GRACIELA CORVALAN INTERVIEW TO CARLOS CASTANEDA

Graciela Corvalán is an Argentine teacher who lived in the United States and she traveled with some friends to Los Angeles to interview Carlos Castaneda, and their conversation was later published in 1982 in the Argentine magazine 'Mutantia;' I transcribe it below, I added subtitles to facilitate reading, and I added my comments in purple in parentheses.

--oOo--

Carlos Castaneda emphasized that this conversation should be published in a South American magazine.  Graciela says:

"I interviewed him in Los Angeles. It was a very interesting experience, which I shared with three friends who accompanied me. Carlos Castaneda told us, with frankness and simplicity, about his latest experiences."

In my opinion, the interview revealed him without masks or pretenses. This conversation clarifies and contextualizes some of the episodes he recounts in his latest book, 'The Eagle's Gift'.

I believe that the story of 'Joe Córdoba and his wife' presents a less popularized aspect of Carlos Castaneda and his group, which in my opinion would be the synthesis or final stage of their path or knowledge: that 'touching ground' and 'being nothing'.

I just sent him a message to let him know that the work will be published in the magazine ' Mutantia '. He was very keen for it to be published in a Spanish-language publication. I'm sure he'll be delighted.

I had written to him several months earlier (two letters, to be precise) when Carlos Castaneda called. That was in mid-July. His call took me completely by surprise. Castaneda spoke at length, and without my asking, he offered to give me information.

Castaneda was interested in meeting and talking with me. He tried to make me understand that the task I was undertaking was of great importance. "I am neither a guru nor a charlatan," he insisted, referring to some critics and journalists.

(Unfortunately, Castaneda was quite the charlatan and later behaved like a guru.)

Castaneda is a serious researcher who was interested in discussing his work in Mexico and his epistemological approach. According to him, European man cannot conceive of others thinking or of any description of reality other than his own.

Meeting with Castaneda

Once I was in Los Angeles, Castaneda called, but not finding me, he left his message and instructions about the time and place where our meeting would take place:

"Exit the toll-free highway at that street and turn right at that other one. Go past four traffic lights. The Church of the Immaculate Conception is there on the left, but ignore that and turn right. There you'll find the UCLA campus (University of California, Los Angeles). Go into the parking lot; since it's Sunday, there won't be anyone there, and you can get in without any problems. There are usually few people on weekends. Then, at 4 p.m., next to the guardhouse."

Castaneda expected us to arrive in a brown Volkswagen.

That night and the following morning I worked feverishly on my notes. I had slept little but wasn't tired. Around one in the afternoon, my friends and I left for the UCLA campus. We had a little over two hours to travel.

Following Castaneda's directions, we arrived without difficulty at the guardhouse at the entrance to the UCLA parking lot. It was still about 15 minutes to 4 p.m. We parked in a somewhat shady spot.

At four o'clock sharp, I looked up and saw them coming toward the car: my friend with a dark-haired man who was a little shorter than her. Castaneda was wearing blue jeans and a pale cream-colored open-necked t-shirt (without pockets). I got out of the car and hurried to meet them.

After the usual greetings and polite phrases, I asked if he would allow me to use a recorder. We had one in the car in case he would permit it. "No, it's better if you don't," he replied with a shrug. We headed to the car anyway to get our notes, notebooks, and books.

Loaded with books and papers, we let Castaneda guide us. He knew the way well. "Over there  ," he said, pointing , "  there are some lovely benches."

From the outset, Castaneda set the tone of the conversation and the topics we would discuss. I also realized that I wouldn't need all those questions I had so painstakingly prepared, because, as he had told me on the phone, he wanted to talk to us about the work they were doing and the importance and seriousness of their research.

The conversation took place in Spanish, a language he speaks fluently and with a great sense of humor. Castaneda is a master of conversation. We spoke for seven hours. Time passed without his enthusiasm or our attention waning.

As he gained confidence, he made more and more use of typically Argentinian expressions, both to show off his Buenos Aires roots and as a kind gesture towards us, who were all Argentinians.

It's worth mentioning that although his Spanish is correct, it's clear his native language is English. He made frequent use of English expressions and words, to which we provided the Spanish equivalents. The fact that his native language is English is also evident in the syntactic structure of his phrases and sentences.

Throughout that afternoon, Castaneda made a point of keeping the conversation on a non-intellectual level. Although he had undoubtedly read extensively and was familiar with various schools of thought, he never once drew comparisons with other traditions of the past or present.

The Toltec teachings were transmitted to us through material images, which, precisely because of this, prevent them from being interpreted speculatively. In this way, Castaneda was not only obedient to his teachers but also completely faithful to the path he had chosen. He did not want to contaminate his teachings with anything foreign to them.

Shortly after we met, he wanted to know why we were interested in meeting him. He already knew about my planned review and the projected book of interviews. Beyond any professional considerations, we emphasized the importance of his books, which had so greatly influenced us and many others. We were deeply interested in discovering the source of that wisdom.

Meanwhile, we had reached the benches, and we sat down in the shade of the trees.

The conversation begins

"Don Juan gave me everything,  " Castaneda began . "  When I met him, I had no other interest than anthropology, but after that encounter, I changed. And I wouldn't trade what happened to me for anything!"

Don Juan was, in a way, present there with us, and every time Castaneda mentioned or remembered him, we felt his emotion. Of Don Juan, he said that he was a totality of exquisite intensity, capable of giving himself completely in every moment.

"Giving himself completely at every moment is his principle, his rule  ," he said . " The fact that Don Juan is like this cannot be explained and is rarely understood; it simply is."

In his book " The Second Ring of Power, " Castaneda recalls a special characteristic of Don Juan and Don Genaro, which all others lack. There he writes: "None of us is willing to give each other undivided attention, in the way that Don Juan and Don Genaro did." (p. 203).

These words point to that being who is everything in every instant, to that presence that is Don Juan.

On many occasions Castaneda refers to having "a gesture", to that totally gratuitous and free act of being.

The book " The Second Ring of Power " had left me full of questions. I was very interested in it, even more so after reading it a second time, but I had heard unfavorable comments. I myself had some doubts. I told Castaneda that I thought " Journey to Ixtlan " was the one I had liked the most, without really knowing why.

Castaneda was listening to me and answered my words with a gesture that seemed to say: "And what do I have to do with anyone's taste?"

I kept talking, looking for reasons and explanations. "Perhaps that preference is due to the fact that there's a lot of love in ' Journey to Ixtlan ,'" I told him.

Castaneda frowned. He didn't like the word "love." It's possible that the term has connotations of "romantic love," "sentimentality," or "weakness" for him. Trying to explain, I insisted that the final scene of " Journey to Ixtlan " is brimming with intensity.

Castaneda nodded: "Yes, I would agree with that last point. Intensity , that's the word."

Continuing with the same book, I told him that some scenes had struck me as downright grotesque. I couldn't find any justification for them.

Castaneda agreed with me. "Yes, the behavior of those women is monstrous and grotesque, but that vision was necessary for me to be able to take action," he said. Castaneda needed that shock.

"Without an adversary we are nothing  ," he continued, "  being an adversary is inherent to the human 'form.' Life is war, it is struggle. Peace is an anomaly."

Referring to pacifism, he called it a 'monstrosity' because, according to him, men "are beings of achievements and struggles."

Unable to contain myself, I told him I couldn't accept his calling pacifism a monstrosity. "And Gandhi? What do you think of Gandhi, for example?" I asked him.

"Gandhi?  " he replied . "  Gandhi isn't a pacifist, Gandhi is one of the most tremendous fighters who ever lived. And what a fighter!"

I understood then that Castaneda gives very special value to words. The 'pacifism' he had referred to could only be the pacifism of the weak, of those who lack the courage to be and do anything else, of those who do nothing because they have no goals or energy in life; in short, this pacifism reflects a self-indulgent and hedonistic attitude.

With a broad gesture intended to encompass an entire society devoid of values, will, and energy, he retorted: "Everyone's on drugs... Yes, hedonists!"

Castaneda didn't clarify these concepts, nor did we ask him to. I understood that part of the warrior's asceticism was to free himself from the human 'form,' but Castaneda's unusual comments had filled me with confusion.

Little by little, however, I came to realize that this idea of ​​being 'beings of achievements and struggles' is just the first level of the relationship. That's the raw material from which we start.

Don Juan, in the books, always refers to a person's good 'tone'. That's where the learning begins, and one moves to another level. "You can't cross over to the other side without losing your 'human form'," Castaneda said.

The gaps

Pressing on other aspects of his book that had not been clear to me, I asked him about the "gaps" that people are left with simply because they have reproduced.

"Yes  ," Castaneda said , "  there are differences between people who have had children and those who haven't. To tiptoe past the Eagle, you have to be whole. A person with 'holes' won't get through."

The metaphor of the "Eagle" will be explained to us later. For the moment it went almost unnoticed since our attention was focused on another topic.

"How do you explain Doña Soledad's attitude toward Pablito, as well as La Gorda's toward her daughters?" I insisted. The idea of ​​taking away that "edge" that children take from us at birth was, to a large extent, inconceivable to me.

Castaneda agreed that he hadn't yet fully systematized all of that. He insisted, however, on the differences between people who had reproduced and those who hadn't. "Don Genaro is a little crazy! A little crazy! Don Juan, on the other hand, is a serious madman. Don Juan goes slowly but goes far. In the end, they both arrive..."

"I, like Don Juan," he continued, "have gaps; that is to say, I have to follow his path. The Genaros, on the other hand, have a different model. The Genaros, for example, have a special 'edge' that we don't have; they are more nervous and quick-moving. They are very light; nothing stops them."

Those of us who, like Gorda and I, have had children, possess other qualities that compensate for that loss. We become more composed, and although the road is long and arduous, we eventually arrive. In general, those who have had children know how to care for others. This doesn't mean that people without children don't know how, but it's different.

Generally, one doesn't know what one is doing; one is unaware of one's actions and then pays the price. "I didn't know what I was doing!" he exclaimed, undoubtedly referring to his own personal life.

"At birth, I took everything from my father and mother," he said. "They were both bruised and battered! I had to give them back the 'edge' I had taken from them. Now I have to recover the 'edge' I lost."

It would seem that this idea of ​​'gaps' that need to be filled has to do with biological atavisms. We wanted to know if having gaps is something irreparable.

"No," he replied. "One can heal. Nothing in life is irrevocable. It is always possible to return what does not belong to us and recover what is ours."

