The Art of Dreaming (25 page)

"You
have
seen
energy before," he went on, "many times, in fact.
But each of those times,
seeing
was a fluke. Now you are going to do it
deliberately.

"Dreamers
have a rule of thumb," he continued. "If their energy body is
complete, they
see
energy every time they gaze at an item in the daily
world. In dreams, if they
see
the energy of an item, they know they are
dealing with a real world, no matter how distorted that world may appear to
their
dreaming
attention. If they can't see the energy of an item, they
are in an ordinary dream and not in a real world."

"What
is a real world, don Juan?"

"A
world that generates energy; the opposite of a phantom world of projections,
where nothing generates energy, like most of our dreams, where nothing has an
energetic effect."

Don Juan
then gave me another definition of
dreaming
: a process by which dreamers
isolate dream conditions in which they can find energy-generating elements. He
must have noticed my bewilderment. He laughed and gave another, even more
convoluted definition:
dreaming
is the process by which we intend to
find adequate positions of the assemblage point, positions that permit us to
perceive energy-generating items in dreamlike states.

He
explained that the energy body is also capable of perceiving energy that is
quite different from the energy of our own world, as in the case of items of
the inorganic beings' realm, which the energy body perceives as sizzling
energy. He added that in our world nothing sizzles; everything here wavers.

"From
now on," he said, "the issue of your
dreaming
is going to be
to determine whether the items on which you focus your
dreaming
attention are energy generating, mere phantom projections, or generators of
foreign energy."

Don Juan
admitted that he had hoped I was going to come up with the idea of
seeing
energy as the gauge to determine whether or not I was observing my real body
asleep. He laughed at my spurious device of putting on elaborate sleeping
attire, every four days. He said that I'd had, at my fingertips, all the
information necessary to deduce what was the real task of the third gate of
dreaming
and to come up with the right idea but that my interpretation system had forced
me to seek contrived solutions that lacked the simplicity and directness of
sorcery.

Don Juan
told me that in order to
see
in
dreaming
not only did I have to
intend
seeing
but I had to put my intent into loud words. For reasons he
refused to explain, he insisted that I had to speak up. He conceded that there
are other means to accomplish the same result, but he asserted that voicing
one's intent is the simplest and most direct way.

The first
time I put into words my intent to
see
, I was
dreaming
of a
church bazaar. There were so many articles that I could not make up my mind
which one to gaze at. A giant, conspicuous vase in a corner made up my mind for
me. I gazed at it, voicing my intent to
see
. The vase remained in my
view for an instant, then it changed into another object.

I gazed at
as many things as I could in that dream. After I voiced my intent to
see
,
every item I had chosen to gaze at vanished or turned into something else, as
had happened all along in my
dreaming
practices. My
dreaming
attention was finally exhausted, and I woke up tremendously frustrated, almost
angry.

For months
on end, I actually gazed at hundreds of items in my dreams and deliberately
voiced my intent to
see
, but nothing ever happened. Tired of waiting, I
finally had to ask don Juan about it.

"You
need to have patience. You are learning to do something extraordinary," he
remarked. "You are learning to intend to
see
in your dreams.
Someday you will not have to voice your intent; you'll simply will it,
silently."

"I
think I have not understood the function of whatever I am doing," I said.
"Nothing happens when I shout my intent to
see
. What does that
mean?"

"It
means that your dreams, so far, have been ordinary dreams; they have been
phantom projections; images that have life only in your
dreaming
attention."

He wanted
to know exactly what had happened to the items on which I had focused my gaze.
I said that they had vanished or changed shape or even produced vortexes that
eventually changed my dreams.

"It
has been like that in all my daily
dreaming
practices," I said.
"The only thing out of the ordinary is that I am learning to yell in my
dreams, at the top of my voice."

My last
statement threw don Juan into a genuine fit of belly laughter, which I found
disconcerting. I failed to find the humor of my statement or the reason for his
reaction.

"Someday
you'll appreciate how funny all this is," he said as an answer to my
silent protest. "In the meantime, don't give up or get discouraged. Keep
on trying. Sooner or later, you'll hit the right note."

As usual,
he was right. A couple of months later, I hit the jackpot. I had a most unusual
dream. It started with the appearance of a scout from the inorganic beings'
world. The scouts as well as the
dreaming
emissary had been strangely
absent from my dreams. I had not missed them or pondered their disappearance.
In fact, I was so at ease without them I had even forgotten to ask don Juan
about their absence.

In that
dream, the scout had been, at first, a gigantic yellow topaz, which I had found
stuck in the back of a drawer. The moment I voiced my intent to
see
, the
topaz turned into a blob of sizzling energy. I feared that I would be compelled
to follow it, so I moved my gaze away from the scout and focused it on an
aquarium with tropical fish. I voiced my intent to
see
and got a
tremendous surprise. The aquarium emitted a low, greenish glow and changed into
a large surrealist portrait of a bejeweled woman. The portrait emitted the same
greenish glow when I voiced my intent to
see
.

