Version 2006.05.17

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

### 6. The Shadows' World

"You must be extremely careful, for you are about to fall prey to the inorganic beings," don Juan said to me, quite unexpectedly, after we had been talking about something totally unrelated to dreaming.

His statement caught me by surprise. As usual, I attempted to defend myself.

"You don't have to warn me. I'm very careful," I assured him.

"The inorganic beings are plotting," he said. "I sense that, and I can't console myself by saying that they set traps at the beginning and, in this manner, undesirable dreamers are effectively and permanently screened out."

The tone of his voice was so urgent that I immediately had to reassure him I was not going to fall into any trap.

"You must seriously consider that the inorganic beings have astounding means at their disposal," he went on. "Their awareness is superb. In comparison, we are children, children with a lot of energy, which the inorganic beings covet."

I wanted to tell him that, on an abstract level, I had understood his point and his concern, but, on a concrete plane, I saw no reason for his warning, because I was in control of my dreaming practices.

A few minutes of uneasy silence followed before don Juan spoke again. He changed the subject and said that he had to bring to my attention a very important issue of his dreaming instruction, an issue that had, so far, bypassed my awareness.

"You already understand that the gates of dreaming are specific obstacles," he said, "but you haven't understood yet that whatever is given as the exercise to reach and cross a gate is not really what that gate is all about."

"This is not clear to me at all, don Juan."

"I mean that it's not true to say, for example, that the second gate is reached and crossed when a dreamer learns to wake up in another dream, or when a dreamer learns to change dreams without waking up in the world of daily life."

"Why isn't it true, don Juan?"

"Because the second gate of dreaming is reached and crossed only when a dreamer learns to isolate and follow the foreign energy scouts."

"Why then is the idea of changing dreams given at all?"

"Waking up in another dream or changing dreams is the drill devised by the old sorcerers to exercise a dreamer's capacity to isolate and follow a scout."

Don Juan stated that following a scout is a high accomplishment and that when dreamers are able to perform it, the second gate is flung open and the universe that exists behind it becomes accessible to them. He stressed that this universe is there all the time but that we cannot go into it because we lack energetic prowess and that, in essence, the second gate of dreaming is the door into the inorganic beings' world, and dreaming is the key that opens that door.

"Can a dreamer isolate a scout directly, without having to go through the drill of changing dreams?" I asked.

"No, not at all," he said. "The drill is essential. The question here is whether this is the only drill that exists. Or can a dreamer follow another drill?"

Don Juan looked at me quizzically. It seemed that he actually expected me to answer the question.

"It's too difficult to come up with a drill as complete as the one the old sorcerers devised," I said, without knowing why but with irrefutable authority.

Don Juan admitted that I was absolutely right and said that the old sorcerers had devised a series of perfect drills to go through the gates of dreaming into the specific worlds that exist behind every gate. He reiterated that dreaming, being the old sorcerers' invention, has to be played by their rules. He described the rule of the second gate in terms of a series of three steps: one, through practicing the drill of changing dreams, dreamers find out about the scouts; two, by following the scouts, they enter into another veritable universe; and three, in that universe, by means of their actions, dreamers find out, on their own, the governing laws and regulations of that universe.

Don Juan said that in my dealings with the inorganic beings, I had followed the rule so well that he feared devastating consequences. He thought that the unavoidable reaction on the part of the inorganic beings was going to be an attempt to keep me in their world.

"Don't you think that you are exaggerating, don Juan?" I asked. I could not believe that the picture was as bleak as he was painting it.

"I am not exaggerating at all," he said, in a dry, serious tone. "You'll see. The inorganic beings don't let anyone go, not without a real fight."

"But what makes you think they want me?"

"They've already shown you too many things. Do you really believe that they are going to all this trouble just to entertain themselves?"

Don Juan laughed at his own remark. I did not find him amusing. A strange fear made me ask him whether he thought I should interrupt or even discontinue my dreaming practices.

"You have to continue your dreaming until you have gone through the universe behind the second gate," he said. "I mean that you alone must either accept or reject the lure of the inorganic beings. That is why I remain aloof and hardly ever comment on your dreaming practices."

