The Art of Dreaming (38 page)

"It's
horrendous to think that you were in the second attention for nine days,"
don Juan went on. "Nine days is just a second for the death defier, but an
eternity for us."

Before I
could protest or explain or say anything, he stopped me with a comment.

"Consider
this," he said. "If you still can't remember all the things I taught
you and did with you in the second attention, imagine how much more difficult
it must be to remember what the death defier taught you and did with you. I
only made you change levels of awareness; the death defier made you change
universes."

I felt meek
and defeated. Don Juan and his two companions urged me to make a titanic effort
and try to remember when I changed my clothes. I could not. There was nothing
in my mind: no feelings, no memories. Somehow, I was not totally there with
them.

The nervous
agitation of don Juan and his two companions reached a peak. Never had I seen
him so discombobulated. There had always been a touch of fun, of not quite
taking himself seriously in everything he did or said to me. Not this time,
though.

Again, I
tried to think, bring forth some memory that would shed light on all this; and
again I failed, but I did not feel defeated; an improbable surge of optimism
overtook me. I felt that everything was coming along as it should.

Don Juan's
expressed concern was that he knew nothing about the
dreaming
I had done
with the woman in the church. To create a dream hotel, a dream town, a dream
Carol Tiggs was to him only a sample of the old sorcerers'
dreaming
prowess, the total scope of which defied human imagination.

Don Juan
opened his arms expansively and finally smiled with his usual delight.

"We
can only deduce that the woman in the church showed you how to do it," he
said in a slow, deliberate tone. "It's going to be a giant task for you to
make comprehensible an incomprehensible maneuver. It has been a masterful
movement on the chessboard, performed by the death defier as the woman in the
church. She has used Carol's energy body and yours to lift off, to break away
from her moorings. She took you up on your offer of free energy."

What he was
saying had no meaning to me; apparently, it meant a great deal to his two
companions. They became immensely agitated. Addressing them, don Juan explained
that the death defier and the woman in the church were different expressions of
the same energy; the woman in the church was the more powerful and complex of
the two. Upon taking control, she made use of Carol Tiggs's energy body, in
some obscure, ominous fashion congruous with the old sorcerers' machinations,
and created the Carol Tiggs of the hotel, a Carol Tiggs of sheer intent. Don
Juan added that Carol and the woman may have arrived at some sort of energetic
agreement during their meeting.

At that
instant, a thought seemed to find its way to don Juan. He stared at his two
companions, unbelievingly. Their eyes darted around, going from one to the
other. I was sure they were not merely looking for agreement, for they seemed
to have realized something in unison.

"All
our speculations are useless," don Juan said in a quiet, even tone.
"I believe there is no longer any Carol Tiggs. There isn't any woman in
the church either; both have merged and flown away on the wings of intent, I
believe, forward.

"The
reason the Carol Tiggs of the hotel was so worried about her appearance was
because she was the woman in the church, making you dream a Carol Tiggs of
another kind; an infinitely more powerful Carol Tiggs. Don't you remember what
she said? "Dream your intent of me. Intend me forward."

"What
does this mean, don Juan?" I asked stunned.

"It
means that the death defier has seen her total way out. She has caught a ride
with you. Your fate is her fate."

"Meaning
what, don Juan?"

"Meaning
that if you reach freedom so will she."

"How
is she going to do that?"

"Through
Carol Tiggs. But don't worry about Carol." He said this before I voiced my
apprehension. "She's capable of that maneuver and much more."

Immensities
were piling up on me. I already felt their crushing weight. I had a moment of
lucidity and asked don Juan, "What is going to be the outcome of all
this?"

He did not
answer. He gazed at me, scanning me from head to toe. Then he slowly and
deliberately said, "The death defier's gift consists of endless
dreaming
possibilities. One of them was your dream of Carol Tiggs in another time, in
another world; a more vast world, open-ended; a world where the impossible
might even be feasible. The implication was not only that you will live those
possibilities but that one day you will comprehend them."

He stood
up, and we started to walk in silence toward his house. My thoughts began to
race wildly. They were not thoughts, actually, but images, a mixture of
memories of the woman in the church and of Carol Tiggs, talking to me in the
darkness in the dream hotel room. A couple of times I was near to condensing
those images into a feeling of my usual self, but I had to give it up; I had no
energy for such a task.

Before we
arrived at the house, don Juan stopped walking and faced me. He again
scrutinized me carefully, as if he were looking for signs in my body. I then
felt obliged to set him straight on a subject I believed he was deadly wrong
about.

"I was
with the real Carol Tiggs at the hotel," I said. "For a moment, I
myself believed she was the death defier, but after careful evaluation, I can't
hold on to that belief. She was Carol. In some obscure, awesome way she was at
the hotel, as I was there at the hotel myself."

"Of
course she was Carol," don Juan agreed. "But not the Carol you and I
know. This one was a dream Carol, I've told you, a Carol made out of pure
intent. You helped the woman in the church spin that dream. Her art was to make
that dream an all-inclusive reality: the art of the old sorcerers, the most
frightening thing there is. I told you that you were going to get the crowning
lesson in
dreaming
, didn't I?"

"What
do you think happened to Carol Tiggs?" I asked.

"Carol
Tiggs is gone," he replied. "But someday you will find the new Carol
Tiggs, the one in the dream hotel room."

"What
do you mean she's gone?"

"She's
gone from the world," he said.

I felt a
surge of nervousness cut through my solar plexus. I was awakening. The
awareness of myself had started to become familiar to me, but I was not yet
fully in control of it. It had begun, though, to break through the fog of the
dream; it had begun as a mixture of not knowing what was going on and the
foreboding sensation that the incommensurable was just around the corner.

I must have
had an expression of disbelief, because don Juan added in a forceful tone,
"This is
dreaming
. You should know by now that its transactions are
final. Carol Tiggs is gone."

"But
where do you think she went, don Juan?"

"Wherever
the sorcerers of antiquity went. I told you that the death defier's gift was
endless
dreaming
possibilities. You didn't want anything concrete, so
the woman in the church gave you an abstract gift: the possibility of flying on
the wings of intent."