Version 2006.05.29

## "The Eagle's Gift" - ©1981 by Carlos Castaneda
Part two: The Art of 'Dreaming'

### 6. Losing the Human Form

A few months later, after helping everyone to resettle in different parts of Mexico, la Gorda took up residence in Arizona. We began then to unravel the strangest and most engulfing part of our apprenticeship.

At first our relationship was rather strained. It was very difficult for me to overcome my feelings about the way we had parted in the Alameda Park. Although la Gorda knew the whereabouts of the others, she never said anything to me. She felt that it would have been superfluous [* superfluous- serving no useful purpose] for me to know about their activities.

On the surface, everything seemed to be all right between la Gorda and me. Nevertheless, I held a bitter resentment toward her for siding with the others against me. I did not express it, but it was always there. I helped her, and did everything for her as if nothing had happened; but that entered under the heading of impeccability. It was my duty. To fulfill that duty, I would have gladly gone to my death. I purposely absorbed myself in guiding and coaching her in the intricacies of modern city living. She was even learning English. Her progress was phenomenal. [* phenomenal- exceedingly or unbelievably great]

Three months went by almost unnoticed. But one day while I was in Los Angeles, I woke up in the early morning hours with an unbearable pressure in my head. It was not a headache: It was rather a very intense weight in my ears. I felt it also on my eyelids and the roof of my mouth. I knew I was feverish, but the heat was only in my head. I made a feeble attempt to sit up. The thought crossed my mind that I was having a stroke. My first reaction was to call for help, but somehow I calmed down and tried to let go of my fear.

After a while, the pressure in my head began to diminish, but it also began to shift to my throat. I gasped for air- gagging and coughing for some time. The pressure moved slowly to my chest, then to my stomach, to my groin, to my legs, and to my feet before it finally left my body.

Whatever had happened to me had taken about two hours to unfold. During the course of those two grueling hours, it was as if something inside my body was actually moving downward; moving out of me. I fancied it to be rolling up like a carpet. Another image that occurred to me was of a blob moving inside the cavity of my body.

I discarded that image in favor of the first because the feeling was of something being coiled within itself. Just like a carpet being rolled up, it became heavier and thus more painful as it went down. The two areas where the pain became excruciating were my knees and my feet, especially my right foot which remained hot for thirty-five minutes after all the pain and pressure had vanished.

La Gorda, upon hearing my report, said that this time for certain I had lost my human form; that I had dropped all my shields, or most of them. She was right. Without knowing how or even realizing what had happened, I found myself in a most unfamiliar state. I felt detached; unbiased.

It did not matter what la Gorda had done to me. It was not that I had forgiven her for her reproachable behavior with me. It was as if there had never been any betrayal. There was no overt or covert rancor left in me for la Gorda, or for anyone else.

What I felt was not a willed indifference, nor negligence to act. Neither was it alienation, nor even the desire to be alone. Rather, it was an alien feeling of aloofness; a capability of immersing myself in the moment, and of having no thoughts whatever about anything else.

People's actions no longer affected me because I had no more expectations of any kind. A strange peace became the ruling force in my life. I felt I had somehow adopted one of the concepts of a warrior's life: detachment.

La Gorda said that I had done more than adopt it: I had actually embodied it.

Don Juan and I had had long discussions on the possibility that someday I would do just that. He had said that detachment did not automatically mean wisdom, but that it was, nonetheless, an advantage because it allowed the warrior to pause momentarily to reassess situations; to reconsider positions. In order to use that extra moment consistently and correctly, however, he said that a warrior had to struggle unyieldingly for a lifetime.

I had despaired that I would never experience that feeling. As far as I could determine, there was no way to improvise it. It had been useless for me to think about its benefits, or to reason out the possibilities of its advent. [* advent- an arrival that has been awaited; especially of something momentous]

During the years I had known don Juan, I certainly experienced a steady lessening of personal ties with the world; but that had taken place on an intellectual plane. In my everyday life, I was unchanged until the moment I lost my human form.

I speculated with la Gorda that the concept of losing the human form refers to a bodily condition that besets the apprentice upon his reaching a certain threshold in the course of training.