This idea of ​​recovery is consistent with a whole 'learning journey'; a journey in which it is not enough to know or practice one or more techniques, but rather requires a profound individual transformation. It would be a coherent system of life with concrete and precise objectives.

(I don't consider the assumption that  in order to reach infinity you must recover the energy that your children took from you by procreating them to be valid, because in teachings given by higher masters, they explain that the good you do for others karmically serves you much better to evolve, and that is why the path of helping others is more efficient than the path of selfish development.)  

Translations of his books

After a brief silence, I asked him if his book " The Second Ring of Power " had been translated into Spanish.

According to Castaneda, a Spanish publisher held all the rights, but he wasn't sure if the book had been published or not.

(Editor's Note: " The Second Ring of Power " has been published by Editorial Pomaire.) [Castaneda was not very happy with the distribution of his books by the Fondo de Cultura Económica.]

"The Spanish translations were done by Juan Tovar, who is a great friend of mine," he replied.

Juan Tovar used the Spanish notes that Castaneda himself had provided him; notes that some critics have questioned.

"The Portuguese translation seems to be very beautiful," I told him.

"Yes," Castaneda agreed, "that translation is based on the French translation and it's really very well done."

In Argentina, his first two books had been banned. It seems the reason given was related to drugs. Castaneda didn't know this.

"Why?" he asked us, concluding without waiting for our answer, "I imagine it's the work of Mother Church."

(Obvious allusion to the Catholic Church. Just as Spain is the Mother Country for the countries of Hispanic America, the Catholic Church is the Mother Church, the church that Spain brought with the conquest and colonization. There is undoubtedly an ironic undertone in that comment.)

The Toltecs according to Castaneda

At the beginning of our conversation, Castaneda mentioned something about the "Toltec teachings." " The Second Ring of Power " also emphasizes "the Toltecs" and "being a Toltec."

"What does it mean to be a Toltec?" we asked him.

According to Castaneda, the word 'Toltec' constitutes a very broad unit of meaning. Someone is described as a Toltec in the same way that they are described as a democrat or a philosopher.

As he uses it, this word has nothing to do with its anthropological meaning. (From an anthropological point of view, the word refers to an indigenous culture of central and southern Mexico that was already extinct at the time of the conquest and colonization of the Americas.)

"A Toltec is one who knows the mysteries of stalking and dreams." They are all Toltecs. "It is a small group that has managed to keep alive a tradition dating back more than 3,000 years before Christ," he told us.

Since I was working on mystical thought and had a particular interest in establishing the source and place of origin of the various traditions, I insisted: "Do you believe, then, that the Toltec tradition offers a teaching that would be unique to America?"

"The 'Toltec nation' keeps alive a tradition that is undoubtedly unique to America." Castaneda argued that it is possible that the peoples of America brought something from Asia when they crossed the Bering Strait, but that so many thousands of years ago all of that happened that for the moment there are only theories.

In the book " Tales of Power ," Don Juan speaks to Castaneda about 'the sorcerers,' about "those men of knowledge" whom the conquest and colonization of the white man could not destroy because they neither knew of their existence nor noticed all the incomprehensible aspects of their world: "Who makes up the Toltec nation? Do they work together? Where do they do it?" we asked him.

Castaneda answered all our questions.

Some members of his lineage

He is now in charge of a group of young people who live in the Chiapas region of southern Mexico. They all moved there because the woman who now teaches them used to live there.

"So... you came back?" I felt compelled to ask him, recalling the last conversation between Castaneda and the little sisters at the end of the book: " The Second Ring of Power ." 

"Did you return quickly, just as the Fat Lady asked you to?"

"No, I didn't come back soon, but I did come back," he replied, laughing. "I came back to carry out a task that I cannot give up."

The group consists of about 14 members. While the core group comprises 8 or 9 people, everyone is essential to the task at hand. If each member is sufficiently exemplary, they can help a greater number of people.

"Eight is a magic number," Castaneda once said. He also insisted that the Toltec doesn't save himself alone but departs with the core group. The others remain and are indispensable for continuing and keeping the tradition alive. The group doesn't need to be large, but each person involved in the task is absolutely necessary for the whole.

"La Gorda and I are responsible for those close to us. Well, I'm actually the one responsible, but she helps me closely with this task," Castaneda explained.

He then spoke to us about the members of the group we knew from his books. He told us that Don Juan was a Yaqui Indian from the state of Sonora. Pablito, on the other hand, was a Mixtec Indian, and Néstor was Mazatec (from Mazatlán, in the state of Sinaloa). Benigno was Zotsil (Sotzil). He emphasized several times that Josefina was not Indian but Mexican and that one of her grandfathers was of French origin. La Gorda, like Néstor and Don Genaro, was Mazatec.

"When I met her, Gorda was an immense, heavy woman, battered by life," he said. "None of those who knew her today can imagine that the woman of now is the same as before."

We wanted to know what language he used to communicate with everyone in the group, and what language they generally used among themselves. I reminded him that his books make references to some Native American languages.

"We communicate in Spanish because it's the language we all speak," he replied. "Besides, neither Josefina nor the Toltec lady are Indians. I only speak a little bit of the Indian language. Isolated phrases, like greetings and the occasional expression. What I know isn't enough for me to hold a conversation."

The path to liberation

Taking advantage of a pause in his speech, I asked him if the task they were performing was accessible to all men or if it was something for only a few.

As our questions aimed to discover the relevance of Toltec teachings and the value of the group's experience for the rest of humanity, Castaneda explained to us that each member of the group has specific tasks to fulfill, whether in the Yucatan area, in other areas of Mexico, or in other places.

"By completing tasks, one discovers a great many things that are directly applicable to concrete situations in daily life. You learn a lot by doing tasks."

The Genaros, for example, have a band with which they travel throughout the border region. You can imagine that they see and are in contact with many people. There are always opportunities to share knowledge. There is always help. Help with a word, with a small suggestion... Each one, faithfully fulfilling their task, does so. All beings can learn. All have the possibility of living as warriors.

Anyone can undertake the warrior's task. The only requirement is to want to do it with unwavering desire; that is, one must be unwavering in the desire to be free. The path is not easy. We constantly look for excuses and try to escape. The mind may succeed, but the body feels everything... The body learns quickly and easily.

"The Toltec cannot waste energy on nonsense," he continued. "I was one of those people who couldn't be without friends... I couldn't even go to the movies alone!"

At one point, Don Juan told him that he should abandon everything, and particularly, separate himself from all those friends with whom he had nothing in common. For a long time, Castaneda resisted the idea until finally it began to take hold.

"Once, on my way back to Los Angeles, I got out of the car a block before I got home and made a phone call. Of course, that day, like every day, my house was full of people. One of my friends answered, and I asked him to pack a suitcase with a few things and bring it to me. I also told him that the rest of my things—books, records, etc.—could be divided among them. Of course, my friends didn't believe me and took everything as a loan," Castaneda explained.

This act of getting rid of the library and the records is like cutting ties with the entire past, with a whole world of ideas and emotions.

"My friends thought I was crazy and waited for me to come back from my madness. I didn't see them for about twelve years... Yes, for about twelve years," he concluded.

Twelve years later, Castaneda was able to meet with them again. He first sought out one of his friends, who put him in touch with the others. They then planned an outing, going out to dinner together. They had a wonderful time that day, ate a lot, and his friends got drunk.

"Meeting up with them after all those years was my way of thanking them for the friendship they had given me before," Castaneda said. "Now they are all grown up, with their families, wives, children... It was necessary, however, that I thank them. Only in this way could I finally end things with them and close a chapter of my life."

Castaneda's friends may not understand or be able to share anything he's doing, but the fact that he wanted to and was able to thank them was beautiful. Castaneda wasn't angry with them, he didn't expect anything from them. He sincerely thanked them for their friendship and, in doing so, inwardly freed himself from that entire past.

Love according to Castaneda

We then talked about love, "that much-talked-about love." He told us several anecdotes about his Italian grandfather, "always so prone to falling in love," and about his father, "such a bohemian." "Oh! Love! Love!" he repeated several times. All his comments tended to dismantle common ideas about love.

"It was very difficult for me to learn," he told us. "I was also very prone to falling in love... It was hard for Don Juan to make me understand that I had to cut off certain relationships."

The way I finally broke up with her was this: I invited her to dinner and we met at a restaurant. During dinner, what always happened, happened. We had a huge fight, and she yelled and insulted me. Finally, I asked her if she had any money. She said yes. I took the opportunity to tell her I should go to my car to get my wallet or something. I got up and never went back. Before leaving her, I wanted to be sure I had enough money to take a taxi home. I haven't seen her since.

"You're not going to believe this, but the Toltecs are very ascetic," he insisted.

(In reality, Castaneda continued to be a womanizer and even became increasingly unrestrained with sex.)

Without questioning his word, I told him that this idea didn't come from "The Second Ring of Power." "On the contrary," I emphasized, "I think that many scenes and attitudes in your book lend themselves to confusion."

"How could you think I would have said that clearly?" he replied. "I couldn't say that the relationship between them was pure because not only would no one have believed me, but no one would have understood me."

According to Castaneda, we live in a very lustful society.

Most people wouldn't have understood everything we discussed that afternoon. This is how Castaneda himself finds himself forced to adapt to certain demands from the editors who, in turn, seek to satisfy the tastes of the reading public.

"People are focused on other things," Castaneda continued. "The other day, for example, I went into a bookstore here in Los Angeles and started browsing the magazines on the counter. I found that there were a lot of publications with pictures of naked women... Many with men as well."

I don't know what to tell you. In one of the photos, there was a man fixing an electrical cable at the top of a ladder. He was wearing his hard hat and a big tool belt. That was it. The rest of him was naked. Ridiculous! Something like that doesn't fit! A woman can be funny... But a man!

She explained that this is because women have a lot of experience due to their long history in these kinds of roles. "You can't just improvise a role like that!"

"You don't say!" one of us exclaimed sharply. "This is the first time I've heard such an explanation. The idea that women's behavior isn't improvised is completely new to me."

After listening to Castaneda, we became convinced that for the Toltec, sex represents an immense drain on energy needed for other tasks. This explains his insistence on the completely ascetic relationships maintained by the group members.

"From the world's point of view, the life this group leads and the relationships they maintain are completely unacceptable and unheard of. What I'm telling you wouldn't be believable. It took me a long time to understand it, but I've finally been able to verify it."

