Don Juan told me that in order to see in dreaming not only did I have tointend seeing but I had to put my intent into loud words. For reasons herefused to explain, he insisted that I had to speak up. He conceded that thereare other means to accomplish the same result, but he asserted that voicingone's intent is the simplest and most direct way.

The first time I put into words my intent to see, I was dreaming of achurch bazaar. There were so many articles that I could not make up my mindwhich one to gaze at. A giant, conspicuous vase in a corner made up my mind forme. I gazed at it, voicing my intent to see. The vase remained in my view foran instant, then it changed into another object. I gazed at as many things as Icould in that dream. After I voiced my intent to see, every item I had chosento gaze at vanished or turned into something else, as had happened all along inmy dreaming practices. My dreaming attention was finally exhausted, and I wokeup tremendously frustrated, almost angry.

For months on end, I actually gazed at hundreds of items in my dreams anddeliberately voiced my intent to see, but nothing ever happened. Tired ofwaiting, I finally had to ask don Juan about it.

"You need to have patience. You are learning to do somethingextraordinary," he remarked. "You are learning to intend to see inyour dreams. Someday you will not have to voice your intent; you'll simply willit, silently."

"I think I have not understood the function of whatever I amdoing," I said. "Nothing happens when I shout my intent to see. Whatdoes that mean?"

"It means that your dreams, so far, have been ordinary dreams; theyhave been phantom projections; images that have life only in your dreamingattention."

He wanted to know exactly what had happened to the items on which I hadfocused my gaze. I said that they had vanished or changed shape or even producedvortexes that eventually changed my dreams.

"It has been like that in all my daily dreaming practices," Isaid. "The only thing out of the ordinary is that I am learning to yell inmy dreams, at the top of my voice."

My last statement threw don Juan into a genuine fit of belly laughter,which I found disconcerting. I failed to find the humor of my statement or thereason for his reaction.

"Someday you'll appreciate how funny all this is," he said as ananswer to my silent protest. "In the meantime, don't give up or getdiscouraged. Keep on trying. Sooner or later, you'll hit the right note."

As usual, he was right. A couple of months later, I hit the jackpot. I hada most unusual dream. It started with the appearance of a scout from theinorganic beings' world. The scouts as well as the dreaming emissary had beenstrangely absent from my dreams. I had not missed them or pondered theirdisappearance. In fact, I was so at ease without them I had even forgotten toask don Juan about their absence.

In that dream, the scout had been, at first, a gigantic yellow topaz,which I had found stuck in the back of a drawer. The moment I voiced my intentto see, the topaz turned into a blob of sizzling energy. I feared that I wouldbe compelled to follow it, so I moved my gaze away from the scout and focusedit on an aquarium with tropical fish. I voiced my intent to see and got atremendous surprise. The aquarium emitted a low, greenish glow and changed intoa large surrealist portrait of a bejeweled woman. The portrait emitted the samegreenish glow when I voiced my intent to see.

As I gazed at that glow, the whole dream changed. I was walking then on astreet in a town that seemed familiar to me; it might have been Tucson. I gazedat a display of women's clothes in a store window and spoke out loud my intentto see. Instantly, a black mannequin, prominently displayed, began to glow. Igazed next at a saleslady who came at that moment to rearrange the window. Shelooked at me. After voicing my intent, I saw her glow. It was so stupendousthat I was afraid some detail in her splendorous glow would trap me, but thewoman moved inside the store before I had time to focus my total attention onher. I certainly intended to follow her inside; however, my dreaming attention wascaught by a moving glow. It came to me charging, filled with hatred. There wasloathing in it and viciousness. I jumped backward. The glow stopped its charge;a black substance swallowed me, and I woke up.

These images were so vivid that I firmly believed I had seen energy and mydream had been one of those conditions that don Juan had called dreamlike,energy-generating. The idea that dreams can take place in the consensualreality of our daily world intrigued me, just as the dream images of the inorganicbeings' realm had intrigued me.

"This time, you not only saw energy but crossed a dangerousboundary," don Juan said, after hearing my account.

