of perception, which you have to separate." "Why do I have to separate it?" "Because it deliberately reduces the scope of what can be perceived and makes us believe that the mold into which we fit our perception is all that exists. I am convinced that for man to survive now, his perception must change at its social base." "What is this social base of perception, don Juan?" "The physical certainty that the world is made of concrete objects. I call this a social base because a serious and fierce effort is put out by everybody to guide us to perceive the world the way we do." "How then should we perceive the world?" "Everything is energy. The whole universe is energy. The social base of our perception should be the physical certainty that energy is all there is. A mighty effort should be made to guide us to perceive energy as energy. Then we would have both alternatives at our fingertips." ... Don Juan's conception was that our entrapment in processing our perception to fit a social mold loses its power when we realize we have accepted this mold as an inheritance from our ancestors without bothering to examine it. ... "After ages of perceiving in such a manner, we are now forced to believe that the world is made up of objects." ... "I am saying that this is first a world of energy; then it's a world of objects. If we don't start with the premise that