"Today, we're going to discuss a most serious topic in sorcery," don Juan said abruptly, "and
we're going to begin by talking about the energy body."
He had described the energy body to me countless times, saying that it was a conglomerate of
energy fields, the mirror image of the conglomerate of energy fields that makes up the physical
body when it is seen as energy that flows in the universe. He had said that it was smaller, more
compact, and of heavier appearance than the luminous sphere of the physical body.
Don Juan had explained that the body and the energy body were two conglomerates of energy
fields compressed together by some strange agglutinizing force. He had emphasized no end that
the force that binds that group of energy fields together was, according to the sorcerers of ancient
Mexico, the most mysterious force in the universe. His personal estimation was that it was the
pure essence of the entire cosmos, the sum total of everything there is.
He had asserted that the physical body and the energy body were the only counterbalanced
energy configurations in our realm as human beings. He accepted, therefore, no other dualism
than the one between these two. The dualism between body and mind, spirit and flesh, he
considered to be a mere concatenation of the mind, emanating from it without any energetic
foundation. Don Juan had said that by means of discipline it is possible for anyone to bring the
energy body closer to the physical body. Normally, the distance between the two is enormous.
Once the energy body is within a certain range, which varies for each of us individually, anyone,
through discipline, can forge it into the exact replica of their physical body-that is to say, a threedimensional,
solid being. Hence the sorcerers' idea of the other or the double. By the same token,
through the same processes of discipline, anyone can forge their three-dimensional, solid physical
body to be a perfect replica of their energy body-that is to say, an ethereal charge of energy
invisible to the human eye, as all energy is....."What does it mean, that it's approaching me, don Juan?" I asked.
"It means that something is going to knock the daylights out of you," he said, smiling. "A
tremendous degree of control is going to come into your life, but not your control, the energy
body's control."
"Do you mean, don Juan, that some outside force will control me?" I asked.
"There are scores of outside forces controlling you at this moment," don Juan replied. "The
control that I am referring to is something outside the domain of language. It is your control and
at the same time it is not. It cannot be classified, but it can certainly be experienced. And above
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all, it can certainly be manipulated. Remember this: It can be manipulated, to your total
advantage, of course, which again, is not your advantage, but the energy body's advantage.
However, the energy body is you, so we could go on forever like dogs biting their own tails,
trying to describe this. Language is inadequate. All these experiences are beyond syntax."........."What is it, don Juan?" I asked. "I see fleeting black shadows all over the place."
"Ah, that's the universe at large," he said, "incommensurable, nonlinear, outside the realm of
syntax. The sorcerers of ancient Mexico were the first ones to see those fleeting shadows, so they
followed them around. They saw them as you're seeing them, and they saw them as energy that
flows in the universe. And they did discover something transcendental."
He stopped talking and looked at me. His pauses were perfectly placed. He always stopped
talking when I was hanging by a thread.
"What did they discover, don Juan?" I asked.
"They discovered that we have a companion for life," he said, as clearly as he could. "We
have a predator that came from the depths of the cosmos and took over the rule of our lives.
Human beings are its prisoners. The predator is our lord and master. It has rendered us docile,
helpless. If we want to protest, it suppresses our protest. If we want to act independently, it
demands that we don't do so."......"You have arrived, by your effort alone, to what the shamans of ancient Mexico called the
topic of topics," don Juan said. "I have been beating around the bush all this time, insinuating to
you that something is holding us prisoner. Indeed we are held prisoner! This was an energetic
fact for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico."
"Why has this predator taken over in the fashion that you're describing, don Juan?" I asked.
"There must be a logical explanation."
"There is an explanation," don Juan replied, "which is the simplest explanation in the world.
They took over because we are food for them, and they squeeze us mercilessly because we are
their sustenance. Just as we rear chickens in chicken coops, gallineros, the predators rear us in
human coops, humaneros. Therefore, their food is always available to them."......."I want to appeal to your analytical mind," don Juan said. Think for a moment, and tell me
how you would explain the contradiction between the intelligence of man the engineer and the
stupidity of his systems of beliefs, or the stupidity of his contradictory behavior. Sorcerers believe
that the predators have given us our systems of beliefs, our ideas of good and evil, our social
mores. They are the ones who set up our hopes and expectations and dreams of success or failure.
They have given us covetousness, greed, and cowardice. It is the predators who make us
complacent, routinary, and egomaniacal."
"But how can they do this, don Juan?" I asked, somehow angered further by what he was
saying. "Do they whisper all that in our ears while we are asleep?"