 Castaneda had told us earlier that when a person reproduces, they lose a special "edge." It seems that this "edge" is a strength that children inherit from their parents simply by being born. And this "void" that remains in the person is what must be filled or recovered. The lost strength must be recovered.

He also implied that prolonged sexual relations between a couple eventually wear them down. Differences arise in a relationship, leading to a gradual rejection of certain characteristics in one another. Consequently, for reproduction, one chooses what one likes in the other, but there is no guarantee that what is chosen is necessarily the best.

"From a reproductive point of view," he commented, "the best thing is 'at random'."

(Castaneda says that to have children it's best to find a random partner, but to impregnate his wife he didn't look for a random man but chose a Slavic Adonis, and he did it to please her because she wanted to have a child but since Castaneda had had a vasectomy he could no longer procreate.)

Castaneda tried hard to explain these concepts to us better, but he had to confess again that they are topics that he himself is not yet clear about.

More reflections from Castaneda

Castaneda had been describing to us a group whose demands, for most people, were extreme. We were very interested to know where all that effort was leading.

"What is the Toltec's sole objective?" We wanted to understand the meaning of everything Castaneda had been telling us. "What is the objective you are pursuing?" we insisted, taking the question to a personal level.

"The goal is to leave the living world; to leave with everything you are but with nothing more than what you are. The point is to take nothing and leave nothing behind: Don Juan left the world whole and alive. Don Juan does not die because the Toltecs do not die," he answered us.

[In the book " The Second Ring of Power, " the Fat Lady instructs Castaneda regarding the "nagual-tonal" dichotomy, telling him: "Mastery of the second attention is only achieved after the warriors have completely swept the surface of the table... this second attention makes the two attentions form a unity, and this unity is the totality of oneself." (p. 283)

In the same book, the Fat Lady also explains to Castaneda: “When sorcerers learn to ‘dream,’ they bind their two attentions together, and then there is no need for the center to push outward… Sorcerers do not die… I don’t mean that we do not die. We are nothing; we are fools: we are neither here nor there. They, on the other hand, have their attentions so united that perhaps they will never die.” (p. 281)

According to Castaneda, the idea that we are free is an illusion and an absurdity. He strove to make us understand that common sense deceives us because ordinary perception only tells us part of the truth.

"Ordinary perception doesn't tell us the whole truth. There must be more to life than just passing through the earth, than simply eating and reproducing," he said vehemently.

And with a gesture that we interpreted as alluding to the meaninglessness of it all and the immense tedium of life in its daily boredom, he asked us: "What is all this that surrounds us?"

Common sense would be that agreement we have reached after a long educational process that imposes ordinary perception as the only truth.

"Precisely, the art of the sorcerer," he said, "consists in leading the apprentice to discover and destroy that perceptual prejudice."

According to Castaneda, Edmund Husserl is the first in the West to conceive of the possibility of "suspending judgment".

[In his book " Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomenological Philosophy " (1913), Husserl dealt at length with the "epoché" or "phenomenological reduction".]

The phenomenological method does not deny but simply "brackets" those elements that underpin our ordinary perception.

Castaneda believes that phenomenology offers the most useful theoretical and methodological framework for understanding Don Juan's teachings. According to phenomenology, the act of knowing depends on intention, not perception.

Perception always varies according to history; that is, according to the subject with acquired knowledge and immersed in a particular tradition. The most important rule of the phenomenological method is "towards the things themselves."

"The task that Don Juan performed with me," he insisted, "was to gradually break down perceptual prejudices until a total rupture was achieved."

Phenomenology "suspends" judgment and limits itself to the "description" of pure intentional acts.

"Thus, for example, I construct the object 'house'. The phenomenological referent is minimal. The intention is what transforms the referent into something concrete and singular."

For Castaneda, however, phenomenology has a purely methodological value. Husserl never transcended the theoretical level, and consequently, he never touched upon human beings in their everyday lives.

For Castaneda, Western man (European man) has at best become political man. This political man would be the epitome of our civilization.

"Don Juan," Castaneda said, "with his teaching is opening the door to another, much more interesting man: a man who already lives in a magical world or universe."

Reflecting on the idea of ​​'political man', I was reminded of a book by Eduardo Spranger called Forms of Life, in which it is said that the life of the political man "is intertwined with relations of power and rivalry" (p. 216).

The political man is the man of power, whose authority controls both the concrete reality of the world and the beings that inhabit it. Whereas, Don Juan's world is a magical world populated by entities and forces.

"What's admirable about Don Juan," Castaneda said, "is that although in the everyday world he seems to be crazy (a little crazy! a little crazy!), no one is able to perceive it. To the world, Don Juan presents a façade that is necessarily temporary... an hour, a month, sixty years. No one could catch him off guard! In this world, Don Juan is impeccable because he always knew that what's here is just a moment and that what comes after... Well... A beauty! Don Juan and Don Genaro intensely loved beauty."

Don Juan's perception and understanding of reality and time are undoubtedly very different from ours. While Don Juan is always impeccable in his daily life, this doesn't prevent him from knowing that "on this side" everything is definitely fleeting.

Castaneda continued describing a universe polarized towards two extremes: the right side and the left side. The right side would correspond to the tonal and the left side to the nagual.

In the book " Tales of Power, " Don Juan explains at length to Castaneda about these two halves of the "bubble of perception." He tells him that the master's task consists of meticulously cleaning one part of the "bubble," and then rearranging "everything that is" on the other side.

"The master deals with this by hammering it mercilessly into the apprentice until his entire worldview is contained in one half of the bubble. The other half, the one that has been cleansed, can then be reclaimed by something the sorcerers call will." (p. 332)

Explaining all this is very difficult because at this level words are completely inadequate. Indeed, the left side of the universe "implies the absence of words," and without words we cannot think. Only actions have a place there. "In that other world," Castaneda said, "the body acts. The body, in order to understand, does not need words."

In Don Juan's magical universe—if we can call it that—there are certain entities called "allies" or "fleeting shadows." These can be seen countless times.

Many explanations have been sought for this type of phenomenon, but according to Castaneda, there is no doubt that these phenomena depend primarily on human anatomy. The important thing is to understand that there is a whole range of explanations that can account for these 'fleeting shadows'.

I then asked him about this "knowing through the body" that he speaks of in his books. "Is it that for you the whole body is an organ of knowing?" I inquired.

"Of course! The body knows," he replied.

As an example, Castaneda spoke to us about the many possibilities of that part of the leg that runs from the knee to the ankle, where a center of memory is located. It seems that one can learn to use the body to capture those 'fleeting shadows'.

"Don Juan's teaching transforms the body into an electronic scanner," he said, searching for the right word in Spanish when comparing the body to an electronic telescope at different levels.

The body would have the ability to perceive reality, which in turn would reveal different configurations of matter.

It was clear that for Castaneda, the body possessed possibilities of movement and perception to which most of us are unaccustomed. Standing up and pointing to his foot and ankle, he spoke to us about the possibilities of that part of the body and how little we know about it all.

"In the Toltec tradition," he stated, "the apprentice is trained in the development of these possibilities. It is at this level that Don Juan begins to build."

Meditating on these words of Castaneda, I thought of the parallel with Tantric Yoga and the different chakras that the officiant awakens through certain ritual practices. 

In Miguel Serrano's book " The Hermetic Circle ," it states that the chakras are "centers of consciousness." In the same book, Carl Jung recounts to Serrano a conversation he had with a Pueblo Indian chief named Ochwián Biano, or Lake of the Mountain.

“He was explaining to me his impression of the white people, always so restless, always searching for something, aspiring to something… According to Ochwián Biano, the white people were crazy, because they claimed to think with their heads, and only crazy people do that. This statement by the Indian chief greatly surprised me, and I asked him what he thought with. He replied that he thought with his heart.” (Miguel Serrano, The Hermetic Circle - Buenos Aires: Ed. Kier, 1978)

The Eagle

The warrior's path to knowledge is long and requires total dedication. They all have a specific goal and a very pure motivation.

"What is the objective?" we insisted.

It seems that the goal is to consciously cross over to the other side through the left side of the universe.

"We must try to get as close as possible to the eagle and try to escape without being devoured. The goal," he said, "is to tiptoe out to the eagle's left."

"I don't know if you know," he continued, trying to clarify the image for us, "that there is an entity the Toltecs call the eagle. The visionary sees it as an immense blackness that extends to infinity; it is an immense blackness that a lightning bolt crosses. That is why they call it the eagle: it has black wings and back, and its breast is luminous."

The eye of that entity is not a human eye. The eagle has no mercy. All that is alive is represented in the eagle. That entity embodies all the beauty that humankind is capable of creating, as well as all the bestiality that is not truly human. What is truly human in the eagle is immensely small compared to everything else. The eagle is too much mass, bulk, darkness... compared to the little that is truly human.

The eagle attracts all living forces that are about to disappear because it feeds on that energy. The eagle is like an immense magnet that gathers all those beams of light that are the vital energy of what is dying.

While Castaneda was telling us all this, his hands and fingers, like hammers, imitated the head of an eagle pecking at space with insatiable appetite.

"I'm just telling you what Don Juan and the other sorcerers say: 'They're all sorcerers and witches!' he exclaimed. 'They're all wrapped up in a metaphor that's incomprehensible to me.'"

The shape and the mold

"Who owns man? What does he demand of us?" he asked.

We listened attentively and let him talk because he had entered a territory where questions were no longer appropriate.

"Our owner cannot be a man," he said.

It seems the Toltecs call the 'mold of man' their 'owner'. All things—plants, animals, and human beings—have a 'mold'. The 'mold of man' is the same for all human beings.

"My mold and yours," he continued, "is the same, but in each person it manifests and acts differently depending on the person's development."

From Castaneda's words, we interpret the 'human mold' as what unites us, what unifies the force of life. The human form, on the other hand, would be what prevents us from seeing the mold.

And it seems that, as long as the human form is not lost, we are only able to see reflections of that form in everything we perceive. We don't see that human form itself, but we feel it in our bodies. That 'form' is what makes us who we are and prevents us from changing.

