Version 2006.05.17

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

### 5. The World of Inorganic Beings

Faithful to my agreement to wait for don Juan to initiate any comment on dreaming, only in cases of necessity did I ask him for advice. Ordinarily, though, he not only seemed reluctant to touch the subject but was somehow displeased with me about it. In my estimation, a confirmation of his disapproval was the fact that whenever we talked about my dreaming activities, he always minimized the import of anything I had accomplished.

For me, at that time, the animate existence of inorganic beings had become the most crucial aspect of my dreaming practices. After encountering them in my dreams, and especially after my bout with them in the desert around don Juan's house, I should have been more willing to take their existence as a serious affair. But all these events had quite the opposite effect on me. I became adamant and doggedly denied the possibility that they existed.

Then I had a change of heart and decided to conduct an objective inquiry about them. The method of this inquiry required that I first compile a record of everything that transpired in my dreaming sessions, then use that record as a matrix to find out if my dreaming proved or disproved anything about the inorganic beings. I actually wrote down hundreds of pages of meticulous but meaningless details when it should have been clear to me that the evidence of their existence had been gathered almost as soon as I had started my inquiry.

It took but a few sessions for me to discover that what I thought to be don Juan's casual recommendation- to suspend judgment and let the inorganic beings come to me- was, in fact, the very procedure used by the sorcerers of antiquity to attract them. By leaving me to find it out for myself, don Juan was simply following his sorcery training. He had remarked time and time again that it is very difficult to make the self give up its strongholds except through practice. One of the self's strongest lines of defense is indeed our rationality, and this is not only the most durable line of defense when it comes to sorcery actions and explanations but also the most threatened. Don Juan believed that the existence of inorganic beings is a foremost assailant of our rationality.

In my dreaming practices, I had an established course, which I followed every single day without deviation. I aimed first at observing every conceivable item of my dreams, then at changing dreams. I can say in sincerity that I observed universes of detail in dreams upon dreams.

As a matter of course, at one given moment my dreaming attention began to wane, and my dreaming sessions ended: either in my falling asleep and having regular dreams in which I had no dreaming attention whatsoever; or in my waking up and not being able to sleep at all.

From time to time, however, as don Juan had described it, a current of foreign energy, a scout, as he called it, was injected into my dreams. Being forewarned helped me to adjust my dreaming attention and be on the alert. The first time I noticed foreign energy, I was dreaming about shopping in a department store. I was going from counter to counter looking for antiques. I finally found one. The incongruence of looking for antiques in a department store was so obvious that it made me chuckle, but since I had found one, I forgot about that incongruence. The antique was the handle of a walking stick. The salesman told me that it was made of iridium, which he called one of the hardest substances in the world. It was a carved piece: the head and shoulders of a monkey. It looked like jade to me. The salesman was insulted when I insinuated that it might be jade, and to prove his point he hurled the object, with all his strength, against the cement floor. It did not break but bounced like a ball and then sailed away, spinning like a Frisbee. I followed it. It disappeared behind some trees. I ran to look for it, and I found it, stuck on the ground. It had been transformed into an extraordinarily beautiful, deep green and black, full-length walking stick.

I coveted it. I grabbed it and struggled to pull it out of the ground before anyone else came along. But, hard as I tried, I could not make it budge. I was afraid I would break it if I attempted to pry it loose by shaking it back and forth. So I began to dig around it with my bare hands. As I kept on digging, it kept on melting, until only a puddle of green water was left in its place. I stared at the water; it suddenly seemed to explode. It turned into a white bubble, and then it was gone. My dream continued into other images and details, which were not outstanding, although they were crystal clear.

When I told don Juan about this dream, he said, "You isolated a scout. Scouts are more numerous when our dreams are average, normal dreams. The dreams of dreamers are strangely free from scouts. When they appear, they are identifiable by the strangeness and incongruity surrounding them."

"Incongruity, in what manner, don Juan?"

"Their presence doesn't make any sense."

"Very few things make sense in a dream."

"Only in average dreams are things nonsensical. I would say that this is so because more scouts are injected then, because average people are subject to a greater barrage from the unknown."

"Do you know why is that so, don Juan?"

"In my opinion, what takes place is a balance of forces. Average people have stupendously strong barriers to protect themselves against those onslaughts. Barriers such as worries about the self. The stronger the barrier, the greater the attack.

