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Through The Lens Of PerceptionHal Zena BennettShaman's Drum, A Journal Of Experiential Shamanism: Fall, 1987
now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." —I Corinthians Nearly thirty years ago, I spent a summer in Mexico, much of it in a small village two hours by bus up the coast from Acapulco. As far as I know, the village had no name but was referred to as "the turnaround" (in Spanish, of course) because it was here that the third-class bus turned around and headed back over the mountain to Acapulco. I had gone there on the recommendation of a friend to escape the modern hotels and the tourist crowd. But I was not entirely prepared for the primitive conditions I met, or for a certain adventure that came to me. Instead of a modern hotel room, I found myself sleeping on a cot, covered only by a light sheet, just one of seven other rugged souls who had chosen this thatched roof dormitory over the more elegant accommodations available two hours south. We always arose at sunrise, helped fold the cots, then stashed them away in one corner of the room. That done, we sat around and sipped coffee from crude, terra-cotta cups as we waited for breakfast to be served by the proprietor and his wife. Eating and sleeping under these conditions, created a bond between strangers, in spite of the language barriers. I knew enough Spanish to ask for basic life essentials, and the others, mostly Mexican students from the City, knew enough English to make small-talk. One afternoon I met a man on the beach who said he was a tourist guide. He offered to take me up to the top of the mountain—I do not think I ever heard the name of it—where he promised to show me the most spectacular view imaginable. The fee for this jaunt was reasonable, and having nothing better to do I agreed to go with him. The man's name was "Sen", and he was a wiry but strong looking little man who appeared to be in his early sixties. He wore only faded khaki pants and a red T-shirt with a flying hawk emblazoned across the chest. Underneath the bird, written in Spanish, was the name of a local beer. Sen was dark-skinned and had long black hair that reached nearly to his shoulders. His face had sharp Indian features, and when he smiled he revealed two front teeth capped in gold. Just after noon, Sen packed a small knapsack with staples that he purchased from a groceria a short ways from our camp. Then we set out on foot in the most casual way imaginable. He pointed to the mountain peak where we were going. It looked to me to be miles and miles away. He assured me, however, that it was a much shorter distance than it looked, and I was not to worry. We traveled on foot for most of the afternoon, taking what he called "El Sombre"—the shaded trail on the eastern slopes of the mountain, which protected us from the torturous rays of the afternoon sun. The trail was difficult, very steep at times, and not well maintained. I failed to keep track of the time, but we must have traveled for at least four hours before we stopped. Finally Sen announced that we had arrived at our destination, and he led me to the mouth of a large cave, where we sat down to rest. I would guess that the cave was approximately two thousand feet above the sea. Less than a mile to the west, and seemingly straight down, was the ocean. As Sen had promised me, it was a most spectacular view. The steep walls of the mountain amplified the sounds of the waves far below, giving the illusion that the sea might have been only a stone's throw away. From this aerial view, somewhat magnified by a peculiar atmospheric distortion, one could watch the waves rolling gently in upon the beautiful white beach, appearing as they might through binoculars. I was aware of Sen squatting down on the ledge a few feet off to my left and a foot or two behind me. I turned and watched as he took a small package from his day-pack. He had something wrapped up in newspapers, which he set down in front of him. He carefully unfolded the papers, smoothing the edges out over the ground. At the center of the square of newspaper were six objects that looked like green cactus apples with flattened tops. Each one had a feathery white tuft growing out of its top. With a small, razor-sharp, stag handled jackknife, Sen removed the tufts and sliced the cactus apples pie-like into narrow wedges. "What is it?" I asked, in Spanish. "It is medicine for fixing your eyes," Sen said. He looked up and grinned mischievously, making a peculiar fanning gesture with his hands around the area of his eyes. "Peyote," I said. He nodded, inviting me to share the peyote with him. I would have been reluctant except that back in the States, I had taken peyote three times. Each time had been under controlled conditions, and in the name of medical research. We had taken our peyote as a dried powder inside gelatin capsules. I had only seen pictures of it in its raw form. I had experienced a pleasant, mildly altered state of consciousness in these experiments. So, naturally, I had no particular anxiety about taking the peyote with my guide. Sen showed me how to eat the narrow slices from the buttons. He tipped back his head, opened his mouth wide, and placed a single slice