JOURNEY TO IXTLAN -- THE LESSONS OF DON JUAN

Thursday, August 17, 1961

As soon as I got out of my car I complained to don Juan that I was not feeling well.

"Sit down, sit down," he said softly and almost led me by the hand to his porch. He smiled and patted me on the back.

Two weeks before, on August 4th, don Juan, as he had said, changed his tactics with me and allowed me to ingest some peyote buttons. During the height of my hallucinatory experience I played with a dog that lived in the house where the peyote session took place. Don Juan interpreted my interaction with the dog as a very special event. He contended that at moments of power, such as the one I had been living then, the world of ordinary affairs did not exist and nothing could be taken for granted, that the dog was not really a dog but the incarnation of Mescalito, the power of deity contained in peyote.

The post-effects of that experience were a general sense of fatigue and melancholy, plus the incidence of exceptionally vivid dreams and nightmares.

"Where's your writing gear?" don Juan asked as I sat down on the porch.

I had left my notebooks in my car. Don Juan walked back to the car and carefully pulled out my briefcase and brought it to my side.

He asked if I usually carried my briefcase when I walked. I said I did.

"That's madness," he said. "I've told you never to carry anything in your hands when you walk. Get a knapsack."

I laughed. The idea of carrying my notes in a knapsack was ludicrous. I told him that ordinarily I wore a suit and a knapsack over a three-piece suit would be a preposterous sight.

"Put your coat on over the knapsack," he said. "It is better that people think you're a hunchback than to ruin your body carrying all this around."

He urged me to get out my notebook and write. He seemed to be making a deliberate effort to put me at ease.

I complained again about the feeling of physical discomfort and the strange sense of unhappiness I was experiencing.

Don Juan laughed and said, "You're beginning to learn."

We then had a long conversation. He said that Mescalito, by allowing me to play with him, had pointed me out as a "chosen man" and that, although he was baffled by the omen because I was not an Indian, he was going to pass on to me some secret knowledge. He said that he had had a "benefactor" himself, who taught him how to become a "man of knowledge."

I sensed that something dreadful was about to happen. The revelation that I was his chosen man, plus the unquestionable strangeness of his ways and the devastating effect that peyote had had on me, created a state of unbearable apprehension and indecision. But don Juan disregarded my feelings and recommended that I should only think of the wonder of Mescalito playing with me.

"Think about nothing else," he said. "The rest will come to you of itself."

He stood up and patted me gently on the head and said in a very soft voice, "I am going to teach you how to become a warrior in the same manner I have taught you how to hunt. I must warn you, though, learning how to hunt has not made you into a hunter, nor would learning how to become a warrior make you one."

I experienced a sense of frustration, a physical discomfort that bordered on anguish. I complained about the vivid dreams and nightmares I was having. He seemed to deliberate for a moment and sat down again.

"They're weird dreams," I said.

"You've ,always had weird dreams," he retorted.

"I'm telling you, this time they are truly more weird than anything I've ever had."

"Don't concern yourself. They are only dreams. Like the dreams of any ordinary dreamer, they don't have power. So what's the use of worrying about them or talking about them?"

"They bother me, don Juan. Isn't there something I can do to stop them?"

"Nothing. Let them pass," he said. "Now it's time for you to become accessible to power, and you are going to begin by tackling dreaming."

The tone of voice he used when he said "dreaming" made me think that he was using the word in a very particular fashion. I was pondering about a proper question to ask when he began to talk again.

"I've never told you about dreaming, because until now I was only concerned with teaching you how to be a  hunter," he said. "A hunter is not concerned with the manipulation of power, therefore his dreams are only dreams. They might be poignant but they are not dreaming.

"A warrior, on the other hand, seeks power, and one of the avenues to power is dreaming. You may say that the difference between a hunter and a warrior is that a warrior is on his way to power, while a hunter knows nothing or very little about it.

"The decision as to who can be a warrior and who can only be a hunter is not up to us. That decision is in the realm of the powers that guide men. That's why your playing with Mescalito was such an important omen. Those forces guided you to me; they took you to that bus depot, remember? Some clown brought you to me. A perfect omen, a clown pointing you out. So, I taught you how to be a hunter. And then the other perfect omen, Mescalito himself playing with you. See what I mean?"