Be that as it may, the end result of losing the human form for la Gorda and myself, oddly enough, was not only the sought-after and coveted sense of detachment, but also the fulfillment of our elusive task of remembering.

And again in this case, the intellect played a minimal part.

One night la Gorda and I were discussing a movie. She had gone to see an X-rated movie, and I was eager to hear her description of it. She had not liked it at all. She maintained that it was a weakening experience because being a warrior entailed leading an austere [* austere- severely simple, stern, or strict in bearing or demeanour] life in total celibacy, [* celibacy- abstaining from sexual relations] like the Nagual Juan Matus.

I told her that I knew for a fact that don Juan liked women, and was not celibate; and that I found that delightful.

"You're insane!" she exclaimed with a tinge of amusement in her voice. "The Nagual was a perfect warrior. He was not caught up in any webs of sensuality."

She wanted to know why I thought don Juan was not celibate. I told her about an incident that had taken place in Arizona at the beginning of my apprenticeship.

I had been resting at don Juan's house one day after an exhausting hike. Don Juan appeared to be strangely nervous. He kept getting up to look out the door. He seemed to be waiting for someone.

Then, quite abruptly, he told me that a car had just come around the bend in the road, and was heading for the house. He said that it was a girl- a friend of his who was bringing him some blankets. I had never seen don Juan embarrassed, and I felt terribly sad to see him so upset that he did not know what to do.

I thought that he did not want me to meet the girl. I suggested that I might hide, but there was no place to conceal myself in the room. So he made me lie down on the floor, and covered me with a straw mat. I heard the sound of a car motor being turned off, and then through the slits in the mat I saw a girl standing at the door. She was tall, slender, and very young. I thought she was beautiful. Don Juan was saying something to her in a low, intimate voice. Then he turned and pointed at me.

"Carlos is hiding under the mat," he said to the girl in a loud clear voice. "Say hello to him."

The girl waved at me, and said hello with the friendliest smile. I felt stupid and angry at don Juan for putting me in that embarrassing position. It seemed obvious to me that he was trying to alleviate his nervousness; or even worse, that he was showing off in front of me.

When the girl left, I angrily asked for an explanation. He candidly said that he had gotten carried away because my feet were showing, and he did not know what else to do. When I heard this, his whole maneuver became clear. He had been showing off his young friend to me. I could not possibly have had my feet uncovered because they were tucked under my thighs. I laughed knowingly, and don Juan seemed obligated to explain that he liked women, especially that girl.

I never forgot the incident. Don Juan never discussed it, and whenever I brought it up, he always made me stop. I wondered almost obsessively about that young woman. I had hopes that someday she might look me up after reading my books.

La Gorda had become very agitated. She was pacing back and forth in the room while I talked. She was about to weep. I imagined all sorts of intricate networks of relationships that might be at stake. I thought la Gorda was possessive, and was reacting like a woman threatened by another woman.

"Are you jealous, Gorda:" I asked.

"Don't be stupid," she said angrily. "I'm a formless warrior. I've no envy or jealousy left in me."

I brought up something that the Genaros had told me; that la Gorda was the Nagual's woman. Her voice became barely audible.

"I think I was," she said, and with a vague look she sat on her bed. "I have a feeling that I was. I don't know how though. In this life, the Nagual Juan Matus was to me what he was to you. He was not a man. He was the Nagual. He had no interest in sex."

I assured her that I had heard don Juan express his liking for that girl.

"Did he say that he had sex with her?" la Gorda asked.

"No, he didn't, but it was obvious from the way he talked," I said.

"You would like the Nagual to be like you, wouldn't you?" she asked with a sneer. "The Nagual was an impeccable warrior."

I thought I was right, and did not need to review my opinion. Just to humor la Gorda, I said that perhaps the young woman was, if not his mistress, don Juan's apprentice.

There was a long pause. What I had said had a disturbing effect on me. Until that moment I had never thought about such a possibility. I had been locked into a prejudgment allowing myself no room for revision.

La Gorda asked me to describe the young woman. I could not do it. I had not really looked at her features. I had been too annoyed; too embarrassed to examine her in detail. The young woman also seemed to have been struck by the awkwardness of the situation, and she had hurried out of the house.