In the book " The Second Ring of Power ," the Fat Lady instructs Castaneda about the human mold and the human form. In that book, the mold is described as a luminous entity, and Castaneda recalls that Don Juan described it as "the source and origin of man." (p. 154)

La Gorda, thinking of Don Juan, remembers that he told her that "if we ever have enough personal power we will be able to glimpse the mold even if we are not sorcerers; and that when this happens we will say that we have seen God. He told me that if we call him God, it would be correct because the mold is God." (p. 155)

Several times that afternoon we returned to the topic of the human form and the human mold. Approaching the subject from different angles, it became increasingly clear that the human form is that hard shell of the personal.

"That human form," he said, "is like a towel that covers you from your armpits to your feet. Behind that towel is a lit candle that burns down until it goes out. When the candle goes out, it means you have died. Then the Eagle comes and devours you."

"Seers," Castaneda continued, "are those beings capable of seeing a human being as a luminous egg. Inside that sphere of light is the lit candle. If the seer sees that the candle is small, no matter how strong the person may seem, it means that they are already finished."

Castaneda had told us before that the Toltecs never die because being a Toltec implies having lost the human form.

Only then did we understand: if the Toltec has lost his human form, there is nothing for the Eagle to devour.

We also had no doubt that the concepts of "owner" of man and "mold" of man, as well as the image of the Eagle, referred to the same entity or were closely related.

Several hours later, sitting over hamburgers in a cafe on Westwood Boulevard and another street whose name I don't remember, Castaneda told us about his experience of losing his "human form".

According to her, her experience was not as severe as that of La Gorda, who had symptoms similar to those of a heart attack.

"In my case," Castaneda said, "a simple phenomenon of hyperventilation occurred. At that precise moment, I felt a great pressure: a current of energy entered through my head, passed through my chest and stomach, and continued down my legs until it disappeared through my left foot. That was all."

"To be sure," he continued, "I went to the doctor, but he didn't find anything wrong. He only suggested that I breathe into a paper bag to reduce the amount of oxygen and counteract the hyperventilation."

In  the book " The Second Ring of Power ,"  the Fat Lady tells Castaneda that when she lost her human form, she began to see an eye always in front of her. This eye accompanied her constantly and almost drove her mad. Little by little, she grew accustomed to it until one day the eye became a part of her.

"Someday, when I become a truly formless being, I will no longer see that eye; the eye will be one with me..." said the Fat Lady.

(Historical data shows that Castaneda did not actually lose his  "human form".)

More information about the Eagle

At the beginning of our conversation, Castaneda mentioned something about the 'Toltec teaching'.

According to the Toltecs, one must somehow repay or give back to the Eagle what is due to it. Castaneda has already told us that the Eagle is the master of man, and that the Eagle embodies all the nobility and beauty, as well as all the horror and ferocity, found in all that exists.

"Why is the Eagle the owner of man?" we asked.

"The Eagle is the master of man because it feeds on the flame of life, on the vital energy that emanates from all that is," he replied.

And once again making the gesture with his hands resembling an eagle's beak, he pecked his arm around the space while saying: "Like this! Like this! It devours everything!"

"The only way to escape the Eagle's voracious appetite is to tiptoe out while holding your breath..."

When one is ready for the final flight, an offering is made to the eagle; "an offering," Castaneda emphasized, "that is almost like giving oneself. One gives the Eagle an equivalent of oneself. This offering they call personal recapitulation. Don Juan told me that death begins with this personal recapitulation. Only then, that is to say, when death is irrefutable and inescapable, does the action begin."

The recap

"What does personal recapitulation consist of, how is it done?", we wanted to know.

"First, you have to make a list of all the people you have met throughout your life," he replied, "a list of all those who in one way or another have forced you to put your ego, that center of personal pride which would later show itself as a 3,000-headed monster, on the table."

We need to bring back everyone who helped us get caught up in this 'they love me or they don't love me' game. A game that is nothing more than living self-absorbed, licking our wounds!

The recapitulation has to be total – he continued – it goes from Z to A, backwards. It begins in the present moment and goes back to early childhood, to two or three years old, and even earlier if possible.

From the moment we are born, everything is recorded in our bodies. Recapitulation is, and requires, extensive memory training.

So, how is this recap done?

The images are carefully brought in and placed in front of you; then, with a movement of the head from right to left, each of the images is blown on as if sweeping them from your vision... The breath is magical," he added.

With the end of the recap, all the tricks, games, and self-deceptions also came to an end. It seems that in the end we know all our tricks, and there's no way to put our ego on the table without immediately realizing what we're trying to achieve.

"With personal recapitulation, one strips oneself of everything. Then, only the task remains; the task in all its simplicity, purity, and rawness."

Recapitulation is possible for all men, but it requires an unyielding will. If one wavers or hesitates, one is lost because the Eagle will devour him. In this realm, doubt has no place.

I don't quite know how to explain all this, but in fulfilling and dedicating oneself to the task, one must be compulsive without truly being so, because the Toltec is a free being. The task demands everything from one, and yet one remains free. Do you understand? If this is difficult to grasp, it's because, at its core, it's a paradox.

But this recapitulation—Castaneda added, changing his tone and posture—needs some spice. The characteristic of Don Juan and his cronies is that they are lighthearted. Don Juan cured me of being heavy-handed. He is not solemn, not at all ceremonious. Within the seriousness of the task they all perform, there is always room for humor.

Castaneda recounts how Don Juan broke him of his smoking habit.

To illustrate in a concrete way how Don Juan taught him, Castaneda recounted a very interesting episode. It seems that he smoked a lot, and that Don Juan decided to cure him.

"I used to smoke about three packs a day. One cigarette after another! I wouldn't let them go out. You can see I don't wear pockets now," he said, pointing to his shirt, which, in truth, had no pockets. "I got rid of the pockets back then to prevent my body from feeling anything on my left side, anything that would remind me of the habit. By eliminating the pocket, I also eliminated the physical habit of reaching for it."

In the first book, " The Teachings of Don Juan ," he tells him: "The thing you have to learn is how to get to the crack between the worlds and how to enter the other world... There is a place where the two worlds overlap. The crack is there. It opens and closes like a door in the wind. To get there, a man must exercise his will. He must, I would say, develop an indomitable desire, a total dedication. But he must do it without the help of any power and any man..." (p. 220)

"Don Juan once told me we were going to spend a few days in the hills of Chihuahua. I remember he specifically told me not to forget to bring my cigarettes. He also recommended that I bring enough supplies for about two packs a day, and no more. So I bought the boxes of cigarettes, but instead of 20, I packed about 40. I made some lovely little bundles that I covered with aluminum foil to protect my stash from animals and rain."

Well-equipped and with my backpack on, I followed Don Juan through the hills. There I was, lighting cigarette after cigarette, trying to catch my breath! Don Juan has tremendous vigor; with great patience he waited for me, watching me smoke and struggle through the hills. I wouldn't have the patience he had with me now! – Castaneda exclaimed.

We finally reached a fairly high plateau, surrounded by cliffs and steep slopes. There, Don Juan invited me to try to turn back or descend. For a long time, I tried both ways until finally I had to give up, as I knew I wouldn't be able to.

We continued like this for several days, until one morning I woke up and the first thing I did was look for my cigarettes. Where were my precious packs? I searched and searched, but I couldn't find them.

When Don Juan wakes up, he wants to know what's wrong with me. I explain what happened, and he says, 'Don't worry. A coyote probably came and took them, but they can't be far. Here! Look! There are traces of the coyote!'

We spent the entire day tracking the coyote's footprints in search of the packages. After searching for a long time, Don Juan kept insisting that I shouldn't worry because right over the hill there was a town where I could buy all the cigarettes I wanted.

Once again we went searching and searching... Of course, this time we were looking for the village. Where is the village? Not a sign of it.

That's what we were doing when Don Juan sat down on the floor and, pretending to be an old man, began to complain: 'This time I'm really lost... I'm old now... I can't take it anymore...'

While saying this, he clutched his head and gestured wildly.

Castaneda told us this whole story imitating Don Juan in his gestures and tone of voice. It was quite a sight to see. Later, Castaneda himself would tell us that Don Juan often referred to his theatrical abilities.

"With all that walking," Castaneda continued, "I think about 10 or 12 days had passed. I didn't even have any desire to smoke anymore! That's how I lost my craving for cigarettes. We were running around like demons through the hills!"

When it was time to return, you can imagine that Don Juan knew exactly how to do it. We went straight down to the village. The difference was that, back then, I no longer needed to buy cigarettes. About 15 years have passed since that episode—Castaneda said with a touch of nostalgia.

"The line of non-action," he commented, "is precisely the opposite of the routine or routines to which we are accustomed. Habits like smoking, for example, are what keep us tied down, chained... In the sense of non-action, however, all paths are possible."

Castaneda implied that Don Juan knew them all very well; he knew their habits and weaknesses. That's how he gradually gained their trust, one by one.

Don Juan and Don Genaro, "those two cronies," as Castaneda said, knew how to play the appropriate trick on each of them and thus make them fall into the path of knowledge.

Doña Soledad

We remained silent for a while; finally, I broke it to ask her about Doña Soledad. I told her that she had impressed me as a grotesque figure; as a witch, truly.

“Doña Soledad is an Indian,” she replied. “The story of her transformation is incredible. She put so much willpower into it that she finally succeeded. In this effort, she developed her will to such an extreme that she also developed too much personal pride. That’s precisely why I don’t think she can tiptoe around the eagle’s left flank. In any case, it’s fantastic what she was able to do for herself! I don’t know if you remember who she was… She was ‘Manuelita,’ Pablito’s ‘mamacita.’ Always washing, ironing, and scrubbing… offering food to everyone.”

When we referred to this, Castaneda imitated in gestures and movements a very poor old woman.

"You have to see her now," he continued. "Doña Soledad is a strong, young woman. Now we have to fear her!"

The recapitulation took Doña Soledad seven years of her life. She went into a hole and never came out. She stayed there until she finished everything. In seven years, she did nothing but that. Even though she can't pass by the Eagle—Castaneda said, full of admiration—she will never again be the poor little thing she once was.

Castaneda talks about his new teacher: Florinda

After a pause, Castaneda reminded us that Don Juan and Don Genaro were no longer with them.

"Now everything is different," Castaneda said nostalgically. "Don Juan and Don Genaro are gone, but the Toltec lady is with us. She entrusts us with tasks. La Gorda and I do our work together. The others also have tasks to complete; different tasks, in different places."

According to Don Juan, women are more talented than men. Women are more sensitive. In life, they also expend less energy and tire less than men. This is why Don Juan has now left me in the hands of a woman. He has left me in the hands of the other side of the man-woman divide. Even more, he has left me in the hands of women: the little sisters and the Fat Lady,” Castaneda told us.

