As a preamble to his first lesson in dreaming, don Juan talked about thesecond attention as a progression beginning as an idea that comes to us morelike a curiosity than an actual possibility; turning into something that canonly be felt, as a sensation is felt; and finally evolving into a state ofbeing, or a realm of practicalities, or a preeminent force that opens for usworlds beyond our wildest fantasies.

When explaining sorcery, sorcerers have two options. One is to speak inmetaphorical terms and talk about a world of magical dimensions. The other isto explain their business in abstract terms proper to sorcery. I have alwayspreferred the

latter, although neither option will ever satisfy the rational mind of aWestern man.

Don Juan told me that what he meant by his metaphorical description of thesecond attention as a progression was that, being a by-product of adisplacement of the assemblage point, the second attention does not happennaturally but must be intended, beginning with intending it as an idea andending up with intending it as a steady and controlled awareness of theassemblage point's displacement.

"I am going to teach you the first step to power," don Juansaid, beginning his instruction in the art of dreaming. "I'm going toteach you how to set up dreaming."

"What does it mean to set up dreaming?"

"To set up dreaming means to have a precise and practical commandover the general situation of a dream. For example, you may dream that you arein your classroom. To set up dreaming means that you don't let the dream slipinto something else. You don't jump from the classroom to the mountains, forinstance. In other words, you control the view of the classroom and don't letit go until you want to."

"But is it possible to do that?"

"Of course it's possible. This control is no different from thecontrol we have over any situation in our daily lives. Sorcerers are used to itand get it every time they want or need to. In order to get used to ityourself, you must start by doing something very simple. Tonight, in yourdreams, you must look at your hands."

Not much more was said about this in the awareness of our daily world. Inmy recollection of my experiences in the second attention, however, I found outthat we had a more extensive exchange. For instance, I expressed my feelingsabout the absurdity of the task, and don Juan suggested that I should face itin terms of a quest that was entertaining, instead of solemn and morbid.

"Get as heavy as you want when we talk about dreaming," he said."Explanations always call for deep thought. But when you actually dream,be as light as a feather. Dreaming has to be performed with integrity andseriousness, but in the midst of laughter and with the confidence of someonewho doesn't have a worry in the world. Only under these conditions can ourdreams actually be turned into dreaming."

Don Juan assured me that he had selected my hands arbitrarily as somethingto look for in my dreams and that looking for anything else was just as valid.The goal of the exercise was not finding a specific thing but engaging mydreaming attention.

Don Juan described the dreaming attention as the control one acquires overone's dreams upon fixating the assemblage point on any new position to which ithas been displaced during dreams. In more general terms, he called the dreamingattention an incomprehensible facet of awareness that exists by itself, waitingfor a moment when we would entice it, a moment when we would give it purpose;it is a veiled faculty that every one of us has in reserve but never has theopportunity to use in everyday life.

My first attempts at looking for my hands in my dreams were a fiasco.After months of unsuccessful efforts, I gave up and complained to don Juanagain about the absurdity of such a task.

"There are seven gates," he said as a way of answering,"and dreamers have to open all seven of them, one at the time. You're upagainst the first gate that must be opened if you are to dream."

"Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"It would've been useless to tell you about the gates of dreamingbefore you smacked your head against the first one. Now you know that it is anobstacle and that you have to overcome it."

Don Juan explained that there are entrances and exits in the energy flowof the universe and that, in the specific case of dreaming, there are sevenentrances, experienced as obstacles, which sorcerers call the seven gates ofdreaming.

"The first gate is a threshold we must cross by becoming aware of aparticular sensation before deep sleep," he said. "A sensation whichis like a pleasant heaviness that doesn't let us I open our eyes. We reach thatgate the instant we become aware that we're falling asleep, suspended indarkness and heaviness."

"How do I become aware that I am falling asleep? Are there any stepsto follow?"

"No. There are no steps to follow. One just intends to become awareof falling asleep."

"But how does one intend to become aware of it?"

"Intent or intending is something very difficult to talk about. I oranyone else would sound idiotic trying to explain it. "Bear that in mindwhen you hear what I have to say next sorcerers intend anything they setthemselves to intend, simply by intending it."

"That doesn't mean anything, don Juan."

