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I dreamt that I found myself walking with
him on a wide avenue lined with trees in some unknown city. It was such a vivid
dream, and I was so aware of everything, that I immediately tried to orient
myself by reading signs and looking at people. It definitely was not any
English- or Spanish-speaking city, but it was a Western city. The people seemed
to be northern Europeans, perhaps Lithuanians. I became absorbed in trying to
read billboards and street signs.
    Don Juan
nudged me gently. "Don't bother with that," he said. "We are
nowhere identifiable. I've just lent you my energy so you would reach your
energy body, and with it you've just crossed into another world. This won't
last long, so use your time wisely.
    "Look
at everything, but without being obvious. Don't let anyone notice you."
    We walked
in silence. It was a block-long walk, which had a remarkable effect on me. The
more we walked, the greater my sensation of visceral anxiety. My mind was curious,
but my body was alarmed. I had the clearest understanding that I was not in
this world. When we got to an intersection and stopped walking, I saw that the
trees on the street had been carefully trimmed. They were short trees with
hard-looking, curled leaves. Each tree had a big square space for watering.
There were no weeds or trash in those spaces, as one would find around trees in
the city, only charcoal black, loose dirt.
    The moment
I focused my eyes on the curb, before I stepped off it to cross the street, I
noticed that there were no cars. I tried desperately to watch the people who
milled around us, to discover something about them that would explain my
anxiety. As I stared at them, they stared back at me. In one instant a circle
of hard blue and brown eyes had formed around us.
    A certainty
hit me like a blow: this was not a dream at all; we were in a reality beyond
what I know to be real. I turned to face don Juan. I was about to realize what
was different about those people, but a strange dry wind that went directly to
my sinuses hit my face, blurred my view, and made me forget what I wanted to
tell don Juan. The next instant, I was back where I had started from: don
Juan's house. I was lying on a straw mat, curled up on my side.
    "I
lent you my energy, and you reached your energy body," don Juan said
matter-of-factly.
    I heard him
talk, but I was numb. An unusual itching on my solar plexus kept my breaths
short and painful. I knew that I had been on the verge of finding something
transcendental about dreaming and about the people I had seen, yet I
could not bring whatever I knew into focus.
    "Where
were we, don Juan?" I asked. "Was it all a dream? A hypnotic
state?"
    "It
wasn't a dream," he replied. "It was dreaming . I helped you
reach the second attention so that you would understand intending as a subject
not for your reason but for your energy body.
    "At
this point, you can't yet comprehend the importance of all this, not only
because you don't have sufficient energy but because you're not intending
anything. If you were, your energy body would comprehend immediately that the
only way to intend is by focusing your intent on whatever you want to intend.
This time I focused it for you on reaching your energy body."
    "Is
the goal of dreaming to intend the energy body?" I asked, suddenly
empowered by some strange reasoning.
    "One
can certainly put it that way," he said. "In this particular
instance, since we're talking about the first gate of dreaming , the goal
of dreaming is to intend that your energy body becomes aware that you
are falling asleep. Don't try to force yourself to be aware of falling asleep.
Let your energy body do it. To intend is to wish without wishing, to do without
doing.
    "Accept
the challenge of intending," he went on. "Put your silent
determination, without a single thought, into convincing yourself that you have
reached your energy body and that you are a dreamer. Doing this will
automatically put you in the position to be aware that