The Active Side of Infinity (16 page)

"The sorcerers of olden times, who gave us the entire format of
sorcery,
believed that there is sadness in the universe, as a force, a condition, like
light, like
intent,
and that this
perennial force acts especially on sorcerers because they no longer have any
defensive
shields. They cannot hide behind their friends or their studies. They cannot
hide behind
love, or hatred, or happiness, or misery. They can't hide
behind anything.

"The condition of sorcerers," don Juan went on, "is that
sadness, for them, is abstract. It
doesn't come from coveting or
lacking something, or from self-importance. It doesn't come from
me.
It
comes from
infinity.
The sadness you feel for not thanking your friend
is already leaning in
that direction.

"My teacher, the nagual Julian," he went on, "was a
fabulous actor. He actually worked professionally in the theater. He had a
favorite story that he used to tell in his theater sessions. He used to push me
into terrible outbursts of anguish with it. He said that it was a story for
warriors who had everything and yet felt the sting of the universal sadness. I
always thought he was telling it for me, personally."

Don Juan then paraphrased his teacher, telling me that the story
referred to a man suffering from profound melancholy. He went to see the best
doctors of his day and every one of those doctors failed to help him. He
finally came to the office of a leading doctor, a healer of the soul.
The
doctor suggested to his patient that perhaps he could find solace, and the end
of his
melancholy, in love. The man responded that love was no
problem for him, that he was loved perhaps like no one else in the world. The
doctor's next suggestion was that maybe the patient
should
undertake a voyage and see other parts of the world. The man responded that,
without
exaggeration, he had been in every corner of the world.
The doctor recommended hobbies like the
arts, sports,
etc. The man responded to every one of his recommendations in the same terms:
He
had done that and had had no relief. The doctor
suspected that the man was possibly an incurable
liar. He couldn't
have done all those things, as he claimed. But being a good healer, the doctor
had
a final insight. "Ah!" he exclaimed. "I have the perfect
solution for you, sir. You must attend
a performance
of the greatest comedian of our day. He will delight you to the point where you
will forget every twist of your melancholy. You must attend a
performance of the Great Garrick!"

Don Juan said that the man looked at the doctor with the saddest look
you can imagine, and
said, "Doctor, if that's your
recommendation, I am a lost man. I have no cure. I am the Great
Garrick."

Don Juan defied
inner silence
as a peculiar state of being in
which thoughts were canceled out
and one could function from a level
other than that of daily awareness. He stressed that inner
silence
meant the suspension of the
internal dialogue-
the
perennial companion of thoughts-and
was therefore a state of
profound quietude.

"The old sorcerers," don Juan said, "called it
inner
silence
because it is a state in which perception doesn't depend on the
senses. What is at work during
inner silence
is another faculty
that
man has, the faculty that makes him a magical being, the very faculty that has
been curtailed, not by man himself but by some extraneous influence."

"What is this extraneous influence that curtails the magical
faculty of man?" I asked.

"That is the topic for a future explanation," don Juan
replied, "not the subject of our present
discussion,
even though it is indeed the most serious aspect of the sorcery of the shamans
of
ancient Mexico.

"Inner silence,"
he continued,
"is the stand from which everything stems in sorcery. In other words,
everything we do leads to that stand, which, like everything else in the world
of sorcerers,
doesn't reveal itself unless something gigantic shakes
us."

Don Juan said that the sorcerers of ancient Mexico devised endless ways
to shake themselves
or other sorcery practitioners at their foundations
in order to reach that coveted state of inner I
silence.
They
considered the most far-fetched acts, which may seem totally unrelated to the
pursuit
of
inner silence,
such as, for instance, jumping into waterfalls or
spending nights hanging
upside down from the top branch of a
tree, to be the key points that brought it into being.

Following the rationales of the sorcerers of ancient Mexico, don Juan stated categorically that
inner silence
was
accrued, accumulated. In my case, he struggled to guide me to construct a core
of
inner
silence
in myself, and then add to it, second by second, on every occasion
I practiced it.
He explained that the sorcerers of ancient Mexico discovered that each individual had a different
threshold of
inner
silence
in terms of time, meaning that
inner silence
must be kept by
each one of us for the length of time of our specific threshold before it can
work.

"What did those sorcerers consider the sign that
inner silence
is
working, don Juan?" I asked.

"Inner silence
works from the
moment you begin to accrue it," he replied. "What the old
sorcerers
were after was the final, dramatic, end result of reaching that individual
threshold of
silence. Some very talented practitioners need only a
few minutes of silence to reach that coveted
goal. Others,
less talented, need long periods of silence, perhaps more than one hour of complete
quietude, before they reach the desired result. The desired result is
what the old sorcerers called stopping
the world,
the moment when
everything around us ceases to be what it's always been.

"This is the moment when sorcerers return to the true nature of
man," don Juan went on. "The
old sorcerers
also called it
total freedom.
It is the moment when man the slave
becomes man the free being, capable of feats of perception that defy our linear
imagination."

