Magical Passes (15 page)

Don Juan called for a new syntax that could be used in order to express this wondrous quality of the assemblage point and the possibilities of perception brought about by dreaming. He conceded, however, that perhaps the present syntax of our language could be forced to cover it if this experience became available to any one of us, and not merely to shaman initiates.

Something related to dreaming that was of tremendous interest to me, hut which bewildered me to no end, was don Juan's statement that there was really no procedure to speak of that would teach anyone how to dream. He said that more than anything else, dreaming was an arduous effort on the part of the practitioners to put themselves in contact with the indescribable all-pervading force that the sorcerers of ancient Mexico called intent. Once this link was established, dreaming also mysteriously became established. Don Juan asserted that this linkage could be accomplished following any pattern that implied discipline.

When I asked him to give me a succinct explanation of the procedures involved, he laughed at me.

"To venture into the world of sorcerers," he said, "is not like learning to drive a car. To drive a car, you need manuals and instructions. To dream, you need to intend it."

"But how can I intend it?" I insisted.

"The only way you could intend it is by intending it," he declared. "One of the most difficult things for a man of our day to accept is a lack of procedure. Modern man is in the throes of manuals, praxes, methods, steps loading to. He is ceaselessly taking notes, making diagrams, deeply involved in the 'know-how.' But in the world of sorcerers, procedures and rituals are mere designs to attract and focus attention. They are devices used to force a focusing of interest and determination. They have no other value."

What don Juan considered to be of supreme importance in order to dream is the rigorous execution of the magical passes: the only device that the sorcerers of his lineage used to aid the displacement of the assemblage point. The execution of the magical passes gave those sorcerers the stability and the energy necessary to call forth their dreaming attention, without which there was no possibility of dreaming for them. Without the emergence of dreaming attention, practitioners could aspire, at best, to have lucid dreams about phantasmagorical worlds. They could perhaps have views of worlds that generate energy, but these would make no sense to them whatsoever in the absence of an all-inclusive rationale that would properly categorize them.

Once the shamans of don Juan's lineage had developed their dreaming attention, they realized that they had tapped on the doors of infinity. They had succeeded in enlarging the parameters of their normal perception. They discovered that their normal state of awareness was infinitely more varied than it had been before the advent of their dreaming attention. From that point on, those sorcerers could truthfully venture into the unknown.

"The aphorism," don Juan said to me once, "that 'the sky is the limit' was most applicable to the sorcerers of ancient times. They certainly outdid themselves."

"Was it really true for them that the sky was the limit, don Juan?" I

asked.

"This question could be answered only by each of us individually," he said, smiling expansively. "They gave us the tools. It is up to us individually to use them or refuse them. In essence, we are alone in front of infinity, and the issue of whether or not we are capable of reaching our limits has to be answered personally."

THE MAGICAL PASSES FOR DREAMING

27. Getting the Assemblage Point Loose

The left arm, with the palm of the hand turned upward, reaches over the area behind the shoulder blades, as the trunk leans a bit forward. Then the arm is brought in an underhanded motion from the left side of

the body to the front, moving in an upward thrust in front of the face, with the palm of the left hand turned to face the left. The fingers are held together (figs. 172, 173). This magical pass is executed by each arm in succession. The knees are kept bent for greater stability and thrusting force.

28. Forcing the Assemblage Point to Drop Down

The back is kept as straight as possible. The knees are locked. The left arm, fully stretched, is placed at the hack, a few inches away from the body. The hand is bent at a ninety-degree angle in relation to the forearm; the palm faces downward and the fully stretched fingers point backward. The fully stretched right arm is placed in front in the same position: with the wrist bent at a ninety-degree angle, the palm facing downward, the fingers pointing forward.

The head turns in the direction of the arm that is kept at the back, and a total stretch of the tendons ()l the legs and arms takes place at that instant. This tension of the tendons is held for a moment (fig. 174). The same movement is repeated with the right arm in hack and the left in front.

29. Enticing the Assemblage Point to Drop by Drawing Energy from the Adrenals and Transferring It to the Front

The left arm is placed behind the body at the level of the kidneys, as far to the right as it can reach; the hand is held like a claw. The clawed hand moves across the kidney area from right to left as if dragging a solid substance. The right arm is held in its normal position by the side of the thigh.

Next, the left hand moves to the front; the palm is held flat, on the right side, against the liver and gallbladder. The left hand moves across the front of the body to the left, the area of the pancreas and spleen, as if smoothing the surface of a solid substance; at the same time the right hand, held like a claw behind the body, moves from left to right over the kidneys as if dragging a solid substance.

Then the right hand is placed on the front of the body; the palm is held flat against the area of the pancreas and spleen. The hand moves across the front of the body to the area of the liver and gallbladder, as if smoothing a rough surface, while the clawed left hand moves again across the area of the kidneys from right to left as if dragging a solid substance (figs. 175, 176). The knees are kept bent for greater stability and force.

30. Playing Out the A and B Types of Energy

The right forearm, bent in a vertical position, at a ninety-degree angle, is centered in front of the body, with the elbow almost at the level of the shoulders, and the palm of the hand facing left. The left forearm, bent at the elbow and held in a horizontal position, is placed with the back of the hand underneath the right elbow. The eyes, without focusing on either forearm, keep a peripheral view of both of them. The pressure of the right arm is downward, while the pressure of the left arm is upward. The two forces act simultaneously on both arms; they are kept under this tension for a moment (fig. 177).

Then the same movement is executed by reversing the order and position of the arms.

