Version 2006.05.09

## "The Fire From Within" - ©1984 by Carlos Castaneda

### 14. The Rolling Force

Don Juan was about to start his explanation of the mastery of awareness, but he changed his mind and stood up. We had been sitting in the big room observing a moment of quiet.

"I want you to try seeing the Eagle's emanations," he said. "For that you must first move your assemblage point until you see the cocoon of man."

We walked from the house to the center of town. We sat down on an empty, worn park bench in front of the church, it was early afternoon on a sunny, windy day with lots of people milling around.

He repeated, as if he were trying to drill it into me, that alignment is a unique force because it either helps the assemblage point shift, or it keeps it glued to its customary position. The aspect of alignment that keeps the point stationary, he said, is will; and the aspect that makes it shift is intent. He remarked that one of the most haunting mysteries is how will, the impersonal force of alignment, changes into intent, the personalized force which is at the service of each individual.

"The strangest part of this mystery is that the change is so easy to accomplish," he went on. "But what is not so easy is to convince ourselves that it is possible. There, right there, is our safety catch. We have to be convinced. And none of us wants to be."

He told me then that I was in my keenest state of awareness, and that it was possible for me to intend my assemblage point to shift deeper into my left side to a dreaming position. He said that warriors should never attempt seeing unless they are aided by dreaming.

I argued that to fall asleep in public was not one of my fortes. He clarified his statement saying that to move the assemblage point away from its natural setting, and to keep it fixed at a new location is to be asleep. With practice, seers learn to be asleep and yet behave as if nothing is happening to them.

After a moment's pause he added that for purposes of seeing the cocoon of man, one has to gaze at people from behind as they walk away. It is useless to gaze at people face to face because the front of the egglike cocoon of man has a protective shield which seers call the front plate. It is an almost impregnable, unyielding shield that protects us throughout our lives against the onslaught of a peculiar force that stems from the emanations themselves.

He also told me not to be surprised if my body was stiff, as though it were frozen. He said that I was going to feel very much like someone standing in the middle of a room looking at the street through a window, and that speed was of the essence, as people were going to move extremely fast by my seeing window.

He told me then to relax my muscles, shut off my internal dialogue, and let my assemblage point drift away under the spell of inner silence. He urged me to smack myself gently but firmly on my right side, between my hipbone and my ribcage.

I did that three times and I was sound asleep. It was a most peculiar state of sleep. My body was dormant, but I was perfectly aware of everything that was taking place. I could hear don Juan talking to me and I could follow every one of his statements as if I were awake, yet I could not move my body at all.

Don Juan said that a man was going to walk by my seeing window and that I should try to see him. I unsuccessfully attempted to move my head and then a shiny egglike shape appeared, it was resplendent. I was awed by the sight and before I could recover from my surprise, it was gone. It floated away, bobbing up and down.

Everything had been so sudden and fast that it made me feel frustrated and impatient. I felt that I was beginning to wake up. Don Juan talked to me again and urged me to relax. He said that I had no right and no time to be impatient. Suddenly, another luminous being appeared and moved away. It seemed to be made of a white fluorescent shag.

Don Juan whispered in my ear that if I wanted to, my eyes were capable of slowing down everything they focused on. Then he warned me that another man was coming.

I realized at that instant that there were two voices. The one I had just heard was the same one that had admonished me to be patient. That was don Juan's. The other, the one that told me to use my eyes to slow down movement, was the voice of seeing.

That afternoon, I saw ten luminous beings in slow motion. The voice of seeing guided me to witness in them everything don Juan had told me about the glow of awareness.

There was a vertical band with a stronger amber glow on the right side of those egglike luminous creatures, perhaps one-tenth of the total volume of the cocoon. The voice said that that was man's band of awareness. The voice pointed out a dot on man's band, a dot with an intense shine. It was high on the oblong shapes almost on the crest of them on the surface of the cocoon. The voice said that it was the assemblage point.

When I saw each luminous creature in profile, from the point of view of its body, its egglike shape was like a gigantic asymmetrical yoyo that was standing edgewise, or like an almost round pot that was resting on its side with its lid on. The part that looked like a lid was the front plate. It was perhaps one-fifth the thickness of the total cocoon.

I would have gone on seeing those creatures, but don Juan said that I should now gaze at people face to face, and sustain my gaze until I had broken the barrier and I was seeing the emanations.

I followed his command. Almost instantaneously, I saw a most brilliant array of live, compelling fibers of light. It was a dazzling sight that immediately shattered my balance.