The woman who is now teaching him has no name; she is simply 'the Toltec woman'.

"Mrs. Tolteca is the one who teaches me now. She is responsible for everything. All the others, the Fat Lady and I are nothing," Castaneda told us.

We wanted to know if she knew she was going to meet us, as well as her other plans.

(Several months later, Gorda—María Elena—called me to relay a message from Carlos Castaneda. In that conversation, she told me that the Toltec lady's name was Doña Florinda, and that she was a very elegant, lively, and restless person. The Toltec lady must be about 50 years old.)

"Mrs. Toltec knows everything. She sent me to Los Angeles to talk to you," he replied, turning to me. "She knows about my plans and that I'm going to New York."

We also wanted to know what she looked like. "Is she young? Is she old?" we asked.

"Mrs. Tolteca is a very strong woman. Her muscles move in a very peculiar way. She's old, but one of those old women who look that way thanks to makeup."

It was difficult to explain what she was like. In his attempt, Castaneda looked for a point of reference and reminded us of the film "Giant".

"Do you remember that movie James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor were in? Elizabeth Taylor plays a mature woman, even though she was actually very young. I get the same impression of the Toltec woman: an old woman's face on a still-young body. I'd say she's playing the old woman too."

"Are you familiar with the National Enquirer ?" he continued casually. "A friend of mine keeps them for me here in Los Angeles, and I read them every time I come here. It's the only thing I read here... I actually saw some pictures of Elizabeth Taylor in that paper (recently). Now she's really grown up!"

This comment, in a way, summarized his judgment regarding the immense news production that characterizes our era. This comment also contains a judgment regarding the value of all Western culture. Everything is on par with the sensationalist tabloid National Enquirer .

Nothing Castaneda said that afternoon was accidental. The various pieces of information he provided were all designed to create a specific impression on us. There was nothing ambiguous about Castaneda's intention; on the contrary, his aim was to convey the essential truth of the teaching in which they were involved.

We continued talking about the Toltec lady and Castaneda told us that she will be leaving soon.

"She told us that two other ladies will be coming in her place. The Toltec woman is very strict. Her demands are terrible!"

(Over the phone, Gorda also insisted that Mrs. Tolteca was very fierce, and that while she loved her more than Castaneda, it wouldn't hurt if she loved her a little more. "Our whole bodies are bruised from the beatings she gives us," she said.)

Now, if the Toltec woman is fierce, it seems that the two who are coming are much worse.

"Perhaps it won't leave yet! One cannot stop wanting, nor can one prevent the body from complaining and fearing the severity of the undertaking... However, there is no way to alter fate. That's when it caught me!"

I have no freedom other than to be impeccable, because only by being impeccable can I change my destiny; that is, I tiptoe around the Eagle's left flank. But if I am not impeccable, I do not change my destiny, and the Eagle devours me.

(Castaneda was anything but flawless.)

"The Nagual Juan Matus is a free man. He is free by fulfilling his destiny. Do you understand me? I don't know if you understand what I mean," Castaneda asked us, worried.

"Of course we understand!" we replied vehemently, "both in this last point and in many other things you have told us so far, we find great similarity with what we feel and experience daily."

"Don Juan is a free man," he continued, "he seeks freedom, his spirit seeks it.  Don Juan is free from that basic prejudice; the perceptual prejudice that prevents us from seeing reality."

Break the routines

The important thing about everything we've been talking about lies in the possibility of breaking the cycle of routines. Don Juan had Castaneda do numerous exercises to make him aware of his routines. Among them were 'walking in the dark' and the 'power march'.

"How do we break that cycle of routines? How do we break that perceptual arc that binds us to that ordinary view of reality?" we asked him.

That ordinary vision that our routines help to fix is ​​precisely what Castaneda calls "the attention of the tonal" or "the first ring of attention."

"Breaking that perceptual arc isn't easy; it can take years. The difficulty with me," he said, laughing, "is that I'm very stubborn. I forced myself to do things the hard way. That's why, in my case, Don Juan had to use drugs... and that's how I ended up... with my liver in the gutter!"

We all laughed.

"By focusing on non-doing, you can break down routines and raise awareness," Castaneda explained.

And saying this, he stood up and began to walk backwards while reminding us of a technique that Don Juan had taught him: walking backwards with the help of a mirror.

Castaneda went on to tell us that to make the task easier, he devised a metal device (like a ring worn like a crown on the head) to which he attached the mirror. This allowed him to practice the exercise while keeping his hands free.

Other examples of non-doing techniques include putting on your belt backwards and wearing the wrong shoes. All of these techniques aim to make you aware of what you are doing at any given moment.

"Disrupting routines," he said, "is how we give the body new sensations. The body knows..."

Castaneda then gave us the following example, referring to some of the games that young Toltecs practice for hours.

"They are games of non-doing, games in which there are no fixed rules but rather these are created as you play," he explained to us. 

It seems that, since there are no fixed rules, the behavior of the players is not predictable and, consequently, everyone must be very attentive.

"One of these games involves giving the opponent false signals. It's a game of tug-of-war."

According to him, this tug-of-war game involves three people and requires two posts and a rope. One of the players is tied to the rope and hung from the posts. The other two players must pull on the ends of the rope and try to deceive each other by giving false signals. Everyone has to be very attentive so that when one pulls, the others do the same, and the person hanging doesn't end up crooked.

Techniques and games involving not doing develop attention. They can be considered concentration exercises since they require practitioners to be fully aware of what they are doing.

Castaneda commented that old age would consist of being trapped in the perfect circle of routines.

"One of the Toltec lady's teaching methods is to put us in situations. And I think it's the best way because by putting ourselves in situations we discover that we are nothing. The other path is that of self-love, of personal pride. Through this latter path we transform ourselves into detectives, always attentive to everything that can happen to us and offend us."

 "Detectives?" we replied.

"Yes!" she replied. "We spend our time looking for evidence of whether or not we are loved. By focusing on our ego, we only strengthen it. According to the Toltec woman, the best thing to do is start by considering that no one loves us." 

Castaneda told us that for Don Juan, personal pride is like a 3000-headed monster.

"One destroys and knocks down heads, but others always rise up... It's because one has all the tricks!" he exclaimed.

With tricks, it seems we deceive ourselves into believing we are someone.

I reminded him, then, of the image of hunting weaknesses "like gathering rabbits from a trap," which appears in his book.

"Yes," he replied, "you have to be constantly on the lookout."

Castaneda recounts what he did in those last years

Changing position, Castaneda began to tell us the story of his last three years.

"One of the many jobs was cooking in those roadside cafes. La Gorda accompanied me that year as a waitress. We spent more than a year traveling around like Joe Córdoba and his wife!"

"My full name was José Luis Córdoba, at your service," he said, bowing deeply, "although everyone knew me as Joe Córdoba."

Castaneda didn't tell us the name or location of the city where they lived. It's possible they were in several places. It seems that initially, he, La Gorda, and Mrs. Tolteca arrived, and Mrs. Tolteca stayed with them for a while. Their first priority was finding a house and work for 'Joe Córdoba, his wife, and his mother-in-law'.

"That's how we introduced ourselves," Castaneda commented, "because otherwise people wouldn't have understood such a strange trio."

They searched for work for a long time, until they finally found it in a roadside cafe.

"In that type of establishment, you start very early in the morning; you have to be working by five in the morning," he told us.

Castaneda told us, laughing, that in those places the first thing they ask you is: "Do you know how to cook eggs?"

What could "making eggs" possibly mean? It seemed to take him quite a while to figure out what they were trying to tell him until he finally realized it referred to the various ways of preparing eggs for breakfast. In truck stops or restaurants, "making eggs" is a big deal.

They worked like that for a year. "Now I really know how to make eggs!" she exclaimed, laughing. "As many as you want!"

La Gorda also worked a lot and she was such a good waitress that she ended up taking charge of all the girls.

After a year, when Mrs. Tolteca told them "that's enough, that task is over," the owner of the cafeteria didn't want to let them leave.

"The truth is that we worked very hard there, very hard! From morning till night," Castaneda confessed to us.

During that year they had a significant encounter. It's the story of a young woman named Terry, who came to the coffee shop where they were, asking for a job as a waitress.

By that time, Joe Córdoba (that is, Carlos Castaneda) had gained the trust of the owner of the establishment and was in charge of hiring and supervising all the staff.

Terry told them she was looking for Carlos Castaneda. How could she have known they were there? Castaneda didn't know.

"This girl Terry," Castaneda continued sadly, implying that she looked dirty and disheveled, "is one of those hippies who take drugs... A dreadful life. Poor thing!"

Castaneda would later tell us that although he was never able to tell Terry who he was, Joe Córdoba and his wife helped her a lot during the months she spent with them.

Castaneda told us that one day Terry came very excited from the street saying that she had just seen Carlos Castaneda in a Cadillac parked in front of the cafeteria.

"He's there!" she shouted to us. "He's in the car, writing!"

"Are you sure it's Carlos Castaneda? How can you be so convinced?" I asked her.

But she continued: "Yes, it's him, I'm sure of it!"

Castaneda then suggested that he go to the car and ask him. He had to get rid of that immense doubt.

"Come on! Come on!" he insisted.

She didn't dare to talk to him because she said he was too fat and very ugly.

Castaneda encouraged her, saying, "But you look divine! Go on!"

She finally went, but returned immediately in tears. It seems the man in the Cadillac hadn't even looked at her and had sent her away, telling her not to bother him.

"Can you imagine how I tried to comfort her?" Castaneda told us. "I felt so sorry for her that I almost told her who I was, but the Fat Lady wouldn't let me; she protected me. I really couldn't say anything to her because I was carrying out a task in which I was Joe Córdoba and not Carlos Castaneda, and I couldn't disobey that rule."

Castaneda told us that when Terry arrived she wasn't a good waitress, but as the months passed they managed to make her good, clean and careful.

"La Gorda gave Terry a lot of advice. We took good care of her... She never imagined who she was with all that time," she tells us.

These past few years have been marked by great hardship, during which they were mistreated and abused. More than once she was on the verge of revealing her identity, but... "Who would have believed me!" she said. "Besides, the Toltec woman is the one who decides."

"That year," he continued, "there were times when we were reduced to the bare minimum: we slept on the floor and ate only one thing."