"Pay close attention. Someday it'll be your turn to explain. Thestatement seems nonsensical because you are not putting it in the propercontext. Like any rational man, you think that understanding is exclusively therealm of our reason, of our mind.

"For sorcerers, because the statement I made pertains to intent andintending, understanding it pertains to the realm of energy. Sorcerers believethat if one would intend that statement for the energy body, the energy bodywould understand it in terms entirely different from those of the mind. Thetrick is to reach the energy body. For that you need energy."

"In what terms would the energy body understand that statement, donJuan?"

"In terms of a bodily feeling, which it's hard to describe. You'llhave to experience it to know what I mean."

I wanted a more precise explanation, but don Juan slapped my back and mademe enter into the second attention. At that time, what he did was still utterlymysterious to me. I could have sworn that his touch hypnotized me. I believedhe had instantaneously put me to sleep, and I dreamt that I found myselfwalking with him on a wide avenue lined with trees in some unknown city. It wassuch a vivid dream, and I was so aware of everything, that I immediately tried toorient myself by reading signs and looking at people. It definitely was not anEnglish- or Spanish-speaking city, but it was a Western city. The people seemedto be northern Europeans, perhaps Lithuanians. I became absorbed in trying toread billboards and street signs.

Don Juan nudged me gently. "Don't bother with that," he said."We are nowhere identifiable. I've just lent you my energy so you wouldreach your energy body, and with it you've just crossed into another world.This won't last long, so use your time wisely.

"Look at everything, but without being obvious. Don't let anyonenotice you."

We walked in silence. It was a block-long walk, which had a remarkableeffect on me. The more we walked, the greater my sensation of visceral anxiety.My mind was curious, but my body was alarmed. I had the clearest understandingthat I was not in this world. When we got to an intersection and stoppedwalking, I saw that the trees on the street had been carefully trimmed. Theywere short trees with hard-looking, curled leaves. Each tree had a big squarespace for watering. There were no weeds or trash in those spaces, as one wouldfind around trees in the city, only charcoal black, loose dirt.

The moment I focused my eyes on the curb, before I stepped off it to crossthe street, I noticed that there were no cars. I tried desperately to watch thepeople who milled around us, to discover something about them that wouldexplain my anxiety. As I stared at them, they stared back at me. In one instanta circle of hard blue and brown eyes had formed around us.

A certainty hit me like a blow this was not a dream at all; we were in areality beyond what I know to be real. I turned to face don Juan. I was aboutto realize what was different about those people, but a strange dry wind thatwent directly to my sinuses hit my face, blurred my view, and made me forgetwhat I wanted to tell don Juan. The next instant, I was back where I hadstarted from don Juan's house. I was lying on a straw mat, curled up on myside.

"I lent you my energy, and you reached your energy body," donJuan said matter-of-factly.

I heard him talk, but I was numb. An unusual itching on my solar plexuskept my breaths short and painful. I knew that I had been on the verge offinding something transcendental about dreaming and about the people I hadseen, yet I could not bring whatever I knew into focus.

"Where were we, don Juan?" I asked. "Was it all a dream? A'hypnotic state?"

"It wasn't a dream," he replied. "It was dreaming. I helpedyou reach the second attention so that you would understand intending as asubject not for your reason but for your energy body

"At this point, you can't yet comprehend the import of all this, notonly because you don't have sufficient energy but because you're not intendinganything. If you were, your energy body would comprehend immediately that theonly way to intend is by focusing your intent on whatever you want to intend.This time I focused it for you on reaching your energy body."

"Is the goal of dreaming to intend the energy body?" I asked,suddenly empowered by some strange reasoning.

"One can certainly put it that way," he said. "In thisparticular instance, since we're talking about the first gate of dreaming, thegoal of dreaming is to intend that your energy body becomes aware that you arefalling asleep. Don't try to force yourself to be aware of falling asleep. Letyour energy body do it. To intend is to wish without wishing, to do withoutdoing.

"Accept the challenge of intending," he went on. "Put yoursilent determination, without a single thought, into convincing yourself thatyou have reached your energy body and that you are a dreamer. Doing this willautomatically put you in the position to be aware that you are fallingasleep."

"How can I convince myself that I am a dreamer when I am not?"

"When you hear that you have to convince yourself, you automaticallybecome more rational. How can you convince yourself you are a dreamer when youknow you are not? Intending is both the act of convincing yourself you areindeed a dreamer, although you have never dreamt before, and the act of beingconvinced."