La Gorda said that, without any logical reason, she felt that the young woman was a key figure in the Nagual's life. Her statement led us to talking about don Juan's known friends. We struggled for hours trying to piece together all the information we had about his associates. I told her about the different times don Juan had taken me to participate in peyote ceremonies. I described everyone who was there. She recognized none of them. I realized then that I might know more people associated with don Juan than she did.

But something I had said triggered her recollection of a time when she had seen a young woman driving the Nagual and Genaro in a small white car. The woman let the two men off at the door of la Gorda's house, and she stared at la Gorda before she drove away. La Gorda thought that the young woman was someone who had given the Nagual and Genaro a lift. I remembered then that I had gotten up from under the straw mat at don Juan's house just in time to see a white Volkswagen driving away.

I mentioned one more incident involving another of don Juan's friends; a man who had given me some peyote plants once in the market of a city in northern Mexico. He had also obsessed me for years. His name was Vicente.

Upon hearing that name, la Gorda's body reacted as if a nerve had been touched. Her voice became shrill. She asked me to repeat the name, and describe the man. Again I could not come up with any description. I had seen the man only once for a few minutes more than ten years before.

La Gorda and I went through a period of almost being angry; not at one another, but at whatever was keeping us imprisoned.

The final incident that precipitated our full-fledged remembering came one day when I had a cold, and was running a high fever. I had stayed in bed, dozing off and on, with thoughts rambling aimlessly in my mind. The melody of an old Mexican song had been running through my head all day.

At one moment, I was dreaming that someone was playing it on a guitar. I complained about the monotony of it, and whoever I was protesting to, thrust the guitar toward my stomach. I jumped back to avoid being hit, and bumped my head on the wall: I woke up then.

It had not been a vivid dream. Only the tune had been haunting. I could not dispel the sound of the guitar. It kept running through my mind. I remained half awake listening to the tune. It seemed as if I were entering into a state of dreaming.

Then, a complete and detailed dreaming scene appeared in front of my eyes. In the scene there was a young woman sitting next to me. I could distinguish every detail of her features. I did not know who she was, but seeing her shocked me.

I was fully awake in one instant. The anxiety that her face created in me was so intense that I got up, and quite automatically I began to pace back and forth. I was perspiring profusely and I dreaded to leave my room. I could not call la Gorda for help either. She had gone back to Mexico for a few days to see Josefina. I tied a sheet around my waist to brace my midsection. It helped to subdue some ripples of nervous energy that went through me.

As I paced back and forth, the image in my mind began to dissolve; not into peaceful oblivion as I would have liked, but into an intricate full-fledged memory.

I remembered that one time I had been sitting on some sacks of wheat or barley stacked up in a grain bin. The young woman was singing the old Mexican song that had been running in my mind while she played a guitar. When I joked about her playing, she nudged me in the ribs with the butt of the guitar. There had been other people sitting with me; la Gorda and two men. I knew those men very well, but I still could not remember who the young woman was. I tried but it seemed hopeless.

I lay down again drenched in a cold sweat. I wanted to rest for a moment before I got out of my soaked pajamas. As I rested my head on a high pillow, my memory seemed to clear up further, and then I knew who the guitar player was. She was the Nagual woman; the most important being on earth for la Gorda and myself. She was the feminine analogue [* analogue- somrthing equivalent in some respects, though otherwise dissimilar] of the Nagual man; not his wife or his woman, but his counterpart. She had the serenity and command of a true leader. Being a woman, she nurtured us.

I did not dare to push my memory too far. I knew intuitively that I did not have the strength to withstand the full recollection. I stopped on the level of abstract feelings. I knew that she was the embodiment of the purest, most unbiased, and profound affection. It would be most appropriate to say that la Gorda and I loved the Nagual woman more than life itself. What on earth had happened to us to have forgotten her?

That night lying on my bed I became so agitated that I feared for my very life. I began to chant some words which became a guiding force to me. Only when I had calmed down did I remember that the words I had said to myself over and over were also a memory that had come back to me that night; the memory of a formula; an incantation to pull me through an upheaval such as the one I had experienced.

I am already given to the power that rules my fate.

