Fire from within, p.5
Fire From Within, page 5
"A nagual is someone flexible enough to be anything," he had said. "To be a nagual, among other things, means to have no points to defend. Remember this- we'll come back to it over and over."
We had come back to it over and over, in every possible way. He did indeed seem to have no points to defend, but during his absence in Oaxaca, I was given to just a shadow of doubt. Suddenly I realized that a nagual did have one point to defend. The 'description of the Eagle', and 'what the Eagle does' required, in my opinion, a passionate defense.
I tried to pose that question to some of don Juan's companions, but they eluded my probings. They told me that I was in quarantine from that kind of discussion until don Juan had finished his explanation.
The moment he returned, we sat down to talk and I asked him about it.
"Those truths are not something to defend passionately," he replied. "If you think that I'm trying to defend them, you are mistaken. Those truths were put together for the delight and enlightenment of warriors, not to engage any proprietary sentiments. When I told you that a nagual has no points to defend, I meant, among other things, that a nagual has no obsessions."
I told him that I was not following his teachings, for I had become obsessed with his description of the Eagle and what it does. I remarked over and over about the awesomeness of such an idea.
"It is not just an idea," he said. "It is a fact. And a darn scary one if you ask me. The new seers were not simply playing with ideas."
"But what kind of a force would the Eagle be?"
"I wouldn't know how to answer that. The Eagle is as real for the seers as gravity and time are for you, and just as abstract and incomprehensible."
"Wait a minute, don Juan. Those are abstract concepts, but they do refer to real phenomena that can be corroborated. There are whole disciplines dedicated to that."
"The Eagle and its emanations are equally corroboratable," don Juan retorted. "And the discipline of the new seers is dedicated to doing just that."
I asked him to explain what the Eagle's emanations are.
He said that the Eagle's emanations are an immutable thing-in-itself, which engulfs everything that exists; the knowable and the unknowable.
"There is no way to describe in words what the Eagle's emanations really are," don Juan continued. "A seer must witness them."
"Have you witnessed them yourself, don Juan?"
"Of course I have, and yet I can't tell you what they are. They are a presence; almost a mass of sorts; a pressure that creates a dazzling sensation. One can catch only a glimpse of them, as one can catch only a glimpse of the Eagle itself."
"Would you say, don Juan, that the Eagle is the source of the emanations?"
"It goes without saying that the Eagle is the source of its emanations."
"I meant to ask if that is so visually."
"There is nothing visual about the Eagle. The entire body of a seer senses the Eagle. There is something in all of us that can make us witness with our entire body. Seers explain the act of seeing the Eagle in very simple terms: because man is composed of the Eagle's emanations, man need only revert back to his components.
"The problem arises with man's awareness. It is his awareness that becomes entangled and confused. At the crucial moment when it should be a simple case of the emanations acknowledging themselves, man's awareness is compelled to interpret. The result is a vision of the Eagle and the Eagle's emanations. But there is no Eagle and no Eagle's emanations. What is out there is something that no living creature can grasp."
I asked him if the source of the emanations was called the Eagle because eagles in general have important attributes.
"This is simply the case of something unknowable vaguely resembling something known," he replied. "On account of that, there have certainly been attempts to imbue eagles with attributes they don't have. But that always happens when impressionable people learn to perform acts that require great sobriety. Seers come in all sizes and shapes."
"Do you mean to say that there are different kinds of seers?"
"No. I mean that there are scores of imbeciles who become seers. Seers are human beings full of foibles, or rather, human beings full of foibles are capable of becoming seers. Just as in the case of miserable people who become superb scientists.
"The characteristic of miserable seers is that they are willing to forget the wonder of the world. They become overwhelmed by the fact that they see and believe that it's their genius that counts. A seer must be a paragon in order to override the nearly invincible laxness of our human condition. More important than seeing itself is what seers do with what they see."
"What do you mean by that, don Juan?"
"Look at what some seers have done to us. We are stuck with their vision of an Eagle that rules us and devours us at the moment of our death."
He said that there is a definite laxness in that version, and that personally he did not appreciate the idea of something devouring us. For him, it would be more accurate to say that there is a force that attracts our consciousness, much as a magnet attracts iron shavings. At the moment of dying, all of our being disintegrates under the attraction of that immense force.
That such an event was interpreted as the Eagle devouring us he found grotesque, because it turns an indescribable act into something as mundane as eating.
"I'm a very average man," I said. "The description of an Eagle that devours us had a great impact on me."
"The real impact can't be measured until the moment when you see it yourself," he said. "But you must bear in mind that our flaws remain with us even after we become seers. So when you see that force, you may very well agree with the lax seers who called it the Eagle, as I did myself. On the other hand, you may not. You may resist the temptation to ascribe human attributes to what is incomprehensible, and actually improvise a new name for it; a more accurate one."
