The Power of Silence (27 page)

"I
understood how right my benefactor had been," don Juan said. "My
stupidity was a monster and it had already devoured me. The instant I had that
thought, I knew that anything I could say or do was useless. I had lost my
chance. Now, I was only clowning for those men. The spirit could not possibly
have cared about my despair. There were too many of us - men with our own petty
private hells, born of our stupidity - for the spirit to pay attention.

"I
knelt and faced the southeast. I thanked my benefactor again and told the
spirit I was ashamed. So ashamed. And with my last breath I said goodbye to a
world which could have been wonderful if I had had wisdom. An immense wave came
for me then. I felt it, first. Then I heard it, and finally I saw it coming for
me from the southeast, over the fields. It overtook me and its blackness
covered me. And the light of my life was gone. My hell had ended. I was finally
dead! I was finally free!"

Don Juan's
story devastated me. He ignored all my efforts to talk about it. He said that
at another time and in another setting we were going to discuss it. He demanded
instead that we get on with what he had come to do: elucidate the mastery of
awareness.

A couple of
days later, as we were coming down from the mountains, he suddenly began to
talk about his story. We had sat down to rest. Actually, I was the one who had
stopped to catch my breath. Don Juan was not even breathing hard.

"The
sorcerers' struggle for assuredness is the most dramatic struggle there
is," don Juan said. "It's painful and costly. Many, many times it has
actually cost sorcerers their lives."

He
explained that in order for any sorcerer to have complete certainty about his
actions, or about his position in the sorcerers' world, or to be capable of
utilizing intelligently his new continuity, he must invalidate the continuity
of his old life. Only then can his actions have the necessary assuredness to
fortify and balance the tenuousness and instability of his new continuity.

"The
sorcerer seers of modern times call this process of invalidation the ticket to
impeccability, or the sorcerers' symbolic but final death," don Juan said.
"And in that field in Sinaloa, I got my ticket to impeccability. I died
there. The tenuousness of my new continuity cost me my life."

"But
did you die, don Juan, or did you just faint?" I asked, trying not to
sound cynical.

"I
died in that field," he said. "I felt my awareness flowing out of me
and heading toward the Eagle. But as I had impeccably recapitulated my life,
the Eagle did not swallow my awareness. The Eagle spat me out. Because my body
was dead in the field, the Eagle did not let me go through to freedom. It was
as if it told me to go back and try again.

"I
ascended the heights of blackness and descended again to the light of the
earth. And then I found myself in a shallow grave at the edge of the field,
covered with rocks and dirt."

Don Juan
said that he knew instantly what to do. After digging himself out he rearranged
the grave to look as if a body were still there, and slipped away. He felt
strong and determined. He knew that he had to return to his benefactor's house.
But, before he started on his return journey, he wanted to see his family and
explain to them that he was a sorcerer and for that reason he could not stay
with them. He wanted to explain that his downfall had been not knowing that
sorcerers can never make a bridge to join the people of the world. But, if
people desire to do so, they have to make a bridge to join sorcerers.

"I
went home," don Juan continued, "but the house was empty. The shocked
neighbors told me that farm workers had come earlier with the news that I had
dropped dead at work, and my wife and her children had left."

"How
long were you dead, don Juan?" I asked.

"A
whole day, apparently," he said.

Don Juan's
smile played on his lips. His eyes seemed to be made of shiny obsidian. He was
watching my reaction, waiting for my comments.

"What
became of your family, don Juan?" I asked.

"Ah,
the question of a sensible man," he remarked. "For a moment I thought
you were going to ask me about my death!"

I confessed
that I had been about to, but that I knew he was seeing my question as I
formulated it in my mind, and just to be contrary I asked something else. I did
not mean it as a joke, but it made him laugh.

"My
family disappeared that day," he said. "My wife was a survivor. She
had to be, with the conditions we lived under. Since I had been waiting for my
death, she believed I had gotten what I wanted. There was nothing for her to do
there, so she left.

"I
missed the children and I consoled myself with the thought that it wasn't my
fate to be with them. However, sorcerers have a peculiar bent. They live
exclusively in the twilight of a feeling best described by the words "and
yet . . ." When everything is crumbling down around them, sorcerers accept
that the situation is terrible, and then immediately escape to the twilight of
"and yet. . ."

"I did
that with my feelings for those children and the woman. With great discipline -
especially on the part of the oldest boy - they had recapitulated their lives
with me. Only the spirit could decide the outcome of that affection."

He reminded
me that he had taught me how warriors acted in such situations. They did their
utmost, and then, without any remorse or regrets, they relaxed and let the
spirit decide the outcome.

"What
was the decision of the spirit, don Juan?" I asked.

He
scrutinized me without answering. I knew he was completely aware of my motive
for asking. I had experienced a similar affection and a similar loss.

"The
decision of the spirit is another basic core," he said. "Sorcery
stories are built around it. We'll talk about that specific decision when we
get to discussing that basic core.

"Now,
wasn't there a question about my death you wanted to ask?"

"If
they thought you were dead, why the shallow grave?" I asked. "Why
didn't they dig a real grave and bury you?"

"That's
more like you," he said laughing. "I asked the same question myself
and I realized that all those farm workers were pious people. I was a
Christian. Christians are not buried just like that, nor are they left to rot
like dogs. I think they were waiting for my family to come and claim the body
and give it a proper burial. But my family never came."