And I cling to nothing, so I will have nothing to defend.

I have no thoughts, so I will see.

I fear nothing, so I will remember myself.

The formula had one more line, which at the time was incomprehensible to me.

Detached and at ease, I will dart past the Eagle to be free.

Being sick and feverish may have served as a cushion of sorts. It may have been enough to deviate the main impact of what I had done; or rather, of what had come upon me since I had not intentionally done anything.

Up to that night, if my inventory of experience had been examined, I could have accounted for the continuity of my existence. The nebulous [* nebulous- lacking definite form or limits] memories I had of la Gorda, or the presentiment [* presentiment- a feeling of evil to come] of having lived in that house in the mountains of central Mexico were in a way real threats to the idea of my continuity.

But those memories were nothing in comparison to remembering the Nagual woman; not so much because of the emotions that the memory itself brought back, but because I had forgotten her; and not as one forgets a name or a tune.

There had been nothing about her in my mind prior to that moment of revelation. Nothing! And then something had come upon me, or something had fallen off me, and I found myself remembering her; a most important being, who from the point of view of my experiential self prior to that moment, I had never met.

I had to wait two more days for la Gorda's return before I could tell her about my recollection. The moment I described the Nagual woman, la Gorda remembered her. La Gorda's awareness was somehow dependent on mine.

"The girl I saw in the white car was the Nagual woman!" la Gorda exclaimed. "She came back to me and I couldn't remember her."

I heard the words and understood their meaning, but it took a long time for my mind to focus on what she had said. My attention wavered. It was as if a light was actually placed in front of my eyes, and was being dimmed. I had the notion that if I did not stop the dimming, I would die. Suddenly I felt a convulsion and I knew that I had put together two pieces of myself that had become separated. I realized that the young woman I had seen at don Juan's house was the Nagual woman.

In that moment of emotional upheaval, la Gorda was no help to me. Her mood was contagious. She was weeping without restraint. The emotional shock of remembering the Nagual woman had been traumatic to her.

"How could I have forgotten her?" la Gorda sighed.

I caught a glint of suspicion in her eyes as she faced me.

"You had no idea that she existed, did you?" she asked.

Under any other conditions, I would have thought that her question was impertinent and insulting; but I was wondering the same about her. It had occurred to me that she might have known more than she was revealing.

"No. I didn't," I said. "But how about you, Gorda? Did you know that she existed?"

Her face had such a look of innocence and perplexity that my doubts were dispelled.

"No," she replied. "Not until today. I know now for a fact that I used to sit with her and the Nagual Juan Matus on that bench in the plaza in Oaxaca. I always remembered having done that, and I remembered her features; but I thought I had dreamed it all. I knew everything, and yet I didn't. But why did I think it was a dream?"

I had a moment of panic. Then I had the perfect physical certainty that as she spoke a channel opened somewhere in my body. Suddenly I knew that I also used to sit on that bench with don Juan and the Nagual woman.

I remembered then a sensation I had experienced on every one of those occasions. It was a sense of physical contentment, happiness, and plenitude that would be impossible to imagine. I thought that don Juan and the Nagual woman were perfect beings, and that to be in their company was indeed my great fortune.

Sitting on that bench, flanked by the most exquisite beings on earth, I experienced perhaps the epitome of my human sentiments. One time I told don Juan, and I meant it, that I wanted to die then so as to keep that feeling pure, intact, and free from disruption.

I told la Gorda about my memory. She said that she understood what I meant. We were quiet for a moment and then the thrust of our remembering swayed us dangerously toward sadness; even despair. I had to exert the most extraordinary control over my emotions not to weep. La Gorda was sobbing, covering her face with her forearm.

After a while we became more calm. La Gorda stared into my eyes. I knew what she was thinking. It was as if I could read her questions in her eyes. They were the same questions that had obsessed me for days. Who was the Nagual woman? Where had we met her? Where did she fit? Did the others know her too?

I was just about to voice my questions when la Gorda interrupted me.

"I really don't know," she said quickly, beating me to the question. "I was counting on you to tell me. I don't know why, but I feel that you can tell me what's what."

