The Power of Silence (29 page)

"Don't
worry," he said. "Death is painful only when it happens in one's bed,
in sickness. In a fight for your life, you feel no pain. If you feel anything,
it's exultation."

He said
that one of the most dramatic differences between civilized men and sorcerers
was the way in which death came to them. Only with sorcerer-warriors was death
kind and sweet. They could be mortally wounded and yet would feel no pain. And
what was even more extraordinary was that death held itself in abeyance for as
long as the sorcerers needed it to do so.

"The
greatest difference between an average man and a sorcerer is that a sorcerer
commands his death with his speed," don Juan went on. "If it comes to
that, the jaguar will not eat me. He'll eat you, because you don't have the
speed to hold back your death."

He then
elaborated on the intricacies of the sorcerers' idea of speed and death. He
said that in the world of everyday life our word or our decisions could be
reversed very easily. The only irrevocable thing in our world was death. In the
sorcerers' world, on the other hand, normal death could be countermanded, but
not the sorcerers' word. In the sorcerers' world decisions could not be changed
or revised. Once they had been made, they stood forever.

I told him
his statements, impressive as they were, could not convince me that death could
be revoked. And he explained once more what he had explained before. He said
that for a seer human beings were either oblong or spherical luminous masses of
countless, static, yet vibrant fields of energy, and that only sorcerers were
capable of injecting movement into those spheres of static luminosity. In a
millisecond they could move their assemblage points to any place in their
luminous mass. That movement and the speed with which it was performed entailed
an instantaneous shift into the perception of another totally different
universe. Or they could move their assemblage points, without stopping, across
their entire fields of luminous energy. The force created by such movement was
so intense that it instantly consumed their whole luminous mass.

He said
that if a rockslide were to come crashing down on us at that precise moment, he
would be able to cancel the normal effect of an accidental death. By using the
speed with which his assemblage point would move, he could make himself change
universes or make himself burn from within in a fraction of a second. I, on the
other hand, would die a normal death, crushed by the rocks, because my
assemblage point lacked the speed to pull me out.

I said it
seemed to me that the sorcerers had just found an alternative way of dying,
which was not the same as a cancellation of death. And he replied that all he
had said was that sorcerers commanded their deaths. They died only when they
had to.

Although I
did not doubt what he was saying, I kept asking questions, almost as a game.
But while he was talking, thoughts and unanchored memories about other
perceivable universes were forming in my mind, as if on a screen.

I told don
Juan I was thinking strange thoughts. He laughed and recommended I stick to the
jaguar, because he was so real that he could only be a true manifestation of
the spirit.

The idea of
how real the animal was made me shudder.

"Wouldn't
it be better if we changed direction instead of heading straight for the
hills?" I asked.

I thought
that we could create a certain confusion in the jaguar with an unexpected
change. "It's too late to change direction," don Juan said. "The
jaguar already knows that there is no place for us to go but the hills."

"That
can't be true, don Juan!" I exclaimed.

"Why
not?" he asked.

I told him
that although I could attest to the animal's ability to be one jump ahead of
us, I could not quite accept that the jaguar had the foresight to figure out
where we wanted to go.

"Your
error is to think of the jaguar's power in terms of his capacity to figure
things out," he said. "He can't think. He only knows."

Don Juan
said that our dust-raising maneuver was to confuse the jaguar by giving him
sensory input on something for which we had no use. We could not develop a real
feeling for raising dust though our lives depended on it.

"I
truly don't understand what you are saying," I whined.

Tension was
taking its toll on me. I was having a hard time concentrating.

Don Juan
explained that human feelings were like hot or cold currents of air and could
easily be detected by a beast. We were the senders, the jaguar was the
receiver. Whatever feelings we had would find their way to the jaguar. Or
rather, the jaguar could read any feelings that had a history of use for us. In
the case of the dust-raising maneuver, the feeling we had about it was so out
of the ordinary that it could only create a vacuum in the receiver.

"Another
maneuver silent knowledge might dictate would be to kick up dirt," don
Juan said. He looked at me for an instant as if he were waiting for my
reactions.

"We
are going to walk very calmly now," he said. "And you are going to
kick up dirt as if you were a ten-foot giant."

I must have
had a stupid expression on my face. Don Juan's body shook with laughter.
"Raise a cloud of dust with your feet," he ordered me. "Feel
huge and heavy."

I tried it
and immediately had a sense of massiveness. In a joking tone, I commented that
his power of suggestion was incredible. I actually felt gigantic and ferocious.
He assured me that my feeling of size was not in any way the product of his
suggestion, but the product of a shift of my assemblage point.

He said
that men of antiquity became legendary because they knew by silent knowledge
about the power to be obtained by moving the assemblage point. On a reduced
scale sorcerers had recaptured that old power. With a movement of their
assemblage points they could manipulate their feelings and change things. I was
changing things by feeling big and ferocious. Feelings processed in that
fashion were called intent.

"Your
assemblage point has already moved quite a bit," he went on. "Now you
are in the position of either losing your gain or making your assemblage point
move beyond the place where it is now."

