The Power of Silence (17 page)

I asked him
what the level of proficiency was.

"Pure
understanding," he replied. "In order to attain that instantaneous
shift of energy, one needed a clear connection with intent, and to get a clear
connection one needed only to intend it through pure understanding."

Naturally I
wanted him to explain pure understanding. He laughed and sat down on a bench.

"I'm
going to tell you something fundamental about sorcerers and their acts of sorcery,"
he went on. "Something about the somersault of their thought into the
inconceivable."

He said
that some sorcerers were storytellers. Storytelling for them was not only the
advance runner that probed their perceptual limits but their path to perfection,
to power, to the spirit. He was quiet for a moment, obviously searching for an
appropriate example. Then he reminded me that the Yaqui Indians had a
collection of historical events they called "the memorable dates." I
knew that the memorable dates were oral accounts of their history as a nation
when they waged war against the invaders of their homeland: the Spaniards
first, the Mexicans later. Don Juan, a Yaqui himself, stated emphatically that
the memorable dates were accounts of their defeats and disintegration.

"So,
what would you say," he asked me, "since you are a learned man, about
a sorcerer storyteller's taking an account from the memorable dates - let's
say, for example, the story of Calixto Muni - and changing the ending so that
instead of describing how Calixto Muni was drawn and quartered by the Spanish
executioners, which is what happened, he tells a story of Calixto Muni the
victorious rebel who succeeded in liberating his people?"

I knew the
story of Calixto Muni. He was a Yaqui Indian who, according to the memorable
dates, served for many years on a buccaneer ship in the Caribbean in order to
learn war strategy. Then he returned to his native Sonora, managed to start an
uprising against the Spaniards and declared a war of independence, only to be
betrayed, captured, and executed.

Don Juan
coaxed me to comment. I told him I would have to assume that changing the
factual account in the manner he was describing would be a psychological
device, a sort of wishful thinking on the sorcerer storyteller's part. Or
perhaps it would be a personal, idiosyncratic way of alleviating frustration. I
added that I would even call such a sorcerer storyteller a patriot because he
was unable to accept bitter defeat.

Don Juan
laughed until he was choking.

"But
it's not a matter of one sorcerer storyteller," he argued. "They all
do that."

"Then
it's a socially sanctioned device to express the wishful thinking of a whole
society," I retorted. "A socially accepted way of releasing
psychological stress collectively."

"Your
argument is glib and convincing and reasonable," he commented. "But
because your spirit is dead, you can't
see
the flaw in your
argument."

He eyed me
as if coaxing me to understand what he was saying. I had no comment, and
anything I might have said would have made me sound peevish.

"The
sorcerer storyteller who changes the ending of the "factual"
account," he said, "does it at the direction and under the auspices
of the spirit. Because he can manipulate his elusive connection with intent, he
can actually change things. The sorcerer storyteller signals that he has
intended it by taking off his hat, putting it on the ground, and turning it a
full three hundred and sixty degrees counterclockwise. Under the auspices of
the spirit, that simple act plunges him into the spirit itself. He has let his
thought somersault into the inconceivable."

Don Juan
lifted his arm above his head and pointed for an instant to the sky above the
horizon.

"Because
his pure understanding is an advance runner probing that immensity out
there," don Juan went on, "the sorcerer storyteller knows without a
shadow of doubt that somewhere, somehow, in that infinity, at this very moment
the spirit has descended. Calixto Muni is victorious. He has delivered his
people. His goal has transcended his person."

A couple of
days later, don Juan and I made a trip to the mountains. Halfway up the
foothills we sat down to rest. Earlier that day, don Juan had decided to find
an appropriate setting in which to explain some intricate aspects of the
mastery of awareness. Usually he preferred to go to the closer western range of
mountains. This time, however, he chose the eastern peaks. They were much
higher and farther away. To me they seemed more ominous, darker, and more massive.
But I could not tell whether this impression was my own or if I had somehow
absorbed don Juan's feelings about these mountains.

I opened my
backpack. The women seers from don Juan's group had prepared it for me and I
discovered that they had packed some cheese. I experienced a moment of
annoyance, because while I liked cheese, it did not agree with me. Yet I was
incapable of refusing it whenever it was made available.

Don Juan
had pointed this out as a true weakness and had made fun of me. I was embarrassed
at first but found that when I did not have cheese around I did not miss it.
The problem was that the practical jokers in don Juan's group always packed a
big chunk of cheese for me, which, of course, I always ended up eating.

"Finish
it in one sitting," don Juan advised me with a mischievous glint in his
eyes. "That way you won't have to worry about it anymore."

Perhaps
influenced by his suggestion, I had the most intense desire to devour the whole
chunk. Don Juan laughed so much I suspected that once again he had schemed with
his group to set me up.

In a more
serious mood, he suggested that we spend the night there in the foothills and
take a day or two to reach the higher peaks. I agreed.

Don Juan
casually asked me if I had recalled anything about the four moods of stalking.
I admitted that I had tried, but that my memory had failed me.

"Don't
you remember my teaching you the nature of ruthlessness?" he asked.
"Ruthlessness, the opposite of self-pity?"

I could not
remember. Don Juan appeared to be considering what to say next. Then he
stopped. The corners of his mouth dropped in a gesture of sham impotence. He
shrugged his
shoulders, stood up and quickly walked a short distance to a small level spot
on top of a hill.

"All
sorcerers are ruthless," he said, as we sat down on the flat ground.
"But you know this. We have discussed this concept at length."