He reiterated that the drill for the third gate of dreaming is to make theenergy body move on its own. In my last session, he said, I had unwittinglysuperseded the effect of that drill and crossed into another world.

"Your energy body moved," he said. "It journeyed, byitself. That kind of journeying is beyond your abilities at this moment, andsomething attacked you."

"What do you think it was, don Juan?"

"This is a predatorial universe. It could have been one of thousandsof things existing out there." "Why do you think it attackedme?"

"For the same reason the inorganic beings attacked you because youmade yourself available." "Is it that clear-cut, don Juan?"

"Certainly. It's as clear-cut as what you would do if astrange-looking spider crept across your desk while you were . writing. You'dsquash it, out of fright, rather than admire it or examine it."

I was at a loss and searched for words to ask the proper question. Iwanted to ask him where my dream had taken place, or what world I was in thatdream. But those questions did not make any sense; I could gather that myself.Don Juan was very understanding.

"You want to know where your dreaming attention was focused, don'tyou?" he asked with a grin.

This was exactly how I wanted to word my question. I reasoned that in thedream under consideration, I must have been looking at some real object. Justlike what had happened when I saw in dreams the minute details on the floor orthe walls or the door of my room, details that I later had corroboratedexisted.

Don Juan said that in special dreams, like the one I'd had, our dreamingattention focuses on the daily world, and that it moves instantly from one realobject to another in the world. What makes this movement possible is that theassemblage point is on the proper dreaming position. From that position, theassemblage point gives the dreaming attention such fluidity that it can move ina split second over incredible distances, and in doing so it produces aperception so fast, so fleeting that it resembles an ordinary dream.

Don Juan explained that in my dream I had seen a real vase and then mydreaming attention had moved over distances to see a real surrealist paintingof a bejeweled woman. The result, with the exception of seeing energy, had beenvery close to an ordinary dream, in which items, when gazed at, quickly turninto something else.

"I know how disturbing this is," he went on, definitely aware ofmy bewilderment. "For some reason pertinent to the mind, to see energy indreaming is more upsetting than anything one can think of."

I remarked that I had seen energy in dreaming before, yet it had neveraffected me like this.

"Now your energy body is complete and functioning," he said."Therefore, the implication that you see energy in your dream is that youare perceiving a real world, through the veil of a dream. That's the importanceof the journey you took. It was real. It involved energy-generating items thatnearly ended your life."

"Was it that serious, don Juan?"

"You bet! The creature that attacked you was made of pure awarenessand was as deadly as anything can be. You saw its energy. I am sure that yourealize by now that unless we see in dreaming, we can't tell a real,energy-generating thing from a phantom projection. So, even though you battledthe inorganic beings and indeed saw the scouts and the tunnels, your energybody doesn't know for sure if they were real, meaning energy generating. Youare ninety-nine but not one hundred percent sure."

Don Juan insisted on talking about the journey I had taken. Forinexplicable reasons, I was reluctant to deal with that subject. What he wassaying produced an instantaneous reaction in me. I found myself trying to cometo grips with a deep, strange fear; it was dark and obsessive in a nagging,visceral way.

"You definitely went into another layer of the onion," don Juansaid, finishing a statement to which I had not paid attention.

"What is this other layer of the onion, don Juan?"

"The world is like an onion, it has many skins. The world we know isbut one of them. Sometimes, we cross boundaries and enter into another skinanother world, very much like this one, but not the same. And you entered intoone, all by yourself."

"How is this journey you're talking about possible, don Juan?"

"That is a meaningless question, because no one can answer it. In theview of sorcerers, the universe is constructed in layers, which the energy bodycan cross. Do you know where the old sorcerers are still existing to this day?In another layer, in another skin of the onion."

"For me, the idea of a real, pragmatic journey, taken in dreams, isvery difficult to understand or to accept, don Juan."

"We have discussed this topic to exhaustion. I was convinced youunderstood that the journey of the energy body depends exclusively on theposition of the assemblage point."

"You've told me that. And I have been mulling it over and over; still,saying that the journey is in the position of the assemblage point doesn't sayanything to me."

