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Chapter Eleven “The flyers are an essential part of the universe and they must be taken as what they really are - awesome, monstrous. They are the means by which the universe tests us. “We are energetic probes created by the universe and it’s because we are possessors of energy that has awareness that we are the means by which the universe becomes aware of itself. The flyers are the implacable challengers. They cannot be taken as anything else. If we succeed in doing that, the universe allows us to continue. “A weird thing is that every human being on this earth seems to have exactly the same reactions, the same thoughts, the same feelings. They seem to respond in more or less the same way to the same stimuli. Those reactions seem to be sort of fogged up by the language they speak, but if we scrape that off, they are exactly the same reactions that besiege every human being on Earth. I would like you to become curious about this, and see if you can formally account for such homogeneity. “... really wanted to start for home right away [...] but before we reached his house, don Juan sat down on a high ledge overlooking the valley. He didn’t say anything for awhile. He was not out of breath. I couldn’t conceive of why he had stopped to sit down. “The task of the day, for you”, he said abruptly, in a foreboding tone, “is one of the most mysterious things of sorcery, something that goes beyond language, beyond explanations. ...So brace yourself by propping your back against this rock wall, as far as possible, from the edge. I will be by you, in case you faint or fall down. ...I want you to cross your legs and enter into inner silence, but don’t fall asleep.” It was rather difficult for me to enter into inner silence without falling asleep. I fought a nearly invincible desire to fall asleep. I succeeded, and found myself looking at the bottom of the valley from an impenetrable darkness around me. And then, I saw something that chilled me to the marrow of my bones. I saw a gigantic shadow, perhaps fifteen feet across, leaping in the air and then landing with a silent thud. I felt the thud in my bones, but I didn’t hear it. “They are really heavy”, don Juan said in my ear. He was holding me by the left arm, as hard as he could. I saw something that looked like a mud shadow wiggle on the ground, and then take another gigantic leap, perhaps fifty feet long, and land again, with the same ominous silent thud. I fought not to lose my concentration. I was frightened beyond anything I could rationally use as a description. I kept my eyes fixed on the jumping shadow on the bottom of the valley. Then I heard a most peculiar buzzing, a mixture of the sound of flapping wings and the buzzing of a radio whose dial has not quite picked up the frequency of a radio station, and the thud that followed was something unforgettable. It shook don 318