Castaneda's advice on eating

Upon hearing this, we wanted him to explain their eating habits. Castaneda told us that the Toltecs eat only one type of food at a time, but they do so more frequently.

"The Toltecs eat all day long," he commented casually.

(In this statement by Castaneda, one can see the desire to break the image that people have of the sorcerer or witch, beings with special powers who do not have the same needs as the rest of mortals. By saying that "they eat all day," Castaneda united them with the rest of men.)

According to Castaneda, mixing foods, such as eating meat with potatoes and vegetables, is very bad for your health.

"This mixture is very recent in the life of humanity," he stated, "whereas eating only one food helps digestion and is better for the body."

"Don Juan once accused me of always feeling unwell. Can you imagine how I defended myself? However, I later realized he was right, and I learned from it. Now I feel good, strong, and healthy."

Sleeping according to Castaneda

Their sleeping patterns are also different from most of ours. The important thing is to realize that there are many ways to sleep. According to Castaneda, we've been taught to go to bed and wake up at a certain time because that's what society expects of us.

"For example," Castaneda said, "parents put their children to bed to get rid of them."

We all laughed because there was some truth to 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 it amounts to more than five hours a day."

Sleeping in this way requires, on the part of the person, the ability to go directly into deep sleep.

More stories from Joe Cordoba

Returning to Joe Córdoba and his wife, Castaneda told us that one day the Toltec lady came and told them that they were not working hard enough.

"She sent us to organize a fairly large landscaping business, something like garden design and maintenance.  This new task for Mrs. Tolteca was no small feat. We had to hire a group of people to help us with the work during the week, while we were at the café. And on weekends we dedicated ourselves exclusively to the gardens. We were very successful!"

La Gorda is a very enterprising person. That year we worked incredibly hard... During the week we were at the coffee shop, and on weekends it was all driving the truck and pruning trees. The demands on Toltec women are immense!

I remember that on one occasion we were at a friend's house when journalists arrived looking for Carlos Castaneda. They were journalists from the New York Times.

Trying to go unnoticed, Gorda and I started planting trees in my friend's garden. From a distance, we saw them going in and out of the house. That's when my friend yelled at us and verbally abused us terribly in front of the journalists.

It seems Joe Córdoba's wife could yell at them without consequence. None of those present came to our defense. Who were we? Just a bunch of poor people working in the sun!

That's how my friend and we tricked the journalists.

However, I couldn't fool my body. For three years we were engrossed in the task of giving my body experiences that would make it realize that, in truth, we are nothing.

The truth is, it's not just the body that suffers; the mind is also accustomed to constant stimuli. The warrior, however, has no external stimuli; he doesn't need them. What better place, then, than where we were! There, no one thinks!

Continuing with the story of their adventures, Castaneda commented that more than once he and La Gorda were kicked out onto the street. "Other times, traveling by truck on the highway, they would push us to the side of the road. What choice did we have? It was better to let them pass!"

From everything Castaneda had been 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." The latter, "is something very difficult to endure but very informative," Castaneda concluded calmly.

The goal of this exercise is to learn to detach oneself from the emotional impact of discrimination. The important thing is not to react, not to get angry. If you react, you're lost.

"One doesn't get offended when a tiger attacks," he explained, "one simply steps aside and lets it pass."

"Another time, 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 onto the street without pay. What's more, to protect themselves from us in case we protested, they had called the local police. Can you imagine? We were imprisoned for nothing!"

That year, Gorda and I spent it working incredibly hard and enduring great hardship. Many times we had nothing to eat. The worst part was that we couldn't complain and we didn't have the support of the group. We were alone in that endeavor and couldn't escape. In any case, even if we had been able to reveal our identities, no one would have believed us. The task is always all-consuming.

"Truly, in those years I was Joe Córdoba," Castaneda affirmed, emphasizing his words with his whole body, "and this is very beautiful because I can't fall any lower. I've already reached the lowest point there is to reach. That's 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 in Chiapas now and he's doing very well. He has a band: Benigno has a wonderful gift for imitation; he imitates Tom Jones and many others. Pablito is the same as always, very lazy. Benigno is the one who makes the noises and Pablito celebrates them. Benigno is the one who does the work and Pablito collects the applause.

"Now," he concluded, "we have all finished the tasks we were doing and are preparing for new ones. The Toltec lady is the one who commands us."

The story of Joe Córdoba and his wife had impressed us greatly. It was a very different experience from those in his books. We were interested to know if he had written or was writing anything about Joe Córdoba.

"Why don't you write about this? Of everything you've told us, Joe Córdoba and his wife are what have impacted me the most."

"I have just delivered a new manuscript to my agent," Castaneda replied, "and in that manuscript, the Toltec lady is the one who teaches. It couldn't be otherwise... Its title may well be 'Stalking and the Art of Being in the World.'"

All her teachings are contained there. She is responsible for that manuscript. A woman had to be the one to teach the art of stalking. Women know it well because they have always lived with the enemy; that is to say, they have always walked on tiptoe in a man's world. Precisely for that reason, because women have extensive experience in this art, the Toltec lady is the one who must impart 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 no one would understand or believe it. I can talk about it with very few people... But the essence of that experience of the last three years is in that book.

(We don't know if that manuscript actually existed, but in any case, it wasn't published.)

Returning to the Toltec lady and her modality, Castaneda told us that she was very different from Don Juan.

"She doesn't like me," he insisted, "but she does like Gorda. You can't ask a Toltec woman anything. Before you even speak, she already knows what to say. Besides, you have to be afraid of her; when she gets angry, she hits," he concluded, making many gestures that indicated his fear.

Daydreaming explained by Castaneda

We remained silent for a while. The sun had set, and its rays reached us through the tree trunks. I felt a slight chill. I reckon it was around seven in the evening.

Castaneda also seemed to realize the time. "It's getting late," he said to us. "What do you say we go get something to eat? I'll treat you."

We got up and started walking. Ironically, Castaneda ended up carrying my notes and his books for a while. It was best to leave everything in the car. So we did. Free of our luggage, we walked a few blocks, engaged in lively conversation.

Everything they have achieved requires years of preparation and practice. One example is the exercise of sleep. "That which seems like nonsense," Castaneda stated emphatically, "is actually very difficult to achieve."

The exercise consists of learning to dream at will and systematically. It begins by dreaming of a hand entering the dreamer's field of vision. Then the entire arm is seen. This continues progressively until one can see oneself in the dream.

The next stage involves learning how to use dreams. In other words, once you have learned to control them, you have to learn how to act on them.

"For example," Castaneda said, "one dreams of leaving one's body, opening the door, and going out into the street. The street is, then, something unheard of! Something within oneself leaves oneself; something achieved at will."

According to Castaneda, dreaming doesn't take time. That is, dreaming doesn't occur within the time of our clocks. Dream time is something very compact.

"The Toltec woman," Castaneda continued, "says that dreaming occurs in P's time. Why? I don't know. That's what she says."

Castaneda made us understand that in dreams there is immense physical exhaustion.

"In dreams, one can live a long time," he said, "but the body suffers. My body feels it a lot... Afterwards, it remains, like a clumsiness of years."

Several times, when touching on this subject of dreams, Castaneda would say that what they do in dreams has a pragmatic value. In the book "Tales of Power" it is written that dream experiences and waking experiences "acquired the same pragmatic value," and that for the sorcerers "the criteria for differentiating between dream and waking became inoperative." (p. 21)

The idea of ​​out-of-body experiences or journeys sharply piqued our interest, and we wanted to know more about those experiences.

Castaneda responded by clarifying that each of them has achieved different experiences.

"La Gorda and I, for example, go together. She takes my forearm and... we go."

He also explained that the group has communal trips.

"Everyone is in constant training, the goal of which is to become witnesses! Becoming a witness means that one can no longer judge anything. That is, it is about eternal seeing, which is equivalent to having no more prejudices."

Josefina seems to have great skill for these dream-body journeys. She wants to take him with her and tempts him by telling him wonderful things. La Gorda is the one who always saves him.

"Josefina has a great facility for breaking that arc of reflexivity. She's crazy, absolutely crazy!" Castaneda exclaimed. "Josefina flies very far, but she doesn't want to go alone and she always comes back. She comes back and looks for me... She gives me reports that are wonderful!"

According to Castaneda, Josefina is a being who cannot function in this world.

"Here," she said, "I would have ended up in some institution."

Josefina is a being 'unbound' to the concrete; she is ethereal.

"She could leave for good at any moment," Castaneda tells us.

La Gorda and he, on the other hand, are much more cautious in their flights. La Gorda, in particular, represents the stability and balance that he somewhat lacks.

After a pause, I reminded him of that vision of the immense dome that in the book "The Second Ring of Power" is presented as the place of the meeting and where Don Juan and Don Genaro would be waiting for them.

"La Gorda also has that vision," he commented thoughtfully. "What we see isn't a terrestrial horizon. It's something very flat and arid, on whose horizon we see an immense arc rising, covering everything and advancing until it reaches the zenith. At that point of the zenith, a great luminosity is seen. I would say it's something like a dome that emits an amber-colored light."

We tried to pressure him with questions to get more information about that dome.

"What is it? Where is it?" we inquired.

Castaneda replied that, judging by the size of what they saw, it could be a planet. "At the zenith," he added, "there's something like a great wind."

From the brevity of his response, we realized that Castaneda didn't want to talk much about that subject. It's also possible that he couldn't find the right words to express what they were seeing.

Be that as it may, it is evident that these visions, these flights in the dream body, are a constant training for the ultimate journey: that exit through the eagle's left side, that final leap called death, that putting an end to recapitulation, that power to say "we are ready" in which we take all that we are, but nothing more than what we are.

"According to the Toltec woman," Castaneda confided in us, "those visions are my own aberrations. She thinks that's my unconscious way of paralyzing my actions; that is, my way of saying that I don't want to leave the world. The Toltec woman also says that with my attitude I'm stopping the Fat One from having a more fruitful or productive flight."

Don Juan and Don Genaro were great dreamers. They had absolute control of art.

“It frightens me,” Castaneda suddenly exclaimed, raising his hand to his forehead, “that no one notices Don Juan is an extraordinary dreamer. And 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 Don Juan and Don Genaro possess is evident in their ability to go unnoticed or undetected.”