"Do you mean I have to tell myself I am a dreamer and try my best tobelieve it? Is that it?"

"No, it isn't. Intending is much simpler and, at the same time,infinitely more complex than that. It requires imagination, discipline, andpurpose. In this case, to intend means that you get an unquestionable bodilyknowledge that you are a dreamer. You feel you are a dreamer with all the cellsof your body."

Don Juan added in a joking tone that he did not have sufficient energy tomake me another loan for intending and that the thing to do was to reach myenergy body on my own. He assured me that intending the first gate of dreamingwas one of the means discovered by the sorcerers of antiquity for reaching thesecond attention and the energy body.

After telling me this, he practically threw me out of his house,commanding me not to come back until I had intended the first gate of dreaming.

I returned home, and every night for months I went to sleep intending withall my might to become aware that I was falling asleep and to see my hands inmy dreams. The other part of the task - to convince myself that I was a dreamerand that I had reached my energy body - was totally impossible for me.

Then, one afternoon while taking a nap, I dreamt I was looking at myhands. The shock was enough to wake me up. It proved to be a unique dream thatcould not be repeated. Weeks went by, and I was unable either to become awarethat I was falling asleep or to find my hands. I began to notice, however, at Iwas having in my dreams a vague feeling that there was something I should havebeen doing but could not remember feeling became so strong that it kept onwaking me up at fall hours of the night.

When I told don Juan about my futile attempts to cross the first gate ofdreaming, he gave me some guidelines. "To ask a dreamer to find adetermined item in his dreams is a subterfuge," he said. "The realissue is to become aware that one is if ailing asleep. And, strange as it mayseem, that doesn't happen commanding oneself to be aware that one is fallingasleep by sustaining the sight of whatever one is looking at in a dream."

He told me that dreamers take quick, deliberate glances at s everythingpresent in a dream. If they focus their dreaming attention on somethingspecific, it is only as a point of departure. From there, dreamers move on tolook at other items in the dream's content, returning to the point of departureas many times as possible.

After a great effort, I indeed found hands in my dreams, but they neverwere mine. They were hands that only seemed to I belong to me, hands thatchanged shape, becoming quite nightmarish at times. The rest of my dreams'content, nonetheless, was always pleasantly steady. I could almost sustain theview I of anything I focused my attention on.

It went on like this for months, until one day when my capacity to dreamchanged seemingly by itself. I had done nothing special besides my constantearnest determination to be aware that I was falling asleep and to find myhands.

I dreamt I was visiting my hometown. Not that the town I 1 was dreamingabout looked at all like my hometown, but 1 somehow I had the conviction thatit was the place where I was born. It all began as an ordinary, yet very vividdream. Then the light in the dream changed. Images became sharper. The streetwhere I was walking became noticeably more real than a moment before. My feetbegan to hurt. I could feel that things were absurdly hard. For instance, onbumping into a door, not only did I experience pain on the knee that hit thedoor but I also was enraged by my clumsiness.

I realistically walked in that town until I was completely exhausted. Isaw everything I could have seen had I been a tourist walking through thestreets of a city. And there was no difference whatsoever between that dreamwalk and any walk I had actually taken on the streets of a city I visited forthe first time.

"I think you went a bit too far," don Juan said after listeningto my account. "All that was required was your awareness of fallingasleep. What you've done is equivalent to bringing a wall down just to squash amosquito sitting on it."

"Do you mean, don Juan, that I flubbed it?"

"No. But apparently you're trying to repeat something you did before.When I made your assemblage point shift and you and I ended up in thatmysterious city, you were not asleep. You were dreaming, but not asleep,meaning that your assemblage point didn't reach that position through a normaldream. I forced it to shift.

"You certainly can reach the same position through dreaming, but Iwouldn't advise you to do that at this time."

"Is it dangerous?"

"And how! Dreaming has to be a very sober affair. No false movementcan be afforded. Dreaming is a process of awakening, of gaining control. Ourdreaming attention must be systematically exercised, for it is the door to thesecond attention."

"What's the difference between the dreaming attention and the secondattention?"

"The second attention is like an ocean, and the dreaming attention islike a river feeding into it. The second attention is the condition of beingaware of total worlds, total like our world is total, while the dreamingattention is the condition of I being aware of the items of our dreams."

