the choice of dying in the world of ordinary affairs or dying in unknown worlds, will unavoidably choose the latter. But the new seers, realizing that their predecessors had chosen merely to change the locale of their death, came to understand the futility of it all; the futility of struggling to control their fellow men; the futility of assembling other worlds; and above all, the futility of self-importance. One of the most fortunate decisions that the new seers made, he said, was never to allow their assemblage points to move permanently to any position other than heightened awareness. From that position, they actually resolved their dilemma of futility and found out that the solution is not simply to choose an alternate world in which to die, but to choose total consciousness; total freedom. Don Juan commented that by choosing total freedom, the new seers unwittingly continued in the tradition of their predecessors, and became the quintessence of the death defiers. He explained that the new seers discovered that if the assemblage point is made to shift constantly to the confines of the unknown, but is made to return to a position at the limit of the known, then when it is suddenly released it moves like lightning across the entire cocoon of man; aligning all the emanations inside the cocoon at once. " The new seers burn with the force of alignment ," don Juan went on, " with the force of will, which they have turned into the force