[In his books, Castaneda has referred to "not being noticed" and "going unnoticed." For example, in the book "The Second Ring of Power," Castaneda recalls the times Don Juan had ordered him to concentrate "on not being obvious." Nestor also says "that Don Juan and Don Genaro learned to go unnoticed in the midst of all this." Both are masters of the art of stalking. Of Don Genaro, the Fat Lady says that "he was in his dream body most of the time" (p. 270).]

"Everything they do," Castaneda continued enthusiastically, "is worthy of praise. I intensely admire Don Juan's great control, composure, and serenity. One could never say that Don Juan is a senile old man."

It's not like that with other people. There's an old professor here on campus, for example, who was already famous when I was a boy. Back then, he was at the peak of his physical strength and intellectual creativity. Now... there he is, chewing on his cork tongue! Now I can see him for what he is, a senile old man.

Of Don Juan, on the other hand, I could never say anything like that. His advantage over me is always immense."

[In the interview with Sam Keen, Castaneda says that Don Juan once asked him if he thought the two of them were equal, and although Castaneda didn't really think they were, in a condescending tone he said yes.]

Don Juan listened to him but did not accept his verdict and replied:

"I don't think we are, because I am a hunter and a warrior, and you are nothing more than a 'fucking ___'. I am willing at any moment to offer a recap of my life. So your little world full of sadness and indecision can never be the same as mine."

(Sam Keen, Voices and Visions, New York: Harper and Row, 1976, p.122.]

Castaneda's encounter with a yoga guru

In everything Castaneda told us, parallels can be found with other currents and traditions of mystical thought. His own books cite authors and works from antiquity and the present.

I reminded him that, among others, reference is made to The Egyptian Book of the Dead, to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, to Spanish poets such as Saint John of the Cross and Juan Ramón Jiménez, and to Latin American writers such as the Peruvian César Vallejo.

"Yes," he replied, "there are always books in my car, lots of books. Things that 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 nonsense. He says that after the first stanza it loses its power, that it's pure repetition."

One of us asked him if he had read or was familiar with the yoga techniques and descriptions of the different planes of reality offered by the sacred books of India.

"All of that is wonderful," he said. "I've also had quite close relationships with people who work in Hatha Yoga. For example, in 1976, a doctor friend named Claudio Naranjo connected me with a yoga master, so we went to visit him at his Ashram here in California."

We communicated through a professor who acted as translator. I was hoping to find parallels in that interview with my own out-of-body experiences. However, nothing of substance was discussed. There was, yes, a lot of showmanship and ceremony, but nothing was actually said.

Towards the end of the interview, this character took a kind of metal sprayer in his hands and began to spray me with a liquid whose smell I didn't like at all.

When he left, I asked his disciples what he had just thrown at me. Someone came up 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 from him is sacred."

"You can imagine," he concluded in a tone that was both playful and mocking, "that this is where the conversation with the yoga master ends."

Castaneda's encounter with a disciple of Gurdjieff

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 that this man had imitated Gurdjieff in everything.

"He had shaved his head and had an enormous mustache," Castaneda remarked, gesturing with his hands to indicate its size. "As soon as we entered, he grabbed me roughly by the neck and gave me some tremendous blows. Immediately afterward, he told me I should leave my current teacher 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? They teach you everything in just a few classes."

Castaneda also told us that Gurdjieff's disciple had mentioned the use of drugs to accelerate the learning process.

The interview didn't last long. It seems Castaneda's friend quickly realized the absurdity of the situation and the magnitude of his mistake. This friend had insisted that he visit Gurdjieff's disciple because he was convinced that Castaneda needed a more serious teacher than Don Juan. When the interview ended, Castaneda told us that his friend felt utterly ashamed.

Castaneda talks about his future projects

We had already been walking for more than six or seven blocks. For a while we talked about incidental things. I remember telling him that I had read an article by Juan Tovar in "La Gaceta del Fondo de Cultura Económica" in which he mentioned the possibility of filming his books.

"Yes," Castaneda said, "that possibility was discussed for a while."

He then recounted his encounter with the producer, Joseph E. Levine, who had intimidated him from behind his enormous desk. The size of the desk and the producer's words, barely comprehensible because of the huge cigar he held between his lips [“Did the tribe mind?” he asked], were among the things that had most impressed Castaneda.

"He was behind a desk, like on a platform," he explained, "and I was down there, very small. He looked powerful! His hands were 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 suggested Mia Farrow for one of the roles.

"Conceiving a film like this was very difficult," he commented. "It's neither ethnography nor fiction. The project ultimately failed. The nagual Juan Matus told me it couldn't be done."

During that same period he was invited to participate in shows such as Johnny Carson's and Dick Cavett's.

"In the end, I couldn't accept things like that. What do I tell Johnny Carson, for example, if he asks me whether or not I spoke with the coyote? What do I tell him? I tell him yes, that... And then what? Undoubtedly, the situation would have been ridiculous."

"Don Juan was the one who entrusted me with bearing witness to a tradition," Castaneda said. "He himself insisted that I accept interviews and give lectures to promote the books. Later, he made me stop everything because that kind of work takes a lot of energy. If you're involved in those things, you have to give them your all."

Castaneda clearly explained that he uses the proceeds from his books to cover the expenses of the entire group. Castaneda feeds them all.

"Don Juan gave me the task of writing down everything the sorcerers and witches said. My task is simply to write until one day they tell me, 'Enough, this is over.' I truly don't know the impact of my books because I'm not involved with what goes on here. Don Juan, and now the Toltec women, own all the material in the books. They are responsible for everything said there."

The tone of his voice and his gestures deeply impressed us. It was clear that in this respect, Castaneda's task is to obey. His goal is nothing less than to be impeccable as both receiver and transmitter of a tradition and a teaching.

"Personally," he continued after a pause, "I'm working on a kind of journal; it's something like a manual. I am responsible for that work. I would like a reputable publisher to release it and take charge of distributing it to interested individuals and educational institutions."

Castaneda told us that he had prepared about 18 units in which he believed he summarized all the teachings of the Toltec nation. To organize the work, he used E. Husserl's phenomenology as a theoretical framework to make what he was taught understandable.

“Last week,” he said, “I was in New York. I took the project to the editors at Simon and Schuster, but I failed. They seem to have been scared. Something like this can’t possibly succeed. I’m solely responsible for those 18 units,” he continued meditatively, “and as you can see, I wasn’t successful. Those 18 units are like the 18 times I’ve fallen and hit my head hard. I agree with the editors that it’s a heavy read, but that’s just how I am… Don Juan, Don Genaro, all the others are different. They’re lightweights!”

"Why do I call them units?" he asked, anticipating our conversation. "I call them that because each one aims to show one of the ways to break the unity of the familiar. This single perceptual vision can be broken in different ways."

Castaneda, trying to clarify this for us again, gave us the example of a map. Every time we want to get somewhere, we need a map with clear landmarks so we don't get lost.

"We find nothing without a map," Castaneda exclaimed. "What happens next is that all we see is the map. Instead of seeing what needs to be seen, we end up seeing the map we carry within us. That's why breaking that arc of reflexivity, constantly severing the ties that lead us to known points of reference, is Don Juan's final teaching."

Many times that afternoon Castaneda insisted that he was nothing more than a "simple bridge to the world." All the knowledge in the books belonged to the Toltec nation. And faced with his insistence, I couldn't help but react and tell him that the task of compiling the material from the notes into coherent and well-organized books was immense and difficult.

"No," Castaneda replied, "I have no merit. 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 attempt to create something in this way is absurd. And to explain this, he brought up an episode from his father's life.

“My father,” he said, “decided he was going to be a great writer. With that goal in mind, he resolved to fix up his desk. He needed to have a desk that was perfect. Every single detail had to be considered, from the wall decorations to the type of light on his work surface. Once the room was ready, he spent a long time looking for the right desk for his endeavor. The desk had to be a certain size, wood, color, and so on.”

The same thing happened with the choice of the chair he would sit on. Then he had to select the right cover so as not to ruin the wood of his desk. The cover could be plastic, glass, leather, cardboard... On that cover my father would rest the paper on which he would write his masterpiece.

And once he sat down in his chair facing the blank page, he didn't know what to write. That was my dad. He wants to start by writing the perfect sentence. Sure... but you can't write like that.

One is always an instrument, an intermediary. I see each page in dreams, and the success of each of those pages depends on the degree of fidelity with which I am able to copy that dream model. Precisely, the page that impresses or impacts the most is the one in which I have managed to reproduce the original with the greatest accuracy.

(I suspect that story about his father must have been invented by Castaneda, because Castaneda's father was a goldsmith, not a writer.) 

These comments by Castaneda reveal a whole theory of knowledge and of intellectual and artistic creation. (I immediately thought of Plato and Saint Augustine with their image of the "inner teacher.") To know is to discover, and to create is to copy. Neither knowledge nor creation can ever be a purely personal endeavor.

Castaneda talks about the interviews he gave

While we were having dinner, I mentioned some of the interviews I had read. I told her that I had really enjoyed the one Sam Keen had done with her, which had been published in "Psychology Today" magazine.

Castaneda was also pleased with that interview; he has a lot of respect for Sam Keen.

 "During those years," he said, "I met many people I would have liked to remain friends with, one example being the psychologist Sam Keen. Don Juan, however, said enough."

Regarding the "Time" magazine interview, Castaneda told us that a male journalist first came to meet him in Los Angeles, but it seems things didn't go well ["It didn't work out," he said] and he left.

They then sent him "one of those girls you can't refuse," he said, making us all smile. Everything went very well, and they got along "perfectly." Castaneda had the impression that she understood what he was saying. In the end, however, she didn't write the article. The notes she had taken were given to a journalist who "I think is in Australia now," he added. And it seems that this journalist did whatever he wanted with the notes he was given.

Every time the Time interview was mentioned, his annoyance was obvious. He had warned Don Juan that Time was too powerful and important a magazine. Don Juan, however, had insisted that the interview take place.

"The interview was done, just in case," Castaneda concluded informally, again using a typically Buenos Aires expression.

Castaneda gives his opinion on his critics

We also talked about the critics and what had been written about him and his books. I mentioned Richard de Mille and others who have questioned the veracity of his work and its anthropological value.

“The work I have to do,” Castaneda stated, “is free from whatever critics might say. My task is to present that knowledge in the best way possible. Nothing they say matters to me because I am no longer Carlos Castaneda, the writer. I am neither a writer, nor a thinker, nor a philosopher; consequently, their attacks do not find me. Now, I know that I am nothing; no one can take anything from me because Joe Córdoba is nothing. There is no personal pride in all of this.”