"Dreamers, by contrast, have fewer barriers and fewer scouts in their dreams. It seems that in dreamers' dreams nonsensical things disappear, perhaps to ensure that dreamers catch the presence of scouts."

Don Juan advised me to pay close attention and remember every single possible detail of the dream I had had. He even made me repeat what I had told him.

"You baffle me," I said. "You don't want to hear anything about my dreaming, and then you do. Is there any order to your refusals and acceptances?"

"You bet there is order behind all this," he said. "Chances are, you'll do the same someday to another dreamer. Some items are of key importance because they are associated with the spirit. Others are entirely unimportant because they are associated with our indulging personality."

"The first scout you isolate will always be present; it could be in any form, even iridium. By the way, what's iridium?"

"I don't really know," I said in total sincerity.

"There you are! And what will you say if it turns out to be one of the strongest substances in the world?"

Don Juan's eyes shone with delight while I nervously laughed at that absurd possibility- which I later learned was true.

I began to notice from then on the presence of incongruous items in my dreams. Once I had accepted don Juan's categorization of foreign energy in dreams, I totally agreed with him that incongruous items were foreign invaders of my dreams. Upon isolating them, my dreaming attention always focused on them with an intensity that did not occur under any other circumstances.

Another thing I noticed was that every time foreign energy invaded my dreams, my dreaming attention had to work hard to turn it into a known object. The handicap of my dreaming attention was its inability to accomplish fully such a transformation. The end result was a bastardized item, nearly unknown to me. The foreign energy then dissipated quite easily, the bastardized item vanished, turning into a blob of light, which was quickly absorbed by other pressing details of my dreams.

When I asked don Juan to comment on what was happening to me, he said, "At this point in your dreaming, scouts are reconnoiterers sent by the inorganic realm. They are very fast, meaning that they don't stay long."

"Why do you say that they are reconnoiterers, don Juan?"

"They come in search of potential awareness. They have consciousness and purpose, although it is incomprehensible to our minds, comparable perhaps to the consciousness and purpose of trees. The inner speed of trees and inorganic beings is incomprehensible to us because it is infinitely slower than ours."

"What makes you say that, don Juan?"

"Both trees and inorganic beings last longer than we do. They are made to stay put. They are immobile, yet they make everything move around them."

"Do you mean, don Juan, that inorganic beings are stationary like trees?"

"Certainly. What you see in dreaming as bright or dark sticks are their projections. What you hear as the voice of the dreaming emissary is equally their projection. And so are their scouts."

For some unfathomable reason, I was overwhelmed by these statements. I was suddenly filled with anxiety. I asked don Juan if trees also had projections like that."

"They do," he said. "Their projections are, however, even less friendly to us than those of the inorganic beings. Dreamers never seek them, unless they are in a state of profound amenity with trees, which is a very difficult state to attain. We have no friends on this earth, you know." He chuckled and added, "It's no mystery why."

"It may not be a mystery to you, don Juan, but it certainly is to me."

"We are destructive. We have antagonized every living being on this earth. That's why we have no friends."

I felt so ill at ease that I wanted to stop the conversation altogether. But a compulsive urge made me return to the subject of inorganic beings.

"What do you think I should do to follow the scouts?" I asked.

"Why in the world would you want to follow them?"

"I am conducting an objective inquiry about inorganic beings."

"You're pulling my leg, aren't you? I thought you were unmovable on your stand that inorganic beings don't exist."

His scoffing tone and cackling laughter told me what his thoughts and feelings about my objective inquiry were.

"I've changed my mind, don Juan. Now I want to explore all those possibilities."

"Remember, the realm of inorganic beings was the old sorcerers' field. To get there, they tenaciously fixed their dreaming attention on the items of their dreams. In that fashion, they were able to isolate the scouts. And when they had the scouts in focus, they shouted their intent to follow them. The instant the old sorcerers voiced that intent, off they went, pulled by that foreign energy."

"Is it that simple, don Juan?"

He did not answer. He just laughed at me as if daring me to do it.

At home, I tired of searching for don Juan's true meanings. I was thoroughly unwilling to consider that he might have described an actual procedure. After running out of ideas and patience, one day I let my guard down. In a dream I was having then, I was baffled by a fish that had suddenly jumped out of a pond I was walking by. The fish twitched by my feet, then flew like a colored bird, perching on a branch, still being a fish. The scene was so outlandish that my dreaming attention was galvanized. I instantly knew it was a scout. A second later, when the fish-bird turned into a point of light, I shouted my intent to follow it, and, just as don Juan had said, off I went into another world.