I fell down on the cement walk on my side. From there, I saw the compelling fibers of light multiply themselves. They burst open and myriads of other fibers came out of them. But the fibers, compelling as they were, somehow did not interfere with my ordinary view.

There were scores of people going into church. I was no longer seeing them. There were quite a few women and men just around the bench. I wanted to focus my eyes on them, but instead I noticed how one of those fibers of light bulged suddenly. It became like a ball of fire that was perhaps seven feet in diameter, it rolled on me. My first impulse was to roll out of its way. Before I could even move a muscle the ball had hit me.

I felt it as clearly as if someone had punched me gently in the stomach. An instant later another ball of fire hit me, this time with considerably more strength, and then don Juan whacked me really hard on the cheek with his open hand. I jumped up involuntarily and lost sight of the fibers of light and the balloons that were hitting me.

Don Juan said that I had successfully endured my first brief encounter with the Eagle's emanations, but that a couple of shoves from the tumbler had dangerously opened up my gap. He added that the balls that had hit me were called the rolling force, or the tumbler.

We had returned to his house, although I did not remember how or when. I had spent hours in a sort of semi-sleeping state. Don Juan and the other seers of his group had given me large amounts of water to drink. They had also submerged me in an ice-cold tub of water for short periods of time.

"Were those fibers I saw the Eagle's emanations?" I asked don Juan.

"Yes. But you didn't really see them," he replied. "No sooner had you begun to see than the tumbler stopped you. If you had remained a moment longer it would have blasted you."

"What exactly is the tumbler?" I asked.

"It is a force from the Eagle's emanations," he said. "A ceaseless force that strikes us every instant of our lives. It is lethal when seen. We are oblivious to it in our ordinary lives because we have protective shields. We have consuming interests that engage all our awareness. We are permanently worried about our station; our possessions.

"These shields, however, do not keep the tumbler away, they simply keep us from seeing it directly, protecting us in this way from getting hurt by the fright of seeing the balls of fire hitting us. Shields are a great help and a great hindrance to us. They pacify us and at the same time fool us. They give us a false sense of security."

He warned me that a moment would come in my life when I would be without any shields and uninterruptedly at the mercy of the tumbler. He said that it is an obligatory stage in the life of a warrior known as losing the human form.

I asked him to explain to me once and for all what the human form is and what it means to lose it.

He replied that seers describe the human form as the compelling force of alignment of the emanations lit by the glow of awareness on the precise spot on which normally man's assemblage point is fixated. It is the force that makes us into persons. Thus, to be a person is to be compelled to affiliate with that force of alignment and consequently to be affiliated with the precise spot where it originates.

By reason of their activities, at a given moment the assemblage points of warriors drift toward the left. It is a permanent move which results in an uncommon sense of aloofness, or control, or even abandon.

That drift of the assemblage point entails a new alignment of emanations. It is the beginning of a series of greater shifts. Seers very aptly called this initial shift losing the human form because it marks an inexorable movement of the assemblage point away from its original setting and results in the irreversible loss of our affiliation to the force that makes us normal persons.

He asked me then to describe all the details I could remember about the balls of fire. I told him that I had seen them so briefly I was not sure I could describe them in detail.

He pointed out that seeing is an euphemism for moving the assemblage point, and that if I moved mine a fraction more to the left I would have a clear picture of the balls of fire; a picture which I could interpret then as having remembered them.

I tried to have a clear picture, but I couldn't, so I described what I remembered.

He listened attentively and then urged me to recall if they were balls or circles of fire. I told him I didn't remember.

He explained that those balls of fire, which the new seers call the rolling force, are of crucial importance to human beings because they are the expression of a force that pertains to all details of life and death.

I asked him to clarify what he meant by all the details of life and death.

"The rolling force is the means through which the Eagle distributes life and awareness for safekeeping," he said. "But it also is the force that, let's say, collects the rent. It makes all living beings die. What you saw today was called the tumbler by the ancient seers."

He said that seers describe it as an eternal line of iridescent rings, or balls of fire, that roll onto living beings ceaselessly. Luminous organic beings meet the rolling force head on until the day when the force proves to be too much for them and the creatures finally collapse. The old seers were mesmerized by seeing how the tumbler then tumbles them into the beak of the Eagle to be devoured. That was the reason they called it the tumbler.

"You said that it is a mesmerizing sight. Have you yourself seen it rolling human beings?" I asked.

"Certainly I've seen it," he replied, and after a pause he added, "You and I saw it only a short while ago in Mexico City."