She was counting on me, and I was counting on her. We laughed at the irony of our situation. I asked her to tell me everything she remembered about the Nagual woman. La Gorda made efforts to say something two or three times, but seemed to be unable to organize her thoughts.

"I really don't know where to start," she said. "I only know that I loved her."

I told her that I had the same feeling. An unearthly sadness gripped me every time I thought of the Nagual woman. As I was talking, my body began to shake.

"You and I loved her," la Gorda said. "I don't know why I'm saying this, but I know that she owned us."

I prodded her to explain that statement. She could not determine why she had said it. She was talking nervously; elaborating on her feelings. I could no longer pay attention to her. I felt a fluttering in my solar plexus. A vague memory of the Nagual woman started to form. I urged la Gorda to keep on talking; to repeat herself if she had nothing else to say, but not to stop. The sound of her voice seemed to act for me as a conduit into another dimension; another kind of time.

It was as if blood was rushing through my body with an unusual pressure. I felt a prickling all over, and then I had an odd bodily memory. I knew in my body that the Nagual woman was the being who made the Nagual complete. She brought to the Nagual peace, plenitude, and a sense of being protected and delivered.

I told la Gorda that I had the insight that the Nagual woman was don Juan's partner. La Gorda looked at me aghast. She slowly shook her head from side to side.

"She had nothing to do with the Nagual Juan Matus, you idiot," she said with a tone of ultimate authority. "She was for you. That's why you and I belonged to her."

La Gorda and I stared into each other's eyes. I was certain that she was involuntarily voicing thoughts which rationally did not mean anything to her.

"What do you mean, she was for me, Gorda?" I asked after a long silence.

"She was your partner," she said. "You two were a team; and I was her ward; and she entrusted you to deliver me to her someday."

I begged la Gorda to tell me all she knew, but she did not seem to know anything else. I felt exhausted.

"Where did she go?" la Gorda said suddenly. "I just can't figure that out. She was with you, not with the Nagual. She should be here with us now."

She had then another attack of disbelief and fear. She accused me of hiding the Nagual woman in Los Angeles. I tried to ease her apprehensions. I surprised myself by talking to la Gorda as if she were a child.

She listened to me with all the outward signs of complete attention. Her eyes, however, were vacant; out of focus. It occurred to me then that she was using the sound of my voice just as I had used hers; as a conduit. I knew that she was also aware of it.

I kept on talking until I had run out of things to say within the bounds of our topic. Something else took place then, and I found myself half listening to the sound of my own voice. I was talking to la Gorda without any volition on my part. Words that seemed to have been bottled up inside me, now free, reached indescribable levels of absurdity. I talked and talked until something made me stop.

I had remembered that don Juan told the Nagual woman and me while we were on that bench in Oaxaca about a particular human being whose presence had synthesized for him all that he could aspire or expect from human companionship. It was a woman who had been for him what the Nagual woman was for me; a partner; a counterpart. She left him, just as the Nagual woman left me. His feelings for her were unchanged, and were rekindled by the melancholy that certain poems evoked in him.

I also remembered that it was the Nagual woman who used to supply me with books of poetry. She kept stacks of them in the trunk of her car. It was at her instigation [* instigation- the verbal act of urging on] that I read poems to don Juan.

Suddenly the physical memory of the Nagual woman sitting with me on that bench was so clear that I took an involuntary gasp of air. My chest swelled. An oppressive sense of loss- greater than any feeling I had ever had- took possession of me. I bent over with a ripping pain in my right shoulder blade. There was something else I knew; a memory which part of me did not want to release.

I became involved with whatever was left of my shield of intellectuality as the only means to recover my equanimity. I said to myself over and over that la Gorda and I had been operating all along on two absolutely different planes. She remembered a great deal more than I did, but she was not inquisitive. She had not been trained to ask questions of others or of herself.

But then the thought struck me that I was no better off. I was still as sloppy as don Juan had once said I was. I had never forgotten reading poetry to don Juan, and yet it had never occurred to me to examine the fact that I had never owned a book of Spanish poetry, nor did I ever carry one in my car.

La Gorda brought me out of my ruminations. [* ruminations- calm, lengthy, and intense mental considerations] She was almost hysterical. She shouted that she had just figured out that the Nagual woman had to be somewhere very near us. Just as we had been left to find one another, the Nagual woman had been left to find us.