I flew through a seemingly dark tunnel as if I were a weightless flying insect. The sensation of a tunnel ended abruptly. It was exactly as if I had been spewed out of a tube and the impulse had left me smack against an immense physical mass. I was almost touching it. I could not see the end of it in any direction I looked. The entire thing reminded me so much of science fiction movies that I was utterly convinced I was constructing the view of that mass myself, as one constructs a dream. Why not? The thought I had was that, after all, I was asleep, dreaming.

I settled down to observe the details of my dream. What I was viewing looked very much like a gigantic sponge. It was porous and cavernous. I could not feel its texture, but it looked rough and fibrous. It was dark brownish in color. Then I had a momentary jolt of doubt about that silent mass being just a dream. What I was facing did not change shape. It did not move either. As I looked at it fixedly, I had the complete impression of something real but stationary. It was planted somewhere, and it had such a powerful attraction that I was incapable of deviating my dreaming attention to examine anything else, including myself. Some strange force, which I had never before encountered in my dreaming, had me riveted down.

Then I clearly felt that the mass released my dreaming attention. All my awareness focused on the scout that had taken me there. It looked like a firefly in the darkness, hovering over me, by my side. In its realm, it was a blob of sheer energy. I was able to see its energetic sizzling. It seemed to be conscious of me. Suddenly, it lurched onto me and tugged me or prodded me. I did not feel its touch, yet I knew it was touching me. That sensation was startling and new, it was as if a part of me that was not there had been electrified by that touch, ripples of energy went through it, one after another.

From that moment on, everything in my dreaming became much more real. I had a very difficult time keeping the idea that I was dreaming a dream. To this difficulty, I had to add the certainty I had that with its touch the scout had made an energetic connection with me. I knew what it wanted me to do the instant it seemed to tug me or shove me.

The first thing it did was to push me through a huge cavern or opening into the physical mass I had been facing. Once I was inside that mass, I realized that the interior was as homogeneously porous as the outside but much softer looking, as if the roughness had been sanded down. What I was facing was a structure that looked something like the enlarged picture of a beehive. There were countless geometric-shaped tunnels going in every direction. Some went up or down, or to my left or my right. They were at angles with one another, or going up or down on steep or mild inclines.

The light was very dim, yet everything was perfectly visible. The tunnels seemed to be alive and conscious: They sizzled. I stared at them, and the realization that I was seeing hit me. Those were tunnels of energy. At the instant of this realization, the voice of the dreaming emissary roared inside my ears, so loudly I could not understand what it said. "Lower it down," I yelled with unusual impatience and became aware that if I spoke, I blocked my view of the tunnels and entered into a vacuum where all I could do was hear.

The emissary modulated its voice and said, "You are inside an inorganic being. Choose a tunnel and you can even live in it." The voice stopped for an instant, then added, "That is, if you want to do it."

I could not bring myself to say anything. I was afraid that any statement of mine might be construed as the opposite of what I meant.

"There are endless advantages for you," the emissary's voice continued. "You can live in as many tunnels as you want. And each one of them will teach something different. The sorcerers of antiquity lived in this manner and learned marvelous things."

I sensed without any feeling that the scout was pushing me from behind. It appeared to want me to move onward. I took the tunnel to my immediate right. As soon as I was in it, something made me aware that I was not walking on the tunnel; I was hovering in it, flying. I was a blob of energy no different from the scout.

The voice of the emissary sounded inside my ears again. "Yes, you are just a blob of energy," it said. Its redundancy brought me an intense relief. "And you are floating inside one inorganic being," it went on. "This is the way the scout wants you to move in this world. When it touched you, it changed you forever. You are practically one of us now. If you want to stay here, just voice your intent." The emissary stopped talking, and the view of the tunnel returned to me. But when it spoke again, something had been adjusted. I did not lose sight of that world and I still could hear the emissary's voice. "The ancient sorcerers learned everything they knew about dreaming by staying here among us," it said.

I was going to ask if they had learned everything they knew by just living inside those tunnels, but before I voiced my question the emissary answered it. "Yes, they learned everything by just living inside the inorganic beings," it said. "To live inside them, all the old sorcerers had to do was say they wanted to, just like all it took for you to get here was to voice your intent, loud and clear."