His assertion was so farfetched that I felt obliged to tell him that this time he was wrong. He laughed and reminded me that on that occasion, while both of us were sitting on a bench in the Alameda Park in Mexico City, we had witnessed the death of a man. He said that I had recorded the event in my everyday life memory as well as in my left side emanations.

As don Juan spoke to me I had the sensation of something inside me becoming lucid by degrees, and I could visualize with uncanny clarity the whole scene in the park.

The man was lying on the grass with three policemen standing by him to keep onlookers away. I distinctly remembered don Juan hitting me on my back to make me change levels of awareness. And then I saw.

My seeing was imperfect. I was unable to shake off the sight of the world of everyday life. What I ended up with was a composite of filaments of the most gorgeous colors superimposed on the buildings and the traffic. The filaments were actually lines of colored light that came from above. They had inner life. They were bright and bursting with energy.

When I had looked at the dying man, I saw what don Juan was talking about.

Something that was like circles of fire, or iridescent tumbleweeds, was rolling everywhere I focused my eyes. The circles were rolling on people; on don Juan; on me. I felt them in my stomach and became ill.

Don Juan told me to focus my eyes on the dying man. I saw the man at one moment curling up, just as a sow bug curls itself up upon being touched. The incandescent circles pushed him away as if they were casting him aside; out of their majestic, inalterable path.

I had not liked the feeling. The circles of fire had not scared me. They were not awesome, or sinister. I did not feel morbid or somber. The circles rather had nauseated me. I'd felt them in the pit of my stomach. It was revulsion that I'd felt that day.

Remembering them conjured up again the total feeling of discomfort I had experienced on that occasion. As I got ill, don Juan laughed until he was out of breath.

"You're such an exaggerated fellow." he said. "The rolling force is not that bad. It's lovely in fact. The new seers recommend that we open ourselves to it. The old seers also opened themselves to it, but for reasons and purposes guided mostly by self-importance and obsession.

"The new seers, on the other hand, make friends with it. They become familiar with that force by handling it without any self-importance. The result is staggering in its consequences."

He said that a shift of the assemblage point is all that is needed to open oneself to the rolling force. He added that if the force is seen in a deliberate manner, there is minimal danger.

A situation that is extremely dangerous, however, is an involuntary shift of the assemblage point owing, perhaps, to physical fatigue, emotional exhaustion, disease, or simply a minor emotional or physical crisis; such as being frightened or being drunk.

"When the assemblage point shifts involuntarily, the rolling force cracks the cocoon," he went on. "I've talked many times about a gap that man has below his navel. It's not really below the navel itself, but in the cocoon at the height of the navel. The gap is more like a dent; a natural flaw in the otherwise smooth cocoon. That is where the tumbler hits us ceaselessly and where the cocoon cracks."

He went on to explain that if it is a minor shift of the assemblage point, the crack is very small. The cocoon quickly repairs itself, and people experience what everybody has at one time or another; blotches of color and contorted shapes which remain even if the eyes are closed.

If the shift is considerable, the crack also is extensive, and it takes time for the cocoon to repair itself; as in the case of warriors who purposely use power plants to elicit that shift, or people who take drugs and unwittingly do the same.

In these cases men feel numb and cold. They have difficulty talking or even thinking. It is as if they have been frozen from inside.

Don Juan said that in cases in which the assemblage point shifts drastically because of the effects of trauma or of a mortal disease, the rolling force produces a crack the length of the cocoon. The cocoon collapses and curls in on itself, and the individual dies.

"Can a voluntary shift also produce a gap of that nature?" I asked.

"Sometimes," he replied. "We're really frail. As the tumbler hits us over and over, death comes to us through the gap. Death is the rolling force. When it finds weakness in the gap of a luminous being, it automatically cracks it open and makes it collapse."

"Does every living being have a gap?" I asked.

"Of course," he replied. "If it didn't have one it wouldn't die. The gaps, however, are different in size and configuration. Man's gap is a bowl-like depression the size of a fist; a very frail vulnerable configuration. The gaps of other organic creatures are very much like man's; some are stronger than ours and others are weaker.

"But the gap of inorganic beings is really different. It's more like a long thread, a hair of luminosity. Consequently, inorganic beings are infinitely more durable than we are.

"There is something hauntingly appealing about the long life of those creatures, and the old seers could not resist being carried away by that appeal."

He said that the same force can produce two effects that are diametrically opposed. The old seers were imprisoned by the rolling force, and the new seers are rewarded for their toils with the gift of freedom.