"Your problem is your cynicism. I was just like you. Cynicism doesn'tallow us to make drastic changes in our understanding of the world. It alsoforces us to feel that we are always right."

I understood his point to perfection, but I reminded him about my fightagainst all that.

"I propose that you do one nonsensical thing that might turn thetide," he said. "Repeat to yourself incessantly that the hinge ofsorcery is the mystery of the assemblage point. If you repeat this to yourselflong enough, some unseen force takes over and makes the appropriate changes inyou."

Don Juan did not give me any indication that he was being facetious. Iknew he meant every word of it. What bothered me was his insistence that Irepeat the formula ceaselessly to myself. I caught myself thinking that all ofit was asinine.

"Cut your cynical attitude," he snapped at me. "Repeat thisin a bona fide manner.

"The mystery of the assemblage point is everything in sorcery,"he continued, without looking at me. "Or rather, everything in sorceryrests on the manipulation of the assemblage point. You know all this, but youhave to repeat it."

For an instant, as I heard his remarks, I thought I was going to die ofanguish. An incredible sense of physical sadness gripped my chest and made mescream with pain. My stomach and diaphragm seemed to be pushing up, moving intomy chest cavity. The push was so intense that my awareness changed levels, andI entered into my normal state. Whatever we had been talking about became avague thought about something that might have happened but actually had not,according to the mundane reasoning of my everyday-life consciousness.

The next time don Juan and I talked about dreaming, we discussed thereasons I had been unable to proceed with my dreaming practices for months onend. Don Juan warned me that to explain my situation he had to go in aroundabout way. He pointed out, first, that there is an enormous differencebetween the thoughts and deeds of the men of antiquity and those of modern men.Then he pointed out that the men of ancient times had a very realistic view ofperception and awareness because their view stemmed from their observations ofthe universe around them. Modern men, in contrast, have an absurdly unrealisticview of perception and awareness because their view stems from theirobservations of the social order and from their dealings with it.

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.

"Because you are a modern man involved with the views andobservations of men of antiquity," he replied. "And none of thoseviews and observations are familiar to you. Now more than ever you needsobriety and aplomb. I am trying to make a solid bridge, a bridge you can walkon, between the views of men of ancient times and those of modern men."

He remarked that of all the transcendental observations of the men ofancient times, the only one with which I was familiar, because it had filtereddown to our day, was the idea of selling our souls to the devil in exchange forimmortality, which he admitted sounded to him like something coming straightout of the relationship of the old sorcerers with the inorganic beings. Hereminded me how the dreaming emissary had tried to induce me to stay in itsrealm by offering me the possibility of maintaining my individuality andself-awareness for nearly an eternity.

"As you know, succumbing to the lure of the inorganic beings is notjust an idea; it's real," don Juan went on. "But you haven't yetfully realized the implication of that realness. Dreaming, likewise, is real;it is an energy-generating condition. You hear my statements and you certainlyunderstand what I mean, but your awareness hasn't caught up with the total implicationof it yet."

Don Juan said that my rationality knew the import of a realization of thisnature, and during our last talk it had forced my awareness to change levels. Iended up in my normal awareness before I could deal with the nuances of mydream. My rationality had further protected itself by suspending my dreamingpractices.

"I assure you that I am fully aware of what an energy-generatingcondition means," I said.

"And I assure you that you are not," he retorted. "If youwere, you would measure dreaming with greater care and deliberation. Since youbelieve you are just dreaming, you take blind chances. Your faulty reasoningtells you that no matter what happens, at a given moment the dream will be overand you will wake up."

He was right. In spite of all the things I had witnessed in my dreamingpractices, somehow I still retained the general sense that all of it had been adream.

"I am talking to you about the views of men of antiquity and theviews of modern man," don Juan went on, "because your awareness,which is the awareness of modern man, prefers to deal with an unfamiliarconcept as if it were an empty ideality.

"If I left it up to you, you'd regard dreaming as an idea. Of course,I'm sure you take dreaming seriously, but you don't quite believe in thereality of dreaming."

"I understand what you are saying, don Juan, but I don't understandwhy you are saying it."