His weird logic was overwhelming. His words created visions of myself succumbing to something awesome and unknown, something which I had not bargained for, and which I had not conceived existed, even in my wildest fantasies.

"What do you propose I should do?" I asked.

"Become accessible to power; tackle your dreams," he replied. "You call them dreams because you have no power. A warrior, being a man who seeks power, doesn't  call them dreams, he calls them real."

"You mean he takes his dreams as being reality?"

"He doesn't take anything as being anything else. What you call dreams are real for a warrior. You must under stand that a warrior is not a fool. A warrior is an immaculate hunter who hunts power; he's not drunk, or crazed, and he has neither the time nor the disposition to bluff, or to lie to himself, or to make a wrong move. The stakes are too high for that. The stakes are his trimmed orderly life which he has taken so long to tighten and perfect. He is not going to throw that away by making some stupid miscalculation, by taking something for being something else."

"Dreaming is real for a warrior because in it he can act deliberately, he can choose and reject, he can select from a variety of items those which lead to power, and then he can manipulate them and use them, while in an ordinary dream he cannot act deliberately."

"Do you mean then, don Juan, that dreaming is real?"

"Of course it is real."

"As real as what we are doing now?"

"If you want to compare things, I can say that it is perhaps more real. In dreaming you have power; you can change things; you may find out countless concealed facts; you can control whatever you want."

"Don Juan's premises always had appealed to me at a certain level. I could easily understand his liking the idea that one could do anything in dreams, but I could not take him seriously. The jump was too great.

We looked at each other for a moment. His statements were insane and yet he was, to the best of my knowledge, one of the most level-headed men I had ever met.

I told him that I could not believe he took his dreams to be reality. He chuckled as if he knew the magnitude of my untenable position, then he stood up without saying a word and walked inside his house.

I sat for a long time in a state of stupor until he called me to the back of his house. He had made some corn gruel and handed me a bowl.

I asked him about the time when one was awake. I wanted to know if he called it anything in particular. But he did not understand or did not want to answer.

"What do you call this, what we're doing now?" I asked, meaning that what we were doing was reality as opposed to dreams.

"I call it eating," he said and contained his laughter.

"I call it reality," I said. "Because our eating is actually taking place."

"Dreaming also takes place," he replied, giggling. "And so does hunting, walking, laughing."

I did not persist in arguing. I could not, however, even if I stretched myself beyond my limits, accept his premise.  He seemed to be delighted with my despair.

As soon as we had finished eating he casually stated that we were going to go for a hike, but we were not. going to roam in the desert in the manner we had done before.

"It's different this time," he said. "From now on we're going to places of power; you're going to learn how to make yourself accessible to power."

I again expressed my turmoil. I said I was not qualified for that endeavor.

"Come on, you're indulging in silly fears," he said in a low voice, patting me on the back and smiling benevolently. "I've been catering to your hunter's spirit. You like to roam with me in this beautiful desert. It's too late for you to quit."

He began to walk into the desert chaparral. He: signaled me with his head to follow him. I could have walked to my car and left, except that I liked to roam in that beautiful desert with him. I liked the sensation, which I experienced only in his company, that this 'was indeed an awesome, mysterious, yet beautiful world. As he said, I was hooked.

Don Juan led me to the hills towards the east. It was a long hike. It was a hot day; the heat, however, which ordinarily would have been unbearable to me, was somehow unnoticeable.

We walked for quite a distance into a canyon until don Juan came to a halt and sat down in the shade of some boulders. I took some crackers out of my knapsack but he told me not to bother with them.

He said that I should sit in a prominent place. He pointed to a single almost round boulder ten or fifteen feet away and helped me climb to the top. I thought he was also going to sit there, but instead he just climbed part of the way in order to hand me some pieces of dry meat. He told me with a deadly serious expression that it was power meat and should be chewed very slowly and should not be mixed with any other food. He then walked back to the shaded area and sat down with his back against a rock. He seemed relaxed, almost sleepy. He remained in the same position until I had finished eating. Then he sat up straight and tilted his head to the right. He seemed to be listening attentively. He glanced at me two or three times, stood up abruptly, and began to scan the surroundings with his eyes, the way a hunter would do. I automatically froze on the spot and only moved my eyes in order to follow his movement. Very carefully he stepped behind some rocks, as if he were expecting game to come into the area where we were. I realized then that we were in a round covelike bend in the dry water canyon, surrounded by sandstone boulders.