far back on his tongue. Then he rocked his head forward and swallowed. On my first try, I failed to get the peyote far enough back on my tongue, and the foul, earthy taste made me wretch. Sen repeated his instructions, and this time I got it right. Together we consumed five ripe buttons in about a half an hour. Then we sat quietly, breathing slowly and deeply in a way that Sen said he had been taught to do. I recall feeling nauseous at first, but had no trouble with it when I followed Sen's breathing instructions. It was late evening. The sun was setting, and the sky had turned a deep scarlet. At the horizon, sea and sky blended as one in a symphony of reds and yellows. Spread out between the ocean and the cave where we sat, I saw a strip of tropical jungle. Here was a world of lush greens, ferns and palms in varying tone, now wearing an aura of pink created by the fading sun. Blowing in from the ocean, the evening air was cool, heavy with the earthy fragrance of the jungle, of naturally composting vegetation and moist soil, and of flowers which I could not see. "It is like I told you it would be," Sen said. "Do you agree?" I nodded, agreeing that indeed it was very beautiful. Minutes passed; then Sen announced, "Darkness will be coming soon." It took a moment for these words to sink in. And then the horror of it struck me. We had just spent the entire afternoon hiking up an extremely precipitous trail, along which we encountered many hazards. Several times I had clung to the rock face of the mountain to traverse a section of the trail washed out by storms, risking a fall of several hundred feet. Another time a large snake blocked the trail. Sen chased it off with a stick, all the while assuring me that the snake was not poisonous, though its bite could be harmful. The realization that I might have to go down this same trail in the darkness startled me. How could I have been so stupid! Why had it not occurred to me, until now, that it would be dark when we returned! I was furious with Sen. What sort of person would guide me to such a place, heedless of the threat to my well-being. Surely he realized it would be dark before we returned. I then became aware of a deep, groaning roar coming from deep within the cave behind me, and I leapt to my feet with visions of being attacked at any moment by a wild animal whose peace we had disturbed. I began swearing and jumping around, unable to decide which way to turn. I knew there was a washout less than a hundred yards down the trail, and it was already too dark to safely cross it. Sen continued to sit at the mouth of the cave, completely unperturbed. In fact, he was wearing a toothy grin that did nothing for my sense of security. Again I heard the groaning roar within the cave. "What the hell is that?" I cried. "Don't you think we should get out of here?" "Is it such a bad sound?" Sen asked. "I find it rather pleasant." "Pleasant!" I said, still searching for an escape. "How can you sit there so calmly? Do you know what it is?" "It is a sound." "Of what?" Sen shrugged. "Who knows?" At that moment, I sensed that he knew something which I didn't. He'd been here before. Or at least he claimed that he had been. He obviously knew that the sound wasn't a threat to our safety. Or did he? I knew nothing about the man, other than what I saw. He had told me nothing about himself. Where had he come from? For all I knew he cold be a complete fool, or a madman—some sort of murderer who lured people out into the wilds where he slaughtered them. After all, who would ever find me out here? Who even knew—or for that matter cared—where I'd gone? "Sit down," he said sternly, pointing to the empty boulder at the mouth of the cave where moments before I had been sitting. "Not on your life," I said. He looked at me incredulously. "No? Then, where are you going to go?" "I'm leaving," I said. "I'll go back down the trail." "Surely you're joking." "I'm not joking at all," I said. "I've had plenty of trail experience back in California. "Suit yourself," he said. "But you'll miss the best part of the sunset. Look." He pointed over the horizon. Against my better judgment I turned to find out what he thought could possibly be so important. At the edge of the horizon the sky was ablaze with a bright pattern of red and yellow light, twisting slowly into a shape that resembled a spiral galaxy. My breath was literally taken away by the beauty of it, and for a moment I completely forgot my plight. "My god, what is it?" I asked. "It is what I promised you," Sen said. "I have kept my word." In spite of myself I sat down and stared out over the horizon. For an hour or more I watched as the spiraling colors played at the end of the ocean. The galaxy of colors was huge, awesome in its proportions, and seemed to have a life of its own, twisting and turning almost playfully, as though it had an intelligence and was performing a dance with the Earth. Then suddenly it was gone, and we were plunged into darkness. The groaning roar rose from the cave behind us, and this time I was able to study it, to listen with a calmer mind. Rather than like an animal, it sounded this time like two gigantic boulders being ground slowly together, emitting a voice from somewhere deep down in the earth