Part 3 of 3
According to Castaneda, mixing foods—for example, eating meat with potatoes and vegetables—is very bad for health. “This mixture is very recent in the life of humanity,” he affirmed. "Eating a single food helps digestion and is better for the organism.
“Once Don Juan accused me of always feeling bad. You imagine I defended myself! However, later I realized he was right and I learned. Now I feel good, strong and healthy.”
Also, the way they sleep is different from most of us. The important thing is to realize that one can sleep in many ways. According to Castaneda, we have been taught to go to bed and get up at a certain time because that is what society wants from us. “Thus, for example,” said Castaneda, “parents put children to bed to get them out of their hair.” We all laughed because there was some truth in that.
“I sleep all day and all night,” he continued, “but if I add up the hours and minutes I sleep, I don’t think they reach more than five hours per day.” Sleeping in this way requires, on the person’s part, the ability to go directly into deep sleep.
Returning to Joe Córdoba and his wife, Castaneda told us that one day the Toltec Woman came and told them they weren’t working enough. "She sent us to organize a fairly large landscaping business, something like garden design and arrangement.
"This new task from the Toltec Woman was no small thing. We had to hire a group of people to help us do the jobs during the week, while we were at the diner. During the weekends, we dedicated ourselves exclusively to the gardens. We were very successful!
"La Gorda is a very enterprising person. That year we worked very hard… During the week we were at the diner and during the weekends just driving the truck and pruning trees. The demands of the Toltec Woman are very great!
“I remember,” Castaneda went on saying, "that on a certain occasion we were at a friend’s house when journalists arrived looking for Carlos Castaneda. They were journalists from the New York Times. To go unnoticed, La Gorda and I started planting trees in my friend’s garden. From a distance, we saw them enter and leave the house. That was when my friend yelled at us and mistreated us a lot in front of the journalists. It seems Joe Córdoba and his wife could be yelled at without consequences. None of those present there came to our defense. Who were we? There, only the poor and the dogs work in the sun!
“That was how my friend and we deceived the journalists. My body, however, I could not deceive. For three years we were involved in the task of giving the body experiences that would make it realize that, in truth, we are nothing. The truth is that the body is not the only one that suffers: The mind is also used to constant stimuli. The warrior, however, has no stimuli from the environment; he doesn’t need them. What better place, then, than where we were! There, nobody thinks!”
Continuing with the story of his adventures, Castaneda commented that more than once he and La Gorda were kicked out into the street. “Other times, going by truck on the highway, they pushed us to the edges of the road. What alternative did we have? Better to let them pass!”
From everything Castaneda was telling us, it seems that the task of those years had to do with “learning to survive in adverse circumstances,” and with “the experience of discrimination.” This last, “something very difficult to endure but very informative,” he concluded with great calm.
The objective of the task consists in learning to withdraw from the emotional impact that discrimination causes. The important thing is not to react, not to get angry. If one reacts, one is lost. “One doesn’t get offended with the tiger when it attacks,” he explained; “one steps aside and lets it pass.”
“On another occasion, La Gorda and I found work in a house, she as a maid and I as a butler. You can’t imagine how that ended! They kicked us out into the street without pay. Even more! To protect themselves from us in case we protested, they had called the local police. Imagine! We were imprisoned for nothing.”
"That year, La Gorda and I spent it working very hard and suffering great privations. Many times we had nothing to eat. The worst was that we couldn’t complain nor did we have the support of the group. In that task we were alone and couldn’t escape. In any case, even if we had been able to say who we were, nobody would have believed us. The task is always total.
“Truly, I am Joe Córdoba,” Castaneda continued, accompanying his words with his whole body; “and this is very nice because one can no longer fall further. I have already reached as low as one can get. That is all I am.” With these last words he touched the ground with his hands.
"As I told you before, each of us has different tasks to fulfill. The ‘Genaros’ are very clever; Benigno is now in Chiapas and is doing very well. He has a music group: Benigno possesses the gift of imitation to perfection; he imitates Tom Jones and many more. Pablito is the same as always; he is very lazy. Benigno is the one who makes the noises and Pablito celebrates them. Benigno is the one who works and Pablito collects the applause.