Don Juan suddenly came out from behind the rocks and smiled at me. He stretched his arms, yawned, and walked towards the boulder where I was. I relaxed my tense position and sat down.

"What happened?" I asked in a whisper.

He answered me, yelling, that there was nothing around there to worry about.

I felt an immediate jolt in my stomach. His answer was inappropriate and it was inconceivable to me that he would yell, unless he had a specific reason for it.

I began to slide down from the boulder, but he yelled that I should stay there a while longer.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

He sat down and concealed himself between two rocks at the base of the boulder where I was, and then he said in a very loud voice that he had only been looking around because he thought he had heard something.

I asked if he had heard a large animal. He put his hand to his ear and yelled that he was unable to hear me and that I should shout my words. I felt ill at ease yelling, but he urged me in a loud voice to speak up. I shouted that I wanted to know what was going on, and he shouted back that there was really nothing around there. He yelled, asking if I could see anything unusual from the top of the boulder. I said no, and he asked me to describe to him the terrain towards the south.

We shouted back and forth for a while and then he signaled me to come down. I joined him and he whispered in my ear that the yelling was necessary to make our presence known, because I had to make myself accessible to the power of that specific water hole.

I looked around but could not see the water hole. He pointed that we were standing on it.

"There's water here," he said in a whisper, "and also power. There's a spirit here and we have to lure it out; perhaps it will come after you."

I wanted to know more about the alleged spirit, but he insisted on total silence. He advised me to stay perfectly still and not let out a whisper or make the slightest movement to betray our presence.

Apparently it was easy for him to remain in complete immobility for hours; for me, however, it was sheer torture. My legs fell asleep, my back ached, and tension built up around my neck and shoulders. My entire body became numb and cold. I was in great discomfort when don Juan finally stood up. He just sprung to his feet and extended his hand to me to help me stand up.

As I was trying to stretch my legs I realized the inconceivable easiness with which don Juan had jumped up after hours of immobility. It took quite some time for my muscles to regain the elasticity needed for walking.

Don Juan headed back for the house. He walked extremely slowly. He set up a length of three paces as the distance I should observe in following him. He meandered around the regular route and crossed it four or five times in different directions; when we finally arrived at his house it was late afternoon.

I tried to question him about the events of the day. He explained that talking was unnecessary. For the time being, I had to refrain from asking questions until we were in a place of power.

I was dying to know what he meant by that, and tried to whisper a question, but he reminded me, with a cold severe look, that he meant business.

We sat on the porch for hours. I worked on my notes. From time to time he handed me a piece of dry meat; finally it was too dark to write. I tried to think about the new developments, but some part of myself refused to and I fell asleep.

Saturday, August 19, 1961

Yesterday morning don Juan and I drove to town and ate breakfast at a restaurant. He advised me not to change my eating habits too drastically.

"Your body is not used to power meat," he said. "You'd get sick if you didn't eat your food."

He himself ate heartily. When I joked about it he simply said, "My body likes everything."

Around noon we hiked back to the water canyon. We proceeded to make ourselves noticeable to the spirit by "noisy talk" and by a forced silence which lasted hours.

When we left the place, instead of heading back to the house, don Juan took off in the direction of the mountains. We reached some mild slopes first and then we climbed to the top of some high hills. There, don Juan picked out a spot to rest in the open unshaded area. He told me that we had to wait until dusk and that I should conduct myself in the most natural fashion, which included asking all the questions I wanted.

"I know that the spirit is out there lurking," he said in a very low voice.

"Where?"

"Out there, in the bushes."

"What kind of spirit is it?"

He looked at me with a quizzical expression and retorted, "How many kinds are there?"

We both laughed. I was asking questions out of nervousness.

"It'll come out at dusk," he said. "We just have to wait."

