Castaneda then asked don Juan why the sorcerers of ancient Mexico, and the sorcerer's of today, didn't do anything about it (even though they could see them).



"There's nothing that you and I can do about it," don Juan said in a grave, sad voice. "All we can do is discipline ourselves to the point where they will not touch us...



"The sorcerers of ancient Mexico," he said, "saw the predator. They called it the flyer because it leaps through the air. It is not a pretty sight. It is a big shadow, impenetrably dark, a black shadow that jumps through the air. Then, it lands flat on the ground.



"The sorcerers of ancient Mexico were quite ill at ease with the idea of when it made its appearance on Earth. They reasoned that man must have been a complete being at one point, with stupendous insights and feats of awareness that are mythological legends nowadays. And then everything seems to disappear, and we have now a sedated man...



"What I'm saying is that what we have against us is not a simple predator. It is very smart and organized. It follows a methodical system to render us useless. Man, the magical being that he is destined to be, is no longer magical. He's an average piece of meat. There are no more dreams for man but the dreams of an animal who is being raised to become a piece of meat: trite, conventional, imbecilic...



"This predator," don Juan said, "which, of course, is an inorganic being, is not altogether invisible to us as other inorganic beings are. I think as children we do see it, but we decide it's so horrific that we don't want to think about it. Children, of course, could insist on focusing on the sight, but everybody else around them dissuades them from doing so. The only alternative left for mankind is discipline. Discipline is the only deterrent. But by discipline I don't mean harsh routines. I don't mean waking up every morning at five-thirty and throwing cold water on yourself until you're blue. Sorcerers understand discipline as the capacity to face with serenity odds that are not included in our expectations. For sorcerers, discipline is an art; the art of facing infinity without flinching; not because they are strong and tough, but because they are filled with awe."



"In what way would the sorcerers' discipline be a deterrent to the flyers?" I asked.



Don Juan scrutinized my face as if to discover any signs of my disbelief. He said,"Sorcerers say that discipline makes the glowing coat of awareness unpalatable to the flyer. The result is that the predators become bewildered. An inedible glowing coat of awareness is not part of their cognition, I suppose. After being bewildered, they don't have any recourse other than refraining from continuing their nefarious task. If the predators don't eat our glowing coat of awareness for a while, it will keep on growing.



"Simplifying this matter to the extreme, I can say that sorcerers, by means of their discipline, push the predators away long enough to allow their glowing coat of awareness to grow beyond the level of the toes. Once it goes beyond the level of the toes, it grows back to its natural size. The sorcerers of ancient Mexico used to say that the glowing coat of awareness is like a tree. If it is not pruned, it grows to its natural size and volume. As awareness reaches levels higher than the toes, tremendous maneuvers of perception become a matter of course.



"The grand trick of those sorcerers of ancient times was to burden the flyers' mind with discipline. Sorcerers found out that if they taxed the flyers' mind with inner silence, the foreign installation would flee, and give any one of the practitioners involved in this maneuver the total certainty of the mind's foreign origin. The foreign installation comes back, I assure you, but not as strong, and a process begins in which the fleeing of the flyers' mind becomes routine until one day it flees permanently.



"That's the day when you have to rely on your own devices which are nearly zero. A sad day indeed! There's no one to tell you what to do. There's no mind of foreign origin to dictate the imbecilities you're accustomed to. My teacher, the nagual Julian, used to warn all his disciples that this was the toughest day in a sorcerer's life for the real mind that belongs to us. The sum total of our experience after a lifetime of domination has been rendered shy, insecure, and shifty. Personally, I would say that the real battle of sorcerers begins at that moment. The rest is merely preparation"...



Don Juan looked at me from head to toe. "You are fearing the wrath of God, aren't you?" he said. "Rest assured, that's not your fear. It's the flyers' fear, because it knows that you will do exactly as I'm telling you."