"No, they don't do it that way. That's idiotic!" don Juan said, smiling. "They are infinitely
more efficient and organized than that. In order to keep us obedient and meek and weak, the
predators engaged themselves in a stupendous maneuver-stupendous, of course, from the point of
view of a fighting strategist. A horrendous maneuver from the point of view of those who suffer
it. They gave us their mind! Do you hear me? The predators give us their mind, which becomes
our mind. The predators' mind is baroque, contradictory, morose, filled with the fear of being
discovered any minute now.......He then made the most damaging statement he had made so far. He said that this narrow
fringe of awareness was the epicenter of self-reflection, where man was irremediably caught. By
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playing on our self-reflection, which is the only point of awareness left to us, the predators create
flares of awareness that they proceed to consume in a ruthless, predatory fashion. They give us
inane problems that force those flares of awareness to rise, and in this manner they keep us alive
in order for them to be fed with the energetic flare of our pseudoconcerns.......
"There's nothing that you and I can do about it," don Juan said in a grave, sad voice. "All we can do is discipline ourselves to the point where they will not touch us. How can you ask your fellow men to go through those rigors of discipline? They'll laugh and make fun of you, and the
more aggressive ones will beat the -shite- out of you. And not so much because they don't believe it.
Down in the depths of every human being, there's an ancestral, visceral knowledge about the
predators' existence."
"The sorcerers of ancient Mexico," he said, "saw; the predator. They called it the flyer because it leaps through the air. It is
not a pretty sight. It is a big shadow, impenetrably dark, a black shadow that jumps through the
air. Then, it lands flat on the ground. The sorcerers of ancient Mexico were quite ill at ease with
the idea of when it made its appearance on Earth. They reasoned that man must have been a
complete being at one point, with stupendous insights, feats of awareness that are mythological
legends nowadays. And then everything seems to disappear, and we have now a sedated man."
"What I'm saying is that what we have against us is not a simple predator. It is very smart, and
organized. It follows a methodical system to render us useless. Man, the magical being that he is
destined to be, is no longer magical. He's an average piece of meat. There are no more dreams for
man but the dreams of an animal who is being raised to become a piece of meat: trite,
conventional, imbecilic."
"The only alternative left for mankind," he continued, "is discipline. Discipline is the only
deterrent. But by discipline I don't mean harsh routines. I don't mean waking up every morning at
five-thirty and throwing cold water on yourself until you're blue. Sorcerers understand discipline
as the capacity to face with serenity odds that are not included in our expectations. For them,
discipline is an art: the art of facing infinity without flinching, not because they are strong and
tough but because they are filled with awe."
"Sorcerers say that discipline makes the glowing coat of awareness unpalatable to the flyer,"
don Juan said, scrutinizing my face as if to discover any signs of disbelief. "The result is that the
predators become bewildered. An inedible glowing coat of awareness is not part of their
cognition, I suppose. After being bewildered, they don't have any recourse other than refraining
from continuing their nefarious task.
"If the predators don't eat our glowing coat of awareness for a while," he went on, "it'll keep
on growing. Simplifying this matter to the extreme, I can say that sorcerers, by means of their
discipline, push the predators away long enough to allow their glowing coat of awareness to grow
beyond the level of the toes. Once it goes beyond the level of the toes, it grows back to its natural
size. The sorcerers of ancient Mexico used to say that the glowing coat of awareness is like a tree.
If it is not pruned, it grows to its natural size and volume. As awareness reaches levels higher
than the toes, tremendous maneuvers of perception become a matter of course.
"The grand trick of those sorcerers of ancient times," don Juan continued, "was to burden the
flyers' mind with discipline. They found out that if they taxed the flyers' mind with inner silence,
the foreign installation would flee, giving to any one of the practitioners involved in this
maneuver the total certainty of the mind's foreign origin. The foreign installation comes back, I
assure you, but not as strong, and a process begins in which the fleeing of the 'flyers' mind
becomes routine, until one day it flees permanently. A sad day indeed! That's the day when you
have to rely on your own devices, which are nearly zero. There's no one to tell you what to do.
"What-what-what do you mean," I heard myself say, "by taxing the flyers' mind?"
"Discipline taxes the foreign mind no end," he replied. "So, through their discipline, sorcerers
vanquish the foreign installation."
"The flyers' mind flees forever," he said, "when a sorcerer succeeds in grabbing on to the vibrating
force that holds us together as a conglomerate of energy fields. If a sorcerer maintains that pressure
long enough, the flyers' mind flees in defeat. And that's exactly what you are going to do: hold on to
the energy that binds you together."
"The flyers are an essential part of the universe," he went on, "and they must be taken as what
they really are-awesome, monstrous. They are the means by which the universe tests us.
"We are energetic probes created by the universe," he continued as if he were oblivious to my
presence, "and it's because we are possessors of energy that has awareness that we are the means
by which the universe becomes aware of itself. The flyers are the implacable challengers. They
cannot be taken as anything else. If we succeed in doing that, the universe allows us to continue."
"Don't try to disperse them with your hand," he uttered in a firm tone. "Intend them away. Set
up an energy barrier around you. Be silent, and from your silence the barrier will be constructed.
Nobody knows how this is done. It is one of those things that the old sorcerers called energetic
facts. Shut off your internal dialogue. That's all it takes.