He heavily stressed that the dreaming attention is the key to everymovement in the sorcerers' world. He said that among the multitude of items inour dreams, there exist real energetic interferences, things that have been putin our dreams extraneously, by an alien force. To be able to find them andfollow them is sorcery.

The emphasis he put on those statements was so pronounced I that I had toask him to explain them. He hesitated for a moment before answering.

"Dreams are, if not a door, a hatch into other worlds," he !began. "As such, dreams are a two-way street. Our awareness I goes throughthat hatch into other realms, and those other I realms send scouts into ourdreams." "What are those scouts?"

"Energy charges that get mixed with the items of our normal dreams.They are bursts of foreign energy that come into our I dreams, and we interpretthem as items familiar or unfamiliar to us."

"I am sorry, don Juan, but I can't make heads or tails out of yourexplanation."

"You can't because you're insisting on thinking about dreams in termsknown to you what occurs to us during sleep. And I am insisting on giving youanother version a hatch into other realms of perception. Through that hatch,currents of unfamiliar energy seep in. Then the mind or the brain or whatevertakes those currents of energy and turns them into parts of our dreams."

He paused, obviously to give my mind time to take in what he was tellingme. "Sorcerers are aware of those currents of foreign energy," hecontinued. "They notice them and strive to isolate them from the normalitems of their dreams." "Why do they isolate them, don Juan?""Because they come from other realms. If we follow them to their source,they serve us as guides into areas of such mystery that sorcerers shiver at themere mention of such a possibility."

"How do sorcerers isolate them from the normal items of theirdreams?"

"By the exercise and control of their dreaming attention. At onemoment, our dreaming attention discovers them among the items of a dream andfocuses on them, then the total dream collapses, leaving only the foreignenergy."

Don Juan refused to explain the topic any further. He went back todiscussing my dreaming experience and said that, all in all, he had to take mydream as being my first genuine attempt at dreaming, and that this meant I hadsucceeded in reaching the first gate of dreaming.

During another discussion, at a different time, he abruptly brought up thesubject again. He said, "I'm going to repeat what you must do in your dreamsin order to pass the first gate of dreaming. First you must focus your gaze onanything of your choice as the starting point. Then shift your gaze to otheritems and look at them in brief glances. Focus your gaze on as many things asyou can. Remember that if you glance only briefly, the images don't shift. Thengo back to the item you first looked at."

"What does it mean to pass the first gate of dreaming?"

"We reach the first gate of dreaming by becoming aware that we arefalling asleep, or by having, like you did, a gigantically real dream. Once wereach the gate, we must cross it by being able to sustain the sight of any itemof our dreams."

"I can almost look steadily at the items of my dreams, but theydissipate too quickly."

"This is precisely what I am trying to tell you. In order to offsetthe evanescent quality of dreams, sorcerers have devised the use of thestarting point item. Every time you isolate it and look at it, you get a surgeof energy, so at the beginning don't look at too many things in your dreams.Four items will suffice. Later on, you may enlarge the scope until you cancover all you want, but as soon as the images begin to shift and you feel youare losing control, go back to your starting point item and start I all overagain."

"Do you believe that I really reached the first gate of dream-ling,don Juan?"

"You did, and that's a lot. You'll find out, as you go along, f howeasy it'll be to do dreaming now"

I thought don Juan was either exaggerating or giving me I incentive. Buthe assured me he was being on the level.

"The most astounding thing that happens to dreamers," he said,"is that, on reaching the first gate, they also reach the I energybody."

"What exactly is the energy body?"

"It's the counterpart of the physical body. A ghostlike configurationmade of pure energy."

"But isn't the physical body also made out of energy?" "Ofcourse it is. The difference is that the energy body has only appearance but nomass. Since it's pure energy, it can perform acts that are beyond the possibilitiesof the physical body."

"Such as what for example, don Juan?" "Such as transportingitself in one instant to the ends of the universe. And dreaming is the art oftempering the energy body, of making it supple and coherent by graduallyexercising it.

"Through dreaming we condense the energy body until it's a I unitcapable of perceiving. Its perception, although affected by our normal way ofperceiving the daily world, is an independent perception. It has its ownsphere." "What is that sphere, don Juan?"