I confessed to him that I had been at a loss to explain why he was so generous in elucidating other aspects of his knowledge and so miserly with dreaming.

"I was forced to teach you dreaming," he said, "only because that is the pattern set out by the old sorcerers. The path of dreaming is filled with pitfalls, and to avoid those pitfalls or to fall into them is the personal and individual affair of each dreamer, and I may add that it is a final affair."

"Are those pitfalls the result of succumbing to adulation or to promises of power?" I asked.

"Not only succumbing to those, but succumbing to anything offered by the inorganic beings. There is no way for sorcerers to accept anything offered by them, beyond a certain point."

"And what is that certain point, don Juan?"

"That point depends on us as individuals. The challenge is for each of us to take only what is needed from that world, nothing more. To know what's needed is the virtuosity of sorcerers, but to take only what's needed is their highest accomplishment. To fail to understand this simple rule is the surest way of plummeting into a pitfall."

"What happens if you fall, don Juan?"

"If you fall, you pay the price, and the price depends on the circumstances and the depth of the fall. But there is really no way of talking about an eventuality of this sort, because we are not facing a problem of punishment. Energetic currents are at stake here, energetic currents which create circumstances that are more dreadful than death. Everything in the sorcerers' path is a matter of life or death, but in the path of dreaming this matter is enhanced a hundred fold."

I reassured don Juan that I always exercised the utmost care in my dreaming practices, and that I was extremely disciplined and conscientious.

"I know that you are," he said. "But I want you to be even more disciplined and handle everything related to dreaming with kid gloves. Be, above all, vigilant. I can't foretell where the attack will come from."

"Are you seeing, as a seer, imminent danger for me, don Juan?"

"I have seen imminent danger for you since the day you walked in that mysterious city the first time I helped you round up your energy body."

"But do you know specifically what I should do and what I should avoid?"

"No, I don't. I only know that the universe behind the second gate is the closest to our own, and our own universe is pretty crafty and heartless. So the two can't be that different."

I persisted in asking him to tell me what was in store for me. And he insisted that, as a sorcerer, he sensed a state of general danger but that he could not be more specific.

"The universe of the inorganic beings is always ready to strike," he went on. "But so is our own universe. That's why you have to go into their realm exactly as if you were venturing into a war zone."

"Do you mean, don Juan, that dreamers always have to be afraid of that world?"

"No. I don't mean that. Once a dreamer goes through the universe behind the second gate, or once a dreamer refuses to consider it as a viable option, there are no more headaches."

Don Juan stated that only then are dreamers free to continue. I was not sure what he meant; he explained that the universe behind the second gate is so powerful and aggressive that it serves as a natural screen or a testing ground where dreamers are probed for their weaknesses. If they survive the tests, they can proceed to the next gate; if they do not, they remain forever trapped in that universe.

I was left choking with anxiety but, in spite of my coaxing, that was all he said. When I went home, I continued my journeys to the inorganic beings' realm, exerting great care. My carefulness seemed only to increase my sense of enjoying those journeys. I got to the point that the mere contemplation of the inorganic beings' world was enough to create an exultation impossible to describe. I feared that my delight was going to end sooner or later, but it was not so. Something unexpected made it even more intense.

On one occasion, a scout guided me very roughly through countless tunnels, as if searching for something, or as if it were trying to draw all my energy out and exhaust me. By the time it finally stopped, I felt as if I had run a marathon. I seemed to be at the edge of that world. There were no more tunnels, only blackness all around me. Then something lit up the area right in front of me. Light shone from an indirect source. It was a subdued light that rendered everything diffusely gray or brownish. When I became used to the light, I vaguely distinguished some dark, moving shapes. After a while, it seemed to me that focusing my dreaming attention on those moving shapes made them substantial. I noticed that there were three types: some of them were round, like balls; others were like bells; and others yet like gigantic, undulating candle flames. All of them were basically round and the same size. I judged that they were three to four feet in diameter. There were hundreds, perhaps even thousands of them.

