INTRODUCTION
Don Juan Matus, a master sorcerer, a nagual, as master sorcerers
are called when they lead a group of other sorcerers, introduced me to
the cognitive world of shamans who lived in Mexico in 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 Yuma
Indian from Arizona. Don Juan lived in Arizona until 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. His father 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. His name
was Julian Osorio. He introduced don Juan into a lineage of sorcerers that
was 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 that the nagual Julian had been an actor, and that he was
a dashing person—a raconteur, a mime, adored by everybody, influential,
commanding. In one of his theatrical tours to the provinces, the actor
Julian Osorio fell under the influence of another nagual, Elias
Ulloa, who transmitted to him the knowledge of 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 four
disciples: Taisha Abelar, Florinda Donner-Grau, Carol Tiggs, and myself.
He taught them to us in the same spirit in which they had been taught for
generations, with one notable departure: he eliminated the excessive ritual
which had surrounded the teaching and performance of those magical passes
for generations. Don Juan's comments in this respect were that ritual had
lost its impetus as new generations of practitioners became more interested
in efficiency and functionalism. He recommended to me, however, that under
no circumstances should I talk about the magical passes with any of his
disciples or with people in general. His reasons were that the magical
passes pertained exclusively to each person, and that their effect was
so shattering, it was better just to practice them without discussing them.
Don Juan Matus taught me everything he knew about the sorcerers of his
lineage. He stated, asserted, affirmed, explained to me every nuance of
his knowledge. Therefore, everything I say about the magical passes is
a direct result of his instruction. The magical passes were not invented.
They were discovered by the shamans of don Juan's lineage who lived in
Mexico in ancient times, while they were in shamanistic states of heightened
awareness. The discovery of the magical passes was quite accidental.
It began as very simple queries about the nature of an incredible sensation
of well-being that those shamans experienced in those states of heightened
awareness when they held certain bodily positions, or when they moved
their limbs in some specific manner. Their sensation of wellbeing had been
so intense that their drive to repeat those movements in their normal awareness
became the focus of all their endeavors.
By all appearances, they succeeded in their task, and found themselves
the possessors of a very complex series of movements that, when practiced,
yielded them tremendous results in terms of mental and physical prowess.
In fact, the results of performing these movements were so dramatic that
they called them magical passes. They taught them for generations
only to shaman initiates, on a personal basis, following elaborate rituals
and secret ceremonies.
Don Juan Matus, in teaching the magical passes, departed radically from
tradition. Such a departure forced don Juan to reformulate the pragmatic
goal of the magical passes. He presented this goal to me not so much as
the enhancement of mental and physical balance, as it had been in the past,
but as the practical possibility of redeploying energy. He explained
that such a departure 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 there is
an inherent amount of energy existing in each one of us, an amount which
is not subject to the onslaughts of outside forces for augmenting it or
for decreasing it. They believed that this quantity of energy was sufficient
to accomplish something which those sorcerers deemed to be the obsession
of every man on Earth: breaking the parameters of normal perception. Don
Juan Matus was convinced that our incapacity to break those parameters
was induced by our culture and social milieu. He maintained that our culture
and social milieu deployed every bit of our inherent energy in fulfilling
established behavioral patterns which didn't allow us to break those parameters
of normal perception.
"Why in the world would I, or anyone else, want to break those parameters?"
I asked don Juan on one occasion.
"Breaking those parameters is the unavoidable issue of mankind," he replied.
"Breaking them means the entrance into unthinkable worlds of a pragmatic
value in no way different from the value of our 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 ceremonies among modern
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 fact
that we tackle it in a helter-skelter way. our tools are too crude. They
are equivalent to trying to bring down a wall by ramming it with the head.
Man never considers this breakage in terms of energy. For sorcerers, success
is determined only by the accessibility or the inaccessibility of energy.
"Since it is impossible," he continued, "to augment our inherent energy,
the only avenue open for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico was the redeployment
of that energy. For them, this process of redeployment began with
the magical passes, and the way they affected the physical body."
Don Juan stressed in every way possible, while imparting his instruction,
the fact that the enormous emphasis the shamans of his lineage had put
on physical prowess and mental well-being had lasted to the present day.
I was able to corroborate the truth of his statements by observing him
and his fifteen sorcerer-companions. Their superb physical and mental balance
was the most obvious feature about them.
Don Juan's reply when I once asked him directly why sorcerers put so much
stock in the physical side of man was a total surprise to me. I had always
thought that he himself was a spiritual man.
"Shamans are not spiritual at all," he said. "They are very practical beings.
It is a well-known fact, however, that shamans are generally regarded as
eccentric, or even insane. Perhaps that is what makes you think that they
are spiritual. They seem insane because they are always trying to explain
things that cannot be explained. In the course of such futile attempts
to give complete explanations that cannot be completed under any circumstances,
they lose all coherence and say inanities.
"You need a pliable body, if you want physical prowess and levelheadedness,"
he went on. "These are the two most important issues in the lives of shamans,
because they bring forth sobriety and pragmatism: the only indispensable
requisites for entering into other realms of perception. To navigate, in
a genuine way, in the unknown necessitates an attitude of daring, but not
one of recklessness. In order to establish a balance between audacity and
recklessness, a sorcerer has to be extremely sober, 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?"
"Not in your pissy life!" he replied rather brusquely. "Just to conceive
facing the unknown—much less enter into it—requires guts of steel, and
a body that would be Capable of holding those guts. What would be the point
of being gutsy if you didn't have mental alertness, physical prowess, and
adequate muscles?"
The superb physical condition that don Juan had steadily advocated from
the first day of our association, the product of the rigorous execution
of the magical passes, was, by all indications, the first step toward the
redeployment of our inherent energy. This redeployment of energy
was, in don Juan's view, the most crucial issue in the lives of shamans,
as well as in the life of any individual. Redeployment of energy
is a process which consists of transporting, from one place to another,
energy which already exists within us. This energy has been displaced from
centers of vitality in the body, which require that displaced energy in
order to bring forth a balance between mental alertness and physical prowess.
The shamans of don Juan's lineage were deeply engaged with the redeployment
of their inherent energy. This involvement wasn't an intellectual endeavor,
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 the
universe.
"Those sorcerers called this ability to perceive energy as it flowed in
the universe seeing," don Juan explained to me. "They described
seeing as a state of heightened awareness in which the human
body is capable of perceiving energy as a flow, a current, a windlike vibration.
To see energy as it flows in the universe is the product of a momentary
halt of the system of interpretation proper to human beings."
"What is this system of interpretation, don Juan?" I asked.
"The shamans of ancient Mexico found out," he replied, "that every part
of the human body is engaged, in one way or another, in turning this vibratory
flow, this current of vibration, into some form of sensory input. The sum
total of this bombardment of sensory input is then, through usage, turned
into the system of interpretation that makes human beings capable of perceiving
the world the way they do.
"To make this system of interpretation come to a halt," he went on, "was
the result of tremendous discipline on the part of the sorcerers of ancient
Mexico. They called this halt seeing, and made it the cornerstone
of their knowledge. To see energy as it flowed in the universe was,
for them, an essential tool that they employed in making their classificatory
schemes. Because of this capacity, for instance, they conceived the total
universe available to the perception of human beings as an onionlike affair,
consisting of thousands of layers. The daily world of human beings, they
believed, is but one such layer. Consequently, they also believed that
other layers are not only accessible to human perception, but are part
of man's natural heritage."
Another issue of tremendous value in the knowledge of those sorcerers,
an issue which was also a consequence of their capacity to see energy
as it flowed in the universe, was the discovery of the human energetic
configuration. This human energetic configuration was, for them, a conglomerate
of energy fields agglutinated together by a vibratory force that hound
those energy fields into a luminous ball of energy. For the sorcerers
of don Juan's lineage, a human being has an oblong shape like an egg, or
a round shape like a ball. Thus, they called them luminous eggs
or luminous balls. This sphere of luminosity was considered Key
them to he our true self—true in the sense that it is irreducible in terms
of energy. It is irreducible because the totality of human resources are
engaged in the act of perceiving it directly as energy.
Those shamans discovered that on the hack face of this luminous ball
there is a point of 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 then interpreting it. For this reason, they
called it the assemblage point, and deemed that perception is indeed
assembled there. They described the assemblage point as 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 is located
on the same spot, thus giving every human being an entirely similar view
of the world.
A finding of tremendous value for them, and for shamans of succeeding generations,
was that the location of the assemblage point on that spot is the
result of usage and socialization. For this reason, they considered it
to he an arbitrary position which gives merely the illusion of being final
and irreducible. A product of this illusion is the seemingly unshakable
conviction of human beings that the world they deal with daily is the only
world that exists, and that its finality is undeniable.
"Believe me," don Juan said to me once, "this sense of finality about the
world is a mere illusion. Due to the fact that it has never been challenged,
it stands as the only possible view. To see energy as it flows in
the universe is the tool for challenging it. Through the use of this tool,
the sorcerers of my lineage arrived at the conclusion that there are indeed
a staggering number of worlds available to man's perception. They described
those worlds as being all-inclusive realms, realms where one can act and
struggle. In other words, they are worlds where one can live and die, as
in this world of everyday life."
During the thirteen years of my association with him, don Juan taught me
the basic steps toward accomplishing this feat of seeing. I have
discussed those steps in all of my previous writings, but never have I
touched on the key point in this process: the magical passes. He taught
me a great number of them, but along with that wealth of knowledge, don
Juan also left me with the certainty that I was the last link of his lineage.
Accepting that I was the last link of his lineage implied automatically
for me the task of finding new ways to disseminate the knowledge of his
lineage, since its continuity was no longer an issue.
I need to clarify a very important point in this regard: Don Juan Matus
was not ever interested in teaching his knowledge; he was interested in
perpetuating 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
going to ensure that perpetuation. Therefore, he engaged himself in a titanic
effort to teach me all he knew about sorcery, or shamanism, and about the
development of his lineage.
In the course of training me, he realized that my energetic configuration
was, according to him, so vastly different from his own that it couldn't
mean anything else but the end of his line. I told him that I resented
enormously his interpretation of whatever invisible difference existed
between us. I didn't like the burden of being the last of his line, nor
did I understand his reasoning.
"The shamans of ancient Mexico," he said to me once, "believed that choice,
as human beings understand it, is the precondition of the cognitive world
of man, but that it is only a benevolent interpretation of something which
is found when awareness ventures beyond the cushion of our world, a benevolent
interpretation of acquiescence. Human beings are in the throes of forces
that pull them every which way. The art of sorcerers is not really to choose,
but to be subtle enough to acquiesce.
"Sorcerers, although they seem to make nothing else but decisions, make
no decisions at all," he went on. "I didn't decide to choose you, and I
didn't decide that you would be the way you are. Since I couldn't choose
to whom I would impart my knowledge, I had to accept whomever the spirit
was offering me. And that person was you, and you are energetically capable
only of ending, not of continuing."
He maintained that the ending of his line had nothing to do with him or
his efforts, or with his success or failure as a sorcerer seeking total
freedom. He understood it as something that had to do 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 it put
me face to face with another issue that he referred to as locking the
door when you leave. That is to say, I assumed the responsibility of
deciding exactly what to do with everything he had taught me and carrying
out my decision impeccably. First of all, I asked myself the crucial question
of what to do with the magical passes: the facet of don Juan's knowledge
most imbued with pragmatism and function. I decided to use the magical
passes and teach them to whoever wanted to learn them. My decision to end
the secrecy that had surrounded them for an undetermined length of time
was, naturally, the corollary of my total conviction that I am indeed the
end of don Juan's lineage. It became inconceivable to me that I should
carry secrets which were not even mine. To shroud the magical passes in
secrecy was not my decision. It was my decision, however, to end such a
condition.
I endeavored from then on to come up with a more generic form of each magical
pass, a form suitable to everyone. This resulted in a configuration of
slightly modified forms of each one of the magical passes. I have called
this new configuration of movements Tensegrity, a term which belongs
to architecture, where it means "the property of skeleton structures that
employ continuous tension members and discontinuous compression members
in such a way that each member operates with the maximum efficiency and
economy."
In order to explain what the magical passes of the sorcerers who lived
in Mexico in ancient times are, I would like to make a clarification: "ancient
times" meant, for don Juan, a time ten thousand years ago and beyond, a
figure that seems incongruous if examined from the point of view of the
classificatory schemes of modern scholars. When I confronted don Juan with
the discrepancy between his estimate and what I considered to he a more
realistic one, he remained adamant in his conviction. He believed it to
be a fact that people who lived in the New World ten thousand years ago
were deeply concerned with matters of the universe and perception that
modern man has not even begun to fathom.
Regardless of our differing chronological interpretations, the effectiveness
of the magical passes is undeniable to me, and I feel obligated to elucidate
the subject strictly following the manner in which it was presented to
me. The directness of their effect on me has had a deep influence on the
way in which I deal with them. What I am presenting in this work is an
intimate reflection of that influence.
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