Carlos Castaneda - The Power of Silence: Further Lessons of don Juan

The Four Moods of Stalking

Don Juan said that I should sit there at that ancient lookout post and use the pull of the earth to move my assemblage point and recall other states of heightened awareness in which he had taught me stalking.

"In the past few days, I have mentioned many times the four moods of stalking," he went on. "I have mentioned ruthlessness, cunning, patience, and sweetness with the hope that you might remember what I taught you about them. It would be wonderful if you could use these four moods as the ushers to bring you into a total recollection."

He kept quiet for what seemed an inordinately long moment. Then he made a statement which should not have surprised me, but did. He said he had taught me the four moods of stalking in northern Mexico with the help of Vicerite Medrano and Silvio Manuel. He did not elaborate but let his statement sink in. I tried to remember but finally gave up and wanted to shout that I could not remember something that never happened.

As I was struggling to voice my protest, anxious thoughts began to cross my mind. I knew don Juan had not said what he had just to annoy me. As I always did when asked to remember heightened awareness, I became obsessively conscious that there was really no continuity to the events I had experienced under his guidance. Those events were not strung together as the events in my daily life were, in a linear sequence. It was perfectly possible he was right. In don Juan's world, I had no business being certain of anything.

I tried to voice my doubts but he refused to listen and urged me to recollect. By then it was quite dark. It had gotten windy, but I did not feel the cold. Don Juan had given me a flat rock to place on my sternum. My awareness was keenly tuned to everything around.

I felt an abrupt pull, which was neither external nor internal, but rather the sensation of a sustained tugging at an unidentifiable part of myself. Suddenly I began to remember with shattering clarity a meeting I had had years before. I remembered events and people so vividly that it frightened me. I felt a chill.

I told all this to don Juan, who did not seem impressed or concerned. He urged me not to give in to mental or physical fear. My recollection was so phenomenal that it was as if I were reliving the experience. Don Juan kept quiet. He did not even look at me. I felt numbed. The sensation of numbness passed slowly.

I repeated the same things I always said to don Juan when I remembered an event with no linear existence.

"How can this be, don Juan? How could I have forgotten all this?"

And he reaffirmed the same things he always did.

"This type of remembering or forgetting has nothing to do with normal memory," he assured me. "It has to do with the movement of the assemblage point."

He affirmed that although I possessed total knowledge of what intent is, I did not command that knowledge yet. Knowing what intent is means that one can, at any time, explain that knowledge or use it. A nagual by the force of his position is obliged to command his knowledge in this manner.

"What did you recollect?" he asked me.

"The first time you told me about the four moods of stalking," I said.

Some process, inexplicable in terms of my usual awareness of the world, had released a memory which a minute before had not existed; and I recollected an entire sequence of events that had happened many years before.

Just as I was leaving don Juan's house in Sonora, he had asked me to meet him the following week around noon across the U.S. border in Nogales, Arizona, in the Greyhound bus depot.

I arrived about an hour early. He was standing by the door. I greeted him. He did not answer but hurriedly pulled me aside and whispered that I should take my hands out of my pockets. I was dumbfounded. He did not give me time to respond. He said that my fly was open, and it was shamefully evident that I was sexually aroused.

The speed with which I rushed to cover myself was phenomenal. By the time I realized it was a crude joke we were on the street. Don Juan was laughing, slapping me on the back repeatedly and forcefully as if he were just celebrating the joke. Suddenly I found myself in a state of heightened awareness.

We walked into a coffee shop and sat down. My mind was so clear I wanted to look at everything; see the essence of things.

"Don't waste energy!" don Juan commanded in a stern voice. "I brought you here to discover if you can eat when your assemblage point has moved. Don't try to do more than that."

But then a man sat down at the table in front of me, and all my attention became trapped by him.

"Move your eyes in circles," don Juan commanded. "Don't look at that man."

I found it impossible to stop watching the man. I felt irritated by don Juan's demands.

"What do you see?" I heard don Juan ask.

I was seeing a luminous cocoon made of transparent wings which were folded over the cocoon itself. The wings unfolded, fluttered for an instant, peeled off, fell, and were replaced by new wings, which repeated the same process.

Don Juan boldly turned my chair until I was facing the wall.

"What a waste," he said in a loud sigh, after I described what I had seen. "You have exhausted nearly all your energy. Restrain yourself. A warrior needs focus. Who gives a damn about wings on a luminous cocoon?"

He said that heightened awareness was like a springboard. From it one could jump into infinity. He stressed, over and over, that when the assemblage point was dislodged, it either became lodged again at a position very near its customary one or continued moving on into infinity.

"People have no idea of the strange power we carry within ourselves," he went on. "At this moment, for instance, you have the means to reach infinity. If you continue with your needless behavior, you may succeed in pushing your assemblage point beyond a certain threshold, from which there is no return."

I understood the peril he was talking about, or rather I had the bodily sensation that I was standing on the brink of an abyss, and that if I leaned forward I would fall into it.

"Your assemblage point has moved to heightened awareness," he continued, "because I have lent you my energy."

We ate in silence- very simple food. Don Juan did not allow me to drink coffee or tea.

"While you are using my energy," he said, "you're not in your own time. You are in mine. I drink water."

As we were walking back to my car, I felt a bit nauseous. I staggered and almost lost my balance. It was a sensation similar to that of walking while wearing glasses for the first time.

"Get hold of yourself," don Juan said, smiling. "Where we're going you'll need to be extremely precise."

He told me to drive across the international border into the twin city of Nogales, Mexico. While I was driving, he gave me directions: which street to take, when to make right or left hand turns, how fast to go.

"I know this area," I said quite peeved. "Tell me where you want to go and I'll take you there. Like a taxi driver."

"O.K.," he said. "Take me to 1573 Heavenward Avenue."

I did not know Heavenward Avenue, or if such a street really existed. In fact, I had the suspicion he had just concocted a name to embarrass me. I kept silent. There was a mocking glint in his shiny eyes.

"Egomania is a real tyrant," he said. "We must work ceaselessly to dethrone it."

He continued to tell me how to drive. Finally he asked me to stop in front of a one story, light beige house on a corner lot, in a well-to-do neighborhood.