The scout pushed against me to signal me to continue moving. I hesitated, and it did something equivalent to shoving me with such a force that I shot like a bullet through endless tunnels. I finally stopped because the scout stopped. We hovered for an instant. Then we dropped into a vertical tunnel. I did not feel the drastic change of direction. As far as my perception was concerned, I was still moving seemingly parallel to the ground.

We changed directions many times with the same perceptual effect on me. I began to formulate a thought about my incapacity to feel that I was moving up or down when I heard the emissary's voice. "I think you'll be more comfortable if you crawl rather than fly," it said. "You can also move like a spider or a fly, straight up or down or upside down."

Instantaneously, I settled down. It was as if I had been fluffy and suddenly I got some weight, which grounded me. I could not feel the tunnel's walls, but the emissary was right about my being more comfortable when crawling.

"In this world you don't have to be pinned down by gravity," it said. Of course, I was able to realize that myself. "You don't have to breathe either," the voice went on. "And, for your convenience alone, you can retain your eyesight and see as you see in your world." The emissary seemed to be deciding whether to add more. It coughed, just like a man clearing his throat, and said, "The eyesight is never impairedf. Therefore, a dreamer always speaks about his dreaming in terms of what he sees."

The scout pushed me into a tunnel to my right. It was somehow darker than the others. To me, at a preposterous level, it seemed cozier than the others, more friendly or even known to me. The thought crossed my mind that I was like that tunnel or that the tunnel was like me.

"You two have met before," the emissary's voice said.

"I beg your pardon," I said. I had understood what it said, but the statement was incomprehensible."

"You two wrestled, and because of that you now carry each other's energy." I thought that the emissary's voice carried a touch of malice or even sarcasm.

"No, it isn't sarcasm," the emissary said. "I am glad that you have relatives here among us."

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

"Shared energy makes kinship," it replied. "Energy is like blood."

I was unable to say anything else. I clearly felt pangs of fear.

"Fear is something that is absent in this world," the emissary said.

And that was the only statement that was not true.

My dreaming ended there. I was so shocked by the vividness of everything, and by the impressive clarity and continuity of the emissary's statements, that I could not wait to tell don Juan. It surprised and disturbed me that he did not want to hear my account. He did not say so, but I had the impression that he believed all of it had been a product of my indulging personality.

"Why are you behaving like this with me?" I asked. "Are you displeased with me?"

"No. I am not displeased with you," he said. "The problem is that I can't talk about this part of your dreaming. You are completely by yourself in this case. I have said to you that inorganic beings are real. You are finding out how real they are. But what you do with this finding is your business, yours alone. Someday you'll see the reason for my staying away."

"But isn't there something you can tell me about that dream?" I insisted.

"What I can say is that it wasn't a dream. It was a journey into the unknown. A necessary journey, I may add, and an ultrapersonal one."

He changed the subject then and began to talk about other aspects of his teachings.

From that day on, in spite of my fear and don Juan's reluctance to advise me, I became a regular dream traveler to that spongy world. I discovered right away that the greater my capacity to observe the details of my dreams, the greater my facility to isolate the scouts.

If I chose to acknowledge the scouts as foreign energy, they remained within my perceptual field for a while.

If I chose to turn the scouts into quasi known objects, they stayed even longer, changing shapes erratically.

But if I followed them, by revealing out loud my intent to go with them, the scouts veritably transported my dreaming attention to a world beyond what I can normally imagine.

Don Juan had said that inorganic beings are always poised to teach. But he had not told me that dreaming is what they are poised to teach. He had stated that the dreaming emissary, since it is a voice, is the perfect bridge between that world and ours. I found out that the dreaming emissary was not only a teacher's voice but the voice of a most subtle salesman. It repeated on and on, at the proper time and occasion, the advantages of its world. Yet it also taught me invaluable things about dreaming. Listening to what it said, I understood the old sorcerers' preference for concrete practices.

"For perfect dreaming, the first thing you have to do is shut off your internal dialogue," it said to me one time. "For best results in shutting it off, put between your fingers some two to three inch long quartz crystals or a couple of smooth, thin river pebbles. Bend your fingers slightly, and press the crystals or pebbles with them."

The emissary said that metal pins, if they were the size and width of one's fingers, were equally effective. The procedure consisted of pressing at least three thin items between the fingers of each hand and creating, an almost painful pressure in the hands. This pressure had the strange property of shutting off the internal dialogue. The emissary's expressed preference was for quartz crystals. It said that they gave the best results, although with practice anything was suitable.

