He reiterated that awareness begins with the permanent pressure that the emanations at large exert on the ones trapped inside the cocoon. This pressure produces the first act of consciousness; it stops the motion of the trapped emanations, which are fighting to break the cocoon, fighting to die.

“For a seer, the truth is that all living beings are struggling to die,” he went on. “What stops death is awareness.”

Don Juan said that the new seers were profoundly disturbed by the fact that awareness forestalls death and at the same time induces it by being food for the Eagle. Since they could not explain it, for there is no rational way to understand existence, seers realized that their knowledge is composed of contradictory propositions.

“Why did they develop a system of contradictions?” I asked.

“They didn’t develop anything,” he said. “They found unquestionable truths by means of their seeing. Those truths are arranged in terms of supposedly blatant contradictions, that’s all.

“For example, seers have to be methodical, rational beings, paragons of sobriety, and at the same time they must shy away from all of those qualities in order to be completely free and open to the wonders and mysteries of existence.”

His example left me baffled, but not to the extreme. I understood what he meant. He himself had sponsored my rationality only to crush it and demand a total absence of it. I told him how I understood his point.

“Only a feeling of supreme sobriety can bridge the contradictions,” he said.

“Could you say, don Juan, that art is that bridge?”

“You may call the bridge between contradictions anything you want – art, affection, sobriety, love, or even kindness.”

Don Juan continued his explanation and said that in examining the first attention, the new seers realized that all organic beings, except man, quiet down their agitated trapped emanations so that those emanations can align themselves with their matching ones outside. Human beings do not do that; instead, their first attention lakes an inventory of the Eagle’s emanations inside their cocoons.

“What is an inventory, don Juan?” I asked.

“Human beings take notice of the emanations they have inside their cocoons,” he replied. “No other creatures do that. The moment the pressure from the emanations at large fixates the emanations inside, the first attention begins to watch itself. It notes everything about itself, or at least it tries to, in whatever aberrant ways it can. This is the process seers call taking an inventory.

“I don’t mean to say that human beings choose to take an inventory, or that they can refuse to take it. To take an inventory is the Eagle’s command. What is subject to volition, however, is the manner in which the command is obeyed.”

He said that although he disliked calling the emanations commands, that is what they are: commands that no one can disobey. Yet the way out of obeying the commands is in obeying them.

“In the case of the inventory of the first attention,” he went on, “seers take it, for they can’t disobey. But once they have taken it they throw it away. The Eagle doesn’t command us to worship our inventory; it commands us to take it, that’s all.”

“How do seers see that man takes an inventory?” I asked.

“The emanations inside the cocoon of man are not quieted down for purposes of matching them with those outside,” he replied. “This is evident after seeing what other creatures do. On quieting down, some of them actually merge themselves with the emanations at large and move with them. Seers can see, for instance, the light of the scarabs’ emanations expanding to great size.

“But human beings quiet down their emanations and then reflect on them. The emanations focus on themselves.”

He said that human beings carry the command of taking an inventory to its logical extreme and disregard everything else. Once they are deeply involved in the inventory, two things may happen. They may ignore the impulses of the emanations at large, or they may use them in a very specialized way.

The end result of ignoring those impulses after taking an inventory is a unique state known as reason. The result of using every impulse in a specialized way is known as self-absorption.

Human reason appears to a seer as an unusually homogeneous dull glow that rarely if ever responds to the constant pressure from the emanations at large. A glow that makes the egg-like shell become tougher, but more brittle.

Don Juan remarked that reason in the human species should be bountiful, but that in actuality it is very rare. The majority of human beings turn to self-absorption.

He asserted that the awareness of all living beings has a degree of self-reflection in order for them to interact. But none except man’s first attention has such a degree of self-absorption. Contrary to men of reason, who ignore the impulse of the emanations at large, the self-absorbed individuals use every impulse and turn them all into a force to stir the trapped emanations inside their cocoons.

Observing all this, seers arrived at a practical conclusion. They saw that men of reason are bound to live longer, because by disregarding the impulse of the emanations at large, they quiet down the natural agitation inside their cocoons. The self-absorbed individuals, on the other hand, by using the impulse of the emanations at large to create more agitation, shorten their lives.

“What do seers see when they gaze at self-absorbed human beings?” I asked.

“They see them as intermittent bursts of white light, followed by long pauses of dullness,” he said.

Don Juan stopped talking. I had no more questions to ask, or perhaps I was too tired to ask about anything. There was a loud bang that made me jump. The front door flew open and Genaro came in, out of breath. He slumped on the mat. He was actually covered with perspiration.

“I was explaining about the first attention,” don Juan said to him.

“The first attention works only with the known,” Genaro said. “It isn’t worth two plugged nickels with the unknown.”

“That is not quite right,” don Juan retorted. “The first attention works very well with the unknown. It blocks it; it denies it so fiercely that in the end, the unknown doesn’t exist for the first attention.

“Taking an inventory makes us invulnerable. That is why the inventory came into existence in the first place.”