“Now,” he said by way of conclusion, “we have all finished the tasks we were doing and are preparing for new tasks. The Toltec Woman is the one who commands us.”
The story of Joe Córdoba and his wife had impressed us deeply. It was an experience very different from those in his books. We were interested in knowing if he had written or was writing something about Joe Córdoba.
“I knew Joe Córdoba existed,” said one of us; “he had to exist. Why don’t you write about this? Of everything you’ve been telling us, Joe Córdoba and his wife is what has impacted me the most.”
“I have just delivered a new manuscript to my agent,” Castaneda responded. "In this manuscript, the Toltec Woman is the one who teaches. It couldn’t be any other way… Its title will likely be ‘Stalking and the Art of Being in the World.’ There is all her teaching. She is responsible for this manuscript. A woman had to be the one to teach about the art of stalking. Women know it well because they have always lived with the enemy; that is, they have always walked on tip-toes in a masculine world. Precisely for that reason, because women have a long experience in this art, the Toltec Woman is the one who has to give the principles of stalking.
“In this last manuscript, however, there is nothing concrete about the life of Joe Córdoba and his wife. I cannot write in detail about that experience because nobody would understand it or believe it. I can talk about it with very few… But the essence of the experience of the last three years is in the book.”
Returning to the Toltec Woman and her style, Castaneda told us she was very different from Don Juan. “She doesn’t love me,” he insisted; “La Gorda, on the other hand, she does love! You cannot ask the Toltec Woman anything. Before you speak to her, she already knows what she has to say. Moreover, she is to be feared; when she gets angry, she hits,” he concluded, making many gestures indicating his fear.
We stayed in silence for a while. The sun had gone down and its rays reached us through the tree trunks. I felt a bit of a chill. I estimate it was around seven in the evening.
Castaneda also seemed to take notice of the time. “It’s late already,” he told us. “What do you think if we go eat something? My treat?”
We stood up and began to walk. By one of those ironies, Castaneda carried—for a stretch—my notes and his books. It was best to leave everything in the car. We did so. Free of burdens, we walked a few blocks in lively conversation.
Everything they have achieved requires years of preparation and practice. One example is the exercise of dreaming. “That which seems like a trifle,” Castaneda affirmed emphatically, “is very difficult to achieve.”
The exercise consists of learning to dream at will and in a systematic way. It starts by dreaming of a hand entering the dreamer’s visual field. Then, the whole arm is seen. It continues progressively until one can see oneself in the dream. The other stage consists of learning to use the dreams. That is, once control has been achieved, one must learn to act in them. “Thus, for example,” said Castaneda, “one dreams of oneself leaving the body and opening the door and going out to the street. The street is, then, something unheard of! Something in one leaves oneself; something that is achieved at will.”
According to Castaneda, dreaming does not take time. That is, dreaming does not occur in the time of our clocks. Dream time is something very compact.
“The Toltec Woman,” Castaneda continued, “says that dreaming occurs in the ‘time of P.’ Why? I don’t know. That is how she says it.”
Castaneda gave us to understand that in dreams an immense physical exhaustion is produced. “In dreams, one can live much,” he said, “but the body suffers. My body feels it a lot… Afterward it remains like a clumsiness of years.”
Several times, touching on this subject of dreaming, Castaneda would say that what they do in dreams has a pragmatic value. In Tales of Power, one reads that dream experiences and waking experiences “acquired the same pragmatic valence,” and that for sorcerers “the criteria for differentiating between dream and wakefulness became inoperative (p. 21).”
That business of exits or journeys outside the physical body sharply piqued our interest, and we wanted to know more about those experiences.
He responded by clarifying that each of them has achieved different experiences. “La Gorda and I, for example, go together. She takes me by the forearm and… we go.”