"Energy. The energy body deals with energy in terms of I energy.There are three ways in which it deals with energy in I dreaming it canperceive energy as it flows, or it can use energy to boost itself like a rocketinto unexpected areas, or it can perceive as we ordinarily perceive theworld." "What does it mean to perceive energy as it flows?"

"It means to see. It means that the energy body sees energy directlyas a light or as a vibrating current of sorts or as a disturbance. Or it feelsit directly as a jolt or as a sensation that can even be pain."

"What about the other way you talked about, don Juan? The energy bodyusing energy as a boost."

"Since energy is its sphere, it is no problem for the energy body touse currents of energy that exist in the universe to propel itself. All it hasto do is isolate them, and off it goes with them."

He stopped talking and seemed to be undecided, as if he wanted to addsomething but was not sure about it. He smiled at me, and, just as I wasbeginning to ask him a question, he continued his explanation.

"I've mentioned to you before that sorcerers isolate in their dreamsscouts from other realms," he said. "Their energy bodies do that.They recognize energy and go for it. But it isn't desirable for dreamers toindulge in searching for scouts. I was reluctant to tell you about it, becauseof the facility with which one can get swayed by that search."

Don Juan then quickly went on to another subject. He carefully outlinedfor me an entire block of practices. At the time, I found that on one level itwas all incomprehensible to me, yet on another it was perfectly logical andunderstandable. He reiterated that reaching, with deliberate control, the firstgate of dreaming is a way of arriving at the energy body. But to maintain thatgain is predicated on energy alone. Sorcerers get that energy by redeploying,in a more intelligent manner, the energy they have and use for perceiving thedaily world.

When I urged don Juan to explain it more clearly, he added that we allhave a determined quantity of basic energy. That quantity is all the energy wehave, and we use all of it for perceiving and dealing with our engulfing world.He repeated various times, to emphasize it, that there is no more energy for usanywhere and, since our available energy is already engaged, there is not asingle bit left in us for any extraordinary perception, such as dreaming.

"Where does that leave us?" I asked.

"It leaves us to scrounge energy for ourselves, wherever we can findit," he replied.

Don Juan explained that sorcerers have a scrounging method. Theyintelligently redeploy their energy by cutting down anything they considersuperfluous in their lives. They call this method the sorcerers' way. Inessence, the sorcerers' way, as don Juan put it, is a chain of behavioralchoices for dealing with the world, choices much more intelligent than thoseour progenitors taught us. These sorcerers' choices are designed to revamp ourlives by altering our basic reactions about being alive.

"What are those basic reactions?" I asked.

"There are two ways of facing our being alive," he said."One is to surrender to it, either by acquiescing to its demands or byfighting those demands. The other is by molding our particular life situationto fit our own configurations."

"Can we really mold our life situation, don Juan?"

"One's particular life situation can be molded to fit one'sspecifications," don Juan insisted. "Dreamers do that. A wildstatement? Not really, if you consider how little we know about ourselves."

He said that his interest, as a teacher, was to get me thoroughly involvedwith the themes of life and being alive; that is to say, with the differencebetween life, as a consequence of biological forces, and the act of beingalive, as a matter of cognition.

"When sorcerers talk about molding one's life situation," donJuan explained, "they mean molding the awareness of being alive. Throughmolding this awareness, we can get enough energy to reach and sustain theenergy body, and with it we can certainly mold the total direction andconsequences of our lives."

Don Juan ended our conversation about dreaming admonishing me not merelyto think about what he had told me but to turn his concepts into a viable wayof life by a process of repetition. He claimed that everything new in ourlives, such as the sorcerers' concepts he was teaching me, must be repeated tous to the point of exhaustion before we open ourselves to it. He pointed outthat repetition is the way our progenitors socialized us to function in thedaily world.

As I continued my dreaming practices, I gained the capability of beingthoroughly aware that I was falling asleep as well as the capability ofstopping in a dream to examine at will anything that was part of that dream'scontent. To experience this was for me no less than miraculous.

Don Juan stated that as we tighten the control over our dreams, we tightenthe mastery over our dreaming attention. He was right in saying that thedreaming attention comes into play when it is called, when it is given apurpose. Its coming into play is not really a process, as one would normallyunderstand a process an ongoing system of operations or a series of actions orfunctions that bring about an end result. It is rather an awakening. Somethingdormant becomes suddenly functional.