The active side of infin.., p.22
The Active Side of Infinity, page 22
"Well, you're right, Jim, you know Mel is very hard, yes. Yeah!"
"Well, speaking of shitty people, you're no better than Mel, Cal. I can never count on you," etc. Another classic dialogue was:
"How are you doing, Alex? How's your married life?"
"Oh, just great. For the first time, I'm eating on time, home-cooked meals, but I'm getting fat. There's nothing for me to do except watch TV. I used to go out with you guys, but now I can't. Theresa doesn't let me. Of course, I could tell her to go and shag herself, but I don't want to hurt her. I feel content, but miserable."
And Alex had been the most miserable guy before he got married. He was the one whose classic joke was to tell his friends, every time we ran into him, "Hey, come to my car, I want to introduce you to my bitch."
He enjoyed himself pink with our crushed expectations when we would see that what he had in his car was a female dog. He introduced his 'bitch' to all his friends. We were shocked when he actually married Theresa, a long-distance runner. They met at a marathon when Alex fainted. They were in the mountains, and Theresa had to revive him by any means.
So she pissed on his face. After that, Alex was her prisoner. She had marked her territory. His friends used to say, "Her pissy prisoner." His friends thought she was the true bitch who had turned weird Alex into a fat dog.
Don Juan and I laughed for a while. Then he looked at me with a serious expression.
"These are the ups and downs of daily living," don Juan said. "You win, and you lose, and you don't know when you win or when you lose. This is the price one pays for living under the rule of self-reflection. There is nothing that I can say to you, and there's nothing that you can say to yourself.
I could only recommend that you not feel guilty because you're an asshole, but that you strive to end the dominion of self-reflection. Go back to school. Don't give up yet."
My interest in remaining in academia was waning considerably. I began to live on automatic pilot. I felt heavy, despondent.
However, I noticed that my mind was not involved. I didn't calculate anything, or set up any goals or expectations of any sort. My thoughts were not obsessive, but my feelings were. I tried to conceptualize this dichotomy [* dichotomy- a classification into two opposed parts or subclasses] between a quiet mind and turbulent [* turbulent- characterized by unrest or disorder] feelings. It was in this frame of mindlessness and overwhelmed feelings that I walked one day from Haines Hall, where the anthropology department was, to the cafeteria to eat my lunch.
I was suddenly accosted by a strange tremor. I thought I was going to faint, and I sat down on some brick steps. I saw yellow spots in front of my eyes. I had the sensation that I was spinning. I was sure that I was going to get sick to my stomach. My vision became blurry, and finally I couldn't see a thing. My physical discomfort was so total and intense that it didn't leave room for a single thought.
I had only bodily sensations of fear and anxiety mixed with elation, and a strange anticipation that I was at the threshold of a gigantic event. They were sensations without the counterpart of thought. At a given moment, I no longer knew whether I was sitting or standing. I was surrounded by the most impenetrable darkness one can imagine, and then, I saw energy as it flowed in the universe.
I saw a succession of luminous spheres walking toward me or away from me. I saw them one at a time, as don Juan had always told me one sees them. I knew they were different individuals because of their differences in size.
I examined the details of their structures. Their luminosity and their roundness were made of fibers that seemed to be stuck together. They were thin or thick fibers. Every one of those luminous figures had a thick, shaggy covering. They looked like some strange, luminous, furry animals, or gigantic round insects covered with luminous hair.
What was the most shocking thing to me was the realization that I had seen those furry insects all my life. Every occasion on which don Juan had made me deliberately see them seemed to me at that moment to be like a detour that I had taken with him. I remembered every instance of his help in making me see people as luminous spheres, and all of those instances were set apart from the bulk of seeing to which I was having access now.
I knew then, as beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I had perceived energy as it flows in the universe all my life, on my own, without anybody's help. Such a realization was overwhelming to me. I felt infinitely, vulnerable, frail. I needed to seek cover; to hide somewhere.
It was exactly like the dream that most of us seem to have at one time or another in which we find ourselves naked and don't know what to do. I felt more than naked; I felt unprotected, weak, and I dreaded returning to my normal state. In a vague way, I sensed that I was lying down. I braced myself for my return to normality. I conceived of the idea that I was going to find myself lying on the brick walk, twitching convulsively, surrounded by a whole circle of spectators.
The sensation that I was lying down became more and more accentuated. I felt that I could move my eyes. I could see light through my closed eyelids, but I dreaded opening them. The odd part was that I didn't hear any of those people that I imagined were around me. I heard no noise at all. At last, I ventured opening my eyes. I was on my bed, in my office apartment by the corner of Wilshire and Westwood boulevards.
I became quite hysterical upon finding myself in my bed. But for some reason that was beyond my grasp, I calmed down almost immediately. My hysteria was replaced by a bodily indifference, or by a state of bodily satisfaction, something like what one feels after a good meal.
