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."The little sisters surrounded me and laughed, patting me on the back."It's very hard to get into our second attention," la Gorda went on, "and to manage it when youindulge as you do is even harder.The Nagual said that you should know how difficult thatmanaging is better than any of us.With his power plants, you learned to go very far into thatother world.That's why you pulled us so hard today that we nearly died.We wanted to gather oursecond attention on the Nagual's spot, and you plunged us into something we didn't know.We arenot ready for it, but neither are you.You can't help yourself, though; the power plants made youthat way.The Nagual was right: all of us have to help you contain your second attention, and youhave to help all of us to push ours.Your second attention can go very far, but it has no control;ours can go only a little bit, but we have absolute control over it."La Gorda and the little sisters, one by one, told me how frightening the experience of beinglost in the other world had been."The Nagual told me," la Gorda went on, "that when he was gathering your second attentionwith his smoke, you focused it on a gnat, and then the little gnat became the guardian of the otherworld for you."I told her that that was true.At her request I narrated to them the experience don Juan hadmade me undergo.With the aid of his smoking mixture I had perceived a gnat as a hundred-foot-high, horrifying monster that moved with incredible speed and agility.The ugliness of thatcreature was nauseating, and yet there was an awesome magnificence to it.I also had had no way to accommodate that experience in my rational scheme of things.Theonly support for my intellect was my deep-seated certainty that one of the effects of thepsychotropic smoking mixture was to induce me to hallucinate the size of the gnat.I presented to them, especially to la Gorda, my rational, causal explanation of what had takenplace.They laughed."There are no hallucinations," la Gorda said in a firm tone."If anybody suddenly seessomething different, something that was not there before, it is because that person's secondattention has been gathered and that person is focusing it on something.Now, whatever isgathering that person's attention might be anything, maybe it's liquor, or maybe it's madness, ormaybe it's the Nagual's smoking mixture."You saw a gnat and it became the guardian of the other world for you.And do you knowwhat that other world is? That other world is the world of our second attention.The Nagual147 thought that perhaps your second attention was strong enough to pass the guardian and go intothat world.But it wasn't.If it had been, you might have gone into that world and never returned.The Nagual told me that he was prepared to follow you.But the guardian didn't let you pass andnearly killed you.The Nagual had to stop making you focus your second attention with his powerplants because you could only focus on the awesomeness of things.He had you do dreaminginstead, so you could gather it in another way.But he was sure your dreaming would also beawesome.There was nothing he could do about it.You were following him in his own footstepsand he had an awesome, fearsome side."They remained silent.It was as if all of them had been engulfed by their memories.La Gorda said that the Nagual had once pointed out to me a very special red insect, in themountains of his homeland.She asked me if I remembered it.I did remember it.Years before don Juan had taken me to an area unknown to me, in themountains of northern Mexico.With extreme care he showed me some round insects, the size ofa ladybug.Their backs were brilliantly red.I wanted to get down on the ground and examinethem, but he would not let me.He told me that I should watch them, without staring, until I hadmemorized their shape, because I was supposed to remember them always.He then explainedsome intricate details of their behavior, making it sound like a metaphor.He was telling me aboutthe arbitrary importance of our most cherished mores.He pointed out some alleged mores ofthose insects and pitted them against ours.The comparison made the importance of our beliefslook ridiculous."Just before he and Genaro left," la Gorda went on, "the Nagual took me to that place in themountains where those little bugs lived.I had already been there once, and so had everyone else.The Nagual made sure that all of us knew those little creatures, although he never let us gaze atthem."While I was there with him he told me what to do with you and what I should tell you.I'vealready told you most of what he asked me to, except for this last thing.It has to do with whatyou've been asking everybody about: Where are the Nagual and Genaro? Now I'll tell you exactlywhere they are.The Nagual said that you will understand this better than any of us.None of ushas ever seen the guardian.None of us has ever been in that yellow sulfur world where he lives.You are the only one among us who has.The Nagual said that he followed you into that worldwhen you focused your second attention on the guardian
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