"Falling asleep at a moment of total silence guarantees a perfect entrance into dreaming," said the emissary's voice, "and it also guarantees the enhancing of one's dreaming attention."

"Dreamers should wear a gold ring," said the emissary to me another time, "preferably fitted a bit tight."

The emissary's explanation was that such a ring serves as a bridge for surfacing from dreaming back into the daily world or for sinking from our daily awareness into the inorganic beings' realm.

"How does this bridge work?" I asked. I had not understood what was involved.

"The contact of the fingers on the ring lays the bridge down," the emissary said. "If a dreamer comes into my world wearing a ring, that ring attracts the energy of my world and keeps it; and when that energy is needed, that energy transports the dreamer back to this world through the ring's releasing it into the dreamer's fingers.

"The pressure of that ring around a finger serves equally well to ensure a dreamer's return to his world. It gives him a constant, familiar sense on his finger."

During another dreaming session, the emissary said that our skin is the perfect organ for transposing energy waves from the mode of the daily world to the mode of the inorganic beings and vice versa. It recommended that I keep my skin cool and free from pigments or oils.

It also recommended that dreamers wear a tight belt or headband or necklace to create a pressure point that serves as a skin center of energy exchange. The emissary explained that the skin automatically screens energy, and that what we need to do to make the skin not only screen but exchange energy from one mode to the other is to express our intent out loud, in dreaming.

One day the emissary's voice gave me a fabulous bonus. It said that, in order to ensure the keenness and accuracy of our dreaming attention, we must bring it from behind the roof of the mouth, where an enormous reservoir of attention is located in all human beings. The emissary's specific directions were to practice and learn the discipline and control necessary to press the tip of the tongue on the roof of the mouth while dreaming. This task is as difficult and consuming, the emissary said, as finding one's hands in a dream. But, once it is accomplished, this task gives the most astounding results in terms of controlling the dreaming attention.

I received a profusion of instructions on every conceivable subject, instructions that I promptly forgot if they were not endlessly repeated to me. I sought don Juan's advice on how to resolve this problem of forgetting.

His comment was as brief as I had expected. "Focus only on what the emissary tells you about dreaming," he said.

Whatever the emissary's voice repeated enough times, I grasped with tremendous interest and fervor. Faithful to don Juan's recommendation, I only followed its guidance when it referred to dreaming and I personally corroborated the value of its instruction. The most vital piece of information for me was that the dreaming attention comes from behind the roof of the mouth. It took a great deal of effort on my part to feel in dreaming that I was pressing the roof of my mouth with the tip of my tongue. Once I accomplished this, my dreaming attention took on a life of its own and became, I may say, keener than my normal attention to the daily world.

It did not take much for me to deduce how deep must have been the involvement of the old sorcerers with the inorganic beings. Don Juan's commentaries and warnings about the danger of such an involvement became more vital than ever. I tried my best to live up to his standards of self-examination with no indulgence. Thus, the emissary's voice and what it said became a superchallenge for me. I had to avoid, at all cost, succumbing to the temptation of the emissary's promise of knowledge, and I had to do this all by myself since don Juan continued to refuse to listen to my accounts.

"You must give me at least a hint about what I should do," I insisted on one occasion when I was bold enough to ask him.

"I can't," he said with finality, "and don't ask again. I've told you, in this instance, dreamers have to be left alone."

"But you don't even know what I want to ask you."

"Oh yes I do. You want me to tell you that it is all right to live in one of those tunnels, if for no other reason than just to know what the emissary's voice is talking about."

I admitted that this was exactly my dilemma. If nothing else, I wanted to know what was implied in the statement that one can live inside those tunnels.

"I went through the same turmoil myself," don Juan went on, "and no one could help me because this is a superpersonal and final decision; a final decision made the instant you voice your desire to live in that world. In order to get you to voice that desire, the inorganic beings are going to cater to your most secret wishes."

"This is really diabolical, don Juan."

"You can say that again. But not just because of what you are thinking. For you, the diabolical part is the temptation to give in, especially when such great rewards are at stake. For me, the diabolical nature of the inorganic beings' realm is that it might very well be the only sanctuary dreamers have in a hostile universe."

"Is it really a haven for dreamers, don Juan?"