However, I could not quiet my mind. It had been the most shocking thing imaginable for me to realize that I had perceived energy directly all my life. How in the world could it have been possible that I hadn't known? What had been preventing me from gaining access to that facet of my being? Don Juan had said that every human being has the potential to see energy directly. What he hadn't said was that every human being already sees energy directly but doesn't know it.
I put that question to a psychiatrist friend. He couldn't shed any light on my quandary. He thought that my reaction was the result of fatigue and overstimulation. He gave me a prescription for Valium and told me to rest.
I hadn't dared mention to anyone that I had woken up in my bed without being able to account for how I had gotten there. Therefore, my haste to see don Juan was more than justified. I flew to Mexico City as soon as I could, rented a car, and drove to where he lived.
"You've done all this before!" don Juan said, laughing, when I narrated my mind-boggling experience to him. "There are only two things that are new. One is that now you have perceived energy all by yourself. What you did was to stop the world, and then you realized that you have always seen energy as it flows in the universe, as every human being does, but without knowing it deliberately. The other new thing is that you have traveled from your inner silence all by yourself.
"You know, without my having to tell you, that anything is possible if one departs from inner silence. This time your fear and vulnerability made it possible for you to end up in your bed, which is not really that far from the UCLA campus. If you would not indulge in your surprise, you would realize that what you did is nothing, nothing extraordinary for a warrior traveler.
"But the issue which is of the utmost importance isn't knowing that you have always perceived energy directly, or your journeying from inner silence, but, rather, a twofold affair.
"First, you experienced something which the sorcerers of ancient Mexico called the clear view, or losing the human form; the time when human pettiness vanishes, as if it had been a patch of fog looming over us, a fog that slowly clears up and dissipates.
"But under no circumstances must you consider this accomplishment as an end.
"The sorcerers' world is not an immutable [* immutable- not subject or susceptible to change] world like the world of everyday life, where they tell you that once you reach a goal, you remain a winner forever.
"In the sorcerers' world, to arrive at a certain goal means that you have simply acquired the most efficient tools to continue your fight, which, by the way, will never end.
"The second part of this twofold matter is that you experienced the most maddening question for the hearts of human beings. You expressed it yourself when you asked yourself the questions: 'How in the world could it have been possible that I didn't know that I had perceived energy directly all my life? What had been preventing me from gaining access to that facet of my being?'"
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Mud Shadows
To sit in silence with don Juan was one of the most enjoyable experiences I knew.
We were comfortably sitting on some stuffed chairs in the back of his house in the mountains of central Mexico. It was late afternoon. There was a pleasant breeze. The sun was behind the house, at our backs. Its fading light created exquisite shades of green in the big trees in the backyard.
There were big trees growing around his house, and beyond it, which obliterated the sight of the city where he lived. This always gave me the impression that I was in the wilderness; a different wilderness than the barren Sonoran desert, but wilderness nonetheless.
"Today, we're going to discuss a most serious topic in sorcery," don Juan said abruptly, "and we're going to begin by talking about the energy body."
He had described the energy body to me countless times, saying that it was a conglomerate of energy fields; the mirror image of the conglomerate of energy fields that makes up the physical body when it is seen as energy that flows in the universe.
He had said that the energy body was smaller, more compact, and of heavier appearance than the luminous sphere of the physical body.
Don Juan had explained that the body and the energy body were two conglomerates of energy fields compressed together by some strange agglutinating [* agglutinating- strung or clumped together] force.
He had emphasized no end that this force that binds that group of energy fields together was, according to the sorcerers of ancient Mexico, the most mysterious force in the universe.
His personal estimation was that this force was the pure essence of the entire cosmos; the sum total of everything there is.
He had asserted that the physical body and the energy body were the only counterbalanced energy configurations in our realm as human beings. He accepted, therefore, no other dualism in our lives than the one between these two.
The dualism between body and mind, or spirit and flesh, he considered to be a mere concatenation [* concatenation- a linking together as in a chain] of the mind, emanating from our minds without any energetic foundation.
Don Juan had said that by means of discipline, it is possible for anyone to bring the energy body closer to the physical body.
Normally, the distance between the two is enormous.
Once the energy body is within a certain range which varies for each of us individually, through discipline anyone can forge it into the exact replica of their physical body; that is to say, a three-dimensional, solid being; hence the sorcerers' idea of the other or the double.
By the same token, through the same processes of discipline, anyone can forge their three-dimensional, solid physical body to be a perfect replica of their energy body; that is to say, an ethereal charge of energy invisible to the human eye, as all energy is.
When don Juan had told me all about this, my reaction had been to ask him if he was describing a mythical proposition.
He had replied that there was nothing mythical about sorcerers. Sorcerers were practical beings, and what they described was always something quite sober and down-to-earth.
According to don Juan, the difficulty in understanding what sorcerers did was that they proceeded from a different cognitive system.