As I gazed
at that glow, the whole dream changed. I was walking then on a street in a town
that seemed familiar to me; it might have been Tucson. I gazed at a display of
women's clothes in a store window and spoke out loud my intent to
see
.
Instantly, a black mannequin, prominently displayed, began to glow. I gazed
next at a saleslady who came at that moment to rearrange the window. She looked
at me. After voicing my intent, I
saw
her glow. It was so stupendous
that I was afraid some detail in her splendorous glow would trap me, but the
woman moved inside the store before I had time to focus my total attention on
her. I certainly intended to follow her inside; however, my
dreaming
attention was caught by a moving glow. It came to me charging, filled with
hatred. There was loathing in it and viciousness. I jumped backward. The glow
stopped its charge; a black substance swallowed me, and I woke up.

These
images were so vivid that I firmly believed I had
seen
energy and my
dream had been one of those conditions that don Juan had called dreamlike,
energy-generating. The idea that dreams can take place in the consensual
reality of our daily world intrigued me, just as the dream images of the
inorganic beings' realm had intrigued me.

"This
time, you not only
saw
energy but crossed a dangerous boundary,"
don Juan said, after hearing my account.

He
reiterated that the drill for the third gate of
dreaming
is to make the
energy body move on its own. In my last session, he said, I had unwittingly
superseded the effect of that drill and crossed into another world.

"Your
energy body moved," he said. "It journeyed, by itself. That kind of
journeying is beyond your abilities at this moment, and something attacked
you."

"What
do you think it was, don Juan?"

"This
is a predatorial universe. It could have been one of thousands of things
existing out there."

"Why
do you think it attacked me?"

"For
the same reason the inorganic beings attacked you: because you made yourself
available."

"Is it
that clear-cut, don Juan?"

"Certainly.
It's as clear-cut as what you would do if a strange-looking spider crept across
your desk while you were writing. You'd squash it, out of fright, rather than
admire it or examine it."

I was at a
loss and searched for words to ask the proper question. I wanted to ask him
where my dream had taken place, or what world I was in in that dream. But those
questions did not make any sense; I could gather that myself. Don Juan was very
understanding.

"You
want to know where your
dreaming
attention was focused, don't you?"
he asked with a grin.

This was
exactly how I wanted to word my question. I reasoned that in the dream under
consideration, I must have been looking at some real object. Just like what had
happened when I saw in dreams the minute details on the floor or the walls or
the door of my room, details that I later had corroborated, existed.

Don Juan
said that in special dreams, like the one I'd had, our
dreaming
attention focuses on the daily world, and that it moves instantly from one real
object to another in the world. What makes this movement possible is that the
assemblage point is on the proper
dreaming
position. From that position,
the assemblage point gives the
dreaming
attention such fluidity that it
can move in a split second over incredible distances, and in doing so it
produces a perception so fast, so fleeting that it resembles an ordinary dream.

Don Juan
explained that in my dream I had seen a real vase and then my
dreaming
attention had moved over distances to see a real surrealist painting of a
bejeweled woman. The result, with the exception of
seeing
energy, had
been very close to an ordinary dream, in which items, when gazed at, quickly
turn into something else.

"I
know how disturbing this is," he went on, definitely aware of my
bewilderment. "For some reason pertinent to the mind, to
see
energy
in
dreaming
is more upsetting than anything one can think of."

I remarked
that I had
seen
energy in
dreaming
before, yet it had never
affected me like this.

"Now your
energy body is complete and functioning," he said. "Therefore, the
implication that you
see
energy in your dream is that you are perceiving
a real world, through the veil of a dream. That's the importance of the journey
you took. It was real. It involved energy-generating items that nearly ended
your life."

"Was
it that serious, don Juan?"

"You
bet! The creature that attacked you was made of pure awareness and was as
deadly as anything can be. You
saw
its energy. I am sure that you
realize by now that unless we
see
in
dreaming
, we can't tell a
real, energy-generating thing from a phantom projection. So, even though you
battled the inorganic beings and indeed
saw
the scouts and the tunnels,
your energy body doesn't know for sure if they were real, meaning energy
generating. You are ninety-nine but not one hundred percent sure."

Don Juan
insisted on talking about the journey I had taken. For inexplicable reasons, I
was reluctant to deal with that subject. What he was saying produced an
instantaneous reaction in me. I found myself trying to come to grips with a
deep, strange fear; it was dark and obsessive in a nagging, visceral way.

"You
definitely went into another layer of the onion," don Juan said, finishing
a statement to which I had not paid attention.

"What
is this other layer of the onion, don Juan?"

"The
world is like an onion, it has many skins. The world we know is but one of
them. Sometimes, we cross boundaries and enter into another skin: another
world, very much like this one, but not the same. And you entered into one, all
by yourself."

"How
is this journey you're talking about possible, don Juan?"

"That
is a meaningless question, because no one can answer it. In the view of
sorcerers, the universe is constructed in layers, which the energy body can
cross. Do you know where the old sorcerers are still existing to this day? In
another layer, in another skin of the onion."

"For
me, the idea of a real, pragmatic journey, taken in dreams, is very difficult
to understand or to accept, don Juan."

"We have
discussed this topic to exhaustion. I was convinced you understood that the
journey of the energy body depends exclusively on the position of the
assemblage point."

"You've
told me that. And I have been mulling it over and over; still, saying that the
journey is in the position of the assemblage point doesn't say anything to
me."