I knew that I was having a strange, sophisticated vision, yet those shapes were so real that I found myself reacting with genuine queasiness. I got the nauseating feeling of being over a nest of giant, round, brown and grayish bugs. I felt somehow safe, though, hovering above them. I discarded all these considerations, however, the moment I realized that it was idiotic of me to feel safe or ill at ease, as if my dream were a real-life situation. However, as I observed those buglike shapes squirm, I became very disturbed at the idea that they were about to touch me.

"We are the mobile unit of our world," the emissary's voice said, all of a sudden. "Don't be afraid. We are energy, and, for sure, we're not intending to touch you. It would be impossible anyway. We are separated by real boundaries."

After a long pause, the voice added, "We want you to join us. Come down to where we are. And don't be ill at ease. You are not ill at ease with the scouts and certainly not with me. The scouts and I are just like the others. I am bell-shaped, and scouts are like candle flames."

That last statement was definitely a cue of sorts for my energy body. On hearing it, my queasiness and fear vanished. I descended to their level, and the balls and bells and candle flames surrounded me. They came so close to me that they would have touched me had I had a physical body. Instead, we went through one another, like encapsulated air puffs.

I had, at that point, an unbelievable sensation. Although I did not feel anything with or in my energy body, I was feeling and recording the most unusual tickling somewhere else; soft, airlike things were definitely going through me, but not right there. The sensation was vague and fast and did not give me time to catch it fully. Instead of focusing my dreaming attention on it, I became entirely absorbed in watching those oversized bugs of energy.

At the level where we were, it seemed to me that there was a commonality between the shadow entities and myself: size.

Perhaps it was because I judged them to be the same size as my energy body that I felt almost cozy with them. On examining them, I concluded that I did not mind them at all. They were impersonal, cold, detached, and I liked that immensely. I wondered for an instant whether my disliking them one minute and liking them the next was a natural consequence of dreaming or a product of some energetic influence those entities were exerting on me.

"They are most likable," I said to the emissary, at the very moment I was overpowered by a wave of profound friendship or even affection for them.

No sooner had I spoken my mind than the dark shapes scurried away, like bulky guinea pigs, leaving me alone in semidarkness.

"You projected too much feeling and scared them off," the emissary's voice said. "Feeling is too hard for them, and for me for that matter." The emissary actually laughed shyly.

My dreaming session ended there. On awakening, my first reaction was to pack my bag to go to Mexico and see don Juan. However, an unexpected development in my personal life made it impossible for me to travel, in spite of my frantic preparations to leave. The anxiety resulting from this setback interrupted my dreaming practices altogether. I did not engage my conscious volition to stop them. I had unwittingly put so much emphasis on this specific dream that I simply knew if I could not get to don Juan there was no point in continuing dreaming.

After an interruption that lasted over half a year, I became more and more mystified by what had happened. I had no idea that my feelings alone were going to stop my practices. I wondered then if the desire would be sufficient to reinstate it. It was! Once I had formulated the thought of reentering dreaming, my practices continued as if they had never been interrupted. The scout picked up where we had left off and took me directly to the vision I'd had during my last session.

"This is the shadows' world," the emissary's voice said as soon as I was there. "But, even though we are shadows, we shed light. Not only are we mobile but we are the light in the tunnels. We are another kind of inorganic being that exists here. There are three kinds: one is like an immobile tunnel, the other is like a mobile shadow. We are the mobile shadows. The tunnels give us their energy, and we do their bidding."

The emissary stopped talking. I felt it was daring me to ask about the third kind of inorganic being. I also felt that if I did not ask, the emissary would not tell me.

"What's the third kind of inorganic being?" I said.

The emissary coughed and chuckled. To me, it sounded like it relished being asked.

"Oh, that's our most mysterious feature," it said. "The third kind is revealed to our visitors only when they choose to stay with us."

"Why is that so?" I asked.

"Because it takes a great deal of energy to see them," the emissary answered. "And we would have to provide that energy."

I knew that the emissary was telling me the truth. I also knew that a horrendous danger was lurking. Yet I was driven by a curiosity without limits. I wanted to see that third kind.