beneath our feet. I had visions of two continental plates scraping against one another, their sound amplified and made more resonant by a long tunnel in the cave. "Listen," Sen said. "Listen." I did, and the sound varied, not like a voice so much as like music made by a gigantic instrument whose shape and mechanics I could barely imagine. "Didn't I tell you?" Sen said excitedly. "Didn't I tell you I would show you a wonderful place?" He leaned down and picked up his knapsack. Reaching inside, he produced a round object which he handed to me. It was too dark to see what it was, but from the size and texture I guessed it was an orange. "Supper," Sen said, announcing this in a completely matter-of-fact tone. Was he kidding? Was this really his idea of an adequate supper after our arduous climb to this place? Without comment, I sullenly peeled and sectioned the orange, determining that I would eat it slowly, savoring every bite. I was aware of Sen rolling his orange between his palms, the peeling still in place. He was doing this in a very studied, very methodical way, and I grew curious. As I watched him, I also became aware that the mountain was growing brighter and brighter, almost as though a huge spotlight was being pointed at us. I looked up and saw the edge of a full moon just emerging from behind the top of the mountain, another five hundred feet above us. This was providing us with enough light to safely make our way down the path, if that is what we chose to do. I looked at Sen, meaning to suggest this to him. But now he was ripping into the orange like a starving ape, tearing off great chunks and burying his face in his hands as he sucked and chewed at the fruit. I was disgusted by his behavior, and wondered if he always ate like this. He finished, reached into his knapsack for a bandanna, and wiped off his face and hands, licking his fingers now and then to get rid of the sticky juice. This done, he lay down, arranged the knapsack under his head, and appeared for all the world to be getting ready to take a nap. "Shouldn't we be getting back while we still have some light from the moon?" I asked. "What's the hurry? Have you got an appointment with the doctor or something?" To this he chuckled stupidly, like a man unaware of the fact that no one else thought his joke funny. "When are we going back?" "Why don't you just enjoy yourself," he said. "Take it easy." I don't know whether I was more angry than anxious, but I could see that there was no sense in trying to budge him. He had his own plans for us, and he was obviously not going to let me in on them. I was completely at his mercy. I leaned back and started picking at the orange that I had sectioned so carefully. I picked up the first section and was about to put it in my mouth when I felt something moving across my hand. I looked down at the orange section. A tiny lizard, about the length of my little finger, clung to the fruit. I grabbed it by the tail and flung it out into space, disgusted by the thought that had I not felt it moving in time, I would have bitten into H. and might at this very moment be spitting out its bleeding carcass. I was careful after that, brushing off each section of fruit and inspecting it in the moonlight before popping it into my mouth. By the time I had finished eating, Sen was sound asleep. His rasping snores indicated to me that it would be no use trying to awaken him, at least not for an hour or more. I felt restless and uneasy. From far below us I could hear waves lapping against the beach, and this was soothing. Then, every few minutes, the cave made that peculiar groaning sound, a sound to which I had now become accustomed. To pass the time, I decided that I would try to plot how long were the silences between the cave's groans, but after an hour or more I could determine no apparent pattern, and eventually gave it up. The moonlight slowly faded, and again I became anxious as darkness closed in around me. Now, every sound seemed amplified, and I became aware of live things all around me. High-pitched whistles from inside the cave suggested the presence of bats. Rustling in the trees suggested night birds, or perhaps nocturnal animals. None of these things particularly disturbed me, though they didn't exactly put me at ease, either. I had spent many nights under the stars back in the States, hiking in the Sierras. But I have to admit that these sounds were not familiar to me, and my inability to identify them put my nerves on edge. The sky was brilliant with stars, the Milky Way like a great sea of light. Several times I saw meteorites trailing across the sky. In spite of my nervousness, I caught myself dozing, jerking to attention when by body relaxed, and I almost lost the balance of my sitting position. At last I gave into H and lay down, staring up at the sky until I fell asleep. The next thing I knew there was a shriek, and I sat bolt upright, not knowing what to expect. The shriek shattered the stillness once more and I looked up, having determined that the sound had come from above and to my left. As I searched the darkness, the shriek came again and a huge bird, with a wingspan of at least six feet, swooped down, coming right for me. I leapt behind Sen's rock—where he continued to