Version 2006.05.17

## "The Art of Dreaming" - ©1993 by Carlos Castaneda

### 11. The Tenant

There were no more dreaming practices for me, as I was accustomed to having them. The next time I saw don Juan, he put me under the guidance of two women of his party: Florinda and Zuleica- his two closest cohorts. Their instruction was not at all about the gates of dreaming but about different ways to use the energy body, and it did not last long enough to be influential. They gave me the impression that they were more interested in checking me out than in teaching me anything.

"There is nothing else I can teach you about dreaming," don Juan said when I questioned him about this state of affairs. "My time on this earth is up. But Florinda will stay. She's the one who will direct, not only you, but all my other apprentices."

"Will she continue my dreaming practices?"

"I don't know that, and neither does she. It's all up to the spirit. The real player. We are not players ourselves. We are mere pawns in its hands. Following the commands of the spirit, I have to tell you what the fourth gate of dreaming is, although I can't guide you anymore."

"What's the point of whetting my appetite? I'd rather not know."

"The spirit is not leaving that up to me or to you. I have to outline the fourth gate of dreaming for you, whether I like it or not."

Don Juan explained that, at the fourth gate of dreaming, the energy body travels to specific, concrete places and that there are three ways of using the fourth gate: one, to travel to concrete places in this world; two, to travel to concrete places out of this world; and, three, to travel to places that exist only in the intent of others. He stated that the last one is the most difficult and dangerous of the three and was, by far, the old sorcerers' predilection.

"What do you want me to do with this knowledge?" I asked.

"Nothing for the moment. File it away until you need it."

"Do you mean that I can cross the fourth gate by myself, without help?"

"Whether or not you can do that is up to the spirit."

He abruptly dropped the subject, but he did not leave me with the sensation that I should try to reach and cross the fourth gate by myself.

Don Juan then made one last appointment with me to give me, he said, a sorcerers' send-off: the concluding touch of my dreaming practices. He told me to meet him in the small town in southern Mexico where he and his sorcerer companions lived.

I arrived there in the late afternoon. Don Juan and I sat in the patio of his house on some uncomfortable wicker chairs fitted with thick, oversize pillows. Don Juan laughed and winked at me. The chairs were a gift from one of the women members of his party. The chairs had been bought for him in Phoenix, Arizona, and with great difficulty brought into Mexico. He said we simply had to sit as if nothing was bothering us, especially him.

Don Juan asked me to read to him a poem by Dylan Thomas, which he said had the most pertinent meaning for me at that point in time.

I have longed to move away

From the hissing of the spent lie

And the old terrors' continual cry

Growing more terrible as the day

Goes over the hill into the deep sea...

I have longed to move away but am afraid;

Some life, yet unspent, might explode

Out of the old lie burning on the ground,

And, crackling into the air, leave me half-blind.

Don Juan stood up and said that he was going for a walk in the plaza, in the center of town. He asked me to come along. I immediately assumed that the poem had evoked a negative response in him and he needed to dispel it.

We reached the square plaza without having said a word. We walked around it a couple of times, still not talking. There were quite a number of people, milling around the stores on the streets facing the east and north sides of the park. All the streets around the plaza were unevenly paved. The houses were massive, one-story adobe buildings with tiled roofs, whitewashed walls, and blue or brown painted doors. On a side street, a block away from the plaza, the high walls of the enormous colonial church, which looked like a Moorish mosque, loomed ominously over the roof of the only hotel in town. On the south side, there were two restaurants, which inexplicably coexisted side by side, doing good business, serving practically the same menu at the same prices.

I broke the silence and asked don Juan whether he also found it odd that both restaurants were just about the same.

"Everything is possible in this town," he replied.

The way he said it made me feel uneasy.

"Why are you so nervous?" he asked, with a serious expression. "Do you know something you're not telling me?"

"Why am I nervous? That's a laugh. I am always nervous around you, don Juan. Sometimes more so than others."

He seemed to be making a serious effort not to laugh.

"Naguals are not really the most friendly beings on earth," he said in a tone of apology. "I learned this the hard way, being pitted against my teacher, the terrible nagual Julian. His mere presence used to scare the daylights out of me. And when he used to zero in on me, I always thought my life wasn't worth a plug nickel."

"Unquestionably, don Juan, you have the same effect on me."

He laughed openly. "No, no. You are definitely exaggerating. I'm an angel in comparison."