The emissary seemed to be aware of my mood.

"Would you like to see them?" it asked casually.

"Most certainly," I said.

"All you have to do is to say out loud that you want to stay with us," the emissary said with a nonchalant intonation.

"But if I say that, I have to stay, right?" I asked.

"Naturally," the emissary said in a tone of ultimate conviction. "Everything you say out loud in this world is for keeps."

I could not help thinking that, if the emissary had wanted to trick me into staying, all it had to do was lie to me. I would not have known the difference.

"I cannot lie to you, because a lie doesn't exist," the emissary said, intruding into my thoughts. "I can tell you only about what exists. In my world, only intent exists; a lie has no intent behind it; therefore, it has no existence."

I wanted to argue that there is intent even behind lies, but before I could voice my argument, the emissary said that behind lies there is intention but that that intention is not intent.

I could not keep my dreaming attention focused on the argument the emissary was posing. It went to the shadow beings. Suddenly, I noticed that they had the appearance of a herd of strange, childlike animals. The emissary's voice warned me to hold my emotions in check, for sudden bursts of feelings had the capacity to make them disperse, like a flock of birds.

"What do you want me to do?" I asked.

"Come down to our side and try to push or pull us," the emissary's voice urged me. "The quicker you learn to do that, the quicker you'll be able to move things around in your world by merely looking at them."

My merchant's mind went berserk with anticipation. I was instantly among them, desperately trying to push them or pull them. After a while, I thoroughly exhausted my energy. I then had the impression that I had been trying to do something equivalent to lifting a house with the strength of my teeth.

Another impression I had was that the more I exerted myself, the greater the number of shadows. It was as if they were coming from every corner to watch me, or to feed on me. The moment I had that thought, the shadows again scurried away.

"We are not feeding on you," the emissary said. "We all come to feel your energy, very much like what you do with sunlight on a cold day."

The emissary urged me to open up to them by canceling out my suspicious thoughts. I heard the voice, and as I listened to what it was saying, I realized that I was hearing, feeling, and thinking exactly as I do in my daily world. I slowly turned to see around me. Taking the clarity of my perception as a gauge, I concluded that I was in a real world.

The emissary's voice sounded in my ears. It said that for me the only difference between perceiving my world and perceiving theirs was that perceiving their world started and ended in the blink of an eye; perceiving mine did not, because my awareness- together with the awareness of an immense number of beings like me who held my world in place with their intent- was fixed on my world. The emissary added that perceiving my world started and ended the same way for the inorganic beings, in the blink of an eye, but perceiving their world did not, because there were immense numbers of them holding it in place with their intent.

At that instant the scene started to dissolve. I was like a diver, and waking up from that world was like swimming up to reach the surface.

In the following session, the emissary began its dialogue with me by restating that a totally coordinated and coactive relationship existed between mobile shadows and stationary tunnels. It finished its statement saying, "We can't exist without each other."

"I understand what you mean," I said.

There was a touch of scorn in the emissary's voice when it retorted that I could not possibly understand what it means to be related in that fashion, which was infinitely more than being dependent. I intended to ask the emissary to explain what it meant by that, but the next instant I was inside of what I can only describe as the very tissue of the tunnel. I saw some grotesquely merged, glandlike protuberances that emitted an opaque light. The thought crossed my mind that those were the same protuberances that had given me the impression of being like Braille. Considering that they were energy blobs three to four feet in diameter, I began to wonder about the actual size of those tunnels.

"Size here is not like size in your world," the emissary said. "The energy of this world is a different kind of energy; its features don't coincide with the features of the energy of your world, yet this world is as real as your own."

The emissary went on to say that it had told me everything about the shadow beings when it described and explained the protuberances on the tunnels' walls. I retorted that I had heard the explanations but I had not paid attention to them because I believed that they did not pertain directly to dreaming.

"Everything here, in this realm, pertains directly to dreaming," the emissary stated.

I wanted to think about the reason for my misjudgment, but my mind became blank. My dreaming attention was waning. I was having trouble focusing it on the world around me. I braced myself for waking up. The emissary started to speak again, and the sound of its voice propped me up. My dreaming attention perked up considerably.

