to tell you to view things
with care and curiosity, but that is the best way to describe what you should
do. At the third gate, dreamers have to avoid a nearly irresistible impulse to
plunge into everything, and they avoid it by being so curious, so desperate to
get into everything that they don't let any particular thing imprison
them."

Don Juan
added that his recommendations, which he knew sounded absurd to the mind, were
directly aimed at my energy body. He stressed over and over that my energy body
had to unite all its resources in order to act.

"But
hasn't my energy body been acting all along?" I asked.

"Part
of it has, otherwise you wouldn't have journeyed to the inorganic beings'
realm," he replied. "Now your entire energy body has to be engaged to
perform the drill of the third gate. Therefore, to make things easier for your
energy body, you must hold back your rationality."

"I am
afraid you are barking up the wrong tree," I said. "There is very
little rationality left in me after all the experiences you've brought into my
life."

"Don't
say anything. At the third gate, rationality is responsible for the insistence
of our energy bodies on being obsessed with superfluous detail. At the third
gate, then, we need irrational fluidity, irrational abandon to counteract that
insistence."