The shamans of ancient Mexico believed that everything in the universe  is composed of dual forces, and that human beings are subjected to that duality in every aspect of their lives. At the level of energy, they considered that two forces are at play. Don Juan called them the A and B forces. The A force is employed ordinarily in our daily affairs, and is represented by a straight vertical line. The B force is ordinarily an obscure one which rarely enters into action, and it is kept lying down. It is represented by a horizontal line drawn to the left of the vertical one, at its base, making in this fashion a reversed capital letter L.

Shamans, men and women, were the only ones who, in don Juan's view, had been capable of turning the force B, which is ordinarily lying down horizontally, out of use, into an active vertical line. And consequently, they had succeeded in putting force A to rest. This process was represented by drawing a horizontal line at the base of the vertical one, in its right, and making, as a result, a capital letter L. Don Juan portrayed this magical pass as the one which best exemplified this duality and the effort of the sorcerers to reverse its effects.

31. Pulling the Energy Body to the Front

The arms are kept at shoulder level with the elbows bent. The hands overlap each other, and they are turned with the palms down. A circle is made with the hands rotating around each other; the movement is

inward, toward the face (fig. 178). They rotate three times around each other; then the left arm is thrust forward with the hand in a fist, as if to strike an invisible target in front of the body, an arm's length away from it (fig. 179). Three more circles are drawn with both hands, and then the right arm strikes in the same fashion as the left one.

32. Hurling the Assemblage Point Like a Knife over the Shoulder

The left hand reaches over the head to the area behind the shoulder blades and grabs, as if holding a solid object. Then it moves over the head to the front of the body, with the motion of hurling something forward. The knees are kept bent for hurling stability. The same movement is repeated with the right arm (figs. 180, 181).

This magical pass is an actual attempt to hurl the assemblage point, in order to displace it from its habitual position. The practitioner holds the assemblage point as if it were a knife. Something in the intent of hurling the assemblage point causes a profound effect toward the actual displacement of it.

33. Hurling the Assemblage Point Like a Knife from the Back by the Waist

The knees are kept bent as the body leans forward. Then the left arm reaches to the back, from the side, to the area behind the shoulder blades, grabs onto something as if it were solid, and hurls it forward from the waist, with a flick of the wrist, as if hurling a flat disk, or a knife (figs. 182, 183). The same movements are repeated with the right hand.

34. Hurling the Assemblage Point Like a Disk from the Shoulder

A deep rotation of the waist is made to the left, which propels the right arm to swing to the left side of the left leg. Then the motion of the waist, moving in the opposite direction, propels the left arm to swing to the right side of the right leg. Another motion of the waist propels the right arm to swing again to the left side of the left leg. At this point the left hand reaches back instantly with a circular motion to grab onto something as if it were solid, from the area behind the shoulder blades dig 184).

The left hand takes it in a swinging circular motion to the front of the body and up to the level of the right shoulder. The palm of the clenched hand faces upward. From this position, the left hand, with a flick of the wrist, makes a hurling motion, as if to hurl forward something solid, like a disk (fig. 185).

The legs are kept bent slightly at the knees and a great pressure is exerted at the back of the thighs. The right arm, with the elbow slightly bent, is extended behind the body to give stability to the act of hurling a disk. This position is held for a moment, while the left arm maintains the position of having just hurled an object. The same movements are repeated with the other arm.

35. Hurling the Assemblage Point Like a Ball Above the Head

The left hand moves back quickly to the area behind the shoulder blades and grabs something, as if it were solid (fig. 186). The arm rotates twice in a big circle above the head as if to gain impulse (fig. 187) and makes the motion of hurling a ball forward (fig. 188). The knees are kept bent. These movements are repeated with the right hand.

The Fourth Group : Inner Silence

Don Juan said that inner silence was the state most avidly sought by the shamans of ancient Mexico. He defined it as a natural state of human perception in which thoughts are blocked off and all of man's faculties operate from a level of awareness which doesn't require the utilization of our daily cognitive system.

Inner silence has always been associated with darkness, for the shamans of don Juan's lineage, perhaps because human perception, deprived of its habitual companion, the internal dialogue, falls into something that resembles a dark pit. He said that the body functions as usual, hut awareness becomes sharper. Decisions are instantaneous, and seem to stem from a special sort of knowledge which is deprived of thought verbalizations.

Human perception functioning in a condition of inner silence, according to don Juan, is capable of reaching indescribable levels. Some of those levels of perception are worlds in themselves, and not at all like the worlds reached through dreaming. They are indescribable states, inexplicable in terms of the linear paradigms that the habitual state of human perception employs for explaining the universe.

Inner silence, in don Juan's understanding, is the matrix for a gigantic step of evolution: silent knowledge, or the level of human awareness where knowing is automatic and instantaneous. Knowledge at this level is not the product of cerebral cogitation or logical induction and deduction, or of generalizations based on similarities and dissimilarities. There is nothing a priori at the level of silent knowledge, nothing that could constitute a body of knowledge, for everything is imminently now. Complex pieces of information could be grasped without any cognitive preliminaries.

Don Juan believed that silent knowledge was insinuated to early man, but that early man was not really the possessor of silent knowledge. Such an insinuation was infinitely stronger than what modern man experiences, where the bulk of knowledge is the product of rote learning. It is a sorcerers' axiom that although we have lost that insinuation, the avenue that leads to silent knowledge will always be open to man by means of inner silence.

Don Juan Matus taught the hard line of his lineage: that inner silence must be gained by a consistent pressure of discipline. It has to be accrued or stored, bit by bit, second by second. In other words, one has to force oneself to be silent, even if it is only for a few seconds. According to don Juan, it was common knowledge among sorcerers that if one persists in this, persistence overcomes habit, and thus, it is possible to arrive at a threshold of accrued seconds or minutes, which differs from person to person. If the threshold of inner silence is ten minutes for a given individual, for instance, then once this threshold is reached, inner silence happens by itself, of its own accord, so to speak.