The Power of Silence (16 page)

We walked
into his house around seven in the morning, in time for breakfast. I was
famished but not tired. We had left the cave to climb down to the valley at
dawn. Don Juan, instead of following the most direct route, made a long detour
that took us along the river. He explained that we had to collect our wits
before we got home.

I answered
it was very kind of him to say "our wits" when I was the only one
whose wits were disordered. But he replied that he was acting not out of
kindness but out of warrior's training. A warrior, he said, was on permanent
guard against the roughness of human behavior. A warrior was magical and ruthless,
a maverick with the most refined taste and manners, whose wordly task was to
sharpen, yet disguise, his cutting edges so that no one would be able to
suspect his ruthlessness.

After
breakfast I thought it would be wise to get some sleep, but don Juan contended
I had no time to waste. He said that all too soon I would lose the little
clarity I still had, and if I went to sleep I would lose it all.

"It
doesn't take a genius to figure out that there is hardly any way to talk about
intent" he said quickly as he scrutinized me from head to toe. "But
making this statement doesn't mean anything. It is the reason why sorcerers
rely instead on the sorcery stories. And their hope is that someday the
abstract cores of the stories will make sense to the listener."

I
understood what he was saying, but I still could not conceive what an abstract
core was or what it was supposed to mean to me. I tried to think about it.
Thoughts barraged me. Images passed rapidly through my mind giving me no time
to think about them. I could not slow them down enough even to recognize them.
Finally anger overpowered me and I slammed my fist on the table.

Don Juan
shook from head to toe, choking with laughter.

"Do
what you did last night," he urged me, winking. "Slow yourself
down."

My
frustration made me very aggressive. I immediately put forth some senseless
arguments; then I became aware of my error and apologized for my lack of
restraint.

"Don't
apologize," he said. "I should tell you that the understanding you're
after is impossible at this time. The abstract cores of the sorcery stories
will say nothing to you now. Later - years later, I mean - they may make
perfect sense to you."

I begged
don Juan not to leave me in the dark, to discuss the abstract cores. It was not
at all clear to me what he wanted me to do with them. I assured him that my
present state of heightened awareness could be very helpful to me in allowing
me to understand his discussion. I urged him to hurry, for I could not
guarantee how long this state would last. I told him that soon I would return
to my normal state and would become a bigger idiot than I was at that moment. I
said it half in jest. His laughter told me that he had taken it as such, but I
was deeply affected by my own words. A tremendous sense of melancholy overtook
me.

Don Juan
gently took my arm, pulled me to a comfortable armchair, then sat down facing
me. He gazed fixedly into my eyes, and for a moment I was incapable of breaking
the force of his stare.

"Sorcerers
constantly stalk themselves," he said in a reassuring voice, as if trying
to calm me with the sound of his voice.

I wanted to
say that my nervousness had passed and that it had probably been caused by my
lack of sleep, but he did not allow me to say anything.

He assured
me that he had already taught me everything there was to know about stalking,
but I had not yet retrieved my knowledge from the depth of heightened
awareness, where I had it stored. I told him I had the annoying sensation of
being bottled up. I felt there was something locked inside me, something that
made me slam doors and kick tables, something that frustrated me and made me
irascible.

"That
sensation of being bottled up is experienced by every human being," he
said. "It is a reminder of our existing connection with intent. For
sorcerers this sensation is even more acute, precisely because their goal is to
sensitize their connecting link until they can make it function at will.

"When
the pressure of their connecting link is too great, sorcerers relieve it by
stalking themselves."

"I
still don't think I understand what you mean by stalking" I said.
"But at a certain level I think I know exactly what you mean."

"I'll
try to help you clarify what you know, then," he said. "Stalking is a
procedure, a very simple one. Stalking is special behavior that follows certain
principles. It is secretive, furtive, deceptive behavior designed to deliver a
jolt. And, when you stalk yourself you jolt yourself, using your own behavior
in a ruthless, cunning way."

He
explained that when a sorcerer's awareness became bogged down with the weight
of his perceptual input, which was what was happening to me, the best, or even
perhaps the only, remedy was to use the idea of death to deliver that stalking
jolt.

"The
idea of death therefore is of monumental importance in the life of a
sorcerer," don Juan continued. "I have shown you innumerable things
about death to convince you that the knowledge of our impending and unavoidable
end is what gives us sobriety. Our most costly mistake as average men is indulging
in a sense of immortality. It is as though we believe that if we don't think
about death we can protect ourselves from it."

"You
must agree, don Juan, not thinking about death certainly protects us from
worrying about it."

"Yes,
it serves that purpose," he conceded. "But that purpose is an
unworthy one for average men and a travesty for sorcerers. Without a clear view
of death, there is no order, no sobriety, no beauty. Sorcerers struggle to gain
this crucial insight in order to help them realize at the deepest possible
level that they have no assurance whatsoever their lives will continue beyond
the moment. That realization gives sorcerers the courage to be patient and yet
take action, courage to be acquiescent without being stupid."

Don Juan
fixed his gaze on me. He smiled and shook his head.

"Yes,"
he went on. "The idea of death is the only thing that can give sorcerers
courage. Strange, isn't it? It gives sorcerers the courage to be cunning
without being conceited, and above all it gives them courage to be ruthless
without being self-important."

He smiled
again and nudged me. I told him I was absolutely terrified by the idea of my
death, that I thought about it constantly, but it certainly didn't give me
courage or spur me to take action. It only made me cynical or caused me to
lapse into moods of profound melancholy.