"I am saying all this because you are now, for the first time, in theproper position to understand that dreaming is an energy-generating condition.For the first time, you can understand now that ordinary dreams are the honingdevices used to train the assemblage point to reach the position that createsthis energy-generating condition we call dreaming."

He warned me that, since dreamers touch and enter real worlds ofall-inclusive effects, they ought to be in a permanent state of the mostintense and sustained alertness; any deviation from total alertness imperilsthe dreamer in ways more than dreadful.

I began again, at this point, to experience a movement in my chest cavity,exactly as I had felt the day my awareness changed levels by itself. Don Juanforcibly shook me by the arm.

"Regard dreaming as something extremely dangerous!" he commandedme. "And begin that now! Don't start any of your weird maneuvers."

His tone of voice was so urgent that I stopped whatever I was,unconsciously, doing.

"What is going on with me, don Juan?" I asked.

"What's going on with you is that you can displace your assemblagepoint quickly and easily," he said. "Yet that ease has the tendencyto make the displacement erratic. Bring your ease to order. And don't allowyourself even a fraction of an inch leeway."

I could easily have argued that I did not know what he was talking about,but I knew. I also knew I had only a few seconds to round up my energy andchange my attitude, and I did.

This was the end of our exchange that day. I went home, and for nearly ayear I faithfully and daily repeated what don Juan had asked me to say. Theresults of my litany-like invocation were incredible. I was firmly convincedthat it had the same effect on my awareness that exercise has on the muscles ofthe body. My assemblage point became more agile, which meant that seeing energyin dreaming became the sole goal of my practices. My skill at intending to seegrew in proportion to my efforts. A moment came when I was able just to intendseeing, without saying a word, and actually experience the same result as whenI voiced out loud my intent to see.

Don Juan congratulated me on my accomplishment. I, naturally, assumed hewas being facetious. He assured me that he meant it, but beseeched me tocontinue shouting, at least whenever I was at a loss. His request did not seemodd to me. On my own, I had been yelling in my dreams at the top of my voiceevery time I deemed it necessary.

I discovered that the energy of our world wavers. It scintillates. Notonly living beings but everything in our world glimmers with an inner light ofits own. Don Juan explained that the energy of our world consists of layers ofshimmering hues.

The top layer is whitish; another, immediately adjacent to it, ischartreuse; and another one, more distant yet, is amber.

I found all those hues, or rather I saw glimmers of them whenever itemsthat I encountered in my dreamlike states changed shapes. However, a whitishglow was always the initial impact of seeing anything that generated energy.

"Are there only three different hues?" I asked don Juan.

"There is an endless number of them," he replied, "but for thepurposes of) a beginning order, you should be concerned with those three. Lateron, you can get as sophisticated as you want and isolate dozens of hues, if youare able to do it.

"The whitish layer is the hue of the present position of mankind'sassemblage point," don Juan continued. "Let's say that it is a modemhue. Sorcerers believe that everything man does nowadays is tinted with thatwhitish glow. At another time, the position of mankind's assemblage point madethe hue of the ruling energy in the world chartreuse; and at another time, moredistant yet, it made it amber. The color of sorcerers' energy is amber, whichmeans that they are energetically associated with the men who existed in adistant past."

"Do you think, don Juan, that the present whitish hue will changesomeday?"

"If man is capable of evolving. The grand task of sorcerers is tobring forth the idea that, in order to evolve, man must first free hisawareness from its bindings to the social order. Once awareness is free, intentwill redirect it into a new evolutionary path."

"Do you think sorcerers will succeed in that task?"

"They have already succeeded. They themselves are the proof. Toconvince others of the value and import of evolving is another matter."

The other kind of energy I found present in our world but alien to it wasthe scouts' energy, the energy don Juan had called sizzling. I encounteredscores of items in my dreams that, once I saw them, turned into blobs of energythat seemed to be frying, bubbling with some heatlike inner activity.

"Bear in mind that not every scout you are 'going to find belongs tothe realm of inorganic beings," don Juan remarked. "Every scout youhave found so far, except for the blue scout, has been from that realm, butthat was because the inorganic beings were catering to you. They were directingthe show. Now you are on your own. Some of the scouts you will encounter aregoing to be not from the inorganic beings' realm but from other, even moredistant levels of awareness."