sleep soundly—just as the great bird shot by. As the bird passed, less than a foot from my face, I saw its talons extended as though for a kill. But that was not the worst of it. Just a few feet past me, it stopped in mid-flight, seemed to gather itself into a ball, and suddenly changed directions, facing me once again as thought preparing for another attack. I shielded my face with both arms, fully expecting to feel its sharp talons dig into me at any moment. But then it stopped. Facing me directly, flapping its wings gently, hanging in the air like a feathery helicopter, I thought I heard it make a sound. Surely I was dreaming. But I knew I wasn't. I looked directly at the bird and saw that it had a human face. I rubbed my eyes, certain that what I was seeing couldn't possibly be true. But it was. The bird had a human face. Moreover, it was a face I recognized. It was Sen's face! Sen had taken the form of a giant night-hunter. I glanced down on the ground where he had been sleeping. Indeed, he was gone. And there, as clear as the paper on which these words are printed, was the bird—Sen in the form of a bird, hovering before my eyes, flapping his wings gently, evenly, as he held his space in the air. "What are you doing?" I asked, at the moment not thinking how indescribably unbelievable it was to be talking to a bird who had taken the face of my companion. "Coo! Coo! Coo!" the bird said. This was followed by laughter—laughter that I knew was Sen's. The laughter ended and was followed by his stupid chuckling. Did he somehow expect me to share in his little joke? I didn't think it was funny. In fact, I was shaking like a leaf, still unable to give a rational explanation for what I'd seen. Besides, the bird was still there, still hovering within an arm's length me. I decided to treat it as an everyday occurrence. After all, maybe it was a dream. I had heard that the best way to stop a person or situation that you don't like in a dream was to rein in your rational self and tell it to go away. I did this, and heard the bird reply, "Go away to where? You said yourself, it wasn't safe to go down the trail in the dark." "But you're a bird," I said. "You can fly." "Oh, right. That's right," I heard Sen say. "Goo'bye, then." And with this, he disappeared. By the light of the stars I watched him gather his wings under him and plunge off the cliff where I was sitting. I watched as he circled gracefully, changed direction, and disappeared, skimming the treetops in the jungle below, apparently continuing his night hunt. Then, startled, I suddenly realized that I was all alone at the mouth of the cave. Could this have actually happened? Had Sen been transformed, somehow, into the body of a bird, a giant owl or whatever it was? In any case, it was very clear to me now that I was left alone on the mountainside. I heard the crunch of gravel on the path a hundred feet away, off to my right. I called out, "Sen, is that you?" Much to my relief, my companion came into view, hooking up his pants. "Where were you?" I asked. "I went to take a crap," he said. "What's wrong? Are you late for your appointment again?" This was followed by his usual stupid chuckle. Then he went back over to his rock and stretched out, arranging the knapsack under his head as before. "I've had enough of this," I said. "Stop fooling around with my head." "I'm going back to sleep," he said. "Wake me when the movie's over." I could not believe his audacity or his incredible coolness. Within seconds he was sound asleep again, apparently oblivious to everything going on around him. I lay brooding, angry, thoroughly shaken by everything I had been through that night. I wanted to grab Sen by the shoulders and shake him awake. I wanted to scream at him, to tell him how much I resented the games he was playing with me. I didn't know how he was accomplishing what he was doing, and I didn't care. I just wanted it to stop. I huddled close to my rock like an animal guarding its territory. I myself began to feel like an animal, destined to live out its life in the wild. I felt a warming sensation throughout my body, a rippling of muscle. Perhaps it was due to a warm breeze emitted from the mouth of the cave. It was certainly possible that there were hot springs somewhere below that occasionally emitted heat which escaped to the outer vestibules. I found myself staring steadily and angrily at the sleeping Sen. I had never felt such hatred for another man. But as I stared at him I could not identify my anger. I felt a strange fear, like nothing I'd ever felt before. It was as though this man was an intruder in my life, that he was threatening me or something that belonged to me. I watched him cautiously, waiting for him to make the slightest move in my direction, a move that would indicate that I would have to fight with him—perhaps until one or the other of us was dead. I determined that I would be the victor. After all, I was larger, more powerful than he. Sen's snoring stopped. He took a deep breath, then suddenly began to tremble all over as though he was having some sort of fit. The light changed and I saw a giant cat, a mountain lion or a panther standing between me and him, teeth bared. "Sen," I cried, wanting to warn him. But a strange