He also explained to us that the group has communal journeys. All are in constant training whose objective would be to become witnesses! “To become witnesses means,” Castaneda affirmed, “that one can no longer judge anything. That is, it is an eternal seeing that is equivalent to having no more prejudices.”
Josefina seems to have great skills for these journeys in the dream body. She wants to take him away and tempts him by telling him wonders. La Gorda is the one who always saves him.
“Josefina has great ease for breaking that arc of reflexivity. She is crazy, loquita!” he exclaimed. “Josefina flies very far, but she doesn’t want to go alone and always returns. She returns and looks for me… She gives me reports that are marvelous!”
According to Castaneda, Josefina is a being who cannot function in this world. “Here,” he said, “she would have ended up interned in some institution.”
Josefina is a being “without ties” to the concrete; she is ethereal. “At any moment she can leave definitely.” La Gorda and he are, on the other hand, much more cautious in their flights. La Gorda, particularly, represents the stability and balance that he, to some extent, lacks.
After a pause, I reminded him of that vision of the immense dome that in The Second Ring of Power is presented as the place of encounter where Don Juan and Don Genaro would be waiting for them.
“La Gorda also has that vision,” he commented pensively. “What we see is not a terrestrial horizon. It is something very flat and arid on whose horizon we see rising an immense arc that covers everything and advances until reaching the zenith. At that point of the zenith, a great luminosity is seen. I would say it is something like a dome that emits an amber-colored light.”
We tried to press him with questions to give us more information about that dome. “What is it? Where is it?” we inquired.
Castaneda responded that from the size of what they see, it could be a planet. “At the zenith,” he added, “there is like a great wind.”
By the brevity of his response, we realized Castaneda did not want to talk much about that topic. It is possible, also, that he could not find the right words to express what they saw. Be that as it may, it is evident that those visions, those flights in the dream body, are constant training for the definitive journey—that leaving through the left side of the Eagle, that final jump called death, that ending of the recapitulation, that being able to say “we are ready” in which we take everything we are, but nothing more than what we are.
“According to the Toltec Woman,” Castaneda confided to us, “those visions are aberrations of mine. She thinks that is my unconscious mode of paralyzing actions; that is, the way I have of saying I don’t want to leave the world. The Toltec Woman also says that with my attitude I am holding La Gorda back in her possibilities of a more fruitful or productive flight.”
Don Juan and Don Genaro were great dreamers. They had absolute control of the art. “It scares me,” Castaneda suddenly exclaimed, bringing his hand to his forehead, “the fact that nobody notices that Don Juan is an unheard-of dreamer. The same can be said of Don Genaro. Don Genaro, for example, is capable of bringing his dream body into everyday life.”
The great control of Don Juan and Don Genaro is evidenced in that “not being noticed” or passing unobserved. (In all his books, Castaneda has referred to that business of “not being noticed” and “passing unobserved.” In The Second Ring of Power, Castaneda recalls the times Don Juan had ordered him to concentrate “on not being obvious.” Néstor, also, says “that Don Juan and Don Genaro learned not to be noticed in the middle of all this.” Both are masters in the art of “stalking.” Of Don Genaro, La Gorda says that “he was in his dream body most of the time” (p. 270)).
“Everything they do,” he continued with enthusiasm, “is worthy of praise. Of Don Juan, I intensely admire his great control, composure, and serenity. Of Don Juan, it can never be said that he is a senile old man. It’s not like that with other people. There is here on campus, for example, an old professor who, when I was a boy, was already famous. At that time, he was at the peak of his physical robustness and his intellectual creativity. Now… there he is, chewing his cork tongue! Now I can see him as he is, as a senile old man. Of Don Juan, on the other hand, I will never be able to say something like that. His advantage over me is always abysmal.”
In the interview with Sam Keen, Castaneda says that once Don Juan asked him if he thought the two were equal. Although he didn’t really think they were, in a condescending tone he said yes. Don Juan listened to him but did not accept his verdict. “I don’t believe we are,” he told him, “because I am a hunter and a warrior and you are nothing but a ‘pimp.’ I am ready at any moment to offer the recapitulation of my life. Your little world full of sadness and indecision can never be equal to mine” (Sam Keen, Voices and Visions).