"Your
problem is very simple," he said. "You become easily obsessed. I have
been telling you that sorcerers stalk themselves in order to break the power of
their obsessions. There are many ways of stalking oneself. If you don't want to
use the idea of your death, use the poems you read me to stalk yourself."

"I beg
your pardon?"

"I
have told you that there are many reasons I like poems," he said.
"What I do is stalk myself with them. I deliver a jolt to myself with
them. I listen, and as you read, I shut off my internal dialogue and let my
inner silence gain momentum. Then the combination of the poem and the silence
delivers the jolt."

He
explained that poets unconsciously long for the sorcerers' world. Because they
are not sorcerers on the path of knowledge, longing is all they have.

"Let
us see if you can feel what I'm talking about," he said, handing me a book
of poems by Jose Gorostiza.

I opened it
at the bookmark and he pointed to the poem he liked.

. . . this
incessant stubborn dying, this living death,

that slays
you, oh God,

in your
rigorous handiwork, in the roses, in the stones,

in the
indomitable stars

and in the
flesh that burns out, like a bonfire lit by a song,

a dream,

a hue that
hits the eye.

. . . and
you, yourself,

perhaps
have died eternities of ages out there, without us knowing about it,

we dregs,
crumbs, ashes of you;

you that
still are present,

like a star
faked by its very light,

an empty
light without star

that reaches
us,

biding

its
infinite catastrophe.

"As I
hear the words," don Juan said when I had finished reading, "I feel
that that man is
seeing
the essence of things and I can
see
with
him. I don't care what the poem is about. I care only about the feeling the
poet's longing brings me. I borrow his longing, and with it I borrow the
beauty. And marvel at the fact that he, like a true warrior, lavishes it on the
recipients, the beholders, retaining for himself only his longing. This jolt,
this shock of beauty, is stalking."

I was very
moved. Don Juan's explanation had touched a strange chord in me.

"Would
you say, don Juan, that death is the only real enemy we have?" I asked him
a moment later.

"No,"
he said with conviction. "Death is not an enemy, although it appears to
be. Death is not our destroyer, although we think it is."

"What
is it, then, if not our destroyer?" I asked.

"Sorcerers
say death is the only worthy opponent we have," he replied. "Death is
our challenger. We are born to take that challenge, average men or sorcerers.
Sorcerers know about it; average men do not."

"I
personally would say, don Juan, life, not death, is the challenge."

"Life
is the process by means of which death challenges us," he said.
"Death is the active force. Life is the arena. And in that arena there are
only two contenders at any time: oneself and death."

"I
would think, don Juan, that we human beings are the challengers," I said.

"Not
at all," he retorted. "We are passive. Think about it. If we move,
it's only when we feel the pressure of death. Death sets the pace for our
actions and feelings and pushes us relentlessly until it breaks us and wins the
bout, or else we rise above all possibilities and defeat death.

"Sorcerers
defeat death and death acknowledges the defeat by letting the sorcerers go
free, never to be challenged again."

"Does
that mean that sorcerers become immortal?"

"No.
It doesn't mean that," he replied. "Death stops challenging them,
that's all." "But what does that mean, don Juan?" I asked.

"It
means thought has taken a somersault into the inconceivable," he said.

"What
is a somersault of thought into the inconceivable?" I asked, trying not to
sound belligerent. "The problem you and I have is that we do not share the
same meanings."

"You're
not being truthful," don Juan interrupted. "You understand what I
mean. For you to demand a rational explanation of a somersault of thought into
the inconceivable is a travesty. You know exactly what it is."

"No, I
don't," I said.

And then I
realized that I did, or rather, that I intuited what it meant. There was some
part of me that could transcend my rationality and understand and explain,
beyond the level of metaphor, a somersault of thought into the inconceivable.
The trouble was that part of me was not strong enough to surface at will.

I said as
much to don Juan, who laughed and commented that my awareness was like a yo-yo.
Sometimes it rose to a high spot and my command was keen, while at others it
descended and I became a rational moron. But most of the time it hovered at an
unworthy median where I was neither fish nor fowl.

"A
somersault of thought into the inconceivable," he explained with an air of
resignation, "is the descent of the spirit; the act of breaking our
perceptual barriers. It is the moment in which man's perception reaches its
limits. Sorcerers practice the art of sending scouts, advance runners, to probe
our perceptual limits. This is another reason I like poems. I take them as
advance runners. But, as I've said to you before, poets don't know as exactly as
sorcerers what those advance runners can accomplish."

In the
early evening, don Juan said that we had many things to discuss and asked me if
I wanted to go for a walk. I was in a peculiar state of mind. Earlier I had
noticed a strange aloofness in myself that came and went. At first I thought it
was physical fatigue clouding my thoughts. But my thoughts were crystal clear.
So I became convinced that my strange detachment was a product of my shift to
heightened awareness.

We left the
house and strolled around the town's plaza. I quickly asked don Juan about my
aloofness before he had a chance to begin on anything else. He explained it as
a shift of energy. He said that as the energy that was ordinarily used to
maintain the fixed position of the assemblage point became liberated, it
focused automatically on that connecting link. He assured me that there were no
techniques or maneuvers for a sorcerer to learn beforehand to move energy from
one place to the other. Rather it was a matter of an instantaneous shift taking
place once a certain level of proficiency had been attained.