The Power of Silence (31 page)

"Our
points of reference are obtained primarily from our sense perception," he
said. "Our senses perceive and differentiate what is immediate to us from
what is not. Using that basic distinction we derive the rest.

"In
order to reach the third point of reference one must perceive two places at
once."

My
recollecting had put me in a strange mood - it was as if I had lived the
experience just a few minutes earlier. I was suddenly aware of something I had
completely missed before. Under don Juan's supervision, I had twice before
experienced that divided perception, but this was the first time I had
accomplished it all by myself.

Thinking
about my recollection, I also realized that my sensory experience was more
complex than I had at first thought. During the time I had loomed over the
bushes, I had been aware - without words or even thoughts - that being in two
places, or being "here and here" as don Juan had called it, rendered
my perception immediate and complete at both places. But I had also been aware
that my double perception lacked the total clarity of normal perception.

Don Juan
explained that normal perception had an axis. "Here and there" were
the perimeters of that axis, and we were partial to the clarity of
"here." He said that in normal perception, only "here" was
perceived completely, instantaneously, and directly. Its twin referent,
"there," lacked immediacy. It was inferred, deduced, expected, even
assumed, but it was not apprehended directly with all the senses. When we perceived
two places at once, total clarity was lost, but the immediate perception of
"there" was gained.

"But
then, don Juan, I was right in describing my perception as the important part
of my experience," I said.

"No,
you were not," he said. "What you experienced was vital to you,
because it opened the road to silent knowledge, but the important thing was the
jaguar. That jaguar was indeed a manifestation of the spirit.

"That
big cat came unnoticed out of nowhere. And he could have finished us off as
surely as I am talking to you. That jaguar was an expression of magic. Without
him you would have had no elation, no lesson, no realizations."

"But
was he a real jaguar?" I asked.

"You
bet he was real!"

Don Juan
observed that for an average man that big cat would have been a frightening
oddity. An average man would have been hard put to explain in reasonable terms
what that jaguar was doing in Chihuahua, so far from a tropical jungle. But a
sorcerer, because he had a connecting link with intent, saw that jaguar as a
vehicle to perceiving - not an oddity, but a source of awe.

There were
a lot of questions I wanted to ask, and yet I knew the answers before I could
articulate the questions. I followed the course of my own questions and answers
for a while, until finally I realized it did not matter that I silently knew
the answers; answers had to be verbalized to be of any value.

I voiced
the first question that came to mind. I asked don Juan to explain what seemed
to be a contradiction. He had asserted that only the spirit could move the
assemblage point. But then he had said that my feelings, processed into intent,
had moved my assemblage point.

"Only
sorcerers can turn their feelings into intent," he said. "Intent is
the spirit, so it is the spirit which moves their assemblage points.

"The
misleading part of all this," he went on, "is that I am saying only
sorcerers know about the spirit, that intent is the exclusive domain of
sorcerers. This is not true at all, but it is the situation in the realm of
practicality. The real condition is that sorcerers are more aware of their
connection with the spirit than the average man and strive to manipulate it.
That's all. I've already told you, the connecting link with intent is the
universal feature shared by everything there is."

Two or
three times, don Juan seemed about to start to add something. He vacillated,
apparently trying to choose his words. Finally he said that being in two places
at once was a milestone sorcerers used to mark the moment the assemblage point
reached the place of silent knowledge. Split perception, if accomplished by
one's own means, was called the free movement of the assemblage point.

He assured
me that every nagual consistently did everything within his power to encourage
the free movement of his apprentices' assemblage points. This all-out effort
was cryptically called "reaching out for the third point."

"The
most difficult aspect of the nagual's knowledge," don Juan went on,
"and certainly the most crucial part of his task is that of reaching out
for the third point - the nagual intends that free movement, and the spirit
channels to the nagual the means to accomplish it. I had never intended
anything of that sort until you came along. Therefore, I had never fully
appreciated my benefactor's gigantic effort to intend it for me.

"Difficult
as it is for a nagual to intend that free movement for his disciples," don
Juan went on, "it's nothing compared with the difficulty his disciples
have in understanding what the nagual is doing. Look at the way you yourself
struggle! The same thing happened to me. Most of the time, I ended up believing
the trickery of the spirit was simply the trickery of the nagual Julian.

"Later
on, I realized I owed him my life and well-being," don Juan continued.
"Now I know I owe him infinitely more. Since I can't begin to describe
what I really owe him, I prefer to say he cajoled me into having a third point
of reference.

"The
third point of reference is freedom of perception; it is intent; it is the
spirit; the somersault of thought into the miraculous; the act of reaching
beyond our boundaries and touching the inconceivable."

Don Juan
and I were sitting at the table in his kitchen. It was early morning. We had
just returned from the mountains, where we had spent the night after I had
recalled my experience with the jaguar. Recollecting my split perception had
put me in a state of euphoria, which don Juan had employed, as usual, to plunge
me into more sensory experiences that I was now unable to recall. My euphoria,
however, had not waned.

"To
discover the possibility of being in two places at once is very exciting to the
mind," he said. "Since our minds are our rationality, and our
rationality is our self-reflection, anything beyond our self-reflection either
appalls us or attracts us, depending on what kind of persons we are."

He looked
at me fixedly and then smiled as if he had just found out something new.

