Don Juan Matus, a master sorcerer, a nagual, as master sorcerers arecalled when they lead a group of other sorcerers, introduced me to the cognitiveworld of shamans who lived in Mexicoin ancient times. Don Juan Matus was an Indian who was born in Yuma, Arizona.His father was a Yaqui Indian from Sonora, Mexico, and his mother was presumably a YumaIndian from Arizona.Don Juan lived in Arizonauntil he was ten years old. He was then taken by his father to Sonora, Mexico,where they were caught in the endemic Yaqui wars against the Mexicans. Hisfather was killed, and as a ten-year-old child don Juan ended up in Southern Mexico, where he grew up with relatives.

At the age of twenty, he came in contact with a master sorcerer. Hisname was Julian Osorio. He introduced don Juan into a lineage of sorcerers thatwas purported to be twenty-five generations long. He was not an Indian at all,but the son of European immigrants to Mexico. Don Juan related to me thatthe nagual Julian had been an actor, and that he was a dashing person-araconteur, a mime, adored by everybody, influential, commanding. In one of histheatrical tours to the provinces, the actor Julian Osorio fell under theinfluence of another nagual, Elias Ulloa, who transmitted to him the knowledgeof his lineage of sorcerers.

Don Juan Matus, following the tradition of his lineage of shamans,taught some bodily movements which he called magical passes to his fourdisciples: Taisha Abelar, Florinda Donner-Grau, Carol Tiggs, and myself. He taughtthem to us in the same spirit in which they had been taught for generations,with one notable departure: he eliminated the excessive ritual which hadsurrounded the teaching and performance of those magical passes forgenerations. Don Juan's comments in this respect were that ritual had lost itsimpetus as new generations of practitioners became more interested inefficiency and functionalism. He recommended to me, however, that under nocircumstances should I talk about the magical passes with any of his disciples orwith people in general. His reasons were that the magical passes pertainedexclusively to each person, and that their effect was so shattering, it wasbetter just to practice them without discussing them.

Don Juan Matus taught me everything he knew about the sorcerers ofhis lineage. He stated, asserted, affirmed, explained to me every nuance of hisknowledge. Therefore, everything I say about the magical passes is a directresult of his instruction. The magical passes were not invented. They werediscovered by the shamans of don Juan's lineage who lived in Mexico in ancient times, while theywere in shamanistic states of heightened awareness. The discovery of themagical passes was quite accidental. It began as very simple queries about thenature of an incredible sensation of well-being that those shamans experiencedin those states of heightened awareness when they held certain bodilypositions, or when they moved their limbs in some specific manner. Theirsensation of well-being had been so intense that their drive to repeat those movementsin their normal awareness became the focus of all their endeavors.

By all appearances, they succeeded in their task, and foundthemselves the possessors of a very complex series of movements that, whenpracticed, yielded them tremendous results in terms of mental and physical prowess.Infact, the results of performing these movements were so dramatic that theycalled them magical passes. They taught them for generations only toshaman initiates, on a personal basis, following elaborate rituals and secretceremonies.

Don Juan Matus, in teaching the magical passes, departed radicallyfrom tradition. Such a departure forced don Juan to reformulate the pragmaticgoal of the magical passes. He presented this goal to me not so much as theenhancement of mental and physical balance, as it had been in the past, but asthe practical possibility of redeploying energy. He explained that such adeparture was due to the influence of the two naguals who had preceded him.

It was the belief of the sorcerers of don Juan's lineage that thereis an inherent amount of energy existing in each one of us, an amount which isnot subject to the onslaughts of outside forces for augmenting it or for decreasingit. They believed that this quantity of energy was sufficient to accomplishsomething which those sorcerers deemed to be the obsession of every man onEarth: breaking the parameters of normal perception.

Don Juan Matus was convinced that our incapacity to break thoseparameters was induced by our culture and social milieu. He maintained that ourculture and social milieu deployed every bit of our inherent energy infulfilling established behavioral patterns which didn't allow us to break thoseparameters of normal perception.

"Why in the world would I, or anyone else, want to break thoseparameters?" I asked don Juan on one occasion.

"Breaking those parameters is the unavoidable issue ofmankind," he replied. "Breaking them means the entrance intounthinkable worlds of a pragmatic value in no way different from the value ofour world of everyday life. Regardless of whether or not we accept this premise,we are obsessed with breaking those parameters, and we fail miserably at it,hence the profusion of drugs and stimulants and religious rituals and ceremoniesamong modem man."

"Why do you think we have failed so miserably, don Juan?"I asked.

"Our failure to fulfill our subliminal wish”, he said, "is due to the factthat we tackle it in a helter-skelter way. Our tools are too crude. They areequivalent to trying to bring down a wall by ramming it with the head. Man neverconsiders this breakage in terms of energy. For sorcerers, success isdetermined only by the accessibility or the inaccessibility of energy.

"Since it is impossible," he continued, "to augmentour inherent energy, the only avenue open for the sorcerers of ancient Mexicowas the redeployment of that energy. For them, this process of redeployment beganwith the magical passes, and the way they affected the physical body."