"You may be an angel in comparison, except that I don't have the nagual Julian to compare you with."

He laughed for a moment, then became serious again.

"I don't know why, but I definitely feel scared," I explained.

"Do you feel you have reason to be scared?" he asked and stopped walking to peer at me.

His tone of voice and his raised eyebrows gave me the impression he suspected that I knew something I was not revealing to him. He was clearly expecting a disclosure on my part.

"Your insistence makes me wonder," I said. "Are you sure you are not the one who has something up his sleeve?"

"I do have something up my sleeve," he admitted and grinned. "But that's not the issue. The issue is that there is something in this town awaiting you. And you don't quite know what it is; or you do know what it is but don't dare to tell me; or you don't know anything about it at all."

"What's waiting for me here?"

Instead of answering me, don Juan briskly resumed his walking, and we kept going around the plaza in complete silence. We circled it quite a few times, looking for a place to sit. Then, a group of young women got up from a bench and left.

"For years now, I have been describing to you the aberrant practices of the sorcerers of ancient Mexico," don Juan said as he sat down on the bench and gestured for me to sit by him.

With the fervor of someone who has never said it before, he began to tell me again what he had told me many times; that those sorcerers, guided by extremely selfish interests, put all their efforts into perfecting practices that pushed them further and further away from sobriety or mental balance, and that they were finally exterminated when their complex edifices of beliefs and practices became so cumbersome that they could no longer support them.

"The sorcerers of antiquity, of course, lived and proliferated in this area," he said, watching my reaction. "Here in this town. This town was built on the actual foundations of one of their towns. Here in this area, the sorcerers of antiquity carried on all their dealings."

"Do you know this for a fact, don Juan?"

"I do, and so will you, very soon."

My mounting anxiety was forcing me to do something I detested; to focus on myself. Don Juan, sensing my frustration, egged me on.

"Very soon, we'll know whether or not you're really like the old sorcerers, or like the new ones," he said.

"You are driving me nuts with all this strange and ominous talk," I protested.

Being with don Juan for thirteen years had conditioned me, above everything else, to conceive of panic as something that was just around the corner at all times, ready to be released.

Don Juan seemed to vacillate. I noticed his furtive glances in the direction of the church. He was even distracted. When I talked to him, he was not listening. I had to repeat my question.

"Are you waiting for someone?"

"Yes, I am," he said. "Most certainly I am. I was just sensing the surroundings. You caught me in the act of scanning the area with my energy body."

"What did you sense, don Juan?"

"My energy body senses that everything is in place. The play is on tonight. You are the main protagonist. I am a character actor with a small but meaningful role. I exit in the first act."

"What in the world are you talking about?"

He did not answer me. He smiled knowingly.

"I'm preparing the ground," he said. "Warming you up, so to speak, harping on the idea that modern-day sorcerers have learned a hard lesson. They have realized that only if they remain totally detached can they have the energy to be free. Theirs is a peculiar type of detachment which is born not out of fear or indolence, but out of conviction."

Don Juan paused and stood up, stretched his arms in front of him, to his sides, and then behind him.

"Do the same," he advised me. "It relaxes the body; and you have to be very relaxed to face what's coming to you tonight." He smiled broadly.

"Either total detachment or utter indulging is coming to you tonight. It is a choice that every nagual in my line has to make." He sat down again and took a deep breath. What he had said seemed to have taken all his energy.

"I think I can understand detachment and indulging," he went on, "because I had the privilege of knowing two naguals: my benefactor, the nagual Julian, and his benefactor, the nagual Elias. I witnessed the difference between the two. The nagual Elias was detached to the point that he could put aside a gift of power. The nagual Julian was also detached, but not enough to put aside such a gift."

"Judging by the way you're talking," I said, "I would say that you are going to spring some sort of test on me tonight. Is that true?"

"I don't have the power to spring tests of any sort on you, but the spirit does." He said this with a grin, then added, "I am merely its agent."

"What is the spirit going to do to me, don Juan?"

"All I can say is that tonight you're going to get a lesson in dreaming the way lessons in dreaming used to be; but you are not going to get that lesson from me. Someone else is going to be your teacher and guide you tonight."

"Who is going to be my teacher and guide?"

"A visitor who might be a horrendous surprise to you, or no surprise at all."

"And what's the lesson in dreaming I am going to get?"