"It definitely is for some dreamers. Not for me. I don't need props or railings. I know what I am. I am alone in a hostile universe, and I have learned to say. So be it!"

That was the end of our exchange. He had not said what I wanted to hear, yet I knew that even the desire to know what it was like to live in a tunnel meant almost to choose that way of life. I was not interested in such a thing. I made my decision right then to continue my dreaming practices without any further implications. I quickly told don Juan about it.

"Don't say anything," he advised me. "But do understand that if you choose to stay, your decision is final. You'll stay there forever."

It is impossible for me to judge objectively what took place during the countless times I dreamt of that world. I can say that it appeared to be a world as real as any dream can be real. Or I can say that it appeared to be as real as our daily world is real. Dreaming of that world, I became aware of what don Juan had said to me many times: that under the influence of dreaming, reality suffers a metamorphosis. I found myself then facing the two options which, according to don Juan, are the options faced by all dreamers: either we carefully revamp or we completely disregard our system of sensory input interpretation.

For don Juan, to revamp our interpretation system meant to intend its reconditioning. It meant that one deliberately and carefully attempts to enlarge its capabilities. By living in accordance with the sorcerers' way, dreamers save and store the necessary energy to suspend judgment and thus facilitate that intended revamping. He explained that if we choose to recondition our interpretation system, reality becomes fluid, and the scope of what can be real is enhanced without endangering the integrity of reality. Dreaming, then, indeed opens the door into other aspects of what is real.

If we choose to disregard our system, the scope of what can be perceived without interpretation grows inordinately. The expansion of our perception is so gigantic that we are left with very few tools for sensory interpretation, and thus leaves a sense of an infinite realness that is unreal; or an infinite unrealness that could very well be real but is not.

For me, the only acceptable option was reconstructing and enlarging my interpretation system. In dreaming the inorganic beings' realm, I was faced with the consistence of that world from dream to dream; from isolating the scouts through listening to the dreaming emissary's voice to going through tunnels. I went through them without feeling anything, yet being aware that space and time were constant, although not in terms discernible by rationality under normal conditions. However, by noticing the difference or the absence or profusion of detail in each tunnel, or by noticing the sense of distance between tunnels, or by noticing the apparent length or width of each tunnel in which I traveled, I arrived at a sense of objective observation.

The area where this reconstruction of my interpretation system had the most dramatic effect was the knowledge of how I related to the world of the inorganic beings. In that world, which was real to me, I was a blob of energy. Thus, I could whiz in the tunnels, like a fast-moving light, or I could crawl on their walls, like an insect. If I flew, a voice told me not arbitrary but consistent information about details on the walls on which I had focused my dreaming attention. Those details were intricate protuberances, like the Braille system of writing. When I crawled on the walls, I could see the same details with greater accuracy and hear the voice giving me more complex descriptions.

The unavoidable consequence for me was the development of a dual stand. On the one hand, I knew I was dreaming a dream; on the other, I knew I was involved in a pragmatic journey, as real as any journey in the world. This bona fide split was a corroboration of what don Juan had said: that the existence of inorganic beings is the foremost assailant of our rationality.

Only after I had really suspended judgment did I get any relief. At one moment, when the tension of my untenable position- seriously believing in the attestable existence of inorganic beings, while seriously believing that it was only a dream- was about to destroy me, something in my attitude changed drastically, but without any solicitation on my part.

Don Juan maintained that my energy level, which had been steadily growing, one day reached a threshold that allowed me to disregard assumptions and prejudgments about the nature of man, reality, and perception. That day I became enamored with knowledge, regardless of logic or functional value, and, above all, regardless of personal convenience.

When my objective inquiry into the subject of inorganic beings no longer mattered to me, don Juan himself brought up the subject of my dream journey into that world. He said, "I don't think you are aware of the regularity of your meetings with inorganic beings."

He was right. I had never bothered to think about it. I commented on the oddity of my oversight.

"It isn't an oversight," he said. "It's the nature of that realm to foster secretiveness. Inorganic beings veil themselves in mystery, darkness. Think about their world: stationary, fixed to draw us like moths to a light or a fire.

"There is something the emissary hasn't dared to tell you so far: that the inorganic beings are after our awareness or the awareness of any being that falls into their nets. They'll give us knowledge, but they'll extract a payment: our total being."

"Do you mean, don Juan, that the inorganic beings are like fishermen?"

