I arrived at don Miguel’s apartment with five minutes to spare. He lived in a high-rise, in a gated community, in the heart of Las Vegas. I parked between a Ferrari and a Jaguar convertible, and went in. I pushed open the glass doors, passed a couple of blue-haired ladies in the lobby and took the elevator to the twelfth floor.

I rang his bell. He opened the door. Before me stood a slender, Mexican Indian man in his early fifties, of below average height, in gray slacks and a maroon velour pullover. I met his gaze. All my doubts disappeared before he opened his mouth. Looking into Miguel's eyes is like drowning in warm honey.

He grabbed me in a hug. We took seats in his living room. It was severely modern, with glass shelves and tabletops at varying heights, back wall of the dining room open to the sunlight and, from this angle, the desert beyond. The effect was of being in a silver maze.

I set up my tape recorder, then asked, "How did you become a Toltec shaman?"

Don Miguel smiled. His voice was low and soft, accented, but with each word pronounced so carefully that understanding was never a problem. "Well, it's a family tradition, really. My mother is a great healer. She's ninety-five years old now, and I started to learn from her when I was still a child. Her father, my grandfather, don Leonardo, he was a powerful nagual too. Leonardo Macias. His father, don Eziquiel, was also a great nagual. He lived to 117 years.

"I didn't meet my great-grandfather. I only heard all those great stories about him. I think he was the first nagual in the lineage, in the family. And from him you can trace all the way back to the Mexicas, whom you call the Aztecs."

"Who were the Toltecs?"

"Well, the Toltecs, the name Toltec means 'artist.' A Toltec is an artist, not really a nation. History and anthropology think they were a nation. They have a very strong influence in Mexico. They started more than two thousand years ago, built the pyramids of Teotihuacán twenty-five hundred years ago. Before that, there were already Toltecs. It's a way of living. It comes from what I call just common sense, available to everybody. But very few have the fortune to learn it."

"I liked your book, The Four Agreements," I said. "I wonder if any of your students have told you ways the book helped them?"

"All the time. I receive a lot of mail from Europe, a lot of mail from the United States, and also from Latin America, from everywhere, really. You know, to write this book, it was a big challenge, to make it very simple and easy and short enough that anyone can read it, can understand it and apply it. To put it in action, that is the key of the book. That everybody can put it in action and see the difference that makes in their lives.

"When they understand what the book says, they start taking action, and right away they start seeing changes in their lives, until they reach a certain point. They're stuck at that point, and that's the time to read the book again. Then, it's like they're reading another book, because all the limitations that they used to have, they have already dissolved, and they reach another point. They have another 'Aha!' And they start shifting again.

"You find out after you read it that you knew all that. It's something that you knew since you were a child. But for whatever reason, it all shifted, was distorted. When you read that book, little by little you discover that you are not really what you think you are. You are much, much better than that."

"Do you know how many copies of this book have been sold?"  "More than three million. And the beautiful part is that mainly it's word of mouth. It's true that Oprah read it and gave it a big boost. But whoever reads it, right away they think of the people they love, so it keeps growing in that way."

"I get the impression that your more popular books -- The Four Agreements, The Mastery of Love, The Voice of Knowledge -- are for just regular folks. But you seem to be on a double track here, in that you're training people in Toltec nagualism, you're teaching apprentices." "Yes, I teach what I call Dreaming. I have a whole Dream school, and there are teachers there who teach the others."

I was curious as to how what he called "Dreaming" related to other spiritual practices. I said, "My sister, she's a magical person. She used to do what she called 'astral traveling.' I couldn't do it. But I do write fiction. My feeling is that when you write fiction, that you are Dreaming."
"Yes, you are Dreaming. Certainly, right now. Certainly, all the time."
"That part's true," I said. "This is a level of Dreaming. And that's another level of Dreams."

He shook his head. "The way your sister approaches it is a different way than you do. You just don't know that you are Dreaming, and you call it your imagination. That you write science fiction, or whatever you write, is in your imagination. And it's true that you are traveling into a virtual reality that is real. Because everything here is just a virtual reality that is happening in your brain. It's not exactly true."

"So this world is a screen, and we're just running our movies on it."
"Yes."
"And what you're teaching is how to put a happy ending on it."
"That's exactly the direction that a Dream Master has. You know, like I told you before, the word Toltec means 'artist.' And the art that we practice, really, is the art of Dreams. As with every art, we enjoy the art. That's why we do it.

"You know, your whole life is really a story that you create. And that includes your parents, your brother. It's true that they exist. Yes, your father exists. But in the story that you create, you give them...they become characters in your story. It doesn't mean that they are what you believe." He smiled, assayed my soul with those eyes, and cocked his head.

"In your story your father is a certain way. Your mother is a certain way. That's what you believe, but that doesn't mean it's true. It's only true in your story. If you compare notes, you will find out your father is not what you believe he is. Your mother is not what you believe she is. Your children are not what you believe they are.

"And even going a little deeper, you find out that you are not what you believe you are. This is a place in dreams when your whole reality starts coming apart. What you believed you are is not what you are but what you pretended to be for so long."

The bookends of Don Miguel's career are the traffic accident and a massive heart attack in 2002 that nearly killed him. Since then, he has -- at least in theory -- worked a reduced schedule, laboring to set up his sons, Miguel Jr., who lives in Phoenix, and Jose Luis, who lives in San Diego, and in time, his youngest son, Leonardo, to follow in his footsteps.

"What are your students -- the actual naguals that you've changed – what are they doing with this knowledge?"

TO BE CONTINUED...

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After careers as a professional soldier, war correspondent, magazine and book editor, novelist, non-fiction writer and television producer Jim Morris has turned his attention to esoteric subjects. He is a member of the Special Operations Association and the Cherokee Nation of Arkansas and Missouri.  Questions or comments for Jim, email: gymmo@earthlink.net.