"Or it
appalls and attracts us in the same measure," he said, "which seems
to be the case with both of us."

I told him
that with me it was not a matter of being appalled or attracted by my
experience, but a matter of being frightened by the immensity of the
possibility of split perception.

"I
can't say that I don't believe I was in two places at once," I said.
"I can't deny my experience, and yet I think I am so frightened by it that
my mind refuses to accept it as a fact."

"You
and I are the type of people who become obsessed by things like that, and then
forget all about them," he remarked and laughed. "You and I are very
much alike."

It was my
turn to laugh. I knew he was making fun of me. Yet he projected such sincerity
that I wanted to believe he was being truthful.

I told him
that among his apprentices, I was the only one who had learned not to take his
statements of equality with us too seriously. I said that I had seen him in
action, hearing him tell each of his apprentices, in the most sincere tone,
"You and I are such fools. We are so alike!" And I had been
horrified, time and time again, to realize that they believed him.

"You
are not like any one of us, don Juan," I said. "You are a mirror that
doesn't reflect our images. You are already beyond our reach."

"What
you're witnessing is the result of a lifelong struggle," he said.
"What you see is a sorcerer who has finally learned to follow the designs
of the spirit, but that's all.

"I
have described to you, in many ways, the different stages a warrior passes
through along the path of knowledge," he went on. "In terms of his
connection with intent, a warrior goes through four stages. The first is when
he has a rusty, untrustworthy link with intent. The second is when he succeeds
in cleaning it. The third is when he learns to manipulate it. And the fourth is
when he learns to accept the designs of the abstract."

Don Juan
maintained that his attainment did not make him intrinsically different. It
only made him more resourceful; thus he was not being facetious when he said to
me or to his other apprentices that he was just like us.

"I
understand exactly what you are going through," he continued. "When I
laugh at you, I really laugh at the memory of myself in your shoes. I, too,
held on to the world of everyday life. I held on to it by my fingernails.
Everything told me to let go, but I couldn't. Just like you, I trusted my mind
implicitly, and I had no reason to do so. I was no longer an average man.

"My
problem then is your problem today. The momentum of the daily world carried me,
and I kept acting like an average man. I held on desperately to my flimsy
rational Structures. Don't you do the same."

"I
don't hold onto any structures; they hold onto me," I said, and that made
him laugh.

I told him
I understood him to perfection, but that no matter how hard I tried I was
unable to carry on as a sorcerer should.

He said my
disadvantage in the sorcerers' world was my lack of familiarity with it. In
that world I had to relate myself to everything in a new way, which was
infinitely more difficult, because it had very little to do with my everyday
life continuity.

He
described the specific problem of sorcerers as twofold. One is the
impossibility of restoring a shattered continuity; the other is the
impossibility of using the continuity dictated by the new position of their
assemblage points. That new continuity is always too tenuous, too unstable, and
does not offer sorcerers the assuredness they need to function as if they were
in the world of everyday life.

"How
do sorcerers resolve this problem?" I asked.

"None
of us resolves anything," he replied. "The spirit either resolves it
for us or it doesn't. If it does, a sorcerer finds himself acting in the
sorcerers' world, but without knowing how. This is the reason why I have
insisted from the day I found you that impeccability is all that counts. A
sorcerer lives an impeccable life, and that seems to beckon the solution. Why?
No one knows."

Don Juan
remained quiet for a moment. And then, as if I had voiced it, he commented on a
thought I was having. I was thinking that impeccability always made me think of
religious morality.

"Impeccability,
as I have told you so many times, is not morality," he said. "It only
resembles morality. Impeccability is simply the best use of our energy level.
Naturally, it calls for frugality, thoughtfulness, simplicity, innocence; and above
all, it calls for lack of self-reflection. All this makes it sound like a
manual for monastic life, but it isn't.

"Sorcerers
say that in order to command the spirit, and by that they mean to command the
movement of the assemblage point, one needs energy. The only thing that stores
energy for us is our impeccability."

Don Juan
remarked that we do not have to be students of sorcery to move our assemblage
point. Sometimes, due to natural although dramatic circumstances, such as war,
deprivation, stress, fatigue, sorrow, helplessness, men's assemblage points
undergo profound movements. If the men who found themselves in such
circumstances were able to adopt a sorcerer's ideology, don Juan said, they
would be able to maximize that natural movement with no trouble. And they would
seek and find extraordinary things instead of doing what men do in such
circumstances: craving the return to normalcy.

"When
a movement of the assemblage point is maximized," he went on, "both
the average man or the apprentice in sorcery becomes a sorcerer, because by
maximizing that movement, continuity is shattered beyond repair."

"How
do you maximize that movement?" I asked.

"By
curtailing self-reflection," he replied. "Moving the assemblage point
or breaking one's continuity is not the real difficulty. The real difficulty is
having energy. If one has energy, once the assemblage point moves,
inconceivable things are there for the asking."

Don Juan
explained that man's predicament is that he intuits his hidden resources, but
he does not dare use them. This is why sorcerers say that man's plight is the
counterpoint between his stupidity and his ignorance. He said that man needs
now, more so than ever, to be taught new ideas that have to do exclusively with
his inner world - sorcerers' ideas, not social ideas, ideas pertaining to man
facing the unknown, facing his personal death. Now, more than anything else, he
needs to be taught the secrets of the assemblage point.