"Exactly. At one moment, the emissary will show you men who got caught in there or other beings that are not human that also got caught in there."

Revulsion and fear should have been my response. Don Juan's revelations affected me deeply, but in the sense of creating uncontainable curiosity. I was nearly panting.

"Inorganic beings can't force anyone to stay with them," don Juan went on. "To live in their world is a voluntary affair. Yet they are capable of imprisoning any one of us by catering to our desires, by pampering and indulging us. Beware of awareness that is immobile. Awareness like that has to seek movement, and it does this, as I've told you, by creating projections, phantasmagorical projections at times."

I asked don Juan to explain what 'phantasmagorical projections' meant. He said that inorganic beings hook onto dreamers' innermost feelings and play them mercilessly. They create phantoms to please dreamers or frighten them. He reminded me that I had wrestled with one of those phantoms. He explained that inorganic beings are superb projectionists, who delight in projecting themselves like pictures on the wall.

"The old sorcerers were brought down by their inane trust in those projections," he continued. "The old sorcerers believed their allies had power. They overlooked the fact their allies were tenuous energy projected through worlds, like in a cosmic movie."

"You are contradicting yourself, don Juan. You yourself said that the inorganic beings are real. Now you tell me that they are mere pictures."

"I meant to say that the inorganic beings, in our world, are like moving pictures projected on a screen; and I may even add that they are like moving pictures of rarefied energy projected through the boundaries of two worlds."

"But what about inorganic beings in their world? Are they also like moving pictures?"

"Not a chance. That world is as real as our world. The old sorcerers portrayed the inorganic beings' world as a blob of caverns and pores floating in some dark space. And they portrayed the inorganic beings as hollow canes bound together, like the cells of our bodies. The old sorcerers called that immense bundle the labyrinth of penumbra." [* penumbra- a fringe region of partial shadow around a region of complete shadow]

"Then every dreamer sees that world in the same terms, right?"

"Of course. Every dreamer sees it as it is. Do you think you are unique?"

I confessed that something in that world had been giving me all along the sensation I was unique. What created this most pleasant and clear feeling of being exclusive was not the voice of the dreaming emissary, or anything I could consciously think about.

"That's exactly what floored the old sorcerers," don Juan said. "The inorganic beings did to them what they are doing to you now; they created for them the sense of being unique, exclusive plus a more pernicious [* pernicious- exceedingly harmful] sense yet: the sense of having power. Power and uniqueness are unbeatable as corrupting forces. Watch out!"

"How did you avoid that danger yourself, don Juan?"

"I went to that world a few times, and then I never went back."

Don Juan explained that in the opinion of sorcerers, the universe is predatorial, and sorcerers more than anyone else have to take this into account in their daily sorcery activities. His idea was that consciousness is intrinsically compelled to grow, and the only way it can grow is through strife; through life-or-death confrontations.

"The awareness of sorcerers grows when they do dreaming," he went on. "And the moment it grows, something out there acknowledges its growth, recognizes it and makes a bid for it. The inorganic beings are the bidders for that new, enhanced awareness. Dreamers have to be forever on their toes. They are prey the moment they venture out in that predatorial universe."

"What do you suggest I do to be safe, don Juan?"

"Be on your toes every second! Don't let anything or anybody decide for you. Go to the inorganic beings' world only when you want to go."

"Honestly, don Juan, I wouldn't know how to do that. Once I isolate a scout, a tremendous pull is exerted on me to go. I don't have a chance in hell to change my mind."

"Come on! Who do you think you're kidding? You can definitely stop it. You haven't tried to, that's all."

I earnestly insisted that it was impossible for me to stop. He did not pursue the subject any longer, and I was thankful for that. A disturbing feeling of guilt had begun to gnaw at me. For some unknown reason, the thought of consciously stopping the pull of the scouts had never occurred to me.

As usual, don Juan was correct. I found out that I could change the course of my dreaming by intending that course. After all, I did intend for the scouts to transport me to their world. It was feasible that if I deliberately intended the opposite, my dreaming would follow the opposite course.

With practice, my capacity to intend my journeys into the inorganic beings' realm became extraordinarily keen. An increased capacity to intend brought forth an increased control over my dreaming attention. This additional control made me more daring. I felt that I could journey with impunity, because I could stop the journey any time I wanted to.

"Your confidence is very scary" was don Juan's comment when I told him, at his request, about the new aspect of my control over my dreaming attention.