The new seers become familiar with the rolling force through the mastery of intent, and at a given moment they open their own cocoons and the force floods them- as opposed to rolling them up like a curled up sow bug. The final result is their total and instantaneous disintegration.

I asked him a lot of questions about the survival of awareness after the luminous being is consumed by the fire from within. He did not answer. He simply chuckled and shrugged his shoulders.

He went on to say that the old seers' obsession with the tumbler blinded them to the other side of that force. The new seers, with their usual thoroughness in refusing tradition, went to the other extreme. They were at first totally averse to focusing their seeing on the tumbler. They argued that they needed to understand the force of the emanations at large in its aspect as life-giver and enhancer of awareness.

"They realized," don Juan went on, "that it is infinitely easier to destroy something than it is to build it and maintain it. To roll life away is nothing compared to giving it and nourishing it. Of course, the new seers were wrong on this count, but in due course they corrected their mistake."

"How were they wrong, don Juan?"

"It's an error to isolate anything for seeing. At the beginning, the new seers did exactly the opposite from what their predecessors did. They focused with equal attention on the other side of the tumbler. What happened to them was as terrible as, if not worse than, what happened to the old seers.

"They died stupid deaths, just as the average man does. They did not have the mystery and the malignancy of the ancient seers; but neither did they have the quest for freedom of the seers of today.

"Those first new seers served everybody. And because they were focusing their seeing on the life-giving side of the emanations, they were filled with love and kindness. But that didn't keep them from being tumbled. They were vulnerable, just as were the old seers who were filled with morbidity."

He said that for the modern-day new seers, to be left stranded after a life of discipline and toil, just like men who have never had a purposeful moment in their lives, was intolerable.

Don Juan said that these new seers realized, after they had readopted their tradition, that the old seers' knowledge of the rolling force had been complete. At one point the old seers had concluded that there were, in effect, two different aspects of the same force.

The tumbling aspect relates exclusively to destruction and death. The circular aspect, on the other hand, is what maintains life and awareness, fulfillment and purpose. The old seers had chosen, however, to deal exclusively with the tumbling aspect.

"Gazing in teams, the new seers were able to see the separation between the tumbling and the circular aspects," he explained. "They saw that both forces are fused, but are not the same. The circular force comes to us just before the tumbling force. They are so close to each other that they only seemed the same.

"The reason it's called the circular force is that it comes in rings, threadlike hoops of iridescence- a very delicate affair indeed. And just like the tumbling force, it strikes all living beings ceaselessly but for a different purpose. The circular force strikes them to give them strength, direction, and awareness; to give them life.

"What the new seers discovered is that the balance of the two forces in every living being is a very delicate one," he continued, "if at any given time an individual feels that the tumbling force strikes harder than the circular one, that means the balance is upset. The tumbling force strikes harder and harder from then on, until it cracks the living being's gap and makes it die."

He added that out of what I had called balls of fire comes an iridescent hoop exactly the size of living beings, whether men, trees, microbes, or allies.

"Are there different-size circles?" I asked.

"Don't take me so literally," he protested. "There are no circles to speak of, just a circular force that gives seers, who are dreaming it, the feeling of rings. And there are no different sizes either. It's one indivisible force that fits all living beings, organic and inorganic."

"Why did the old seers focus on the tumbling aspect?" I asked.

"Because they believed that their lives depended on seeing it," he replied. "They were sure that their seeing was going to give them answers to age-old questions.

"You see, they figured that if they unraveled the secrets of the rolling force they would be invulnerable and immortal. The sad part is that in one way or another they did unravel the secrets, and yet they were neither invulnerable nor immortal.

"The new seers changed it all by realizing that there is no way to aspire to immortality as long as man has a cocoon."

Don Juan explained that the old seers apparently never realized that the human cocoon is a receptacle and cannot sustain the onslaught of the rolling force forever. In spite of all the knowledge that they had accumulated, they were in the end certainly no better, and perhaps much worse off than the average man.

"In what way were they left worse off than the average man?" I asked.

"Their tremendous knowledge forced them to take it for granted that their choices were infallible," he said. "So they chose to live at any cost."

Don Juan looked at me and smiled. With his theatrical pause he was telling me something I could not fathom.

He said, "They chose to live: Just as they chose to become trees in order to assemble worlds with those nearly unreachable great bands."

"What do you mean by that, don Juan?"

"I mean that they used the rolling force to shift their assemblage points to unimaginable dreaming positions instead of letting it roll them to the beak of the Eagle to be devoured."