"It's a lesson about the fourth gate of dreaming. And it is in two parts. The first part I'll explain to you presently. The second part nobody can explain to you because it is something that pertains only to you. All the naguals of my line got this two-part lesson, but no two of those lessons were alike: They were tailored to fit those naguals' personal bents of character."

"Your explanation doesn't help me at all, don Juan. I am getting more and more nervous."

We remained quiet for a long moment. I was shaken up and fidgety, and did not know what else to say without actually nagging.

"As you already know, for modern-day sorcerers to perceive energy directly is a matter of personal attainment," don Juan said. "We maneuver the assemblage point through self-discipline. For the old sorcerers, the displacement of the assemblage point was a consequence of their subjugation to others, their teachers, who accomplished those displacements through dark operations and gave them to their disciples as gifts of power.

"It's possible for someone with greater energy than ours to do anything to us," he went on. For example, the nagual Julian could have turned me into anything he wanted; a fiend or a saint. But he was an impeccable nagual and let me be myself. The old sorcerers were not that impeccable; and by means of their ceaseless efforts to gain control over others, they created a situation of darkness and terror that was passed on from teacher to disciple."

He stood up and swept his gaze all around us.

"As you can see, this town isn't much," he continued, "but it has a unique fascination for the warriors of my line. Here lies the source of what we are, and the source of what we don't want to be.

"Since I am at the end of my time, I must pass on to you certain ideas; recount to you certain stories; put you in touch with certain beings right here in this town, exactly as my benefactor did with me."

Don Juan said that he was reiterating something I already was familiar with, that whatever he was and everything he knew were a legacy from his teacher, the nagual Julian. He in turn inherited everything from his teacher, the nagual Elias. The nagual Elias from the nagual Rosendo; he from the nagual Lujan; the nagual Lujan from the nagual Santisteban; and the nagual Santisteban from the nagual Sebastian.

He told me again, in a very formal tone, something he had explained to me many times before; that there were eight naguals before the nagual Sebastian, but that they were quite different. They had a different attitude toward sorcery; a different concept of it, although they were still directly related to his sorcery lineage.

"You must recollect now, and repeat to me, everything I've told you about the nagual Sebastian," he demanded.

His request seemed odd to me, but I repeated everything I had been told by him or by any of his companions about the nagual Sebastian and the mythical old sorcerer, the death defier, known to them as the tenant.

"You know that the death defier makes us gifts of power every generation," don Juan said. "And the specific nature of those gifts of power is what changed the course of our lineage."

He explained that the tenant, being a sorcerer from the old school, had learned from his teachers all the intricacies of shifting his assemblage point. Since he had perhaps thousands of years of strange life and awareness- ample time to perfect anything- he knew now how to reach and hold hundreds, if not thousands of positions of the assemblage point. His gifts were like both maps for shifting the assemblage point to specific spots, and manuals on how to immobilize it on any of those positions and thus acquire cohesion.

Don Juan was at the peak of his raconteur's form. I had never seen him more dramatic. If I had not known him better, I would have sworn that his voice had the deep and worried inflection of someone gripped by fear or preoccupation. His gestures gave me the impression of a good actor portraying nervousness and concern to perfection.

Don Juan peered at me, and in the tone and manner of someone making a painful revelation, he said that, for instance, the nagual Lujan received from the tenant a gift of fifty positions. He shook his head rhythmically, as if he were silently asking me to consider what he had just said. I kept quiet.

"Fifty positions!" he exclaimed in wonder. "For a gift, one or, at the most, two positions of the assemblage point should be more than adequate."

He shrugged his shoulders, gesturing bewilderment.

"I was told that the tenant liked the nagual Lujan immensely," he continued. "They struck up such a close friendship that they were practically inseparable. I was told that the nagual Lujan and the tenant used to stroll into the church over there every morning for early mass."

"Right here, in this town?" I asked, in total surprise.

"Right here," he replied. "Possibly they sat down on this very spot, on another bench, over a hundred years ago."

"The nagual Lujan and the tenant really walked in this plaza?" I asked again, unable to overcome my surprise.

"You bet!" he exclaimed. "I brought you here tonight because the poem you were reading to me cued me that it was time for you to meet the tenant."

Panic overtook me with the speed of wildfire. I had to breathe through my mouth for a moment.

"We have been discussing the strange accomplishments of the sorcerers of ancient times," don Juan continued. "But it's always hard when one has to talk exclusively in idealities without any firsthand knowledge. I can repeat to you from now until doomsday something that is crystal clear to me but impossible for you to understand or believe because you don't have any practical knowledge of it."