sound came from my throat, a hissing that I could barely identify with. Sen sat bolt upright and looked calmly past the cat. In fact, his gaze was piercing, looking right through the cat into my eyes. "Stop this nonsense right now," he said. "You need your sleep. You'll be exhausted in the morning." "The cat," I said. "Don't you see it?" At that moment I wasn't certain of anything. I could not clearly see the cat myself. It was too close for me to see. I was terribly confused. Why couldn't he see it? I was aware only of its threatening posture, baring its teeth, ready to pounce. "Of course I see it," Sen said. "It's your cat. It's not going to hurt me." My cat, I thought to myself. Mine? And then I asked, "What makes you so sure?" "I am just sure. I am just sure." He waved his hand in front of my face. Suddenly I was calm. I felt spellbound. "You see?" Sen said. Sen lay back down, and in seconds he was sound asleep again. I drew back away from him, toward the mouth of the cave. The cat came back into focus for me. It was just me and the cat now. The cat turned, gazed into my face, and appeared to grin. Was all this truly my own creation? I stared back at the cat. Its face lit up, glowing, as though it had been a plastic mask; now someone had turned on a light behind the cat mask, exposing the illusion. The body of the cat vanished and I was looking just at its face, at that backlit mask. Then the mask of the cat began to dissolve, as though the heat of the light behind it was causing it to melt. Soon it was nothing more than a molten blob turning in space like a star. As I watched, it began to reshape itself into a much more geometric form. After a few moments its transformation was complete. Round, saucer-shaped, it turned slowly in the space before my eyes. The light still shown within it, as though it possessed its own source of illumination. It turned again and again, revealing its full configuration, thin and elliptical from the side, round and perfectly symmetrical from the front. It was a lens, like the lens from a telescope or a magnifying glass. But this lens had an organic appearance—not unlike a living cell, translucent and soft, definitely alive—a geometric jellyfish. I moved closer to the lens. Deep inside it I saw movement. What were these shapes? I saw many images from my childhood—my brothers, the house where I'd lived during my high school years in Michigan, my parents, my first lover. I thought about how people often reported seeing their lives flash before their eyes when they were faced with death. Could this be the case? Was I near death? I looked deeper into the lens, as though I might find the answer there. I saw a cat, a powerful mountain lion. There was also a giant bird. There was a groaning cave, and a beautiful sunset over the ocean. There was a rugged trail up a mountain, and a man. I looked more closely. It was Sen. He was sleeping by the rock, his head on his knapsack. I could not figure out where he was—in the lens, or beyond it, or both? The lens turned in the air. I closed my eyes, trying to block it out, trying to see around it, or to see a clear place through it where the world beyond would not be distorted by the images inside the lens. But I could not escape the lens' influence, and now I was aware that it was turning deep in my consciousness, in the same space out of which dream and imagination are created. I had never before noticed how large this mental space I called imagination could be. It had no limits, no beginning or middle or end. It seemed to stretch out in all directions, a vast landscape whose borders were as unlimited as space itself. At one moment I could be on the mountainside with Sen, in Mexico. A second later I was back in Michigan, many years before, a boy of twelve riding his bicycle on a rain-slick asphalt street. A second after that I was driving across the Arizona desert in January, with a carload of friends, all in our early twenties, heading back to California after a Christmas holiday with our families in Michigan. Now I shifted to a backpacking trip in the high Sierras, where I fished for trout on the bank of a mountain lake. Where was the lens now? I couldn't find it. It seemed to have merged with all the rest, lost in the jumble of everything I held in my consciousness. I felt panic. Losing the image of the lens was like losing a treasure I had dreamed of discovering all my life. Then there was a long moment of perfect clarity when I realized what had happened to the lens. I saw that it hadn't disappeared at all; the lens was my consciousness, not simply a piece of it. For a long time I just sat quietly and thought about this. It seemed to me that the lens was like a vehicle for my awareness, giving me an identity separate from the rest of the world. This was the image I had been seeking since I was a child. A thousand questions and speculations that I had entertained along the way now focused on this lens image. Having the sense of separateness which the lens provided seemed to me both exciting and frightening. It meant that I was not like an ant, with instincts—that is, pre-programmed responses built in—dictating my every action. It meant that I was capable of creating my own program, or even of overriding whatever