CARLOS CASTANEDA CLAIMED THAT DON GENARO MADE HIS CAR DISAPPEAR SUPERNATURALLY

In his book 'Journey to Ixtlan' Carlos Castaneda told the following story:

« "Do you remember the time I jammed your car?" Don Juan asked.

His question was abrupt and unrelated to the conversation. He was referring to a time when I couldn't start my car until he told me I could. I said that no one would forget such an event.

"That was nothing," said Don Juan in a serene tone.

"How can you say that?" I said in a protesting tone . "What you did that day is something I will truly never understand."

"Genaro can do much better. Right, Genaro?"

"That's right," Don Genaro replied.

"What can you do?" I asked.

"You'll see it next," he replied.

They stood up, and for a moment I didn't know what to do, but Don Juan told me to follow suit. We started climbing the small hill in front of Don Juan's house.

Don Juan moved his hands as if weaving an invisible thread, Don Genaro did the same and repeated: "Let's examine your car."

We reached the top the hill and I looked towards where I had parked my car. My stomach lurched. The car was gone! I ran down the hill. My car was nowhere to be seen. I experienced a moment of great confusion. I had locked the car as usual. »

(Chapter 18, extracts)

Castaneda then began to investigate how Don Genaro managed to do that:

« As always when Don Juan confronted me with inexplicable phenomena, the idea occurred to me that I was being deceived by ordinary means.

I started calculating how many accomplices Don Juan and Don Genaro would have needed to lift my car and take it away, but we were alone.

Another possibility was that an accomplice had forced the door and connected the ignition wire to take the car, but this action implied specialized knowledge beyond his means.

The last possible explanation was that perhaps I had been hypnotized, since their movements seemed very new and suspicious to me. »

(Ibid)

Then Castaneda recounts how Don Genero makes him look for his car in absurd places: under a rock, among the bushes, until finally Castaneda falls into a trance-like state.

Don Juan then explained to Castaneda what had happened:

« The other day, Genaro never moved your car from the world of ordinary people. He merely forced you to see the world like sorcerers do, and your car wasn't in that world. Genaro wanted to soften your certainty. His antics spoke to your body about how absurd it is to try to understand everything. And when he flew his kite, you almost managed to see [like a sorcerer]. You found your car, and you were in both worlds.

"But how did he force me to see the world like the sorcerers?" Castaneda asked.

"I was with him. We both know that world. Now that we know it, all that's needed to produce it is to use that other ring of power I told you the sorcerers have. Genaro can do it as easily as he moves his fingers. He kept you busy turning stones to distract your thoughts and allow your body to see." »

(Chapter 19)

Shortly after the publication of this book, the philosopher Sam Keen interviewed Castaneda, and they had the following conversation about this matter:

Keen: When you told how Don Juan and his friend Don Genero made your car disappear in broad daylight I could only scratch my head. I know that a hypnotist can create an illusion of the presence or absence of an object. Do you think you were hypnotized?

Castaneda: Perhaps, something like that. But we have to begin by realizing, as don Juan says, that there is much more to the world than we usually acknowledge. Our normal expectations about reality are created by a social consensus. We are taught how to see and understand the world.

The trick of socialization is to convince us that the descriptions we agree upon define the limits of the real world. What we call reality is only one way of seeing the world, a way that is supported by a social consensus.

Keen: Then a sorcerer, like a hypnotist, creates an alternative world by building up different expectations and manipulating cues to produce a social consensus.

Castaneda: Exactly.

OBSERVATIONS

Theosophical instructors explained that ancient sorcerers were able to hypnotize people without their knowledge and thus make them believe that they were experiencing whatever those sorcerers wanted: that they were transforming into animals, or that things were disappearing and appearing in front of them, etc.

But Don Juan gave another explanation, saying that Don Genaro  forced Castaneda to see the world as sorcerers do, which I interpret as Genaro  transferring Castaneda's consciousness to another reality.

But esotericism explains that the only other reality that resembles the physical world is the densest subplane of the astral plane. However, Castaneda would have continued to see his car there, because that subplane is the mold of the physical world, and therefore what appears in the physical world also appears in that subplane.

Therefore, Don Juan's answer is incorrect, and if that story is true, the most tangible explanation is that Castaneda was indeed hypnotized, although  I suspect that this story was actually invented by that writer.