In everything Castaneda had told us, parallels can be found with other currents and traditions of mystical thought. In his own books, authors and works of antiquity and the present are cited. I reminded him that, among others, reference is made to the Egyptian Book of the Dead, to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, to Spanish poets like St. John of the Cross and Juan Ramón Jiménez, and to Latin American writers like the Peruvian César Vallejo.
“Yes,” he replied, “in my car there are always books, many books. Things people send me. I used to read excerpts from those books to Don Juan… He likes poetry. Of course, he only likes the first four lines! According to him, what follows is an idiocy. He says that after the first stanza the force is lost, that it is pure repetition.”
One of us asked him if he had read or if he knew yoga techniques and the descriptions of the different planes of reality offered by the sacred books of India.
“All that is wonderful,” he said. “I have also had quite close relations with people who work in Hatha Yoga.”
“In 1976, a doctor friend named Claudio Naranjo [Do you know him? he asked us] connected me with a yoga master. So we went to visit him at his Ashram, here in California.”
#THE FALL OF THE MASK AND THE PATH OF OBEDIENCE
"We communicated through a professor who acted as a translator. I sought to discover in that interview parallels with my own out-of-body experiences. However, nothing important was said there. There was a lot of apparatus and ceremony, but nothing was actually said.
“Toward the end of the interview, this character took a type of metal sprayer in his hands and started wetting me with a liquid whose smell I didn’t like at all. As soon as he withdrew, I asked what he had just thrown at me. Someone approached and explained that I should be very happy because he had given me his blessing. I insisted on knowing the contents of the vessel. Finally, I was told that all the master’s secretions were kept: ‘Everything that comes out of him is sacred.’ You can imagine,” he concluded in a tone between humorous and mocking, “that the conversation with the yoga master ended right there.”
A few years later, Castaneda had a similar experience with one of Gurdjieff’s disciples. He met him in Los Angeles at the urging of a friend. It seems this gentleman had imitated Gurdjieff in everything. “He had shaved his head and had immense mustaches,” he commented, indicating their size with his hands. “As soon as we entered, he grabbed me energetically by the neck and gave me some tremendous blows. Immediately after, he told me I should leave the master I had because I was wasting my time. According to him, in eight or nine classes, he was going to teach me everything I needed to know. Can you imagine? In a few classes, they teach you everything.”
Castaneda also told us that the Gurdjieff disciple had mentioned the use of drugs to accelerate the learning process. The interview didn’t last long. It seems Castaneda’s friend realized very quickly the ridiculousness of the situation and the magnitude of his error. This friend had insisted he visit because he was convinced Castaneda needed a “more serious” master than Don Juan. When the interview ended, Castaneda told us his friend was filled with shame.
#The Failed Movie Projects and Johnny Carson
We had been walking for more than six or seven blocks. For a while, we talked about incidental things. I remember commenting that I had read an article by Juan Tovar mentioning the possibility of filming the books.
“Yes,” he said. “At one time, that possibility was discussed.” He then told us the story of his encounter with the producer, Joseph E. Levine, who had intimidated him from behind his immense desk. The size of the desk and the producer’s words, barely intelligible because of the immense cigar he held between his lips—“Did the tribe mind?” he said—were the things that had most impressed Castaneda. “He was behind a desk like he was on a dais, and I, down there, very tiny. Powerful! With hands full of rings with very large stones.”
Castaneda had already told Juan Tovar that the last thing he expected to see was Anthony Quinn in the role of Don Juan. It seems someone had proposed Mia Farrow for one of the roles. “Conceiving such a movie was very difficult,” he commented. “It is neither ethnography nor fiction. The project failed in the end. The Nagual Juan Matus told me it couldn’t be done.”
During that same time, he was invited to participate in shows like Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett. "In the end, I couldn’t accept things like that. What do I say to Johnny Carson, for example, if he asks me if I talked to the coyote or not? What do I say? I tell him yes, that… And then what? Undoubtedly, the situation would have lent itself to ridicule.
