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->"Tell me more about what my friend should do with his little boy, " I said.
"Tell him to go to skid row and very carefully select an ugly looking derelict, " he went on. "Tell
him to get a young one. One who still has some strength left in him."
Don Juan then delineated a strange strategy. I was to instruct my friend to have the man follow him
or wait for him at a place where he would go with his son. The man, in response to a prearranged
cue to be given after any objectionable behavior on the part of the child, was supposed to leap from
a hiding place, pick the child up, and spank the living daylights out of him.
"After the man scares him, your friend must help the little boy regain his confidence, in any way he
can. If he follows this procedure three or four times I assure you that that child will feel differently
towards everything. He will change his idea of the world."' "What if the fright injures him?"
"Fright never injures anyone. What injures the spirit is having someone always on your back,
beating you, telling you what to do and what not to do.
"When that boy is more contained you must tell your friend to do one last thing for him. He must
find some way to get to a dead child, perhaps in a hospital, or at the office of a doctor. He must take
his son there and show the dead child to him. He must let him touch the corpse once with his left
hand, on any place except the corpse's belly. After the boy does that he will be renewed. The world
will never be the same for him."
I realized then that throughout the years of our association don Juan had been employing with me,
although on a different scale, the same tactics he was suggesting my friend should use with his son.
I asked him about it. He said that he had been trying all along to teach me how to "stop the world."
"You haven't yet, " he said, smiling. "Nothing seems to work, because you are very stubborn. If you
were less stubborn, however, by now you would probably have stopped the world with any of the
techniques I have taught you."
"What techniques, don Juan?"
"Everything I have told you to do was a technique for stopping the world."
"Tell him to go to skid row and very carefully select an ugly looking derelict, " he went on. "Tell
him to get a young one. One who still has some strength left in him."
Don Juan then delineated a strange strategy. I was to instruct my friend to have the man follow him
or wait for him at a place where he would go with his son. The man, in response to a prearranged
cue to be given after any objectionable behavior on the part of the child, was supposed to leap from
a hiding place, pick the child up, and spank the living daylights out of him.
"After the man scares him, your friend must help the little boy regain his confidence, in any way he
can. If he follows this procedure three or four times I assure you that that child will feel differently
towards everything. He will change his idea of the world."' "What if the fright injures him?"
"Fright never injures anyone. What injures the spirit is having someone always on your back,
beating you, telling you what to do and what not to do.
"When that boy is more contained you must tell your friend to do one last thing for him. He must
find some way to get to a dead child, perhaps in a hospital, or at the office of a doctor. He must take
his son there and show the dead child to him. He must let him touch the corpse once with his left
hand, on any place except the corpse's belly. After the boy does that he will be renewed. The world
will never be the same for him."
I realized then that throughout the years of our association don Juan had been employing with me,
although on a different scale, the same tactics he was suggesting my friend should use with his son.
I asked him about it. He said that he had been trying all along to teach me how to "stop the world."
"You haven't yet, " he said, smiling. "Nothing seems to work, because you are very stubborn. If you
were less stubborn, however, by now you would probably have stopped the world with any of the
techniques I have taught you."
"What techniques, don Juan?"
"Everything I have told you to do was a technique for stopping the world."