He said
that possibly every human being under normal living conditions had had at one
time or another the opportunity to break away from the bindings of convention.
He stressed that he did not mean social convention, but the conventions binding
our perception. A moment of elation would suffice to move our assemblage points
and break our conventions. So, too, a moment of fright, ill health, anger, or
grief. But ordinarily, whenever we had the chance to move our assemblage points
we became frightened. Our religious, academic, social backgrounds would come into
play. They would assure our safe return to the flock; the return of our
assemblage points to the prescribed position of normal living.

He told me
that all the mystics and spiritual teachers I knew of had done just that: their
assemblage points moved, either through discipline or accident, to a certain
point; and then they returned to normalcy carrying a memory that lasted them a
lifetime.

"You
can be a very pious, good boy," he went on, "and forget about the
initial movement of your assemblage point. Or you can push beyond your
reasonable limits. You are still within those limits."

I knew what
he was talking about, yet there was a strange hesitation in me making me
vacillate.

Don Juan
pushed his argument further. He said that the average man, incapable of finding
the energy to perceive beyond his daily limits, called the realm of
extraordinary perception sorcery, witchcraft, or the work of the devil, and
shied away from it without examining it further.

"But
you can't do that anymore," don Juan went on. "You are not religious
and you are much too curious to discard anything so easily. The only thing that
could stop you now is cowardice.

"Turn
everything into what it really is: the abstract, the spirit, the nagual. There
is no witchcraft, no evil, no devil. There is only perception."

I
understood him. But I could not tell exactly what he wanted me to do.

I looked at
don Juan, trying to find the most appropriate words. I seemed to have entered
into an extremely functional frame of mind and did not want to waste a single
word.

"Be
gigantic!" he ordered me, smiling. "Do away with reason."

Then I knew
exactly what he meant. In fact, I knew that I could increase the intensity of
my feelings of size and ferociousness until I actually could be a giant,
hovering over the shrubs, seeing all around us.

I tried to
voice my thoughts but quickly gave up. I became aware that don Juan knew all I
was thinking, and obviously much, much more.

And then
something extraordinary happened to me. My reasoning faculties ceased to function.
Literally, I felt as though a dark blanket had covered me and obscured my
thoughts. And I let go of my reason with the abandon of one who doesn't have a
worry in the world. I was convinced that if I wanted to dispel the obscuring
blanket, all I had to do was feel myself breaking through it.

In that
state, I felt I was being propelled, set in motion. Something was making me
move physically from one place to another. I did not experience any fatigue.
The speed and ease with which I could move elated me.

I did not
feel I was walking; I was not flying either. Rather I was being transported
with extreme facility. My movements became jerky and ungraceful only when I
tried to think about them. When I enjoyed them without thought, I entered into
a unique state of physical elation for which I had no precedent. If I had had
instances of that kind of physical happiness in my life, they must have been so
short-lived that they had left no memory. Yet when I experienced that ecstasy I
felt a vague recognition, as if I had once known it but had forgotten.

The
exhilaration of moving through the chaparral was so intense that everything
else ceased. The only things that existed for me were those periods of
exhilaration and then the moments when I would stop moving and find myself
facing the chaparral.

But even
more inexplicable was the total bodily sensation of looming over the bushes
which I had had since the instant I started to be moved.

At one
moment, I clearly saw the figure of the jaguar up ahead of me. He was running
away as fast as he could. I felt that he was trying to avoid the spines of the
cactuses. He was being extremely careful about where he stepped.

I had the
overwhelming urge to run after the jaguar and scare him into losing his
caution. I knew that he would get pricked by the spines. A thought then erupted
in my silent mind - I thought that the jaguar would be a more dangerous animal
if he was hurt by the spines. That thought produced the same effect as someone
waking me from a dream.

When I
became aware that my thinking processes were functioning again, I found that I
was at the base of a low range of rocky hills. I looked around. Don Juan was a
few feet away. He seemed exhausted. He was pale and breathing very hard.

"What
happened, don Juan?" I asked, after clearing my raspy throat.

"You
tell me what happened," he gasped between breaths.

I told him
what I had felt. Then I realized that I could barely see the top of the
mountain directly in my line of vision. There was very little daylight left,
which meant I had been running, or walking, for more than two hours.

I asked don
Juan to explain the time discrepancy. He said that my assemblage point had
moved beyond the place of no pity into the place of silent knowledge, but that
I still lacked the energy to manipulate it myself. To manipulate it myself
meant I would have to have enough energy to move between reason and silent
knowledge at will. He added that if a sorcerer had enough energy - or even if
he did not have sufficient energy but needed to shift because it was a matter
of life and death - he could fluctuate between reason and silent knowledge.

His
conclusions about me were that because of the seriousness of our situation, I
had let the spirit move my assemblage point. The result had been my entering
into silent knowledge. Naturally, the scope of my perception had increased,
which gave me the feeling of height, of looming over the bushes.

At that
time, because of my academic training, I was passionately interested in
validation by consensus. I asked him my standard question of those days.

"If
someone from UCLA's Anthropology Department had been watching me, would he have
seen me as a giant thrashing through the chaparral?"

"I
really don't know," don Juan said. "The way to find out would be to
move your assemblage point when you are in the Department of
Anthropology."

"I
have tried," I said. "But nothing ever happens. I must need to have
you around for anything to take place."

"It
was not a matter of life and death for you then," he said. "If it had
been, you would have moved your assemblage point all by yourself."

"But
would people see what I see when my assemblage point moves?" I insisted.