“Don Juan was the one who charged me with giving testimony of a tradition,” Castaneda said. “He himself insisted that I accept interviews and give lectures to promote the books. Later, he made me cut with everything because that type of task takes away a lot of energy. If one is in those things, one has to give them force.”
#Writing as a Dream Task
Castaneda explained clearly that with the proceeds from his books, he takes care of the expenses for the whole group. Castaneda feeds them all.
“Don Juan insisted that my task was to put into writing everything the sorcerers and witches said. My task consists only of writing until one day they tell me, ‘Enough, it’s over here.’ The impact of my books, I truly don’t know, because I am not related to what goes on here. All the material belongs to Don Juan before and to the Toltec Woman now. They are responsible for everything said there.”
The tone of his voice and his gestures impressed us vividly. It was evident that in this field, Castaneda’s task consists of obedience. His objective is only to be an impeccable receiver and transmitter of a tradition.
“Personally,” he continued after a pause, “I am working on a type of journal; it’s something like a manual. For this work, I am responsible. I would like a serious publisher to publish them and take charge of distributing them to interested people and study centers.”
He told us he had developed about 18 “units” in which he believed he summarized the entire teaching of the Toltec nation. To organize the work, he used the phenomenology of E. Husserl as a theoretical framework.
“Last week I was in New York. I took the project to the editors at Simon and Schuster, but I failed. It seems they got scared. Something like that cannot be successful. Of those 18 units, I am solely responsible,” he continued in a meditative tone, “and as you can see, I had no success. Those 18 units are like the 18 falls in which I have hit my head hard. I agree with the editors that it is heavy reading, but that’s how I am… Don Juan, Don Genaro, all the others are different. They are light!”
“Why do I call them units? Because each of them intends to show one of the ways to break the ‘unity of the familiar.’ There are different ways to break this unique perceptual vision.”
Trying to clarify this, he gave us the example of a map. “Every time we want to get somewhere, we need a map with clear reference points so as not to get lost. We find nothing without a map! What happens afterward is that the only thing we see is the map. Instead of seeing what is there to be seen, we end up seeing the map we carry inside. That’s why breaking that arc of reflexivity, constantly cutting the ties that lead us to known reference points, is the ultimate teaching of Don Juan.”
#The Lesson of Joe Córdoba
Many times during that afternoon, Castaneda insisted that he was nothing more than a “simple bridge to the world.” When I noted that the labor of organizing notes into coherent books was immense, he disagreed.
“No, I have no work. My task consists, simply, of copying the page that is given to me in dreams.”
According to Castaneda, nothing can be created from nothing. To pretend to create that way is an absurdity. To explain this, he brought up an episode from his father’s life. “My father decided he was going to be a great writer. For that purpose, he resolved to fix up his desk. He needed a desk that was perfect. Every detail had to be considered, from the wall decoration to the type of light. Once the room was ready, he spent a long time looking for the right desk… then the right chair… then the right desk pad. Sitting there in front of the blank paper, he didn’t know what to write. That is my dad. He wants to start by writing the perfect sentence. You can’t write like that. One is always an instrument. I see each page in dreams, and the success depends on the degree of fidelity with which I am able to copy that dream model.”
These comments reveal a theory of knowledge where “to know is to discover and to create is to copy.” [I immediately thought of Plato and Saint Augustine with his image of the “inner teacher”].
#The Famous Time Magazine Interview
While we dined, I mentioned the interview Sam Keen did for Psychology Today. Castaneda was satisfied with that one; he had great appreciation for Sam Keen. But regarding the Time magazine interview, his annoyance was evident.
A male journalist first came to Los Angeles. “It didn’t work (no funcó),” he said. Then they sent “one of those girls who cannot be refused.” Everything went well, and they understood each other “marvellously.” Castaneda had the impression she understood him, but in the end, she didn’t write the article. The notes were given to a journalist “who I think is now in Australia,” who did what he wanted with them. He had warned Don Juan that Time was too powerful, but Don Juan insisted on it. “The interview was done ‘just in case’ (por si las moscas),” Castaneda concluded informally.