I remained quiet. I had run out of questions.

"This is the time when we must keep on talking," he said. "The human voice attracts spirits. There's one lurking out there now. We are making ourselves available to it, so keep on talking."

I experienced an idiotic sense of vacuity. I could not think of anything to say. He laughed and patted me on the back.

"You're truly a pill," he said. "When you have to talk, you lose your tongue. Come on, beat your gums."

He made a hilarious gesture of beating his gums together, opening and closing his mouth with great speed.

"There are certain things we will talk about from now on only at places of power," he went on. "I have brought you here, because this is your first trial. This is a place of power, and here we can talk only about power."

"I really don't know what power is," I said.

"Power is something a warrior deals with," he said. "At first it's an incredible, far-fetched affair; it is hard to even think about it. This is what's happening to you now. Then power becomes a serious matter; one may not have it, or one may not even fully realize that it exists, yet one knows that something is there, something which was not noticeable before. Next power is manifested as something uncontrollable that comes to oneself. It is not possible for me to say how it comes or what it really is. It is nothing and yet it makes marvels appear before your very eyes. And finally power is something in oneself, something that controls one's acts and yet obeys one's command."

There was a short pause. Don Juan asked me if I had understood. I felt ludicrous saying I did. He seemed to have noticed my dismay and chuckled.

"I am going to teach you right here the first step to power," he said as if he were dictating a letter to me. "I am going to teach you how to set up dreaming."

He looked at me and again asked me if I knew what he meant. I did not. I was hardly following him at all. He explained that to "set up dreaming" meant to have a concise and pragmatic control over the general situation of a dream, comparable to the control one has over any choice in the desert, such as climbing up a hill or remaining in the shade of a water canyon. '

"You must start by doing something very simple," he said. "Tonight in your dreams you must look at your hands."

I laughed out loud. His tone was so factual that it was as if he were telling me to do something commonplace.

"Why do you laugh?" he asked with surprise.

"How can I look at my hands in my dreams?"

"Very simple, focus your eyes on them just like this." ' He bent his head forward and stared at his hands with his mouth open. His gesture was so comical that I had to laugh.

"Seriously, how can you expect me to do that?" I asked

"The way I've told you," he snapped. "You can, of course, look at whatever you goddamn please--your toes, or your belly, or your pecker, for that matter. I said your hands because that was the easiest thing for me to look at. Don't think it's a joke. Dreaming is as serious as seeing or dying or any other thing in this awesome, mysterious world.

"Think of it as something entertaining. Imagine all the inconceivable things you could accomplish. A man hunting for power has almost no limits in his dreaming."

I asked him to give me some pointers.

"There aren't any pointers," he said. "Just look at your hands."

"There must be more that you could tell me," I insisted.

He shook his head and squinted his eyes, staring at me in short glances.

"Every one of us is different," he finally said. "What you call pointers would only be what I myself did when I was learning. We are not the same; we aren't even vaguely alike."

"Maybe anything you'd say would help me."

"It would be simpler for you just to start looking at your hands."

He seemed to be organizing his thoughts and bobbed his head up and down.

"Every time you look at anything in your dreams it changes shape," he said after a long silence. "The trick in learning to set up dreaming is obviously not just to look at things but to sustain the sight of them. Dreaming is real when one has succeeded in bringing everything into focus. Then there is no difference between what you do , when you sleep and what you do when  you are not sleeping. Do you see what I mean?"

I confessed that although I understood what he had said I was incapable of accepting his premise. I brought up the point that in a civilized world there were scores of people who had delusions and could not distinguish what took place in the real world from what took place in their fantasies. I said that such persons were undoubtedly mentally ill, and my uneasiness increased every time he would recommend I should act like a crazy man.

After my long explanation don Juan made a comical gesture of despair by putting his hands to his cheeks and sighing loudly.

"Leave your civilized world alone," he said. "Let it be! Nobody is asking you to behave like a madman. I've already told you, a warrior has to be perfect in order to deal with the powers he hunts; how can you conceive that a warrior would not be able to tell things apart?

"On the other hand, you, my friend, who know what the real world is, would fumble and die in no time at all if you would have to depend on your ability for telling what is real and what is not."