"Dreaming is the vehicle that brings dreamers to this world," the emissary said, "and everything sorcerers know about dreaming was taught to them by us. Our world is connected to yours by a door called dreams. We know how to go through that door, but men don't. They have to learn it."

The emissary's voice went on explaining what it had already explained to me before.

"The protuberances on the tunnels' walls are shadow beings," it said. "I am one of them. We move inside the tunnels, on their walls, charging ourselves with the energy of the tunnels, which is our energy."

An idle thought crossed my mind: I was really incapable of conceiving a symbiotic relationship such as the one I was witnessing.

"If you would stay among us, you would certainly learn to feel what it is like to be connected as we are connected," the emissary said.

The emissary seemed to be waiting for my reply. I had the feeling that what it really wanted was for me to say that I had decided to stay.

"How many shadow beings are in each tunnel?" I asked to change the mood and immediately regretted it because the emissary began to give me a detailed account of the numbers and functions of the shadow beings in each tunnel. It said that each tunnel had a specific number of dependent entities, which performed specific functions having to do with the needs and expectations of the supporting tunnels.

I did not want the emissary to go into more detail. I reasoned that the less I knew about the tunnel and shadow beings the better off I was. The instant I formulated that thought, the emissary stopped, and my energy body jerked as if it had been pulled by a cable. The next moment, I was fully awake, in my bed.

From then on, I had no more fears that could have interrupted my practices. Another idea had begun to rule me: the idea that I had found unparalleled excitation. I could hardly wait every day to start dreaming and have the scout take me to the shadows' world. The added attraction was that my visions of the shadows' world became even more true to life than before. Judged by the subjective standards of orderly thoughts, orderly visual and auditory sensory input, orderly responses on my part, my experiences, for as long as they lasted, were as real as any situation in our daily world. Never had I had perceptual experiences in which the only difference between my visions and my everyday world was the speed with which my visions ended. One instant I was in a strange, real world, and the next instant I was in my bed.

I craved don Juan's commentaries and explanations, but I was still marooned in Los Angeles. The more I considered my situation, the greater my anxiety: I even began to sense that something in the inorganic beings' realm was brewing at tremendous speed.

As my anxiety grew, my body entered into a state of profound fright, although my mind was ecstatic in the contemplation of the shadows' world. To make things worse, the dreaming emissary's voice lapsed into my daily consciousness. One day while I was attending a class at the university, I heard the voice say, over and over, that any attempt on my part to end my dreaming practices would be deleterious to my total aims. It argued that warriors do not shy away from a challenge and that I had no valid rationale for discontinuing my practices. I agreed with the emissary. I had no intention of stopping anything, and the voice was merely reaffirming what I felt.

Not only did the emissary change but a new scout appeared on the scene. On one occasion, before I had begun to examine the items of my dream, a scout had literally jumped in front of me and aggressively captured my dreaming attention. The notable feature of this scout was that it did not need to go through any energetic metamorphosis. It was a blob of energy from the start. In the blink of an eye, the scout transported me, without my having to voice my intent to go with it, to another part of the inorganic beings' realm: the world of the saber-toothed tigers.

I have described in my other works glimpses of those visions. I say glimpses because I did not have sufficient energy then to render these perceived worlds comprehensible to my linear mind.

My nightly visions of the saber-toothed tigers occurred regularly for a long time, until one night when the aggressive scout that had taken me for the first time to that realm suddenly appeared again. Without waiting for my consent, it took me to the tunnels.

I heard the emissary's voice. It immediately went into the longest and most poignant sales pitch I had heard so far. It told me about the extraordinary advantages of the inorganic beings' world. It spoke of acquiring knowledge that would definitely stagger the mind and about acquiring it by the simplest act, of staying in those marvelous tunnels. It spoke of incredible mobility, of endless time to find things, and, above all, of being pampered by cosmic servants that would cater to my slightest whims.

"Aware beings from the most unbelievable corners of the cosmos stay with us," the emissary said, ending its talk. "And they love their stay with us. In fact, no one wants to leave."