He stood up and gazed at me from head to toe.

"Let's go to church," he said. "The tenant likes the church and its surroundings. I'm positive this is the moment to go there."

Very few times in the course of my association with don Juan had I felt such apprehension. I was numb. My entire body trembled when I stood up. My stomach was tied in knots, yet I followed him without a word when he headed for the church- my knees wobbling and sagging involuntarily every time I took a step. By the time we had walked the short block from the plaza to the limestone steps of the church portico, I was about to faint. Don Juan put his arm around my shoulders to prop me up.

"There's the tenant," he said as casually as if he had just spotted an old friend.

I looked in the direction he was pointing and saw a group of five women and three men at the far end of the portico. My fast and panicked glance did not register anything unusual about those people. I couldn't even tell whether they were going into the church or coming out of it. I noticed, though, that they seemed to be congregated there accidentally. They were not together. By the time don Juan and I reached the small door cut out in the church's massive wooden portals, three women had entered the church. The three men and the other two women were walking away. I experienced a moment of confusion and looked at don Juan for directions. He pointed with a movement of his chin to the holy water font.

"We must observe the rules and cross ourselves," he whispered.

"Where's the tenant?" I asked, also in a whisper. Don Juan dipped the tips of his fingers in the basin, and made the sign of the cross. With an imperative gesture of the chin, he urged me to do the same.

"Was the tenant one of the three men who left?" I whispered nearly in his ear.

"No," he whispered back. "The tenant is one of the three women who stayed. The one in the back row."

At that moment, a woman in the back row turned her head toward me, smiled, and nodded at me.

I reached the door in one jump and ran out.

Don Juan ran after me. With incredible agility, he overtook me and held me by the arm.

"Where are you going?" he asked, his face and body contorting with laughter.

He held me firmly by the arm as I took big gulps of air. I was veritably choking. Peals of laughter came out of him, like ocean waves. I forcefully pulled away and walked toward the plaza. He followed me.

"I never imagined you were going to get so upset," he said, as new waves of laughter shook his body.

"Why didn't you tell me that the tenant is a woman?"

"That sorcerer in there is the death defier," he said solemnly. "For such a sorcerer so versed in the shifts of the assemblage point, to be a man or a woman is a matter of choice or convenience. This is the first part of the lesson in dreaming I said you were going to get. And the death defier is the mysterious visitor who's going to guide you through it."

He held his sides as laughter made him cough. I was speechless. Then a sudden fury possessed me. I was not mad at don Juan or myself or anyone in particular. It was a cold fury which made me feel as if my chest and all my neck muscles were going to explode.

"Let's go back to the church," I shouted, and I didn't recognize my own voice.

"Now, now," he said softly. "You don't have to jump into the fire just like that. Think. Deliberate. Measure things up. Cool that mind of yours. Never in your life have you been put to such a test. You need calmness now.

"I can't tell you what to do," he continued. "I can only, like any other nagual, put you in front of your challenge, after telling you, in quite oblique terms, everything that is pertinent. This is another of the nagual's maneuvers: to say everything without saying it, or to ask without asking."

I wanted to get it over with quickly. But don Juan said that a moment's pause would restore whatever was left of my self-assurance. My knees were about to give in. Solicitously, don Juan made me sit down on the curb. He sat next to me.

"The first part of the dreaming lesson in question is that maleness and femaleness are not final states but are the result of a specific act of positioning the assemblage point," he said. "And this act is, naturally, a matter of volition and training. Since it was a subject close to the old sorcerers' hearts, they are the only ones who can shed light on it."

Perhaps because it was the only rational thing to do, I began to argue with don Juan. "I can't accept or believe what you are saying," I said. I felt heat rising to my face.

"But you saw the woman," don Juan retorted. "Do you think that all of this is a trick?"

"I don't know what to think."

"That being in the church is a real woman," he said forcefully. "Why should that be so disturbing to you? The fact that she was born a man attests only to the power of the old sorcerers' machinations. This shouldn't surprise you. You have already embodied all the principles of sorcery."

My insides were about to burst with tension. In an accusing tone, don Juan said that I was just being argumentative. With forced patience but real pomposity, I explained to him the biological foundation of maleness and femaleness.

"I understand all that," he said. "And you're right in what you're saying. Your flaw is to try to make your assessments universal."

"What we're talking about are basic principles," I shouted. "They'll be pertinent to man here or in any other place in the universe."