Don Juan assured me that
inner silence
is the avenue that leads
to a true suspension of
judgment-to a moment when sensory data
emanating from the universe at large ceases to be interpreted by the senses; a
moment when cognition ceases to be the force which, through usage
and
repetition, decides the nature of the world.

"Sorcerers need a
breaking point
for the workings of
inner
silence to set in," don Juan said.
"The
breaking
point
is like the mortar that a mason puts between bricks. It's only when
the mortar
hardens that the loose bricks become a structure."

From the beginning of our association, don Juan had drilled into me the
value, the necessity,
of
inner silence.
I did my best
to follow his suggestions by accumulating
inner
silence second by
second.
I had no means to measure the effect of this accumulation, nor did I have any
means to
judge whether or not I had reached any threshold. I
simply aimed doggedly at accruing it, not just to please don Juan but because
the act of accumulating it had become a challenge in itself.

One day, don Juan and I were taking a leisurely stroll in the main plaza of Hermosillo. It was the early afternoon of a cloudy day. The heat was dry, and
actually very pleasant. There were lots
of people
walking around. There were stores around the plaza. I had been to Hermosillo many times, and yet 1 had never noticed the stores. I knew that they were
there, but their presence was
not something 1 had been consciously
aware of. I couldn't have made a map of that plaza if my
life
depended on it. That day, as I walked with don Juan, I was trying to locate and
identify the stores. I searched for something to use as a mnemonic device that
would stir my recollection for later use.

"As I have told you before, many times," don Juan said,
jolting me out of my concentration,
"every sorcerer I know,
male or female, sooner or later arrives at a
breaking point
in their
lives."

"Do you mean that they have a mental breakdown or something like
that?" I asked
"No, no," he said, laughing.
"Mental breakdowns are for persons who indulge in themselves.
Sorcerers
are not persons. What 1 mean is that at a given moment the continuity of their
lives has to break in order for inner
silence
to set in and become an
active part of their structures.

"It's very, very important," don Juan went on, "that you
yourself deliberately arrive at that
breaking
point,
or that you create it artificially, and
intelligently."

"What do you mean by that, don Juan?" I asked, caught in his
intriguing reasoning.

"Your
breaking point"
he said, "is to discontinue
your life as you know it. You have done
everything I
told you, dutifully and accurately. If you are talented, you never show it.
That seems to be your style. You're not slow, but you act as if you were.
You're very sure of yourself, but you act as if you were insecure. You're not
timid, and yet you act as if you were afraid of people. Everything you do
points at one single spot: your need to break all that, ruthlessly."

"But in what way, don Juan? What do you have in mind?" I
asked, genuinely frantic.

"I think everything boils down to one act," he said. "You
must leave your friends. You must
say good-bye to them, for good.
It's not possible for you to continue on the warriors' path carrying your
personal history with you, and unless you discontinue your way of life, I won't
be able to go
ahead with my instruction."

"Now, now, now, don Juan," I said, "I have to put my foot
down. You're asking too much of
me. To be frank with you, I don't think
I can do it. My friends are my family, my points of reference."

"Precisely, precisely," he remarked. "They are your
points of reference. Therefore, they have
to go.
Sorcerers have only one point of reference:
infinity."

"But how do you want me to proceed, don Juan?" I asked in a
plaintive voice. His request was
driving me up the wall.

"You must simply leave," he said matter-of-factly. "Leave
any way you can."
"But where would I go?" I
asked.

"My recommendation is that you rent a room in one of those chintzy
hotels you know," he
said. "The uglier the place, the
better. If the room has drab green carpet, and drab green drapes,
and
drab green walls, so much the better-a place comparable to that hotel I showed
you once in
Los Angeles."

I laughed nervously at my recollection of a time when I was driving with
don Juan through
the industrial side of Los Angeles, where there
were only warehouses and dilapidated hotels for
transients.
One hotel in particular attracted don Juan's attention because of its bombastic
name:
Edward the Seventh. We stopped across the street from it
for a moment to look at it.

"That hotel over there," don Juan said, pointing at it,
"is to me the true representation of life on Earth for the average person.
If you are lucky, or ruthless, you will get a room with a view of
the
street, where you will see this endless parade of human misery. If you're not
that lucky, or that
ruthless, you will get a room on the inside, with
windows to the wall of the next building. Think
of spending a
lifetime torn between those two views, envying the view of the street if you're
inside, and envying the view of the wall if you're on the outside, tired
of looking out."

Don Juan's metaphor bothered me no end, for I had taken it all in.

Now, faced with the possibility of having to rent a room in a hotel
comparable to the Edward
the Seventh, 1 didn't know what to say
or which way to go.

"What do you want me to do there, don Juan?" I asked.

"A sorcerer uses a place like that to die," he said, looking
at me with an unblinking stare.
"You have never been alone in
your life. This is the time to do it. You will stay in that room until
you die."

His request scared me, but at the same time, it made me laugh.