Don Juan stressed in every way possible, while imparting hisinstruction, the fact that the enormous emphasis the shamans of his lineage hadput on physical prowess and mental well-being had lasted to the present day. I wasable to corroborate the truth of his statements by observing him and hisfifteen sorcerer-companions. Their superb physical and mental balance was themost obvious feature about them.

Don Juan's reply when I once asked him directly why sorcerers put somuch stock in the physical side of man was a total surprise to me. I had alwaysthought that he himself was a spiritual man. "Shamans are not spiritual atall," he said. "They are very practical beings. It is a well-knownfact, however, that shamans are generally regarded as eccentric, or eveninsane. Perhaps that is what makes you think that they are spiritual. They seeminsane because they are always trying to explain things that cannot beexplained. In the course of such futile attempts to give complete explanationsthat cannot be completed under any circumstances, they lose all coherence andsay inanities.

"You need a pliable body, if you want physical prowess andlevelheadedness," he went on. "These are the two most importantissues in the lives of shamans, because they bring forth sobriety andpragmatism: the only indispensable requisites for entering into other realms ofperception. To navigate, in a genuine way, in the unknown necessitates anattitude of daring, but not one of recklessness. In order to establish abalance between audacity and recklessness, a sorcerer has to be extremelysober, cautious, skillful, and in superb physical condition."

"But why in superb physical condition, don Juan?" I asked."Isn't the desire or the will to journey into the unknown enough?" "（to journeyinto the unknown is）Not in your pissy life!" he replied rather brusquely."Just to conceive facing the unknown much less enter into it requires gutsof steel, and a body that would be capable of holding those guts. What would bethe point of being gutsy if you didn't have mental alertness, physical prowess,and adequate muscles?"  The superbphysical condition that don Juan had steadily advocated from the first day ofour association, the product of the rigorous execution of the magical passes,was, by all indications, the first step toward the redeployment of our inherentenergy.

This redeployment of energy was, in don Juan's view, the mostcrucial issue in the lives of shamans, as well as in the life of anyindividual. Redeployment of energy is a process which consists of transporting,from one place to another, energy which already exists within us. This energyhas been displaced from centers of vitality in the body, which require thatdisplaced energy in order to bring forth a balance between mental alertness andphysical prowess.

The shamans of don Juan's lineage were deeply engaged with theredeployment of their inherent energy. This involvement wasn't an intellectualendeavor, nor was it the product of induction or deduction, or logical conclusions.It was the result of their ability to perceive energy as it flowed in theuniverse, "Those sorcerers called this ability to perceive energy as itflowed in the universe seeing," don Juan explained to me.

"They described seeing as a state of heightened awareness inwhich the human body is capable of perceiving energy as a flow, a current, awind like vibration. To see energy as it flows in the universe is the productof a momentary halt of the system of interpretation proper to humanbeings." "What is this system of interpretation, don Juan?" Iasked. "The shamans of ancient Mexico found out," he replied,"that every part of the human body is engaged, in one way or another, inturning this vibratory flow, this current of vibration, into some form ofsensory input.

The sum total of this bombardment of sensory input is then, throughusage, turned into the system of interpretation that makes human beings capableof perceiving the world the way they do. "To make this system ofinterpretation come to a halt," he went on, was the result of tremendousdiscipline on the part of the sorcerers of ancient Mexico. They called this haltseeing, and made it the corner stone of their knowledge. To see energy as itflowed in the universe was, for them, an essential tool that they employed in makingtheir classifi- schemes. Because of this capacity, for instance, they conceivedthe total universe available to the perception of human beings as an onionlikeaffair, consisting of thousands of layers. The daily world of human beings,they believed, is but one such layer. Consequently, they also believed thatother layers are not only accessible to human perception, but are part of man'snatural heritage."

Another issue of tremendous value in the knowledge of thosesorcerers, an issue which was also a consequence of their capacity to seeenergy as it flowed in the universe, was the discovery of the human energeticconfiguration. This human energetic configuration was, for them, a conglomerateof energy fields agglutinated together by a vibratory force that bound thoseenergy fields into a luminous ball of energy. For the sorcerers of don Juan'slineage, a human being has an oblong shape like an egg, or a round shape like aball. Thus, they called them luminous eggs or luminous balls. This sphere ofluminosity was considered by them to be our true self-true in the sense that itis irreducible in terms of energy. It is irreducible because the totality ofhuman resources are engaged in the act of perceiving it directly as energy. Thoseshamans discovered that on the back face of this luminous ball there is a pointof greater brilliance.

They figured out, through processes of observing energy directly,that this point is key in the act of turning energy into sensory data and theninterpreting it. For this reason, they called it the assemblage point, and deemedthat perception is indeed assembled there. They described the assemblage pointas being located behind the shoulder blades, an arm's length away from them.They also found out that the assemblage point for the entire human race islocated on the same spot, thus giving every human being an entirely similarview of the world.