Sitting at the back of his house in central Mexico that day, don Juan said that the energy body was of key importance in whatever was taking place in my life.
He saw that it was an energetic fact that my energy body, instead of moving away from me as normally happens, was approaching me with great speed.
"What does it mean that it's approaching me?" I asked.
Smiling, don Juan said, "It means that something is going to knock the daylights out of you. A tremendous degree of control is going to come into your life, but not your control; the energy body's control."
I asked, "Do you mean that some outside force will control me?"
"There are scores of outside forces controlling you at this moment," don Juan replied. "The control that I am referring to is something outside the domain of language.
"It is your control and at the same time it is not. It cannot be classified, but it can certainly be experienced. And above all, it can certainly be manipulated.
"Remember this: This control can be manipulated to your total advantage, of course, which is not your advantage, but the energy body's advantage.
"However, the energy body is you. So we could go on forever like dogs biting their own tails trying to describe this. Language is inadequate. All these experiences are beyond syntax."
Darkness had descended very quickly. The foliage of the trees that had been glowing green a little while before was now very dark and heavy.
Don Juan said that if I paid close attention to the darkness of the foliage without focusing my eyes, and if I sort of looked at it from the corner of my eye, I would see a fleeting shadow crossing my field of vision.
He said, "This is the appropriate time of day for doing what I am asking you to do. It takes a moment to engage the necessary attention in you to do it. Don't stop until you catch that fleeting black shadow."
I did see some strange fleeting black shadow projected on the foliage [* foliage- the leaf-like parts of plants responsible for photosynthesis] of the trees. It was either one shadow going back and forth, or there were various fleeting shadows moving from left to right, right to left and straight up in the air.
They looked like fat black fish to me; enormous fish. It was as if gigantic swordfish were flying in the air. I was engrossed in the sight.
Then, finally, it scared me. Although, it became too dark to see the foliage, I could still see the fleeting black shadows.
"What is it, don Juan?" I asked. "I see fleeting black shadows all over the place."
"Ah," he said, "that's the universe at large; incommensurable, nonlinear, and outside the realm of syntax.
"The sorcerers of ancient Mexico were the first ones to see those fleeting shadows, so the sorcerers followed them around. They saw them as you're seeing them, and they saw them as energy that flows in the universe.
"And those sorcerers discovered something transcendental." [* transcendental- existing outside of or not in accordance with nature]
He stopped talking and looked at me. His pause was perfectly placed. He stopped talking when I was hanging by a thread.
I asked, "What did they discover, don Juan?"
"They discovered that we have a companion for life," he said, as clearly as he could. "We have a predator that came from the depths of the cosmos, and took over the rule of our lives. Human beings are its prisoners. The predator is our lord and master.
"It has rendered us docile; helpless. If we want to protest, it suppresses our protest. If we want to act independently, it demands that we don't do so."
It was very dark around us, and that seemed to curtail any expression on my part. If it had been daylight, I would have laughed my head off. In the dark, I felt quite inhibited.
"It's pitch black around us," don Juan said, "but if you look out of the corner of your eye, you will still see fleeting shadows jumping all around you."
He was right. I could still see them. Their movement made me dizzy. Don Juan turned on the light, and that seemed to dissipate everything.
Don Juan said, "You have arrived, by your effort alone, to what the shamans of ancient Mexico called the topic of topics.
"I have been beating around the bush all this time, insinuating to you that something is holding us prisoner. Indeed we are held prisoner! This was an energetic fact for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico."
"Why has this predator taken over in the fashion that you're describing, don Juan?" I asked. "There must be a logical explanation."
"There is an explanation," don Juan replied, "which is the simplest explanation in the world.
"They took over because we are food for them, and they squeeze us mercilessly because we are their sustenance.
"Just as we rear chickens in chicken coops, gallineros, the predators rear us in human coops, humaneros. Therefore, their food is always available to them."
I felt that my head was shaking violently from side to side. I could not express my profound sense of unease and discontentment, but my body moved to bring it to the surface. I shook from head to toe without any volition on my part.
I heard myself saying, "No, no, no, no. This is absurd, don Juan. What you're saying is something monstrous. It simply can't be true, for sorcerers, or for average men, or for anyone."
"Why not?" don Juan asked calmly. "Why not? Because it infuriates you?"
"Yes, it infuriates me," I retorted. "Those claims are monstrous!"
"Well," he said, "you haven't heard all the claims yet. Wait a bit longer and see how you feel.
"I'm going to subject you to a blitz. That is, I'm going to subject your mind to tremendous onslaughts; and you cannot get up and leave because you're caught. Not because I'm holding you prisoner, but because something in you will prevent you from leaving while another part of you is going to go truthfully berserk. So brace yourself!"
There was something in me which I felt was a 'glutton for punishment'. He was right. I wouldn't have left the house for the world; and yet I didn't like one bit the inanities he was spouting.
