The Art of Dreaming (11 page)

"Is
its advice safe and sound?"

"It
cannot be advice. It only tells us what's what, and then we draw the inferences
ourselves." I told don Juan then about what the voice had said to me.

"It's
just like I said," don Juan remarked. "The emissary didn't tell you
anything new. Its statements were correct, but it only seemed to be revealing
things to you. What the emissary did was merely repeat what you already
knew."

"I'm
afraid I can't claim that I knew all that, don Juan."

"Yes,
you can. You know now infinitely more about the mystery of the universe than
what you rationally suspect. But that's our human malady, to know more about
the mystery of the universe than we suspect."

Having
experienced this incredible phenomenon all by myself, without don Juan's
coaching, made me feel elated. I wanted more information about the emissary. I
began to ask don Juan whether he also heard the emissary's voice.

He
interrupted me and with a broad smile said, "Yes, yes. The emissary also
talks to me. In my youth I used to see it as a friar with a black cowl. A
talking friar who used to scare the daylights out of me, every time. Then, when
my fear was more manageable, it became a disembodied voice, which tells me
things to this day."

"What
kinds of things, don Juan?"

"Anything
I focus my intent on, things I don't want to take the trouble of following up
myself. Like, for example, details about the behavior of my apprentices. What
they do when I am not around. It tells me things about you, in particular. The
emissary tells me everything you do."

At that
point, I really did not care for the direction our conversation had taken. I
frantically searched my mind for questions about other topics while he roared
with laughter.

"Is
the
dreaming emissary
an inorganic being?" I asked.

"Let's
say that the
dreaming emissary
is a force that comes from the realm of
inorganic beings. This is the reason dreamers always encounter it."

"Do
you mean, don Juan, that every dreamer hears or sees the emissary?"

"Everyone
hears the emissary; very few see it or feel it."

"Do
you have any explanation for this?"

"No.
Besides, I really don't care about the emissary. At one point in my life, I had
to make a decision whether to concentrate on the inorganic beings and follow in
the footsteps of the old sorcerers or to refuse it all. My teacher, the nagual
Julian, helped me make up my mind to refuse it. I've never regretted that
decision."

"Do
you think I should refuse the inorganic beings myself, don Juan?"

He did not
answer me; instead, he explained that the whole realm of inorganic beings is
always poised to teach. Perhaps because inorganic beings have a deeper
consciousness than ours, they feel compelled to take us under their wings.

"I
didn't see any point in becoming their pupil," he added. "Their price
is too high." "What is their price?"

"Our
lives, our energy, our devotion to them. In other words, our freedom."

"But
what do they teach?"

"Things
pertinent to their world. The same way we ourselves would teach them, if we
were capable of teaching them, things pertinent to our world. Their method,
however, is to take our basic self as a gauge of what we need and then teach us
accordingly. A most dangerous affair!" "I don't see why it would be
dangerous."

"If
someone was going to take your basic self as a gauge, with all your fears and
greed and envy, et cetera, et cetera, and teach you what fulfills that horrible
state of being, what do you think the result would be?"

I had no
comeback. I thought I understood perfectly well the reasons for his rejection.

"The
problem with the old sorcerers was that they learned wonderful things, but on
the basis of their unadulterated lower selves," don Juan went on.
"The inorganic beings became their allies, and, by means of deliberate
examples, they taught the old sorcerers marvels. Their allies performed the
actions, and the old sorcerers were guided step by step to copy those actions,
without changing anything about their basic nature."

"Do
these relationships with inorganic beings exist today?"

"I
can't answer that truthfully. All I can say is that I can't conceive of having
a relationship like that myself. Involvements of this nature curtail our search
for freedom by consuming all our available energy. In order to really follow
their allies' example, the old sorcerers had to spend their lives in the realm
of the inorganic beings. The amount of energy needed to accomplish such a
sustained journey is staggering."

"Do
you mean, don Juan, that the old sorcerers were able to exist in those realms
like we exist here?"

"Not
quite like we exist here, but certainly they lived: they retained their
awareness, their individuality. The
dreaming emissary
became the most
vital entity for those sorcerers. If a sorcerer wants to live in the realm of
the inorganic beings, the emissary is the perfect bridge; it speaks, and its
bent is to teach, to guide."

"Have
you ever been in that realm, don Juan?"

"Countless
times. And so have you. But there is no point in talking about it now. You
haven't cleared all the debris from your
dreaming attention
yet. We'll
talk about that realm some day." "Do I gather, don Juan, that you
don't approve of or like the emissary?"

"I
neither approve of it nor like it. It belongs to another mood, the old
sorcerers' mood. Besides, its teachings and guidance in our world are nonsense.
And for that nonsense the emissary charges us enormities in terms of energy.
One day you will agree with me. You'll see."

In the tone
of don Juan's words, I caught a veiled implication of his belief that I
disagreed with him about the emissary. I was about to confront him with it when
I heard the emissary's voice in my ears.

"He's
right," the voice said. "You like me because you find nothing wrong
with exploring all possibilities. You want knowledge; knowledge is power. You
don't want to remain safe in the routines and beliefs of your daily
world."

The
emissary said all that in English with a marked Pacific Coast intonation. Then
it shifted into Spanish. I heard a slight Argentine accent. I had never heard
the emissary speaking like this before. It fascinated me. The emissary told me
about fulfillment, knowledge; about how far away I was from my birthplace;
about my craving for adventure and my near obsession with new things, new
horizons. The voice even talked to me in Portuguese, with a definite inflection
from the southern pampas.