"Did
you go and look for them, don Juan?" I asked.

"No.
Sorcerers never look for anyone," he replied. "And I was a sorcerer.
I had paid with my life for the mistake of not knowing I was a sorcerer, and
that sorcerers never approach anyone.

"From
that day on, I have only accepted the company or the care of people or warriors
who are dead, as I am."

Don Juan
said that he went back to his benefactor's house, where all of them knew
instantly what he had discovered. And they treated him as if he had not left at
all.

The nagual
Julian commented that because of his peculiar nature don Juan had taken a long
time to die.

"My
benefactor told me then that a sorcerer's ticket to freedom was his
death," don Juan went on. "He said that he himself had paid with his
life for that ticket to freedom, as had everyone else in his household. And
that now we were equals in our condition of being dead."

"Am I
dead too, don Juan?" I asked.

"You
are dead," he said. "The sorcerers' grand trick, however, is to be
aware that they are dead. Their ticket to impeccability must be wrapped in
awareness. In that wrapping, sorcerers say, their ticket is kept in mint
condition.

"For
sixty years, I've kept mine in mint condition."

Don Juan
often took me and the rest of his apprentices on short trips to the western
range nearby. On this occasion we left at dawn, and late in the afternoon,
started back. I chose to walk with don Juan. To be close to him always soothed
and relaxed me; but being with his volatile apprentices always produced in me
the opposite effect: they made me feel very tired.

As we all
came down from the mountains, don Juan and I made one stop before we reached
the flatlands. An attack of profound melancholy came upon me with such speed
and strength that all I could do was to sit down. Then, following don Juan's
suggestion, I lay on my stomach, on top of a large round boulder.

The rest of
the apprentices taunted me and continued walking. I heard their laughter and
yelling become faint in the distance. Don Juan urged me to relax and let my
assemblage point, which he said had moved with sudden speed, settle into its
new position.

"Don't
fret," he advised me. "In a short while, you'll feel a sort of tug,
or a pat on your back, as if someone has touched you. Then you'll be
fine."

The act of
lying motionless on the boulder, waiting to feel the pat on my back, triggered
a spontaneous recollection so intense and clear that I never noticed the pat I
was expecting. I was sure, however, that I got it, because my melancholy indeed
vanished instantly.

I quickly
described what I was recollecting to don Juan. He suggested I stay on the
boulder and move my assemblage point back to the exact place it was when I
experienced the event that I was recalling.

"Get
every detail of it," he warned.

It had
happened many years before. Don Juan and I had been at that time in the state
of Chihuahua in northern Mexico, in the high desert. I used to go there with
him because it was an area rich in the medicinal herbs he collected. From an
anthropological point of view that area also held a tremendous interest for me.
Archaeologists had found, not too long before, the remains of what they
concluded was a large, prehistoric trading post. They surmised that the trading
post, strategically situated in a natural passway, had been the epicenter of
commerce along a trade route which joined the American Southwest to southern Mexico and Central America.

The few
times I had been in that flat, high desert had reinforced my conviction that
archaeologists were right in their conclusions that it was a natural passkey. I,
of course, had lectured don Juan on the influence of that passway in the
prehistoric distribution of cultural traits on the North American continent. I
was deeply interested at that time in explaining sorcery among the Indians of
the American Southwest, Mexico, and Central America as a system of beliefs
which had been transmitted along trade routes and which had served to create,
at a certain abstract level, a sort of pre-Columbian pan-Indianism.

Don Juan,
naturally, laughed uproariously every time I expounded my theories.

The event
that I recollected had begun in the midafternoon. After don Juan and I had
gathered two small sacks of some extremely rare medicinal herbs, we took a
break and sat down on top of some huge boulders. But before we headed back to
where I had left my car, don Juan insisted on talking about the art of
stalking. He said that the setting was the most adequate one for explaining its
intricacies, but that in order to understand them I first had to enter into
heightened awareness.

I demanded
that before he do anything he explain to me again what heightened awareness
really was.

Don Juan,
displaying great patience, discussed heightened awareness in terms of the
movement of the assemblage point. As he kept talking, I realized the facetiousness
of my request. I knew everything he was telling me. I remarked that I did not
really need anything explained, and he said that explanations were never
wasted, because they were imprinted in us for immediate or later use or to help
prepare our way to reaching silent knowledge.

When I
asked him to talk about silent knowledge in more detail, he quickly responded
that silent knowledge was a general position of the assemblage point, that ages
ago it had been man's normal position, but that, for reasons which would be
impossible to determine, man's assemblage point had moved away from that
specific location and adopted a new one called "reason."

Don Juan
remarked that not every human being was a representative of this new position.
The assemblage points of the majority of us were not placed squarely on the
location of reason itself, but in its immediate vicinity. The same thing had
been the case with silent knowledge: not every human being's assemblage point
had been squarely on that location either.

He also said
that "the place of no pity," being another position of the assemblage
point, was the forerunner of silent knowledge, and that yet another position of
the assemblage point called "the place of concern," was the
forerunner of reason.

I found
nothing obscure about those cryptic remarks. To me they were self-explanatory.
I understood everything he said while I waited for his usual blow to my
shoulder blades to make me enter into heightened awareness. But the blow never
came, and I kept on understanding what he was saying without really being aware
that I understood anything. The feeling of ease, of taking things for granted,
proper to my normal consciousness, remained with me, and I did not question my
capacity to understand.