The thought that crossed my mind at that moment was that servitude was definitely antithetical [* antithetical- sharply contrasted in character or purpose] to me. I had never been at ease with servants or with being served.

The scout took over and made me glide through many tunnels. It came to a halt in a tunnel that seemed somehow larger than the others. My dreaming attention became riveted on the size and configuration of that tunnel, and it would have stayed glued there had I not been made to turn around. My dreaming attention focused then on a blob of energy a bit bigger than the shadow entities. It was blue, like the blue in the center of a candle's flame. I knew that this energy configuration was not a shadow entity and that it did not belong there.

I became absorbed in sensing it. The scout signaled me to leave, but something was making me impervious to its cues. I remained, uneasily, where I was. However, the scout's signaling broke my concentration, and I lost sight of the blue shape.

Suddenly, a considerable force made me spin around and put me squarely in front of the blue shape. As I gazed at it, it turned into the figure of a person: very small, slender, delicate, almost transparent. I desperately attempted to determine whether it was a man or a woman, but, hard as I tried, I could not.

My attempts to ask the emissary failed. It flew away quite abruptly, leaving me suspended in that tunnel, facing now an unknown person. I tried to talk to that person the way I talked to the emissary. I got no response. I felt a wave of frustration at not being able to break the barrier that separated us. Then I was besieged by the fear of being alone with someone who might have been an enemy.

I had a variety of reactions triggered by the presence of that stranger. I even felt elation, because I knew that the scout had finally shown me another human being caught in that world. I only despaired at the possibility that we were not able to communicate perhaps because that stranger was one of the sorcerers of antiquity and belonged to a time different from mine.

The more intense my elation and curiosity, the heavier I became, until a moment in which I was so massive that I was back in my body, and back in the world. I found myself in Los Angeles, in a park by the University of California. I was standing on the grass, right in the line of people playing golf.

The person in front of me had solidified at the same rate. We stared at each other for a fleeting instant. It was a girl, perhaps six or seven years old. I thought I knew her. On seeing her, my elation and curiosity grew so out of proportion that they triggered a reversal. I lost mass so fast that in another instant I was again a blob of energy in the inorganic beings' realm. The scout came back for me and hurriedly pulled me away.

I woke up with a jolt of fright. In the process of surfacing into the daily world, something had let a message slip through. My mind went into a frenzy trying to put together what I knew or thought I knew. I spent more than forty-eight continuous hours attempting to get at a hidden feeling or a hidden knowledge that had gotten stuck to me. The only success I had was to sense a force- I fancied it to be outside my mind or my body- that told me not to trust my dreaming anymore.

After a few days, a dark and mysterious certainty began to get hold of me, a certainty that grew by degrees until I had no doubt about its authenticity: I was sure that the blue blob of energy was a prisoner in the inorganic beings' realm.

I needed don Juan's advice more desperately than ever. I knew that I was throwing years of work out the window, but I couldn't help it: I dropped everything I was doing and ran to Mexico.

"What do you really want?" don Juan asked me as a way to contain my hysterical babbling.

I could not explain to him what I wanted because I did not know it myself.

"Your problem must be very serious to make you run like this," don Juan said with a pensive expression.

"It is, in spite of the fact that I can't figure out what my problem really is," I said.

He asked me to describe my dreaming practices in all the detail that was pertinent. I told him about my vision of the little girl and how it had affected me at an emotional level. He instantly advised me to ignore the event and regard it as a blatant attempt, on the part of the inorganic beings, to cater to my fantasies. He remarked that if dreaming is overemphasized, it becomes what it was for the old sorcerers: a source of inexhaustible indulging.

For some inexplicable reason, I was unwilling to tell don Juan about the realm of the shadow entities. It was only when he discarded my vision of the little girl that I felt obliged to describe to him my visits to that world. He was silent for a long time, as if he were overwhelmed.

When he finally spoke, he said, "You are more alone than I thought, because I can't discuss your dreaming practices at all. You are at the position of the old sorcerers. All I can do is to repeat to you that you must exercise all the care you arc able to muster up."