We live at a lower level than the Mexican farmer, which is saying a lot. We've worked the land, and we can't fall any further. The difference between us and the farmer is that the farmer has hope, wants things, and works to one day have more than he has today.

We, on the other hand, have nothing and will have less and less. Can you imagine that? The criticisms are completely off target.

"I am never more fully myself than when I am Joe Córdoba," he exclaimed vehemently, standing up and opening his arms in a gesture of fulfillment. "Joe Córdoba, frying hamburgers all day with smoky eyes... Do you understand me?"

Not all the critics had been negative. Octavio Paz, for example, wrote a very good prologue for the Spanish edition of his first book, " The Teachings of Don Juan ." I found it beautiful.

"Yes," Castaneda agreed, "that prologue is excellent. Octavio Paz is a true gentleman. Perhaps he's one of the last of his kind."

The phrase "a true gentleman" doesn't refer to Octavio Paz's undeniable qualities as a thinker and writer. No! The phrase points to the intrinsic qualities of his being, to the value of the person as a human being. And the fact that Castaneda noted he is "one of the last ones left" underscored the fact that he is an endangered species.

"Well," Castaneda continued, trying to soften the blow, "perhaps there are two gentlemen left."

The other is an elderly Mexican historian friend of his whose name was unfamiliar to us. He told us some anecdotes about him that reflected his physical vitality and intellectual vivacity.

Castaneda talks about his travels

We were still chatting animatedly when the waitress approached and curtly asked if we wanted anything else. Since no one wanted dessert or coffee, we had no choice but to get up. As soon as the waitress left, Castaneda remarked, "Looks like they're kicking us out..."

Yes, they were kicking us out, and perhaps with good reason. It was late... We were surprised to see how late it was. We got up and went out onto the avenue.

It was night, and the street and the people had the feel of a carnival. A mime dressed in a tailcoat and top hat was clowning around behind us. We all smiled at each other as our eyes searched for the dish that's usually passed around during those performances.

To our right, under the eaves of an old theater, someone was attempting another performance on a miniature stage. I thought I saw a cat ready for the show. You really saw all sorts of things there. Once upon a time, a man dressed as a bear tried to compete with the one-man band.

"The point is to look for increasingly extravagant alternatives," someone commented.

As we walked back towards the campus, Castaneda spoke of a planned trip to Argentina.

"That's where a cycle closes," he told us. "Returning to Argentina is very important to me. I don't know yet when I'll be able to do it, but I will go. For now, I have things to do here. It will only be three years since I started my work here in August, and it's possible I'll be able to go then."

That afternoon, Castaneda told us a lot about Buenos Aires, its streets, neighborhoods, and sports clubs. He fondly recalled Florida Street with its elegant shops and bustling crowds. He still remembered the famous movie theater street with its distinctive image. "Lavalle Street," he said, reminiscing.

Castaneda lived in Buenos Aires during his childhood. It seems he was a boarder at a school in the city center. He sadly recalled being told that he was "wider than he was tall" during that time; words that hurt a lot when you're a child.

"I always looked with envy," she remarked, "at those tall, handsome Argentinians."

"You know that in Buenos Aires you always have to support some club," Castaneda continued. "I was a Chacarita fan. Being a River Plate fan isn't fun, is it? Chacarita, on the other hand, is always one of the last."

In those days, Chacarita always came in last. It was moving to see him identify with those who lose, with the "underdogs."

"The Fat Lady will definitely come with me. She wants to travel. Of course, she wants to go to 'Parici' – he clarified. The Fat Lady now shops at Gucci, she's elegant, and she wants to go to Paris. I always tell her, 'Fat Lady, why do you want to go to Paris? There's nothing there.' She has a certain idea of ​​Paris, 'the city of lights.' You know."

He mentioned "La Gorda" many times that afternoon. Through her, Castaneda introduced us to an extraordinary character for whom he undoubtedly feels great respect and admiration. What, then, was the meaning of all that circumstantial information he gave us about her?

I believe that with those comments, as well as those concerning the Toltecs' eating and sleeping habits, Castaneda tried to prevent us from forming a rigid image of who they are. The work they are doing is very serious, and their lives are austere, but they are not rigid nor do they allow themselves to be oppressed by traditional societal norms. The important thing is to free oneself from preconceived notions, not to replace them with others.

Castaneda gave us the impression that he has not traveled much in Latin America, if Mexico is excluded.

"Lately I've only been in Venezuela," she said. "As I already told you, I have to go to Argentina soon. A chapter closes there. After that I can leave. Well... the truth is, I don't know if I want to leave yet." She said her last words with a smile. Who doesn't have ties?

He has traveled to Europe several times for matters related to his books.

"In 1973, however, Don Juan sent me to Italy," he stated. "My task was to go to Rome and obtain an audience with the Pope. He didn't intend for me to obtain a private audience, but rather one of those audiences granted to groups of people. All I had to do in the interview was kiss the Pope's hand."

Castaneda did everything exactly as Don Juan had asked. He went to Italy, arrived in Rome, and requested an audience. "It was one of those Wednesday audiences, after the Pope celebrates a public mass in St. Peter's Square. They granted me the audience, but... I couldn't go," he said. "I didn't even make it to the door."

That afternoon, Castaneda referred several times to his family and his typically liberal and frankly anticlerical education and training.

In his book " The Second Ring of Power ," Castaneda also refers to the anticlerical legacy he inherited. Don Juan, who doesn't seem to justify all his prejudices and struggles against the Catholic Church, tells him:

"Overcoming our own foolishness requires all our time and energy. This is the only thing that matters. Everything else is inconsequential. Nothing your grandfather and father said about the Church made them happy. Being an impeccable warrior, on the other hand, will give you strength, youth, and power. Therefore, the appropriate thing for you is to know how to choose."

Castaneda did not theorize about these topics. Regarding the clericalism-anticlericalism dichotomy, he simply wanted to impart a lesson through the example of his own experience. In other words, he made it clear that it is very difficult to break free from the patterns formed in youth.

"So," I asked, thinking about the task Don Juan had entrusted to him, "will you have to return to Italy?"

"Oh! No! It's not necessary anymore," he replied. "All that happened a long time ago."

With regard to Europe, Castaneda's impression was definitive.

"There's nothing there," he insisted. "Europe is finished; everything is dead. You can see that even in the landscape. The Alps have nothing to do with Colorado! Europe lacks the strength that America has in abundance."

With regard to Italy, he was particularly forceful.

"The landscape is like a miniature. Everything there is neat and very civilized. A little hill here, a little house there. There's no power! In Italy, you're either a communist or a Catholic. There's no other option."

His words made us understand that in Europe there are only old ideologies, dichotomies from other eras. Castaneda, on the other hand, operates on a very different plane from politics or religion. In his universe, traditional ways of seeing and judging have no place.

The end of the conversation

Just before entering the campus, Castaneda turned around, and taking my forearm and hands, said to me, "Madam, you don't know how grateful I am that you introduced me to your friends."

His words were very powerful and moved me deeply. It's worth noting that he thanked me for acting as an intermediary, as a bridge between my friends and him.

When we arrived at the parking lot, we greeted each other politely and went our separate ways. Castaneda walked to the corner and disappeared behind the tall bushes on the street. It must have been around eleven o'clock at night.

We got in the car and started the return journey. The two hours seemed to fly by. We had been so impressed that we didn't have enough time to tell each other everything that afternoon's encounter had stirred within us.

Final reflection from the interviewer

That afternoon Castaneda paid close attention to distinguishing and clarifying what he has verified and is capable of experiencing, from what others say and do.

He told us that he had been learning for 17 years. During all that time, there are things he has been able to experience and verify for himself, others that he is learning, and others that he has not yet incorporated into his life.

Thus, for example, he has been able to observe the Toltec way of eating and sleeping. He has also incorporated the art of sleep, although he still needs the Fat Lady's help.

Regarding other phenomena, it was clear he didn't want to talk much, and more than once he had to confess that there are things he doesn't understand. Moreover, there are many things he doesn't believe it will ever be possible to understand.

Castaneda, however, trusts Don Juan and his teachings; he trusts in what he neither understands nor has been able to explain. Time and again, Don Juan has shown him that the Toltecs were right, and consequently, he trusts that they will be right until the end.

The memory of that afternoon remains like a clearly defined picture in which the fascinating figure of Castaneda fills the entire space. All the phantasmagoria and prodigies—to use Octavio Paz's words—in his books, which I had so often doubted and which I had considered with a certain distaste as an unnecessary display of the phenomenal, became perfectly credible and possible after meeting Castaneda.

Beyond the factual details of the events he recounted, the essential truth of his statements is revealed. After all... what could be more difficult than frying hamburgers all day like Joe Córdoba with smoky eyes?

MY OPINION ON THIS TEXT

This text is very disjointed and poorly written; in my transcription, I tried to improve the writing. It is the longest interview Castaneda ever gave (7 hours), conducted shortly after he published his sixth book, " The Eagle's Gift " (1981). For those unfamiliar with Don Juan's teachings, this text may offer some insight; however, for those who have already studied them extensively, it provides nothing new. 

INFORMATION ABOUT GRACIELA CORVALÁN

Graciela N. Vico Corvalán holds a degree in philosophy from the National University of Cuyo, Mendoza, and is a professor at the same institution. She earned her doctorate from Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri, in 1975. She has been actively involved in teaching in the United States, instructing Spanish, Latin American literature, the history of religion, and philosophy for children. She specializes in contemporary mystical thinkers.

She alternates writing with lecturing, and also teaches Spanish in community courses. She has received numerous academic honors and scholarships. Among her works is the Spanish translation of "Being the Way: On the Journey of Spiritual Development" by Dr. Judy Gómez.

She is preparing a series of conversations with contemporary mystical thinkers from the Americas, and a series of short reviews for a Modern Language Association project: "Guide to Research in Women's Studies," Vol. III.

Last July, at Montclair State College, she dedicated two weeks to an intensive seminar on philosophy for children, a program of the Institute of Philosophy for Children. Among her most important presentations is "Life as Rebellion and Mission: Ezequiel Martínez Estrada," in a series directed by Dr. Ivan A. Schulman.

PUBLICATION IN ENGLISH

An English translation of this interview was later published in the Californian magazine "Magical Blend" in issues number 14 (1986) and 15 (1987) [It was divided into two parts].