The Art of Dreaming (26 page)

"Your
problem is your cynicism. I was just like you. Cynicism doesn't allow us to
make drastic changes in our understanding of the world. It also forces us to
feel that we are always right."

I
understood his point to perfection, but I reminded him about my fight against
all that.

"I
propose that you do one nonsensical thing that might turn the tide," he
said. "Repeat to yourself incessantly that the hinge of sorcery is the
mystery of the assemblage point. If you repeat this to yourself long enough,
some unseen force takes over and makes the appropriate changes in you."

Don Juan
did not give me any indication that he was being facetious. I knew he meant
every word of it. What bothered me was his insistence that I repeat the formula
ceaselessly to myself. I caught myself thinking that all of it was asinine.

"Cut
your cynical attitude," he snapped at me. "Repeat this in a bona fide
manner.

"The
mystery of the assemblage point is everything in sorcery," he continued,
without looking at me. "Or rather, everything in sorcery rests on the
manipulation of the assemblage point. You know all this, but you have to repeat
it."

For an
instant, as I heard his remarks, I thought I was going to die of anguish. An
incredible sense of physical sadness gripped my chest and made me scream with
pain. My stomach and diaphragm seemed to be pushing up, moving into my chest
cavity. The push was so intense that my awareness changed levels, and I entered
into my normal state. Whatever we had been talking about became a vague thought
about something that might have happened but actually had not, according to the
mundane reasoning of my everyday-life consciousness.

The next
time don Juan and I talked about
dreaming
, we discussed the reasons I
had been unable to proceed with my
dreaming
practices for months on end.
Don Juan warned me that to explain my situation he had to go in a roundabout
way. He pointed out, first, that there is an enormous difference between the
thoughts and deeds of the men of antiquity and those of modern men. Then he
pointed out that the men of ancient times had a very realistic view of
perception and awareness because their view stemmed from their observations of
the universe around them. Modern men, in contrast, have an absurdly unrealistic
view of perception and awareness because their view stems from their
observations of the social order and from their dealings with it.

"Why
are you telling me this?" I asked.

"Because
you are a modern man involved with the views and observations of men of
antiquity," he replied. "And none of those views and observations are
familiar to you. Now more than ever you need sobriety and aplomb. I am trying
to make a solid bridge, a bridge you can walk on, between the views of men of
ancient times and those of modern men."

He remarked
that of all the transcendental observations of the men of ancient times, the
only one with which I was familiar, because it had filtered down to our day,
was the idea of selling our souls to the devil in exchange for immortality,
which he admitted sounded to him like something coming straight out of the
relationship of the old sorcerers with the inorganic beings. He reminded me how
the
dreaming
emissary had tried to induce me to stay in its realm by
offering me the possibility of maintaining my individuality and self-awareness
for nearly an eternity.

"As
you know, succumbing to the lure of the inorganic beings is not just an idea;
it's real," don Juan went on. "But you haven't yet fully realized the
implication of that realness.
Dreaming
, likewise, is real; it is an
energy-generating condition. You hear my statements and you certainly
understand what I mean, but your awareness hasn't caught up with the total
implication of it yet."

Don Juan
said that my rationality knew the import of a realization of this nature, and
during our last talk it had forced my awareness to change levels. I ended up in
my normal awareness before I could deal with the nuances of my dream. My
rationality had further protected itself by suspending my
dreaming
practices.

"I
assure you that I am fully aware of what an energy-generating condition
means," I said.

"And I
assure you that you are not," he retorted. "If you were, you would
measure
dreaming
with greater care and deliberation. Since you believe
you are just
dreaming
, you take blind chances. Your faulty reasoning
tells you that no matter what happens, at a given moment the dream will be over
and you will wake up."

He was
right. In spite of all the things I had witnessed in my
dreaming
practices, somehow I still retained the general sense that all of it had been a
dream.

"I am
talking to you about the views of men of antiquity and the views of modern
man," don Juan went on, "because your awareness, which is the awareness
of modern man, prefers to deal with an unfamiliar concept as if it were an
empty ideality.

"If I
left it up to you, you'd regard
dreaming
as an idea. Of course. I'm sure
you take
dreaming
seriously, but you don't quite believe in the reality
of
dreaming
."

"I
understand what you are saying, don Juan, but I don't understand why you are
saying it."

"I am
saying all this because you are now, for the first time, in the proper position
to understand that
dreaming
is an energy-generating condition. For the
first time, you can understand now that ordinary dreams are the honing devices
used to train the assemblage point to reach the position that creates this
energy-generating condition we call
dreaming
."

He warned
me that, since dreamers touch and enter real worlds of all-inclusive effects,
they ought to be in a permanent state of the most intense and sustained
alertness; any deviation from total alertness imperils the dreamer in ways more
than dreadful.

I began
again, at this point, to experience a movement in my chest cavity, exactly as I
had felt the day my awareness changed levels by itself. Don Juan forcibly shook
me by the arm.

"Regard
dreaming
as something extremely dangerous!" he commanded me.
"And begin that now! Don't start any of your weird maneuvers."

His tone of
voice was so urgent that I stopped whatever I was, unconsciously, doing.
"What is going on with me, don Juan?" I asked.

"What's
going on with you is that you can displace your assemblage point quickly and
easily," he said. "Yet that ease has the tendency to make the
displacement erratic. Bring your ease to order. And don't allow yourself even a
fraction of an inch leeway."

