capacity of transporting a man beyond the realm of ordinary reality. But the idea that an ally had a rule eliminated all these possibilities. An ally was a power that had a rale. All the other possibilities could not be considered as allies because they had no rule.
As a concept the rule comprehended the following ideas and their various components: (1) the rule was inflexible; (2) the rule was non-cumulative; (3) the rale was corroborated in ordinary reality; (4) the rule was corroborated in non-ordinary reality; and (5) the rule was corroborated by special consensus.
The outlines of activity forming the body of the rale were unavoidable steps that one had to follow in order to achieve the operational goal of the teachings. This compulsory quality of the rale was rendered in the idea that it was inflexible. The inflexibility of the rale was intimately related to the idea of efficacy. Dramatic exertion created an incessant battle for survival, and under those conditions only the most effective act that one could perform would ensure one's survival. As individualistic points of reference were not permitted, the rule prescribed the actions constituting the only alternative for survival. Thus the rule had to be inflexible; it had to require a definite compliance to its dictum.
Compliance with the rule, however, was not absolute. In the course of the teachings I recorded one instance in which its inflexibility was cancelled out. Don Juan explained that example of deviation as a special favour stemming from direct intervention of an ally. In this instance, owing to my unintentional error in handling the ally contained in Datura inoxia, the rale had been breached. Don Juan extrapolated from the occurrence that an ally had the capacity to intervene directly and withhold the deleterious, and usually fatal, effect resulting from noncompliance with its rale. Such evidence of flexibility was thought to be always the product of a strong bond of affinity between the ally and its follower.
The assumption here was that all conceivable methods of manipulating an ally had already been used. Theoretically, the rule was non-cumulative; there was no possibility of augmenting it. The idea of the non- cumulative nature of the rale was also relative to the concept of efficacy. Since the rule prescribed the only effective alternative for one's personal survival, any attempt to change it or to alter its course by innovation was considered to be not only a superfluous act, but a deadly one. One had only the possibility of adding to one's personal knowledge of the rale, either under the teacher's guidance or under the special guidance of the ally itself. The latter was considered to be an instance of direct acquisition of knowledge, not an addition to the body of the rule.
The rule was corroborated in ordinary reality Corroboration of the rule meant the act of verifying it, the act of attesting to its validity by confirming it pragmatically in an experimental manner. Because the rule dealt with situations of ordinary and of non-ordinary reality, its corroboration took place in both areas.
The situations of ordinary reality with which the rale dealt were most often remarkably uncommon situations, but, no matter how unusual they were, the rale was corroborated in ordinary reality. For that reason it has been considered to fall beyond the scope of this work, and should properly be the realm of another study. That part of the rale concerned the details of the procedures employed in recognizing, collecting, mixing, preparing, and caring for the power plants in which the allies were contained, the details of other procedures involved in the uses of such power plants, and other similar minutiae.
The rule was corroborated in non-ordinary reality The rale was also corroborated in non-ordinary reality, and the corroboration was carried out in the same pragmatic, experimental manner of validation as would have been employed in situations of ordinary reality. The idea of a pragmatic corroboration involved two concepts: (1) meetings with the ally, which I have called the states of non-ordinary reality; and (2) the specific purposes of the rale.
The states of non-ordinary reality. — The two plants in which the allies were contained, when used in conformity with the allies' respective rules, produced states of peculiar perception which don Juan classified as meetings with the ally. He placed extraordinary emphasis on eliciting them, an emphasis summed up in the idea that one had to meet with the ally as many times as possible in order to verify its rule in a pragmatic, experimental manner. The assumption was that the proportion of the rule that was likely to be verified was in direct correlation with the number of times one met with the ally.
The exclusive method of inducing a meeting with the ally was, naturally, through the appropriate use of the plant in which the ally was contained. Nonetheless, don Juan hinted that at a certain advanced stage of learning the meetings could have taken place without the use of the plant; that is to say, they could have been elicited by an act of volition alone.
I have called the meetings with the ally states of non-ordinary reality. I chose the term 'non-ordinary reality' because it conformed with don Juan's assertion that such meetings took place in a continuum of reality, a reality that was only slightly different from the ordinary reality of everyday life. Consequently, non-ordinary reality had specific characteristics that could have been assessed in presumably equal terms by everyone. Don Juan never formulated these characteristics in a definite manner, but his reticence seemed to stem from the idea that each man had to claim knowledge as a matter of personal nature.
The following categories, which I consider the specific characteristics of non-ordinary reality, were drawn from my personal experience. Yet, in spite of their seemingly idiosyncratic origin, they were reinforced and developed by don Juan under the premises of his knowledge; he conducted his teachings as if these characteristics were inherent in non-ordinary reality: (1) non— ordinary reality was utilizable; (2) non-ordinary reality had component elements.
The first characteristics — that non-ordinary reality was utilizable — implied that it was fit for actual service. Don Juan explained time and time again that the encompassing concern of his knowledge was the pursuit of practical results, and that such a pursuit was pertinent in ordinary as well as in non-ordinary reality. He maintained that in his knowledge there were the means of putting non-ordinary reality into service, in the same way as ordinary reality. According to that assertion, the states induced by the allies were elicited with the deliberate intention of being used. In this particular instance don Juan's rationale was that the meetings with the allies were set up to learn their secrets, and this rationale served as a rigid guide to screen out other per— sonalistic motives that one may have had for seeking the states of non-ordinary reality.
The second characteristic of non-ordinary reality was that it had component elements. Those component elements were the items, the actions, and the events that one perceived, seemingly with one's senses, as being the content of a state of non-ordinary reality. The total picture of non-ordinary reality was made up of elements that appeared to possess qualities both of the elements of ordinary reality and of the components of an ordinary dream, although they were not on a par with either one.
According to my personal judgement, the component elements of non-ordinary reality had three unique characteristics: (1) stability, (2) singularity, and (3) lack of ordinary consensus.
These qualities made them stand on their own as discrete units possessing an unmistakable individuality.
The component elements of non-ordinary reality had stability in the sense that they were constant. In this respect they were similar to the component elements of ordinary reality, for they neither shifted nor disappeared, as would the component elements of ordinary dreams. It seemed as if every detail that made up a component element of non-ordinary reality had a concrete— ness of its own, a concreteness I perceived as being extraordinarily stable. The stability was so pronounced that it allowed me to establish the criterion that, in non- ordinary reality, one always possessed the capacity to come to a halt in order to examine any of the component elements for what appeared to be an indefinite length of time. The application of this criterion permitted me to differentiate the states of non-ordinary reality used by don Juan from other states of peculiar perception which may have appeared to be non-ordinary reality, but which did not yield to this criterion.
The second exclusive characteristic of the component elements of non-ordinary reality — their singularity — meant that every detail of the component elements was a single, individual item; it seemed as if each detail was isolated from others, or as if details appeared one at a time. The singularity of the component elements seemed further to create a unique necessity, which may have been common to everybody: the imperative need, the urge, to amalgamate all isolated details into a total scene, a total composite. Don Juan was obviously aware of that need and used it on every possible occasion.
The third unique characteristic of the component elements, and the most dramatic of all, was their lack of ordinary consensus. One perceived the component elements while being in a state of complete solitude, which was