"Are the scouts aware of themselves?" I asked.

"Most certainly," he replied.

"Then why don't they make contact with us when we are awake?"

"They do. But our great misfortune is to have our consciousness sofully engaged that we don't have time to pay attention. In our sleep, however,the two-way-traffic trapdoor opens we dream. And in our dreams, we makecontact."

"Is there any way to tell whether the scouts are from a level besidesthe inorganic beings' world?"

"The greater their sizzling, the farther they come from. It sounds simplistic,but you have to let your energy body tell you what is what. I assure you, it'llmake very fine distinctions and unerring judgments when faced with alienenergy."

He was right again. Without much ado, my energy body distinguished twogeneral types of alien energy. The first was the scouts from the inorganicbeings' realm. Their energy fizzled mildly. There was no sound to it, but ithad all the overt appearance of effervescence, or of water that is starting toboil.

The energy of the second general type of scouts gave me the impression ofconsiderably more power. Those scouts seemed to be just about to burn. Theyvibrated from within as if they were filled with pressurized gas.

My encounters with the alien energy were always fleeting because I paidtotal attention to what don Juan recommended. He said, "Unless you knowexactly what you are doing and what you want out of alien energy, you have tobe content with a brief glance. Anything beyond a glance is as dangerous and asstupid as petting a rattlesnake."

"Why is it dangerous, don Juan?" I asked.

"Scouts are always very aggressive and extremely daring," hesaid. "They have to be that way in order to prevail in their explorations.Sustaining our dreaming attention on them is tantamount to soliciting theirawareness to focus on us. Once they focus their attention on us, we arecompelled to go with them. And that, of course, is the danger. We may end up inworlds beyond our energetic possibilities."

Don Juan explained that there are many more types of scouts than the two Ihad classified, but that at my present level of energy I could only focus onthree. He described the first two types as the easiest to spot. Their disguisesin our dreams are so outlandish, he said, that they immediately attract our dreamingattention. He depicted the scouts of the third type as the most dangerous, interms of aggressiveness and power, and because they hide behind subtledisguises.

"One of the strangest things dreamers find, which you yourself willfind presently," don Juan continued, "is this third type of scout. Sofar, you have found samples of only the first two types, but that's because youhaven't looked in the right place."

"And what is the right place, don Juan?"

"You have again fallen prey to words; this time the culprit word is'items,' which you have taken to mean only things, objects. Well, the mostferocious scout hides behind people in our dreams. A formidable surprise was instore for me, in my dreaming, when I focused my gaze on the dream image of my mother.After I voiced my intent to see, she turned into a ferocious, frighteningbubble of sizzling energy."

Don Juan paused to let his statements sink in. I felt stupid for beingdisturbed at the possibility of finding a scout behind the dream image of my mother.

"It's annoying that they are always associated with the dream imagesof our parents or close friends," he went on.

"Perhaps that's why we often feel ill at ease when we dream ofthem." His grin gave me the impression that he was enjoying my turmoil."A rule of thumb for dreamers is to assume that the third type of scout ispresent whenever they feel perturbed by their parents or friends in a dream.Sound advice is to avoid those dream images. They are sheer poison."

"Where does the blue scout stand in relation to the otherscouts?" I asked.

"Blue energy doesn't sizzle," he replied. "It is like ours;it wavers, but it is blue instead of white. Blue energy doesn't exist in anatural state in our world.

"And this brings us to something we've never talked about. What colorwere the scouts you've seen so far?"

Until the moment he mentioned it, I had never thought about this. I tolddon Juan that the scouts I had seen were either pink or reddish. And he saidthat the deadly scouts of the third type were bright orange.

I found out myself that the third type of scout is outright scary. Everytime I found one of them, it was behind the dream images of my parents,especially of my mother. Seeing it always reminded me of the blob of energythat had attacked me in my first deliberate seeing dream. Every time I foundit, the alien exploring energy actually seemed about to jump on me. My energybody used to react with horror even before I saw it.