"True. True," he said in a quiet voice. "Everything you say is true as long as our assemblage point remains on its habitual position. But the moment it is displaced beyond certain boundaries and our daily world is no longer in function, none of the principles you cherish has the total value you're talking about.

"Your mistake is to forget that the death defier has transcended those boundaries thousands upon thousands of times. It doesn't take a genius to realize that the tenant is no longer bound by the same forces that bind you now."

I told him that my quarrel, if it could be called a quarrel, was not with him, but with accepting the practical side of sorcery, which up to that moment had been so farfetched that it had never posed a real problem to me. I reiterated that, as a dreamer, it was within my experience to attest that in dreaming anything is possible. I reminded him that he himself had sponsored and cultivated this conviction together with the ultimate necessity for soundness of mind. What he was proposing as the tenant's case was not sane. It was a subject only for dreaming; certainly not for the daily world. I let him know that to me it was an abhorrent and untenable proposition.

"Why this violent reaction?" he asked with a smile.

His question caught me off guard. I felt embarrassed. "I think it threatens me at the core," I admitted. And I meant it. To think that the woman in the church was a man was somehow nauseating to me.

A thought played in my mind: perhaps the tenant is a transvestite. I queried don Juan, in earnest, about this possibility. He laughed so hard he seemed about to get ill.

"That's too mundane a possibility," he said. "Maybe your old friends would do such a thing. Your new ones are more resourceful and less masturbatory. I repeat. That being in the church is a woman. It is a she. And she has all the organs and attributes of a female." He smiled maliciously "You've always been attracted to women, haven't you? It seems that this situation has been tailored just for you."

His mirth was so intense and childlike that it was contagious. We both laughed. He, with total abandon. I, with total apprehension.

I came to a decision then. I stood up and said out loud that I had no desire to deal with the tenant in any form or shape. My choice was to bypass all this business and go back to don Juan's house and then home.

Don Juan said that my decision was perfectly all right with him, and we started back to his house. My thoughts raced wildly. Am I doing the right thing? Am I running away out of fear? Of course, I immediately rationalized my decision as the right and unavoidable one. After all, I assured myself, I was not interested in acquisitions, and the tenant's gifts were like acquiring property. Then doubt and curiosity hit me. There were so many questions I could have asked the death defier.

My heart began to pound so intensely I felt it beating against my stomach. The pounding suddenly changed into the emissary's voice. It broke its promise not to interfere and said that an incredible force was accelerating my heart beat in order to drive me back to the church; to walk toward don Juan's house was to walk toward my death.

I stopped walking and hurriedly confronted don Juan with the emissary's words. "Is this true?" I asked.

"I am afraid it is," he admitted sheepishly.

"Why didn't you tell me yourself, don Juan? Were you going to let me die because you think I am a coward?" I asked in a furious mood.

"You were not going to die just like that. Your energy body has endless resources. And it had never occurred to me to think you're a coward. I respect your decisions, and I don't give a damn about what motivates them.

"You are at the end of the road, just like me. So be a true nagual. Don't be ashamed of what you are. If you were a coward, I think you would have died of fright years ago. But if you're too afraid to meet the death defier, then die rather than face him. There is no shame in that."

"Let's go back to the church," I said, as calmly as I could.

"Now we're getting to the crux of the matter!" don Juan exclaimed. "But first, let's go back to the park and sit down on a bench and carefully consider your options. We can spare the time: Besides, it's too early for the business at hand."

We walked back to the park and immediately found an unoccupied bench and sat down.

"You have to understand that only you, yourself, can make the decision to meet or not to meet the tenant, or to accept or reject his gifts of power," don Juan said. "But your decision has to be voiced to the woman in the church, face to face and alone; otherwise it won't be valid."

Don Juan said that the tenant's gifts were extraordinary but that the price for them was tremendous. And that he himself did not approve of either, the gifts or the price.

"Before you make your real decision," don Juan continued, "you have to know all the details of our transactions with that sorcerer."

"I'd rather not hear about this anymore, don Juan," I pleaded.

"It's your duty to know," he said. "How else are you going to make up your mind?"

"Don't you think that the less I know about the tenant the better off I'll be?"

"No. This is not a matter of hiding until the danger is over. This is the moment of truth. Everything you've done and experienced in the sorcerers' world has channeled you to this spot. I didn't want to say it because I knew your energy body was going to tell you, but there is no way to get out of this appointment. Not even by dying. Do you understand?" He shook me by the shoulders. "Do you understand?" he repeated.