I obviously had not expressed what I really had in mind. Every time I protested I was simply voicing the unbearable frustration of being in an untenable position.

"I am not trying to make you into a sick, crazy man," 'don Juan went on. "You can do that yourself without my help. But the forces that guide us brought you to me, and I have been endeavoring to teach you to change your stupid ways and live the strong clean life of a hunter. Then the forces guided you again and told me that you should learn to live the impeccable life of a warrior. Apparently you can't.  But who can tell? We are as mysterious and as awesome as this unfathomable world, so who can tell what you're capable of?"

There was an underlying tone of sadness in don Juan's voice. I wanted to apologize, but he began to talk again.

"You don't have to look at your hands," he said. "Like I've said, pick anything at all. But pick one thing in advance and find it in your dreams. I said your hands because they'll always be there.

"When they begin to change shape you must move your sight away from them and pick something else, and then look at your hands again. It takes a long time to perfect this technique."

I had become so involved in writing that I had not noticed that it was getting dark. The sun had already disappeared over the horizon. The sky was cloudy and the twilight was imminent. Don Juan stood up and gave furtive glances towards the south.

"Let's go," he said. "We must walk south until the spirit of the water hole shows itself."

We walked for perhaps half an hour. The terrain changed abruptly and we came to a barren area. There was a large round hill where the chaparral had burnt. It looked like a bald head. We walked towards it. I thought that don Juan was going to climb the mild slope, but he stopped instead and remained in a very attentive position. His body seemed to have tensed as a single unit and shivered for an instant. Then he relaxed again and stood limply. I could not figure out how his body could remain erect while his muscles were so relaxed.

At that moment a very strong gust of wind jolted me. Don Juan's body turned in the direction of the wind, towards the west. He did not use his muscles to turn, or at least he did not use them the way I would use mine to turn. Don Juan's body seemed rather to have been pulled from the outside. It was as if someone else had arranged his body to face a new direction.

I kept on staring at him. He looked at me from the corner of his eye. The expression on his face was one of determination, purpose. All of his being was attentive, and I stared at him in wonder. I had never been in any situation that called for such a strange concentration.

Suddenly his body shivered as though he had been splashed by a sudden shower of cold water. He had another jolt and then he started to walk as if nothing had happened.

I followed him. We flanked the naked hills on the east side until we were at the middle part of it; he stopped there, turning to face the west.

From where we stood, the top of the hill was not so round and smooth as it had seemed to be from the distance. There was a cave, or a hole, near the top. I looked at it fixedly because don Juan was doing the same. Another strong gust of wind sent a chill up my spine. Don Juan turned towards the south and scanned the area with his eyes.

"There!" he said in a whisper and pointed to an object on the ground.

I strained my eyes to see. There was something on the ground, perhaps twenty feet away. It was light brown and as I looked at it, it shivered. I focused all my attention on it. The object was almost round and seemed to be curled; in fact, it looked like a curled-up dog.

"What is it?" I whispered to don Juan.

"I don't know," he whispered back as he peered at the object. "What does it look like to you?"

I told him that it seemed to be a dog.

"Too large for a dog," he said matter-of-factly.

I took a couple of steps towards it, but don Juan stopped me gently. I stared at it again. It was definitely some animal that was either asleep or dead.  I could almost see its head; its ears protruded like the ears of a wolf. By then I was definitely sure that it was a curled-up animal. I thought that it could have been a brown calf. I whispered that to don Juan. He answered that it was too compact to be a calf, besides its ears were pointed.

The animal shivered again and then I noticed that it was alive. I could actually see that it was breathing, yet it did not seem to breathe rhythmically. The breaths that it took were more like irregular shivers. I had a sudden realization at that moment."

"It's an animal that is dying," I whispered to don Juan.

"You're right," he whispered back. "But what kind of an animal?"

I could not make out its specific features. Don Juan took a couple of cautious steps towards it. I followed him. It was quite dark by then and we had to take two more steps in order to keep the animal in view.

"Watch out," don Juan whispered in my ear. "If it is a dying animal it may leap on us with its last strength."

