The Active Side of Infinity

"The sorcerers' revolution," he continued, "is that they
refuse to honor agreements in which they did not participate. Nobody ever asked
me if I would consent to be eaten by beings of a
different kind
of awareness. My parents just brought me into this world to be food, like
themselves,
and that's the end of the story."

1. - The
Active Side of Infinity

This book is a a collection of the memorable events in my life. Don Juan
revealed to me as
time went by that the shamans of ancient Mexico
had conceived of this collection of memorable
events as a
bona-fide device to stir caches of energy that exist within the self. They
explained
these caches as being composed of energy that originates
in the body itself and becomes displaced, pushed out of reach by the
circumstances of our daily lives. In this sense, the
collection of
memorable events was, for don Juan and the shamans of his lineage, the means
for
redeploying
their unused
energy.

I gathered them following the recommendation of don Juan Matus, a Yaqui
Indian shaman
from Mexico who, as a teacher, endeavored for thirteen
years to make available to me the
cognitive world
of the shamans who
lived in Mexico in ancient times. Don Juan Matus's
suggestion that
I gather this collection of memorable events was made as if it were something
casual,
something that occurred to him on the spur of the moment. That was don Juan's
style of
teaching. He veiled the importance of certain maneuvers
behind the mundane. He hid, in this
fashion, the sting of finality,
presenting it as something no different from any of the concerns of
everyday
life.

Don Juan revealed to me as time went by that the shamans of ancient
Mexico had conceived
of this collection of memorable events as
a bona-fide device to stir caches of energy that exist within the self. They
explained these caches as being composed of energy that originates in the
body
itself and becomes displaced, pushed out of reach by the circumstances of our
daily lives. In
this sense, the collection of memorable events
was, for don Juan and the shamans of his lineage,
the means for
redeploying
their unused energy.

The prerequisite for this collection was the genuine and all-consuming
act of putting together
the sum total of one's emotions and
realizations, without sparing anything. According to don
Juan,
the shamans of his lineage were convinced that the collection of memorable
events was the
vehicle for the emotional and energetic adjustment
necessary for venturing, in terms of
perception, into the unknown.

Don Juan described the total goal of the shamanistic knowledge that he
handled as the
preparation for facing the
definitive journey:
the
journey that every human being has to take at the
end of his life. He said that
through their discipline and resolve, shamans were capable of
retaining their individual awareness and purpose
after death. For them, the vague, idealistic state
that modem man calls "life after death"
was a concrete region filled to capacity with practical
affairs of a different order than the practical
affairs of daily life, yet bearing a similar functional
practicality. Don Juan considered that to collect
the memorable events in their lives was, for shamans, the preparation for their
entrance into that concrete region which they called the
active
side of infinity.
Don Juan and I were talking one afternoon under
his ramada, a loose structure
made
of thin poles of bamboo. It looked like a roofed porch that was partially
shaded from the
sun but that would
not provide protection at all from the rain. There were some small, sturdy
freight boxes there that served as benches. Their freight brands were faded,
and appeared to be more ornament than identification. I was sitting on one of
them. My back was against the front
wall
of the house. Don Juan was sitting on another box, leaning against a pole that
supported the
ramada. I had just
driven in a few minutes earlier. It had been a daylong ride in hot, humid
weather. I was nervous, fidgety, and sweaty.

Don Juan began talking to me as soon as I had comfortably settled down
on the box. With a
broad smile, he commented that overweight people
hardly ever knew how to fight fatness. The
smile that
played on his lips gave me an inkling that he wasn't being facetious. He was
just
pointing out to me, in a most direct and at the same
time indirect way, that I was overweight. I
became so
nervous that I tipped over the freight box on which I was sitting and my back
banged
very hard against the thin wall of the house. The impact
shook the house to its foundations. Don
Juan looked at
me inquiringly, but instead of asking me if I was all right, he assured me that
I had
not cracked the house. Then he expansively explained to
me that his house was a temporary
dwelling for him, that he really
lived somewhere else. When I asked him where he really lived, he
stared
at me. His look was not belligerent; it was, rather, a firm deterrent to
improper questions. I
didn't comprehend what he wanted. I was
about to ask the same question again, but he stopped
me.

