CARLOS CASTANEDA CLAIMED TO HAVE SPOKEN WITH A COYOTE

 

Castaneda, in his book "Journey to Ixtlan," mentioned that he was camping alone on a mountain near Don Juan's house when suddenly:

« I saw a coyote trotting calmly across the field. It was near the spot where I thought I had seen a man. It traveled about fifty meters south and then stopped, turned around, and started walking toward me.

I yelled to scare him, but he kept coming closer. I was apprehensive for a moment. I thought maybe he was rabid, and I even considered gathering stones to defend myself in case of an attack.

When the animal was three or four meters away, I noticed that it wasn't agitated in any way; on the contrary, it seemed calm and fearless. It slowed its pace, stopping a meter or a meter and a half away from me. We looked at each other, and the coyote came even closer. Its brown eyes were friendly and clear.

I sat down on the rocks, and the coyote stopped, almost touching me. I was astonished. I had never seen a wild coyote so close, and the only thing I could think to do was talk to it. I spoke to it as if I were talking to a friendly dog. And then it seemed to me that the coyote answered me. I was absolutely certain that it had said something. I felt confused, but there was no time to dwell on my feelings, because the coyote spoke again.

It wasn't that the animal was uttering words like the ones I usually hear in human voices; rather, I "felt" that it was speaking. But it wasn't the feeling one gets when a pet seems to communicate with its owner. The coyote was indeed saying something; it was conveying a thought, and that communication occurred through something very similar to a sentence.

I had said, "How are you, little coyote?" and I thought I heard the animal reply, "Very well, and you?"

Then the coyote repeated the phrase, and I jumped up. The animal didn't move a muscle. My sudden jump didn't even alarm him. His eyes remained clear and friendly. He lay down and, tilting his head, asked, "Why are you afraid?"

I sat down across from him and had the strangest conversation I'd ever had. Finally, he asked me what I was doing there, and I told him I'd come to "stop the world."

(Cid's note: By "stopping the world," Castaneda refers to halting the physical and usual way we perceive the world, in order to perceive it in its energetic aspect.)

The coyote said, "That's great!" and then I realized he was a bilingual coyote. The nouns and verbs in his sentences were in English, but the conjunctions and exclamations were in Spanish. The thought crossed my mind that I was in the presence of a Chicano coyote. I burst out laughing at the absurdity of it all, and I laughed so hard I almost became hysterical.

Then the impossibility of what was happening hit me full force, and my mind reeled. The coyote stood up, and our eyes met. I stared into its gaze. I felt a pull, and suddenly the animal became iridescent; it began to glow. It was as if my mind were replaying the memory of another event that had taken place ten years earlier, when, under the influence of peyote, I witnessed the metamorphosis of an ordinary dog ​​into an unforgettable, iridescent being.

It was as if the coyote had triggered the memory, and the image of that earlier event, invoked, was superimposed on the coyote's form; the coyote was a fluid, liquid, luminous being. Its luminosity was dazzling.

I tried to shield my eyes with my hands, but I couldn't move. The luminous being touched me somewhere deep within myself, and my body experienced an indescribable warmth and well-being, so exquisite that the touch seemed to have made me explode. I was transfigured. I couldn't feel my feet, my legs, or any part of my body, but something held me upright.

I have no idea how long I remained in that position. Meanwhile, the luminous coyote and the mountain where I was dissolved. There were no thoughts or feelings. Everything had disconnected, and I floated freely. »

(Chapter 18)

Shortly after the publication of this book, the philosopher Sam Keen interviewed Castaneda, and on this subject Castaneda commented:

« My conversation with the coyote is a good illustration of the different theories of embodiment. When he came up to me I said:

   -    “Hi, little coyote. How are you doing?”

And he answered back:

   -    “I am doing fine. How about you?”

Now, I didn’t hear the words in the normal way. But my body knew the coyote was saying something and I translated it into dialogue.

As an intellectual my relationship to dialogue is so profound that my body automatically translated into words the feeling that the animal was communicating with me. We always see the unknown in terms of the known.

We might be able to talk to any animal. For don Juan and the other sorcerers there wasn’t anything unusual about my conversation with the coyote. As a matter of fact they said I should have gotten a more reliable animal for a friend. Coyotes are tricksters and are not to be trusted. »

MY OPINION OF THIS EVENT

It could be that in a heightened state of consciousness one can converse with animals, and perhaps Carlos Castaneda did converse with this coyote (although it seems that in reality this coyote was another being that took the appearance of a coyote), but knowing how much of a liar Castaneda was, it is most likely that he invented this story.