The force of her reasoning almost convinced me. Something in me knew, nevertheless, that it was not so. In fact, that was the memory that was inside me which I did not dare to bring out.

I wanted to start a debate with la Gorda, but there was no reason. My shield of intellect and words was insufficient to absorb the impact of remembering the Nagual woman. Its effect was staggering to me; more devastating than even the fear of dying.

"The Nagual woman is shipwrecked somewhere," la Gorda said meekly. "She's probably marooned, and we're doing nothing to help her."

"No! No!" I yelled. "She's not here any more." I did not exactly know why I had said that, yet I knew that it was true. We sank for a moment into depths of melancholy that would be impossible to fathom rationally. For the first time in the memory of the me I know, I felt a true, boundless sadness; a dreadful incompleteness. There was a wound somewhere in me that had been opened again.

This time I could not take refuge- as I had done so many times in the past- behind a veil of mystery and not knowing. Not to know had been bliss to me. For a moment, I was dangerously sliding into despondency. La Gorda stopped me.

"A warrior is someone who seeks freedom," she said in my ear. "Sadness is not freedom. We must snap out of it."

Having a sense of detachment, as don Juan had said, entails having a moment's pause to reassess situations. At the depth of my sadness, I understood what he meant. I had the detachment. It was up to me to strive to use that pause correctly.

I could not be sure whether or not my volition [* volition- he capability of conscious choice and intention] played a role, but all of a sudden my sadness vanished. It was as if it had never existed. The speed of my change of mood, and its thoroughness, alarmed me.

"Now you are where I am!" la Gorda exclaimed when I described what had happened. "After all these years, I still haven't learned how to handle formlessness. I shift helplessly from one feeling to another in one instant. Because of my formlessness, I could help the little sisters, but I was also at their mercy. Any one of them was strong enough to make me sway from one extreme to the other.

"The problem was that I lost my human form before you did. If you and I had lost it together, we could have helped each other. As it was, I went up and down faster than I care to remember."

I had to admit that her claim of being formless had always seemed spurious [* spurious- plausible but false; intended to deceive] to me. In my understanding, losing the human form included a necessary concomitant; [* concomitant- an event or situation that happens at the same time as, or in connection with another] namely, a consistency of character which was, in light of her emotional ups and downs, beyond her reach.

On account of that, I had judged her harshly and unjustly. Having lost my human form, I was now in a position to understand that formlessness is, if anything, a detriment to sobriety and levelheadedness. There is no automatic emotional strength involved in it. An aspect of being detached, the capacity to become immersed in whatever one is doing, naturally extends to everything one does, including being inconsistent, and outright petty. The advantage of being formless is that it allows us a moment's pause, providing that we have the self-discipline and courage to utilize it.

At last la Gorda's past behavior became comprehensible to me. She had been formless for years, but without the self-discipline required. Thus she had been at the mercy of drastic shifts of mood; and incredible discrepancies between her actions and her purposes.

After our initial recollection of the Nagual woman, la Gorda and I summoned all our forces and tried for days to elicit more memories, but there seemed to be none. I myself was back where I had been before I had begun to remember. I intuited that there should be a great deal more somehow buried in me, but I could not get to it. My mind was void of even the vaguest inkling of any other memories.

La Gorda and I went through a period of tremendous confusion and doubt. In our case, being formless meant to be ravaged by the worst distrust imaginable. We felt that we were guinea pigs in the hands of don Juan; a being supposedly familiar to us, but about whom in reality we knew nothing.

We fueled each other with doubts and fears. The most serious issue was of course the Nagual woman. When we would focus our attention on her, our memory of her became so keen that it was past comprehension that we could have forgotten her.

This would give rise over and over to speculations of what don Juan had really done to us. These conjectures led very easily to the feeling that we had been used. We became enraged by the unavoidable conclusion that he had manipulated us, and had rendered us helpless and unknown to ourselves.

When our rage was exhausted, fear began to loom over us- for we were faced with the awesome possibility that don Juan might have done still more deleterious [* deleterious- harmful to living things] things to us.