"Questions of that sort are not asked around here," he said
firmly. "Ask anything you wish
about procedures or ideas.
Whenever I'm ready to tell you where I live, if ever, I will tell you,
without
your having to ask me."

I instantly felt rejected. My face turned red involuntarily. I was
definitely offended. Don
Juan's explosion of laughter added
immensely to my chagrin. Not only had he rejected me, he had
insulted
me and then laughed at me.

"I live here temporarily," he went on, unconcerned with my foul
mood, "because this is a magical center. In fact, I live here because of
you."

That statement unraveled me. I couldn't believe it. I thought that he
was probably saying that
to ease my irritation at being
insulted. "Do you really live here because of me?" I finally asked
him,
unable to contain my curiosity.

"Yes," he said evenly. "I have to groom you. You are like
me. I will repeat to you now what
I have already told you: The
quest of every nagual, or leader, in every generation of shamans, or
sorcerers,
is to find a new man or woman who, like himself, shows a double energetic
structure; I saw this feature in you when we were in the bus depot in Nogales.
When I
see
your energy, I
see
two balls of
luminosity superimposed, one on top of the other, and that feature binds us
together.
I can't refuse you any more than you can refuse
me." His words caused a most strange agitation in
me. An instant
before I had been angry, now I wanted to weep.

He went on, saying that he wanted to start me off on something shamans
called the
warriors'
way,
backed by the
strength of the area where he lived, which was the center of very strong
emotions
and reactions. Warlike people had lived there for thousands of years, soaking
the land
with their concern with war.

He lived at that time in the state of Sonora in northern Mexico, about a hundred miles south of
the city of Guaymas. I always went there to visit
him under the auspices of conducting my
fieldwork.

"Do I need to enter into war, don Juan?" I asked, genuinely
worried after he declared that the
concern with war was something
that I would need someday. I had already learned to take
everything
he said with the utmost seriousness.

"You bet your boots," he replied, smiling. "When you have
absorbed all there is to be
absorbed in this area, I'll move
away."

I had no
grounds to doubt what he was saying, but I couldn't conceive of him as living
anywhere else. He was absolutely part of
everything that surrounded him. His house, however,
seemed indeed to be a temporary dwelling. It was a
shack typical of the Yaqui farmers; it was
made out of wattle and daub with a flat, thatched roof; it had one big
room for eating and sleeping
and a
roofless kitchen.

"It's very difficult to deal with overweight people," he said.

It seemed to be a non sequitur, but it wasn't. Don Juan was simply
going back to the subject
he had introduced before I had
interrupted him by hitting my back on the wall of his house.

"A minute ago, you hit my house like a demolition ball," he
said, shaking his head slowly
from side to side. "What an
impact! An impact worthy of a portly man."

I had the uncomfortable feeling that he was talking to me from the
point of view of someone
who had given up on me. I immediately
took on a defensive attitude. He listened, smirking, to my
frantic
explanations that my weight was normal for my bone structure.

"That's right," he conceded facetiously. "You have big
bones. You could probably carry thirty
more pounds
with great ease and no one, I assure you, no one, would notice. I would not
notice."

His mocking smile told me that I was definitely pudgy. He asked me then
about my health in
general, and I went on talking, desperately trying
to get out of any further comment about my
weight. He
changed the subject himself.

"What's new about your eccentricities and aberrations?" he
asked with a deadpan expression.

I idiotically answered that they were okay. "Eccentricities and
aberrations" was how he
labeled my interest in being a
collector. At that time, I had taken up, with renewed zeal,
something
that I had enjoyed doing all my life: collecting anything collectible. I
collected
magazines, stamps, records, World War II paraphernalia
such as daggers, military helmets, flags,
etc.

"All I can tell you, don Juan, about my aberrations, is that I'm
trying to sell my collections," I said with the air of a martyr who is
being forced to do something odious.

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