"Why should it be scary?" I asked. I was truly convinced of the practical value of what I had found out.

"Because yours is the confidence of a fool," he said. "I am going to tell you a sorcerers' story that is apropos. [* apropos- of an appropriate or relevant nature] I didn't witness it myself, but my teacher's teacher, the nagual Elias, did."

Don Juan said that the nagual Elias and the love of his life, a sorceress named Amalia, were lost, in their youth, in the inorganic beings' world.

I had never heard don Juan talk about sorcerers being the love of anybody's life. His statement startled me. I asked him about this inconsistency.

"It's not an inconsistency. I have simply refrained all along from telling you stories of sorcerers' affection," he said. "You've been so oversaturated with love all your life that I wanted to give you a break.

"Well, the nagual Elias and the love of his life, the witch Amalia, got lost in the inorganic beings' world," don Juan went on. "They went there not in dreaming but with their physical bodies."

"How did that happen, don Juan?"

"Their teacher, the nagual Rosendo, was very close in temperament and practice to the old sorcerers. He intended to help Elias and Amalia, but instead he pushed them across some deadly boundaries. The nagual Rosendo didn't have that crossing in mind. What he wanted to do was to put his two disciples into the second attention, but what he got as a result was their disappearance."

Don Juan said that he was not going to go into the details of that long and complicated story. He was only going to tell me how they became lost in that world. He stated that the nagual Rosendo's miscalculation was to assume that the inorganic beings are not, in the slightest, interested in women. His reasoning was correct and was guided by the sorcerers' knowledge that the universe is markedly female and that maleness, being an offshoot of femaleness, is almost scarce, thus, coveted.

Don Juan made a digression and commented that perhaps that scarcity of males is the reason for men's unwarranted dominion on our planet. I wanted to remain on that topic, but he went ahead with his story. He said that the nagual Rosendo's plan was to give instruction to Elias and Amalia exclusively in the second attention. And to that effect, he followed the old sorcerers' prescribed technique. He engaged a scout, in dreaming, and commanded it to transport his disciples into the second attention by displacing their assemblage points on the proper position.

Theoretically, a powerful scout could displace their assemblage points on the proper position with no effort at all. What the nagual Rosendo did not take into consideration was the trickery of the inorganic beings. The scout did displace the assemblage points of his disciples, but it displaced them on a position from which it was easy to transport them bodily into the realm of the inorganic beings.

"Is this possible, to be transported bodily?" I asked.

"It is possible," he assured me. "We are energy that is kept in a specific shape and position by the fixation of the assemblage point on one location. If that location is changed, the shape and position of that energy will change accordingly. All the inorganic beings have to do is to place our assemblage point on the right location, and off we go, like a bullet, shoes, hat, and all."

"Can this happen to any one of us, don Juan?"

"Most certainly. Especially if our sum total of energy is right. Obviously, the sum total of the combined energies of Elias and Amalia was something the inorganic beings couldn't overlook. It is absurd to trust the inorganic beings. They have their own rhythm, and it isn't human."

I asked don Juan what exactly the nagual Rosendo did to send his disciples to that world. I knew it was stupid of me to ask, knowing that he was going to ignore my question. My surprise was genuine when he began to tell me.

"The steps are simplicity itself," he said. "He put his disciples inside a very small, closed space, something like a closet. Then he went into dreaming, called a scout from the inorganic beings' realm by voicing his intent to get one, then voiced his intent to offer his disciples to the scout.

"The scout, naturally, accepted the gift and took them away, at an unguarded moment, when they were making love inside that closet. When the nagual opened the closet, they were no longer there."

Don Juan explained that making gifts of their disciples to the inorganic beings was precisely what the old sorcerers used to do. The nagual Rosendo did not mean to do that, but he got swayed by the absurd belief that the inorganic beings were under his control.

"Sorcerers' maneuvers are deadly," don Juan went on. "I beseech you to be extraordinarily aware. Don't get involved in having some idiotic confidence in yourself."

"What finally happened to the nagual Elias and Amalia?" I asked.

"The nagual Rosendo had to go bodily into that world and look for them," he replied.

"Did he find them?"

"He did, after untold struggles. However, he could not totally bring them out. So the two young people were always semiprisoners of that realm."

"Did you know them, don Juan?"

"Of course I knew them, and I assure you, they were very strange."