During our next discussion of dreaming, I queried don Juan about the totalabsence of inorganic beings in my dreaming practices. "Why don't they showup anymore?" I asked.

"They only show themselves at the beginning," he explained."After their scouts take us to their world, there is no necessity for theinorganic beings' projections. If we want to see the inorganic beings, a scouttakes us there. For no one, and I mean no one, can journey by himself to theirrealm."

"Why is that so, don Juan?"

"Their world is sealed. No one can enter or leave without the consentof the inorganic beings. The only thing you can do by yourself once you areinside is, of course, voice your intent to stay. To say it out loud means toset in motion currents of energy that are irreversible. In olden times, wordswere incredibly powerful. Now they are not. In the inorganic beings' realm,they haven't lost their power."

Don Juan laughed and said that he had no business saying anything aboutthe inorganic beings' world because I really knew more about it than he and allhis companions combined.

"There is one last issue related to that world that we haven'tdiscussed," he said. He paused for a long while, as if searching for theappropriate words. "In the final analysis," he began, "myaversion to the old sorcerers' activities is very personal. As a nagual, Idetest what they did. They cowardly sought refuge in the inorganic beings'world. They argued that in a predatorial universe, poised to rip us apart, theonly possible haven for us is in that realm."

"Why did they believe that?" I asked.

"Because it's true," he said. "Since the inorganic beingscan't lie, the sales pitch of the dreaming emissary is all true. That world cangive us shelter and prolong our awareness for nearly an eternity."

"The emissary's sales pitch, even if it's the truth, has no appeal tome," I said.

"Do you mean you will chance a road that might rip you apart?"he asked with a note of bewilderment in his voice.

I assured don Juan that I did not want the inorganic beings' world nomatter what advantages it offered. My statement seemed to please him to no end.

"You are ready then for one final statement about that world. Themost dreadful statement I can make," he said, and tried to smile but didnot quite make it.

Don Juan searched in my eyes, I suppose for a glimmer of agreement or comprehension.He was silent for a moment.

"The energy necessary to move the assemblage points of sorcererscomes from the realm of inorganic beings," he said, as if he were hurryingto get it over with.

My heart nearly stopped. I felt a vertigo and had to stomp my feet on theground not to faint.

"This is the truth," don Juan went on, "and the legacy ofthe old sorcerers to us. They have us pinned down to this day. This is thereason I don't like them. I resent having to dip into one source alone.Personally, I refuse to do it. And I have tried to steer you away from it. Butwith no success, because something pulls you to that world, like amagnet."

I understood don Juan better than I could have thought. Journeying to thatworld had always meant to me, at an energetic level, a boost of dark energy. Ihad even thought of it in those terms, long before don Juan voiced hisstatement.

"What can we do about it?" I asked.

"We can't have dealings with them," he answered, "and yetwe can't stay away from them. My solution has been to take I their energy butnot give in to their influence. This is known as I the ultimate stalking. It isdone by sustaining the unbending intent of freedom, even though no sorcererknows what freedom really is."

"Can you explain to me, don Juan, why sorcerers have to take energyfrom the realm of inorganic beings?"

"There is no other viable energy for sorcerers. In order to Imaneuver the assemblage point in the manner they do, sorcerers need aninordinate amount of energy."

I reminded him of his own statement that a redeployment of energy isnecessary in order to do dreaming.

"That is correct," he replied. "To start dreaming sorcerersneed to redefine their premises and save their energy, but that !"redefining is valid only to have the necessary energy to set up dreaming. Tofly into other realms, to see energy, to forge the energy body, et cetera, etcetera, is another matter. For those maneuvers, sorcerers need loads of dark,alien energy."

"But how do they take it from the inorganic beings' world?"

"By the mere act of going to that world. All the sorcerers of ourline have to do this. However, none of us is idiotic enough to do what you'vedone. But this is because none of us has your proclivities."

Don Juan sent me home to ponder what he had revealed to me. I had endlessquestions, but he did not want to hear any of them.

"All the questions you have, you can answer yourself," he saidas he waved good-bye to me.