The animal, whatever it was, seemed to be on its last legs; its breathing was irregular, its body shook spasmodically, but it did not change its curled-up position. At a given moment, however, a tremendous spasm actually lifted the animal off the ground. I heard an inhuman shriek and the animal stretched its legs; its claws were more than frightening, they were nauseating. The animal tumbled on its side after stretching its legs and then rolled on its back.

I heard a formidable growl and don Juan's voice shouting, "Run for your life!"

And that was exactly what I did. I scrambled towards the top of the hill with unbelievable speed and agility. When I was halfway to the top I looked back and saw don Juan standing in the same place. He signaled me to come down. I ran down the hill.

"What happened?" I asked, completely out of breath.

"I think the animal is dead," he said.

We advanced cautiously towards the animal. It was sprawled on its back. As I came closer to it I nearly yelled with fright. I realized that it was not quite dead yet. Its body was still trembling. Its legs, which were sticking up in the air, shook wildly. The animal was definitely in its last gasps.

I walked in front of don Juan. A new jolt moved the animal's body and I could see its head. I turned to don Juan, horrified. Judging by its body the animal was obviously a mammal, yet it had a beak, like a bird.

I stared at it in complete and absolute horror. My mind refused to believe it. I was dumbfounded. I could not even articulate a word. Never in my whole existence had I witnessed anything of that nature. Something inconceivable was there in front of my very eyes. I wanted don Juan to explain that incredible animal but I could only mumble to him. He was staring at me. I glanced at him and glanced at the animal, and then something in me arranged the world and I knew at once what the animal was. I walked over to it and picked it up. It was a large branch of a bush. It had been burnt, and possibly the wind had blown some burnt debris which got caught in the dry branch and thus gave the appearance of a large bulging round animal. The color of the burnt debris made it look light brown in contrast with the green vegetation.

I laughed at my idiocy and excitedly explained to don Juan that the wind blowing through it had made it look like a live animal. I thought he would be pleased with the way I had resolved the mystery, but he turned around  and began walking to the top of the hill. I followed him. He crawled inside the depression that looked like a cave. It was not a hole but a shallow dent in the sandstone.

Don Juan took some small branches and used them to scoop up the dirt that had accumulated in the bottom of the depression.

"We have to get rid of the ticks," he said.

He signaled me to sit down and told me to make my self comfortable because we were going to spend the night there.

I began to talk about the branch, but he hushed me up.

"What you've done is no triumph," he said. "You've wasted a beautiful power, a power that blew life into that dry twig."

He said that a real triumph would have been for me to let go and follow the power until the world had ceased to exist. He did not seem to be angry with me or disappointed with my performance. He repeatedly stated that this was only the beginning, that it took time to handle power. He patted me on the shoulder and joked that earlier that day I was the person who knew what was real and what was not.

I felt embarrassed. I began to apologize for my tendency of always being so sure of my ways.

"It doesn't matter," he said. "That branch was a real animal and it was alive at the moment the power touched it. Since what kept it alive was power, the trick was, like in dreaming, to sustain the sight of it. See what I mean?"

I wanted to ask something else, but he hushed me up arid said that I should remain completely silent but awake all night and that he alone was going to talk for a while.

He said that the spirit, which knew his voice, might become subdued with the sound of it and leave us alone. He explained that the idea of making oneself accessible to power had serious overtones. Power was a devastating force that could easily lead to one's death and had to be treated with great care. Becoming available to power had to be done systematically, but always with great caution.

It involved making one's presence obvious by a contained display of loud talk or any other type of noisy activity, and then it was mandatory to observe a prolonged and total silence. A controlled outburst and a controlled quietness were the mark of a warrior. He said that properly I should have sustained the sight of the live monster for a while longer. In a controlled fashion, without losing my mind or becoming deranged with excitation or fear, I should have striven to "stop the world." He pointed out that after I had run up the hill for dear life I was in a perfect state for "stopping the world." Combined in that state were fear, awe, power and death; he said that such a state would be pretty hard to repeat

I whispered in his ear, "What do you mean by 'stopping the world?'"

He gave me a ferocious look before he answered that it was a technique practiced by those who were hunting for power, a technique by virtue of which the world as we know it was made to collapse.

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