A finding of tremendous value for them, and for shamans ofsucceeding generations, was that the location of the assemblage point on thatspot is the result of usage and socialisation. For this reason, they consideredit to be an arbitrary position which gives merely the illusion of being finaland irreducible. A product of this illusion is the seemingly unshakableconviction of human beings that the world they deal with daily is the only worldthat exists, and that its finality is undeniable.

"Believe me," don Juan said to me once, "this senseof finality about the world is a mere illusion. Due to the fact that it hasnever been challenged, it stands as the only possible view. To see energy as itflows in the universe is the tool for challenging it. Through the use of thistool, the sorcerers of my lineage arrived at the conclusion that there are indeeda staggering number of worlds available to man's perception. They described thoseworlds as being all-inclusive（广泛的，详尽的） realms, realms where one can act and struggle. In other words, theyare worlds where one can live and die, as in this world of everyday life."

During the thirteen years of my association with him, don Juantaught me the basic steps toward accomplishing this feat of seeing. I havediscussed those steps in all of my previous writings, but never have I touchedon the key point in this process: the magical passes. He taught me a greatnumber of them, but along with that wealth of knowledge, don Juan also left mewith the certainty that I was the last link of his lineage. Accepting that Iwas the last link of his lineage implied automatically for me the task offinding new ways to disseminate the knowledge of his lineage, since itscontinuity was no longer an issue.

I need to clarify a very important point in this regard: Don JuanMatus was not ever interested in teaching his knowledge; he was interested inperpetuating his lineage. His three other disciples and I were the means chosen,he said, by the spirit itself, for he had no active part in it-that were goingto ensure that perpetuation. Therefore, he engaged himself in a titanic effortto teach me all he knew about sorcery, or shamanism, and about the developmentof his lineage.

In the course of training me, he realized that my energeticconfiguration was, according to him, so vastly different from his own that itcouldn't mean anything else but the end of his line. I told him that I resentedenormously his interpretation of whatever invisible difference existed betweenus. I didn't like the burden of being the last of his line, nor did I understandhis reasoning. "The shamans of ancient Mexico," he said to me once,"believed that choice, as human beings understand it, is the preconditionof the cognitive world of man, but that it is only abenevolent interpretation of something which is found when awareness venturesbeyond the cushion of our world, a benevolent interpretation of acquiescence.Human beings are in the throes of forces that pull them every which way. Theart of sorcerers is not really to choose, but to be subtle enough to acquiesce.

"Sorcerers, although they seem to make nothing else butdecisions, make no decisions at all," he went on. "I didn't decide tochoose you, and I didn't decide that you would be the way you are. Since Icouldn't choose to whom I would impart my knowledge, I had to accept whomeverthe spirit was offering me. And that person was you, and you are energeticallycapable only of ending, not of continuing." He maintained that the endingof his line had nothing to do with him or his efforts, or with his success or failureas a sorcerer seeking total freedom. He understood it as something that had todo with a choice exercised beyond the human level, not by beings or entities,but by the impersonal forces of the universe.

Finally, I came to accept what don Juan called my fate. Accepting itput me face to face with another issue that he referred to as locking the doorwhen you leave. That is to say, I assumed the responsibility of deciding exactlywhat to do with everything he had taught me and carrying out my decisionimpeccably. First of all, I asked myself the crucial question of what to dowith the magical passes: the facet of don Juan's knowledge most imbued withpragmatism and function. I decided to use the magical passes and teach them towhoever wanted to learn them. My decision to end the secrecy that hadsurrounded them for an undetermined length or time was, naturally, thecorollary of my total conviction that I am indeed the end of don Juan'slineage. It became inconceivable to me that I should carry secrets which werenot even mine. To shroud the magical passes in secrecy was not my decision. Itwas my decision, however, to end such a condition.

I endeavored from then on to come up with a more generic form ofeach magical pass, a form suitable to everyone. This resulted in aconfiguration of slightly modified forms of each one of the magical passes. Ihave called this new configuration of movements Tensegrity, a term whichbelongs to architecture, where it means "the property of skeletonstructures that employ continuous tension members and discontinuous compressionmembers in such a way that each member operates with the maximum efficiency andeconomy."

In order to explain what the magical passes of the sorcerers wholived in Mexico in ancient times are, I would like to make a clarification:" ancient times" meant, for don Juan, a time ten thousand years agoand beyond, a figure that seems incongruous if examined from the point of viewof the classificatory schemes of modern scholars. When I confronted don Juanwith the discrepancy between his estimate and what I considered to be a morerealistic one, he remained adamant in his conviction. He believed it to be afact that people who lived in the New Worldten thousand years ago were deeply concerned with matters of the universe and perceptionthat modem man has not even begun to fathom.

Regardless of our differing chronological interpretations, theeffectiveness of the magical passes is undeniable to me, and I feel obligatedto elucidate the subject strictly following the manner in which it was presentedto me. The directness of their effect on me has had a deep influence on the wayin which I deal with them. What I am presenting in this work is an intimatereflection of that influence.