"Why do you say that I am at the position of the old sorcerers?"

"I've told you repeatedly that your mood is dangerously like the old sorcerers'. They were very capable beings. Their flaw was that they took to the inorganic beings' realm like fish take to the water. You are in the same boat. You know things about it that none of us can even conceive. For instance, I never knew about the shadows' world, and neither did the nagual Julian. Nor did the nagual Elias, in spite of the fact that he spent a long time in the world of the inorganic beings."

"But what difference does knowing the shadows' world make?"

"A great deal of difference. Dreamers are taken there only when the inorganic beings are sure the dreamers are going to stay in that world. We know this through the old sorcerers' stories."

"I assure you, don Juan, that I have no intention whatsoever of staying there. You talk as if I am just about to be lured by promises of service or promises of power. I am not interested in either, and that's that."

"At this level, it isn't that easy anymore. You've gone beyond the point where you could simply quit. Besides, you had the misfortune of being singled out by a watery inorganic being. Remember how you tumbled with it? And how it felt? I told you then that watery inorganic beings are the most annoying. They are dependent and possessive, and once they sink their hooks, they never give up."

"And what does that mean in my case, don Juan?"

"It means real trouble. The specific inorganic being who's running the show is the one you grabbed that fatal day. Over the years, it has grown familiar with you. It knows you intimately."

I sincerely remarked to don Juan that the mere idea that an inorganic being knew me intimately made me sick to my stomach.

"When dreamers realize that the inorganic beings have no appeal," he said, "it is usually too late for them, because by then the inorganic beings have them in the bag."

I felt in the depths of me that he was talking abstractly, about dangers that might exist theoretically but not in practice. I was secretly convinced there was no danger of any sort.

"I am not going to allow the inorganic beings to lure me in any way, if that's what you're thinking," I said.

"I am thinking that they are going to trick you," he said. "Like they tricked the nagual Rosendo. They are going to set you up, and you won't see the trap or even suspect it. They are smooth operators. Now they have even invented a little girl."

"But there is no doubt in my mind that the little girl exists," I insisted.

"There is no little girl," he snapped. "That bluish blob of energy is a scout; an explorer caught in the inorganic beings' realm. I've said to you that the inorganic beings are like fishermen: They attract and catch awareness."

Don Juan said that he believed, without a doubt, that the bluish blob of energy was from a dimension entirely different from ours; a scout that got stranded and caught like a fly in a spider's web.

I did not appreciate his analogy. It worried me to the point of physical discomfort. I did mention this to don Juan, and he told me that my concern with the prisoner scout was making him feel very close to despair.

"Why does this bother you?" I asked.

"Something is brewing in that confounded world," he said. "And I can't figure out what it is."

While I remained with don Juan and his companions, I did not dream at all about the inorganic beings' world. As usual, my practice was to focus my dreaming attention on the items of my dreams and to change dreams. As a way to offset my concerns, don Juan made me gaze at clouds and at faraway mountain peaks. The result was an immediate feeling of being level with the clouds, or the feeling that I was actually at the faraway mountain peaks.

"I am very pleased, but very worried," don Juan said as a comment on my effort. "You are being taught marvels, and you don't even know it. And I don't mean that you are being taught by me."

"You are talking about the inorganic beings, true?"

"Yes, the inorganic beings. I recommend that you don't gaze at anything; gazing was the old sorcerers' technique. They were able to get to their energy bodies in the blink of an eye, simply by gazing at objects of their predilection. A very impressive technique, but useless to modern sorcerers. It does nothing to increase our sobriety or our capacity to seek freedom. All it does is pin us down to concreteness; a most undesirable state."

Don Juan added that, unless I kept myself in check, by the time I had merged the second attention with the attention of my everyday life, I was going to be an insufferable man. There was, he said, a dangerous gap between my mobility in the second attention and my insistence on immobility in my awareness of the daily world. He remarked that the gap between the two was so great that in my daily state I was nearly an idiot, and in the second attention I was a lunatic.