"Seers who see the Eagle's emanations often call them commands," don Juan said. "I wouldn't mind calling them commands myself if I hadn't got used to calling them emanations. It was a reaction to my benefactor's preference; for him they were commands. I thought that term was more in keeping with his forceful personality than with mine. I wanted something impersonal. 'Commands' sounds too human to me, but that's what they really are, commands."
Don Juan said that to see the Eagle's emanations is to court disaster. The new seers soon discovered the tremendous difficulties involved, and only after great tribulations in trying to map the unknown and separate it from the unknowable did they realize that everything is made out of the Eagle's emanations. Only a small portion of those emanations is within reach of human awareness, and that small portion is still further reduced, to a minute fraction, by the constraints of our daily lives.
That minute fraction of the Eagle's emanations is the known. The small portion within possible reach of human awareness is the unknown. The incalculable rest is the unknowable.
He went on to say that the new seers, being pragmatically oriented, became immediately cognizant of the compelling power of the emanations. They realized that all living creatures are forced to employ the Eagle's emanations without ever knowing what they are. They also realized that organisms are constructed to grasp a certain range of those emanations and that every species has a definite range. The emanations exert great pressure on organisms, and through that pressure organisms construct their perceivable world.
"In our case, as human beings," don Juan said, "we employ those emanations and interpret them as reality. But what man senses is such a small portion of the Eagle's emanations that it's ridiculous to put much stock in our perceptions, and yet it isn't possible for us to disregard our perceptions. The new seers found this out the hard way after courting tremendous dangers."
Don Juan was sitting where he usually sat in the large room. Ordinarily there was no furniture in that room- people sat on mats on the floor- but Carol, the nagual woman, had managed to furnish it with very comfortable armchairs for the sessions when she and I took turns reading to don Juan from the works of Spanish-speaking poets.
"I want you to be very aware of what we are doing," he said as soon as I sat down. "We are discussing the mastery of awareness. The truths we're discussing are the principles of that mastery."
He added that in his teachings for the right side, he had demonstrated those principles to my normal awareness with the help of one of his seer companions, Genaro, and that Genaro had played around with my awareness with all the humor and irreverence for which the new seers were known.
"Genaro is the one who should be here telling you about the Eagle," he said, "except that his versions are too irreverent. He thinks that the seers who called that force the Eagle were either very stupid or were making a grand joke, because eagles not only lay eggs, they also lay turds."
Don Juan laughed and said that he found Genaro's comments so appropriate that he couldn't resist laughter. He added that if the new seers had been the ones to describe the Eagle the description would certainly have been made half in fun.
I told don Juan that on one level I took the Eagle as a poetic image, and as such it delighted me; but on another level I took it literally, and that terrified me.
"One of the greatest forces in the lives of warriors is fear," he said. "It spurs them to learn."
He reminded me that the description of the Eagle came from the ancient seers. The new seers were through with description, comparison, and conjecture of any sort. They wanted to get directly to the source of things and consequently risked unlimited danger to get to it.
They did see the Eagle's emanations, but they never tampered with the description of the Eagle. They felt that it took too much energy to see the Eagle, and that the ancient seers had already paid heavily for their scant glimpse of the unknowable.
"How did the old seers come around to describing the Eagle?" I asked.
"They needed a minimal set of guidelines about the unknowable for purposes of instruction," he replied. "They resolved it with a sketchy description of the force that rules all there is, but not of its emanations, because the emanations cannot be rendered at all in a language of comparisons. Individual seers may feel the urge to make comments about certain emanations, but that will remain personal. In other words, there is no pat version of the emanations, as there is of the Eagle."
"The new seers seem to have been very abstract," I commented. "They sound like modern-day philosophers."
"No. The new seers were terribly practical men," he replied. "They weren't involved in concocting rational theories."
He said that the ancient seers were the ones who were the abstract thinkers. They built monumental edifices of abstractions proper to them and their time. And just like the modern-day philosophers, they were not at all in control of their concatenations.
The new seers, on the other hand, imbued with practicality, were able to see a flux of emanations and to see how man and other living beings utilize them to construct their perceivable world.
"How are those emanations utilized by man, don Juan?"
"It's so simple it sounds idiotic. For a seer, men are luminous beings. Our luminosity is made up of that portion of the Eagle's emanations which is encased in our egglike cocoon. That particular portion- that handful of emanations that is encased, is what makes us men. To perceive is to match the emanations contained inside our cocoon with those that are outside.
"Seers can see, for instance, the emanations inside any living creature and can tell which of the outside emanations would match them."
"Are the emanations like beams of light?" I asked.
"No. Not at all. That would be too simple. They are something indescribable. And yet, my personal comment would be to say that they are like filaments of light.
"What's incomprehensible to normal awareness is that the filaments are aware. I can't tell you what that means, because I don't know what I am saying. All I can tell you with my personal comments is that the filaments are aware of themselves, alive and vibrating; that there are so many of them that numbers have no meaning and that each of them is an eternity in itself."