After a
long silence, he said that we were going to continue discussing the abstract
cores of the sorcery stories, but that he intended to talk less and less about
them because the time was approaching when it would be up to me to discover
them and allow them to reveal their meaning.

"As I
have already told you," he said, "the fourth abstract core of the
sorcery stories is called the descent of the spirit, or being moved by intent.
The story says that in order to let the mysteries of sorcery reveal themselves
to the man we've been talking about, it was necessary for the spirit to descend
on that man. The spirit chose a moment when the man was distracted, unguarded,
and, showing no pity, the spirit let its presence by itself move the man's
assemblage point to a specific position. This spot was known to sorcerers from
then on as the place of no pity. Ruthlessness became, in this way, the first
principle of sorcery.

"The
first principle should not be confused with the first effect of sorcery
apprenticeship, which is the shift between normal and heightened
awareness."

"I
don't understand what you are trying to tell me," I complained.

"What
I want to say is that, to all appearances, having the assemblage point shift is
the first thing that actually happens to a sorcery apprentice," he
replied. "So, it is only natural for an apprentice to assume that this is
the first principle of sorcery. But it is not. Ruthlessness is the first
principle of sorcery. But we have discussed this before. Now I am only trying
to help you remember."

I could
honestly have said that I had no idea what he was talking about, but I also had
the strange sensation that I did.

"Bring
back the recollection of the first time I taught you ruthlessness," he
urged. "
Recollecting
has to do with moving the assemblage
point."

He waited a
moment to see whether I was following his suggestion. Since it was obvious that
I could not, he continued his explanation. He said that, mysterious as the
shift into heightened awareness was, all that one needed to accomplish it was
the presence of the spirit.

I remarked
that his statements that day either were extremely obscure or I was terribly
dense, because I could not follow his line of thought at all. He replied firmly
that my confusion was unimportant and insisted that the only thing of real
importance was that I understand that the mere contact with the spirit could
bring about any movement of the assemblage point.

"I've
told you the nagual is the conduit of the spirit," he went on. "Since
he spends a lifetime impeccably redefining his connecting link with intent, and
since he has more energy than the average man, he can let the spirit express
itself through him. So, the first thing the sorcerer apprentice experiences is
a shift in his level of awareness, a shift brought about simply by the presence
of the nagual. And what I want you to know is that there really is no procedure
involved in making the assemblage point move. The spirit touches the apprentice
and his assemblage point moves. It is as simple as that."

I told him
that his assertions were disturbing because they contradicted what I had
painfully learned to accept through personal experience: that heightened
awareness was feasible as a sophisticated, although inexplicable, maneuver
performed by don Juan by means of which he manipulated my perception.
Throughout the years of our association, he had time after time made me enter
into heightened awareness by striking me on my back. I pointed out this
contradiction.

He replied
that striking my back was more a trick to trap my attention and remove doubts
from my mind than a bona fide maneuver to manipulate my perception. He called
it a simple trick, in keeping with his moderate personality. He commented, not
quite as a joke, that I was lucky he was a plain man, not given to weird
behavior. Otherwise, instead of simple tricks, I would have had to endure
bizarre rituals before he could remove all doubts from my mind, to let the
spirit move my assemblage point.

"What
we need to do to allow magic to get hold of us is to banish doubt from our
minds," he said. "Once doubts are banished, anything is
possible."

He reminded
me of an event I had witnessed some months before in Mexico City, which I had
found to be incomprehensible until he had explained it, using the sorcerers'
paradigm.

What I had
witnessed was a surgical operation performed by a famous psychic healer. A
friend of mine was the patient. The healer was a woman who entered a very
dramatic trance to operate on him.

I was able
to observe that, using a kitchen knife, she cut his abdominal cavity open in
the umbilical region, detached his diseased liver, washed it in a bucket of
alcohol, put it back in and closed the bloodless opening with just the pressure
of her hands.

There had
been a number of people in the semidark room, witnesses to the operation. Some
of them seemed to be interested observers like myself. The others seemed to be
the healer's helpers.

After the
operation, I talked briefly to three of the observers. They all agreed that
they had
witnessed the same events I had. When I talked to my friend, the patient, he
reported that he had
felt the operation as a dull, constant pain in his stomach and a burning
sensation on his right side.

I had
narrated all of this to don Juan and I had even ventured a cynical explanation.
I had told him that the semidarkness of the room, in my opinion, lent itself
perfectly to all kinds of sleight of hand, which could have accounted for the
sight of the internal organs being pulled out of the abdominal cavity and
washed in alcohol. The emotional shock caused by the healer's dramatic trance -
which I also considered trickery - helped to create an atmosphere of almost
religious faith.

Don Juan
immediately pointed out that this was a cynical opinion, not a cynical
explanation, because it did not explain the fact that my friend had really
gotten well. Don Juan had then proposed an alternative view based on sorcerers'
knowledge. He had explained that the event hinged on the salient fact that the
healer was capable of moving the assemblage point of the exact number of people
in her audience. The only trickery involved - if one could call it trickery -
was that the number of people present in the room could not exceed the number
she could handle.

Her
dramatic trance and the accompanying histrionics were, according to him, either
well-thought-out devices the healer used to trap the attention of those present
or unconscious maneuvers dictated by the spirit itself. Whichever, they were
the most appropriate means whereby the healer could foster the unity of thought
needed to remove doubt from the minds of those present and force them into
heightened awareness.