I could
easily have argued that I did not know what he was talking about, but I knew. I
also knew I had only a few seconds to round up my energy and change my
attitude, and I did.

This was
the end of our exchange that day. I went home, and for nearly a year I
faithfully and daily repeated what don Juan had asked me to say. The results of
my litany-like invocation were incredible. I was firmly convinced that it had
the same effect on my awareness that exercise has on the muscles of the body.
My assemblage point became more agile, which meant that
seeing
energy in
dreaming
became the sole goal of my practices. My skill at intending to
see
grew in proportion to my efforts. A moment came when I was able just to intend
seeing
,
without saying a word, and actually experience the same result as when I voiced
out loud my intent to
see
.

Don Juan
congratulated me on my accomplishment. I, naturally, assumed he was being
facetious. He assured me that he meant it, but beseeched me to continue
shouting, at least whenever I was at a loss. His request did not seem odd to
me. On my own, I had been yelling in my dreams at the top of my voice every
time I deemed it necessary.

I
discovered that the energy of our world wavers. It scintillates. Not only
living beings but everything in our world glimmers with an inner light of its
own. Don Juan explained that the energy of our world consists of layers of
shimmering hues.

The top
layer is whitish; another, immediately adjacent to it, is chartreuse; and
another one, more distant yet, is amber.

I found all
those hues, or rather I
saw
glimmers of them whenever items that I
encountered in my dreamlike states changed shapes. However, a whitish glow was
always the initial impact of
seeing
anything that generated energy.

"Are
there only three different hues?" I asked don Juan.

"There
is an endless number of them," he replied, "but for the purposes of a
beginning order, you should be concerned with those three. Later on, you can
get as sophisticated as you want and isolate dozens of hues, if you are able to
do it.

"The
whitish layer is the hue of the present position of mankind's assemblage
point," don Juan continued. "Let's say that it is a modern hue.
Sorcerers believe that everything man does nowadays is tinted with that whitish
glow. At another time, the position of mankind's assemblage point made the hue
of the ruling energy in the world chartreuse; and at another time, more distant
yet, it made it amber. The color of sorcerers' energy is amber, which means
that they are energetically associated with the men who existed in a distant
past."

"Do
you think, don Juan, that the present whitish hue will change someday?"

"If
man is capable of evolving. The grand task of sorcerers is to bring forth the
idea that, in order to evolve, man must first free his awareness from its
bindings to the social order. Once awareness is free, intent will redirect it
into a new evolutionary path."

"Do
you think sorcerers will succeed in that task?"

"They
have already succeeded. They themselves are the proof. To convince others of
the value and import of evolving is another matter."

The other
kind of energy I found present in our world but alien to it was the scouts'
energy, the energy don Juan had called sizzling. I encountered scores of items
in my dreams that, once I
saw
them, turned into blobs of energy that
seemed to be frying, bubbling with some heatlike inner activity.

"Bear
in mind that not every scout you are going to find belongs to the realm of
inorganic beings," don Juan remarked. "Every scout you have found so
far, except for the blue scout, has been from that realm, but that was because
the inorganic beings were catering to you. They were directing the show. Now
you are on your own. Some of the scouts you will encounter are going to be not
from the inorganic beings' realm but from other, even more distant levels of
awareness."

"Are
the scouts aware of themselves?" I asked.

"Most
certainly," he replied.

"Then
why don't they make contact with us when we are awake?"

"They
do. But our great misfortune is to have our consciousness so fully engaged that
we don't have time to pay attention. In our sleep, however, the two-way-traffic
trapdoor opens: we dream. And in our dreams, we make contact."

"Is
there any way to tell whether the scouts are from a level besides the inorganic
beings' world?"

"The
greater their sizzling, the farther they come from. It sounds simplistic, but
you have to let your energy body tell you what is what. I assure you, it'll
make very fine distinctions and unerring judgments when faced with alien
energy."

He was
right again. Without much ado, my energy body distinguished two general types
of alien energy. The first was the scouts from the inorganic beings' realm.
Their energy fizzled mildly. There was no sound to it, but it had all the overt
appearance of effervescence, or of water that is starting to boil.

The energy
of the second general type of scouts gave me the impression of considerably
more power. Those scouts seemed to be just about to burn. They vibrated from
within as if they were filled with pressurized gas.

My
encounters with the alien energy were always fleeting because I paid total
attention to what don Juan recommended. He said, "Unless you know exactly
what you are doing and what you want out of alien energy, you have to be
content with a brief glance. Anything beyond a glance is as dangerous and as
stupid as petting a rattlesnake."

"Why
is it dangerous, don Juan?" I asked.

"Scouts
are always very aggressive and extremely daring," he said. "They have
to be that way in order to prevail in their explorations. Sustaining our
dreaming
attention on them is tantamount to soliciting their awareness to focus on us.
Once they focus their attention on us, we are compelled to go with them. And
that, of course, is the danger. We may end up in worlds beyond our energetic
possibilities."

Don Juan
explained that there are many more types of scouts than the two I had
classified, but that at my present level of energy I could only focus on three.
He described the first two types as the easiest to spot. Their disguises in our
dreams are so outlandish, he said, that they immediately attract our
dreaming
attention. He depicted the scouts of the third type as the most dangerous, in
terms of aggressiveness and power, and because they hide behind subtle
disguises.