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4. The Glow of Awareness
Don Juan, don Genaro, and I had just returned from gathering plants in the surrounding mountains. We were at don Genaro's house, sitting around the table, when don Juan made me change levels of awareness. Don Genaro had been staring at me and began to chuckle. He remarked how odd he thought it was that I had two completely different standards for dealing with the two sides of awareness.
My relation with him was the most obvious example. On my right side, he was the respected and feared sorcerer don Genaro, a man whose incomprehensible acts delighted me and at the same time filled me with mortal terror. On my left side, he was plain Genaro, or Genarito, with no don attached to his name; a charming and kind seer whose acts were thoroughly comprehensible and coherent with what I myself did or tried to do.
I agreed with him and added that on my left side, the man whose mere presence made me shake like a leaf was Silvio Manuel, the most mysterious of don Juan's companions. I also said that don Juan, being a true nagual, transcended arbitrary standards and was respected and admired by me in both states.
"But is he feared?" Genaro asked in a quivering voice.
"Very feared," don Juan interjected in a falsetto voice.
We all laughed, but don Juan and Genaro laughed with such abandon that I immediately suspected they knew something they were holding back.
Don Juan was reading me like a book. He explained that in the intermediate stage, before one enters fully into the left-side awareness, one is capable of tremendous concentration; but one is also susceptible to every conceivable influence. I was being influenced by suspicion.
"La Gorda is always in this stage," he said. "She learns beautifully, but she's a royal pain in the neck. She can't help being driven by anything that comes her way, including, of corse, very good things like keen concentration."
Don Juan explained that the new seers discovered that the transition period is the time when the deepest learning takes place, and that it is also the time when warriors must be supervised; and explanations must be given to them so they can evaluate them properly. If no explanations are given to them before they enter into the left side, they will be great sorcerers but poor seers, as the ancient Toltecs were.
Female warriors in particular fall prey to the lure of the left side, he said. They are so nimble that they can go into the left side with no effort; often too soon for their own good.
After a long silence, Genaro fell asleep. Don Juan began to speak. He said that the new seers had had to invent a number of terms in order to explain the second truth about awareness. His benefactor had changed some of those terms to suit himself, and he himself had done the same, guided by the seers' belief that it does not make any difference what terms are used as long as the truths have been verified by seeing.
I was curious to know what terms he had changed, but I didn't know quite how to word my question. He took it that I was doubting his right or his ability to change them and explained that if the terms we propose originate in our reason they can only communicate the mundane agreement of everyday life. When seers propose a term, on the other hand, it is never a figure of speech because it stems from seeing and embraces everything that seers can attain.
I asked him why he had changed the terms.
"It's a nagual's duty always to look for better ways to explain," he replied. "Time changes everything, and every new nagual has to incorporate new words and new ideas to describe his seeing."
"Do you mean that a nagual takes ideas from the world of every day life?" I asked.
"No. I mean that a nagual talks about seeing in ever new ways," he said. "For instance, as the new nagual, you'd have to say that awareness gives rise to perception. You'd be saying the same thing my benefactor said, but in a different way."
"What do the new seers say perception is, don Juan?"
"They say that perception is a condition of alignment. The emanations inside the cocoon become aligned with those outside that fit them. Alignment is what allows awareness to be cultivated by every living creature. Seers make these statements because they see living creatures as they really are: luminous beings that look like bubbles of whitish light."
I asked him how the emanations inside the cocoon fit those outside so as to accomplish perception.
"The emanations inside and the emanations outside," he said, "are the same filaments of light. Sentient [* sentient- consciously perceiving] beings are minute bubbles made out of those filaments; microscopic points of light, attached to the infinite emanations."
He went on to explain that the luminosity of living beings is made by the particular portion of the Eagle's emanations they happen to have inside their luminous cocoons. When seers see perception, they witness that the luminosity of the Eagle's emanations outside those creatures' cocoons brightens the luminosity of the emanations inside their cocoons. The outside luminosity attracts the inside one. It traps it, so to speak, and fixes it. That fixation is the awareness of every specific being.
Seers can also see how the emanations outside the cocoon exert a particular pressure on the portion of emanations inside. This pressure determines the degree of awareness that every living being has.
I asked him to clarify how the Eagle's emanations outside the cocoon exert pressure on those inside.
"The Eagle's emanations are more than filaments of light," he replied. "Each one of them is a source of boundless energy. Think of it this way: Since some of the emanations outside the cocoon are the same as the emanations inside, their energies are like a continuous pressure. But the cocoon isolates the emanations that are inside its web and thereby directs the pressure.
"I've mentioned to you that the old seers were masters of the art of handling awareness," he went on. "What I can add now is that they were the masters of that art because they learned to manipulate the structure of man's cocoon. I've said to you that they unraveled the mystery of being aware. By that I meant that they saw and realized that awareness is a glow in the cocoon of living beings. They rightly called it the glow of awareness."