Before I went home, I took the liberty of discussing my dreaming visions of the shadows' world with Carol Tiggs, although don Juan had advised me not to discuss them with anybody. She was most understanding and most interested, since she was my total counterpart. Don Juan was definitely annoyed with me for having revealed my troubles to her. I felt worse than ever. Self-pity possessed me, and I began to complain about always doing the wrong thing.

"You haven't done anything yet," don Juan snapped at me. "That much, I know."

Was he right! On my next dreaming session, at home, all hell broke loose. I reached the shadows' world, as I had done on countless occasions: The difference was the presence of the blue energy shape. It was among the other shadow beings. I felt it was possible that the blob had been there before and I hadn't noticed it. As soon as I spotted it, my dreaming attention was inescapably attracted to that blob of energy. In a matter of seconds, I was next to it. The other shadows came to me, as usual, but I paid no attention to them.

All of a sudden, the blue, round shape turned into the little girl I had seen before. She craned her thin, delicate, long neck to one side and said in a barely audible whisper, "Help me!" Either she said that or I fantasized that she said it. The result was the same: I stood frozen, galvanized by genuine concern. I experienced a chill, but not in my energy mass. I felt a chill in another part of me. This was the first time I was completely aware that my experience was thoroughly separate from my sensorial feelings. I was experiencing the shadows' world, with all the implications of what I normally consider experiencing: I was able to think, to assess, to make decisions; I had psychological continuity; in other words, I was myself. The only part of me that was missing was my sensorial self. I had no bodily sensations. All my input came through seeing and hearing. My rationality then considered a strange dilemma: seeing and hearing were not physical faculties but qualities of the visions I was having.

"You are really seeing and hearing," the emissary's voice said, erupting into my thoughts. "That is the beauty of this place. You can experience everything through seeing and hearing, without having to breathe. Think of it! You don't have to breathe! You can go anywhere in the universe and not breathe."

A most disquieting ripple of emotion went through me, and, again, I did not feel it there, in the shadows' world. I felt it in another place. I became enormously agitated by the obvious yet veiled realization that there was a live connection between the me that was experiencing and a source of energy, a source of sensorial feeling located somewhere else. It occurred to me that this somewhere else was my actual physical body, which was asleep in my bed.

At the instant of this thought, the shadow beings scurried away, and the little girl was alone in my field of vision. I watched her and became convinced that I knew her. She seemed to falter as if she were about to faint. A boundless wave of affection for her enveloped me.

I tried to speak to her, but I was incapable of uttering sounds. It became clear to me then that all my dialogues with the emissary had been elicited and accomplished by the emissary's energy. Left to my own devices, I was helpless. I attempted next to direct my thoughts to the little girl. It was useless. We were separated by a membrane of energy I could not pierce.

The little girl seemed to understand my despair and actually communicated with me, directly into my thoughts. She told me, essentially, what don Juan had already said: that she was a scout caught in the webs of that world. Then she added that she had adopted the shape of a little girl because that shape was familiar to me and to her; and that she needed my help as much as I needed hers. She said this to me in one clump of energetic feeling, which was like words that came to me all at once. I had no difficulty understanding her, although this was the first time anything of the sort had happened to me.

I did not know what to do. I tried to convey to her my sensation of incapacity. She seemed to comprehend me instantly. She silently appealed to me with a burning look. She even smiled as if to let me know that she had left it up to me to extricate her from her bonds. When I retorted, in a thought, that I had no abilities whatsoever, she gave me the impression of a hysterical child in the throes of despair.

I frantically tried to talk to her. The little girl actually cried, like a child her age would cry, out of desperation and fear. I couldn't stand it. I charged at her, but with no effective result. My energy mass went through her. My idea was to lift her up and take her with me.

I attempted the same maneuver over and over until I was exhausted. I stopped to consider my next move. I was afraid that my dreaming attention was going to wane, and then I would lose sight of her. I doubted that the inorganic beings would bring me back to that specific part of their realm. It seemed to me that this was going to be my last visit to them: the visit that counted.

Then I did something unthinkable. Before my dreaming attention vanished, I yelled loud and clear my intent to merge my energy with the energy of that prisoner scout and set it free.