To hear
that voice pouring out all this flattery not only scared me but nauseated me. I
told don Juan, right on the spot, that I had to stop my
dreaming
training. He looked up at me, caught by surprise. But when I repeated what I
had heard, he agreed I should stop, although I sensed he was doing it only to
appease me. A few weeks later, I found my reaction a bit hysterical and my
decision to withdraw unsound. I went back to my
dreaming
practices. I
was sure don Juan was aware that I had canceled out my withdrawal.

On one of
my visits to him, quite abruptly, he spoke about dreams.

"Just
because we haven't been taught to emphasize dreams as a genuine field for
exploration doesn't mean they are not one," he began. "Dreams are
analyzed for their meaning or are taken as portents, but never are they taken
as a realm of real events."

"To my
knowledge, only the old sorcerers did that," don Juan went on, "but
at the end they flubbed it. They got greedy, and when they came to a crucial
crossroads, they took the wrong fork. They put all their eggs in one basket:
the fixation of the assemblage point on the thousands of positions it can
adopt."

Don Juan
expressed his bewilderment at the fact that out of all the marvelous things the
old sorcerers learned exploring those thousands of positions, only the art of
dreaming
and the art of stalking remain. He reiterated that the art of
dreaming
is concerned with the displacement of the assemblage point. Then he defined
stalking as the art that deals with the fixation of the assemblage point on any
location to which it is displaced.

"To
fixate the assemblage point on any new spot means to acquire cohesion," he
said. "You have been doing just that in your
dreaming
practices."

"I
thought I was perfecting my energy body," I said, somehow surprised at his
statement.

"You
are doing that and much more, you are learning to have cohesion.
Dreaming
does it by forcing dreamers to fixate the assemblage point. The
dreaming
attention
, the energy body, the second attention, the relationship with
inorganic beings, the
dreaming emissary
are but byproducts of acquiring
cohesion; in other words, they are all by-products of fixating the assemblage
point on a number of
dreaming
positions."

"What
is a
dreaming
position, don Juan?"

"Any
new position to which the assemblage point has been displaced during
sleep." "How do we fixate the assemblage point on a
dreaming
position?"

"By
sustaining the view of any item in your dreams, or by changing dreams at will.
Through your
dreaming
practices, you are really exercising your capacity
to be cohesive; that is to say, you are exercising your capacity to maintain a
new energy shape by holding the assemblage point fixed on the position of any
particular dream you are having."

"Do I
really maintain a new energy shape?"

"Not
exactly, and not because you can't but only because you are shifting the
assemblage point instead of moving it. Shifts of the assemblage point give rise
to minute changes, which are practically unnoticeable. The challenge of shifts
is that they are so small and so numerous that to maintain cohesiveness in all
of them is a triumph."

"How
do we know we are maintaining cohesion?"

"We
know it by the clarity of our perception. The clearer the view of our dreams,
the greater our cohesion."

He said
then that it was time for me to have a practical application of what I had
learned in
dreaming
. Without giving me a chance to ask anything, he
urged me to focus my attention, as if I were in a dream, on the foliage of a
desert tree growing nearby: a mesquite tree.

"Do
you want me to just gaze at it?" I asked.

"I
don't want you to just gaze at it; I want you to do something very special with
that foliage," he said. "Remember that, in your dreams, once you are
able to hold the view of any item, you are really holding the
dreaming
position of your assemblage point. Now, gaze at those leaves as if you were in
a dream, but with a slight yet most meaningful variation: you are going to hold
your
dreaming attention
on the leaves of the mesquite tree in the
awareness of our daily world."

My
nervousness made it impossible for me to follow his line of thought. He
patiently explained that by staring at the foliage, I would accomplish a minute
displacement of my assemblage point. Then, by summoning my
dreaming
attention through staring at individual leaves, I would actually fixate that
minute displacement, and my cohesion would make me perceive in terms of the
second attention. He added, with a chuckle, that the process was so simple it
was ridiculous.

Don Juan
was right. All I needed was to focus my sight on the leaves, maintain it, and
in one instant I was drawn into a vortex-like sensation, extremely like the
vortexes in my dreams. The foliage of the mesquite tree became a universe of
sensory data. It was as if the foliage had swallowed me, but it was not only my
sight that was engaged; if I touched the leaves, I actually felt them. I could
also smell them. My
dreaming
attention was multisensorial instead of
solely visual, as in my regular
dreaming
.

What had
begun as gazing at the foliage of the mesquite tree had turned into a dream. I
believed I was in a dreamt tree, as I had been in trees of countless dreams.
And, naturally, I behaved in this dreamt tree as I had learned to behave in my
dreams; I moved from item to item, pulled by the force of a vortex that took
shape on whatever part of the tree I focused my multisensorial
dreaming
attention. Vortexes were formed not only on gazing but also on touching
anything with any part of my body.

In the
midst of this vision or dream, I had an attack of rational doubts. I began to
wonder if I had really climbed the tree in a daze and was actually hugging the
leaves, lost in the foliage, without knowing what I was doing. Or perhaps I had
fallen asleep, possibly mesmerized by the fluttering of leaves in the wind, and
was having a dream. But just like in
dreaming
, I didn't have enough
energy to ponder for too long. My thoughts were fleeting. They lasted an
instant; then the force of direct experience blanketed them out completely. A
sudden motion around me shook everything and virtually made me emerge from a
clump of leaves, as if I had broken away from the tree's magnetic pull. I was
facing then, from an elevation, an immense horizon. Dark mountains and green
vegetation surrounded me. Another jolt of energy made me shake from my bones
out; then I was somewhere else. Enormous trees loomed everywhere. They were
bigger than the Douglas firs of Oregon and Washington State. Never had I seen a
forest like that. The scenery was such a contrast to the aridness of the
Sonoran desert that it left me with no doubt that I was having a dream.