#Being “Nothing”
Regarding critics like Richard de Mille who doubted his anthropology, Castaneda was calm. "I am no longer Carlos Castaneda, the writer. I am not a writer, nor a thinker, nor a philosopher. Consequently, their attacks don’t find me. I know I am nothing; nobody can take anything from me because Joe Córdoba is nothing. There is no personal pride in this.
“We live at a level lower than the Mexican peasant. We have touched the earth and cannot fall further. The difference is that the peasant has hopes—he wants things and works to one day have more. We, on the other hand, have nothing and each time we will have less. Can you imagine this? The criticisms cannot hit the target. I am never more fully myself than when I am Joe Córdoba,” he exclaimed vehemently, standing up. “Joe Córdoba, frying hamburgers all day with eyes full of smoke… Do you understand me?”
#The “Sign” in the Mail
Castaneda explained how he chose my letter. A friend puts his mail in a toy box. When he arrives in L.A., he reaches in and pulls out one letter. That is the one he answers. He doesn’t leave traces; he doesn’t write back. “The letter I pulled out was your first one. Then I looked for the second. You can’t imagine the trouble I had getting your phone number! I almost thought I wouldn’t have luck, but I got it through the University.”
In his magical universe, great importance is given to signs. He told us a story of two friends who got “lost” in a strange place while trying to enter the San Bernardino Freeway. They did exactly what they were supposed to do but ended up in a place that “wasn’t there.” After 20 minutes, they turned back, asked for directions, were told the same thing, and the second time, the road appeared.
"On the earth, there are places, special sites or openings, through which one enters and passes to something else. It’s near here… in Los Angeles… if you want, I’ll take you?
“The earth is something alive. These places are entrances where the earth periodically receives force from the cosmos. That energy is what the warrior must store. Every 18 days, a wave of energy falls on the earth. Count from August 3rd. You will be able to perceive it.”
#The Final Cycle in Argentina
As we walked back to the campus, he spoke of a planned trip to Argentina. "A cycle closes there. Going back to Argentina is very important to me. I was a child in Buenos Aires, in a boarding school. I remember they told me I was ‘wider than I was tall,’ words that hurt a child. I looked with envy at those tall, handsome Argentines.
“I was a fan of the Chacarita football club. Being a fan of River Plate has no grace, right? Chacarita is always one of the last.” It was touching to see him identified with the underdogs.
“La Gorda will surely go with me. She wants to go to ‘Parici’ (Paris). She buys at Gucci now, she’s elegant. I ask her, ‘Gorda, why do you want to go to Paris? There is nothing there.’ But she has the idea of the City of Light.”
#Italy and the Pope
In 1973, Don Juan sent him to Italy with a task: get an audience with the Pope and kiss his hand. “I got the audience, but… I couldn’t go. I didn’t even make it to the door.” Castaneda explained it is very difficult to break the anticlerical schemas formed in youth. “Europe is finished; everything is dead. Even the landscape—the Alps have nothing on Colorado! In Italy, you are either a Communist or a Catholic. There is nothing else.”
#The Departure
Just before entering the campus, Castaneda turned and took my hands. “Señora, you don’t know how much I thank you for introducing me to your friends.” His words were intense. He was thanking me for being a good “bridge.”
He walked to the corner and disappeared behind the tall bushes. It was nearly 11:00 PM.
After meeting him, all the “prodigies” in his books—which I had often doubted—became perfectly believable. Beyond the facts, there is the essential truth. After all… what is more difficult than frying hamburgers all day like Joe Córdoba with your eyes full of smoke?
*** The end ***
#SOURCES
Reddit Post Where the Sourcing and Translating Work (+ comments & info) Was Done
Source URL’s (for Google Gemini AI translation):
Original Source URL’s:
Alternate PDF: