Free The Art of Dreaming by Carlos Castaneda Page B

said someone laughing, someone who was not don Juan. "You've
just depleted its energy charge. But don't get up yet. Lie there just a moment
longer."
    I looked at
don Juan with a question in my eyes. He was examining me with great curiosity.
Then he helped me up. The dark figure remained on the ground. I wanted to ask
don Juan if the dark figure was all right. Again, I could not voice my
question. Then I did something extravagant. I took it all for real. Up to that
moment something in my mind was preserving my rationality by taking what was
happening as a dream, a dream induced by don Juan's machinations.
    I went to
the figure on the ground and tried to lift it up. I could not put my arms
around it because it had no mass. I became disoriented. The same voice, which
was not don Juan's, told me to lie down on top of the inorganic being. I did
it, and both of us got up in one motion, the inorganic being like a dark shadow
attached to me. It gently separated from me and disappeared, leaving me with an
extremely pleasant feeling of completeness.
    It took me
more than twenty-four hours to regain total control of my faculties. I slept
most of the time. Don Juan checked me from time to time by asking me the same
question, "Was the inorganic being's energy like fire or like water?"
    My throat
seemed scorched. I could not tell him that the energy jolts I had felt were
like jets of electrified water. I have never felt jets of electrified water in
my life. I am not sure if it is possible to produce them or to feel them, but
that was the image playing in my mind every time don Juan asked his key
question.
    Don Juan
was asleep when I finally knew I was completely recovered. Knowing that his
question was of great importance, I woke him up and told him what I had felt.
    "You
are not going to have helping friends among the inorganic beings, but
relationships of annoying dependence," he stated. "Be extremely
careful. Watery inorganic beings are more given to excesses. The old sorcerers
believed that they were more loving, more capable of imitating, or perhaps even
having feelings. As opposed to the fiery ones, who were thought to be more
serious, more contained than the others, but also more pompous."
    "What's
the meaning of all this for me, don Juan?"
    "The
meaning is too vast to discuss at this time. My recommendation is that you
vanquish fear from your dreams and from your life, in order to safeguard your
unity. The inorganic being you depleted of energy and then recharged again was
thrilled out of its candlelike shape with it. It'll come to you for more."
    "Why
didn't you stop me, don Juan?"
    "You
didn't give me time. Besides, you didn't even hear me shouting at you to leave
the inorganic being on the ground."
    "You
should have lectured me, beforehand, the way you always do, about all the
possibilities."
    "I
didn't know all the possibilities. In matters of the inorganic beings, I am
nearly a novice. I refused that part of the sorcerers' knowledge on the ground
that it is too cumbersome and capricious. I don't want to be at the mercy of
any entity, organic or inorganic."
    That was
the end of our exchange. I should have been worried because of his definitely
negative reaction, but I was not. I somehow was certain that whatever I had
done was all right.
    I continued
my dreaming practices without any interference from the inorganic
beings.
     

 
4. - The Fixation of The
Assemblage Point
    Since our
agreement had been to discuss dreaming only when don Juan considered it
necessary, I rarely asked him about it and never insisted on continuing my
questions beyond a certain point. I was more than eager, therefore, to listen
to him whenever he decided to take up the subject. His comments or discussions
on dreaming were invariably cushioned in other topics of his teachings,
and they were always suddenly and abruptly brought in.
    We were
engaged in some unrelated conversation once, while I was visiting with him in
his house, when without any preamble