I understood so well that I asked him if it would be possible for him to make me change levels of awareness in order to alleviate my fear and discomfort. He nearly made me jump with the explosion of his "no".

"You must face the death defier in coldness and with ultimate premeditation," he went on. "And you can't do this by proxy."

Don Juan calmly began to repeat everything he had already told me about the death defier. As he talked, I realized that part of my confusion was the result of his use of words. He rendered 'death defier' in Spanish as el desafiante de la muerte, and 'tenant' as el inquilino, both of which automatically denote a male. But in describing the relationship between the tenant and the naguals of his line, don Juan kept on mixing the Spanish-language male and female gender denotation, creating a great confusion in me.

He said that the tenant was supposed to pay for the energy he took from the naguals of our lineage, but that whatever he paid has bound those sorcerers for generations. As payment for the energy taken from all those naguals, the woman in the church taught them exactly what to do to displace their assemblage point to some specific positions, which she herself had chosen. In other words, she bound every one of those men with a gift of power consisting of a preselected, specific position of the assemblage point and all its implications."

"What do you mean by 'all its implications', don Juan?"

"I mean the negative results of those gifts. The woman in the church knows only of indulging. There is no frugality, no temperance in that woman. For instance, she taught the nagual Julian how to arrange his assemblage point to be, just like her, a woman. Teaching this to my benefactor, who was an incurable voluptuary, was like giving booze to a drunkard."

"But isn't it up to each one of us to be responsible for what we do?"

"Yes, indeed. However, some of us have more difficulty than others in being responsible. To augment that difficulty deliberately, as that woman does, is to put too much unnecessary pressure on us."

"How do you know the woman in the church does this deliberately?"

"She has done it to every one of the naguals of my line. If we look at ourselves fairly and squarely, we have to admit that the death defier has made us, with his gifts, into a line of very indulging, dependent sorcerers."

I could not overlook his inconsistency of language usage any longer, and I complained to him.

"You have to speak about that sorcerer as either a male or a female, but not as both," I said harshly. "I'm too stiff, and your arbitrary use of gender makes me all the more uneasy."

"I am very uneasy myself," he confessed. "But the truth is that the death defier is both: male and female. I've never been able to take that sorcerer's change with grace. I was sure you would feel the same way, having seen him as a man first."

Don Juan reminded me of a time, years before, when he took me to meet the death defier and I met a man, a strange Indian who was not old but not young either and was very slightly built. I remember mostly his strange accent and his use of one odd metaphor when describing things he allegedly had seen. He said, mis ojos se pasearon, "my eyes walked on". For instance, he said, "My eyes walked on the helmets of the Spanish conquerors."

The event was so fleeting in my mind that I had always thought the meeting had lasted only a few minutes. Don Juan later told me that I had been gone with the death defier for a whole day.

"The reason I was trying to find out from you earlier whether you knew what was going on," don Juan continued, "was because I thought that years ago you had made an appointment with the death defier yourself."

"You were giving me undue credit, don Juan. In this instance, I really don't know whether I am coming or going. But what gave you the idea that I knew?"

"The death defier seemed to have taken a liking to you. And that meant to me that he might have already given you a gift of power, although you didn't remember it. Or he might have set up your appointment with him, as a woman. I even suspected she had given you precise directions."

Don Juan remarked that the death defier, being definitely a creature of ritual habits, always met the naguals of his line first as a man, as it had happened with the nagual Sebastian, and subsequently as a woman.

"Why do you call the death defier's gifts, gifts of power? And why the mystery?" I asked. "You yourself can displace your assemblage point to whatever spot you want, isn't that so?"

"They are called gifts of power because they are products of the specialized knowledge of the sorcerers of antiquity," he said. "The mystery about the gifts is that no one on this earth, with the exception of the death defier, can give us a sample of that knowledge. And, of course, I can displace my assemblage point to whatever spot I want, inside or outside man's energy shape. But what I can't do, and only the death defier can, is to know what to do with my energy body in each one of those spots in order to get total perception, total cohesion."

He explained, then, that modern-day sorcerers do not know the details of the thousands upon thousands of possible positions of the assemblage point.

"What do you mean by details?" I asked.

"Particular ways of treating the energy body in order to maintain the assemblage point fixed on specific positions," he replied.