biological or God-given programs might be built in. My decisions, my fears, my dreams, my acquired knowledge, all could come into play. In my present situation, up on the mountain, I could make a decision, based on my fears or on other factors contained in my lens, to leave my guide sleeping by the mouth of the cave and make my way down the mountain trail alone. Or I could choose to trust him, and wait for morning. Regardless of which decision I made, because of my awareness of my separateness—achieved through the lens—it was now very clear to me that I alone was responsible for my destiny. I was terribly excited about being able to see all this. This vision of the lens provided me with a symbol for making sense of knowledge I hadn't even been aware that I was collecting over the years. I wanted to awaken Sen and discuss it all with him. "Sen," I said. "Sen, are you asleep?" I went over to him and gently shook his shoulder. "What do you want?" he asked, turning his head to face me. "Have you created another cat? A bird?" I started to look for the words to explain what I was seeing. But then I backed away. I realized that Sen already knew about everything I had seen. To him it was common knowledge, and he had no time for it. "Never mind," I said, deeply hurt by the realization that I had no one with whom to share my discovery. "I'm sorry to disturb you." Sen mumbled something I couldn't understand and went back to sleep. I sat down and watched the world beyond the lens, and saw it all merge with memories, images, ideas and feelings that I knew belonged only to me. As my companion slept, the shadows shortened on the ledge where I sat and I saw that the lens was not something new in my life. I saw it far more clearly than ever before, and that part was new and unfamiliar, but the subtle mergings of external sights, sounds, sensations, all seemed normal, automatic, even familiar to me. I realized that these things had always occurred—and the only difference was that now I could see them, could feel their shifts and mergings, their constant metamorphoses from one form to another. I remembered many times in the past, all through my life, when I had also had brief glimpses into these basic truths about our ways of processing reality, glimpses never more substantial than the sun's reflection from a bright chrome strip on a passing car. I now saw why life really was not all it appeared to be. Rather, it took on meaning only as it merged with our images inside the lens. Later that afternoon, as we made our way back down the mountain, Sen listened patiently as I related the story of what had happened to me up on the mountain. I wanted to know if he had experienced any of it. Were the things I had seen a shared reality? Had he seen any of it? Sen shrugged. He was vague and elusive. He told me that the Indians believed that the place where we spent the night was a sacred spot, and that people often had visions there that changed their lives. I asked if he had ever had visions there. "Oh, yes," he said. "That is why I sleep when I go there. When I sleep it does what it must do and I am not always jumping up and down thinking I have to do something about it." He laughed. "Unlike you, I am a very lazy man." When I tried to get him to explain this to me, he said it wasn't important. He told me my Spanish wasn't good enough to understand him if he really tried to go into it. And his English wasn't good enough for him to even attempt it in my language. He dismissed me with that phrase the Mexicans have for stopping all further conversation on a subject: "No me importa"—it is not important to me. "You went to the mountain and you saw what I promised you. I am a very good guide. I hope you will tell your friends about me." I promised him I would. When I got back to the camp where I was staying, Sen disappeared down the beach and I never saw him again. I asked the owner of the hostel about him, and he told me that Sen was an Indian, and that I was lucky to have come back from the trek at all. Sen belonged to a tribe that still lived in the mountains, and they were not known for their friendliness toward Anglos. They had no respect at all for the laws of the Government, and they lived their lives completely cut off from the rest of the world. I always took this warning with a grain of salt. After all, if Sen's people were so isolated from the rest of civilization, how had he learned English? He knew my language far better than I knew his. Moreover, when I thought back on it I could not think of a single incident in which Sen had acted in any way that I considered directly harmful. Any harm that could have come to me would have come from my own lens distorting reality in ways that could have caused me to use bad judgment and perhaps bring me to harm through my own actions. The experience has stayed with me throughout my life and become something far more than an unusual memory. The lens has become a reference point for me, a kind of metaphor over which I have puzzled for many years. Only in the past couple years has it become comfortable for me to write about it, to relate the story to others so that I might share the revelations that have come from it.
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