He took himself as an example. He said that the death defier's gift of power to him had been the position of the assemblage point of a crow and the procedures to manipulate his energy body to get the total perception of a crow. Don Juan explained that total perception- total cohesion was what the old sorcerers sought at any cost, and that, in the case of his own gift of power, total perception came to him by means of a deliberate process he had to learn, step by step, as one learns to work a very complex machine.

Don Juan further explained that most of the shifts modern-day sorcerers experience are mild shifts within a thin bundle of energetic luminous filaments inside the luminous egg, a bundle called the band of man; or the purely human aspect of the universe's energy. Beyond that band, but still within the luminous egg, lies the realm of the grand shifts; or movements. When the assemblage point shifts to any spot on that area, perception is still comprehensible to us, but extremely detailed procedures are required for perception to be total.

"The inorganic beings tricked you and Carol Tiggs in your last journey by helping you two to get total cohesion on a grand shift," don Juan said. "They displaced your assemblage points to the farthest possible spot, then helped you perceive there as if you were in your daily world: A nearly impossible thing. To do that type of perceiving a sorcerer needs pragmatic knowledge, or influential friends.

"Your friends would have betrayed you in the end and left you and Carol to fend for yourselves and learn pragmatic measures in order to survive in that world. You two would have ended filled to the brim with pragmatic procedures, just like those most knowledgeable old sorcerers.

"Every grand shift has different inner workings," he continued, "which modern sorcerers could learn if they knew how to fixate the assemblage point long enough at any grand shift. Only the sorcerers of ancient times had the specific knowledge required to do this."

Don Juan went on to say that the knowledge of the specific procedures involved in shifts was not available to the eight naguals who preceded the nagual Sebastian, and that the tenant showed the nagual Sebastian how to achieve total perception on ten new positions of the assemblage point. The nagual Santisteban received seven, the nagual Lujan fifty, the nagual Rosendo six, the nagual Elias four, the nagual Julian sixteen, and he was shown two: That made a total of ninety-five specific positions of the assemblage point that his lineage knew about. He said that if I asked him whether he considered this an advantage to his lineage, he would have to say no because the weight of those gifts put them closer to the old sorcerers' mood.

"Now it's your turn to meet the tenant," he continued. "Perhaps the gifts he will give you will offset our total balance and our lineage will plunge into the darkness that finished off the old sorcerers."

"This is so horribly serious, it's sickening," I said.

"I most sincerely sympathize with you," he retorted with a serious expression. "I know it's no consolation to you if I say that this is the toughest trial of a modern nagual. To face something so old and mysterious as the tenant is not awe-inspiring but revolting. At least it was to me, and still is."

"Why do I have to continue with it, don Juan?"

"Because, without knowing it, you accepted the death defier challenge. I drew an acceptance from you in the course of your apprenticeship, in the same manner my teacher drew one from me, surreptitiously. [* surreptitiously- in a manner marked by quiet and caution and secrecy; taking pains to avoid being observed]

"I went through the same horror, only a little more brutally than you." He began to chuckle. "The nagual Julian was given to playing horrendous jokes. He told me that there was a very beautiful and passionate widow who was madly in love with me. The nagual used to take me to church often, and I had seen the woman staring at me. I thought she was a good-looking woman, and I was a horny young man. When the nagual said that she liked me, I fell for it. My awakening was very rude."

I had to fight not to laugh at don Juan's gesture of lost innocence. Then the idea of his predicament hit me, as being not funny but ghastly.

"Are you sure, don Juan, that that woman is the tenant?" I asked, hoping that perhaps it was a mistake or a bad joke.

"I am very, very sure," he said. "Besides, even if I were so dumb as to forget the tenant, my seeing can't fail me."

"Do you mean, don Juan, that the tenant has a different type of energy?"

"No, not a different type of energy, but certainly different energy features than a normal person."

"Are you absolutely sure, don Juan, that that woman is the tenant?" I insisted, driven by a strange revulsion and fear.

"That woman is the tenant!" don Juan exclaimed in a voice that admitted no doubts.

We remained quiet. I waited for the next move in the midst of a panic beyond description.

"I have already said to you that to be a natural man or a natural woman is a matter of positioning the assemblage point," don Juan said. "By natural I mean someone who was born either male or female. To a seer, the shiniest part of the assemblage point faces outward, in the case of females; and inward, in the case of males. The tenant's assemblage point was originally facing inward, but he changed it by twisting it around and making his egglike energy shape look like a shell that has curled up on itself."