Карлос Кастанеда. Разрозненые материалы за 1994 год  1. Carlos Castaneda Bibliography v1.3.3 2. Carlos Castaneda Speaks, An interview by Keith Thompson. 3. CASTANEDA'S CLAN (An interview with Florinda, Donner-Grau, Taisha Abelar, and Carol Tiggs by Keith Nichols.) Magical Blend Magazine (c) 1994 4. Carlos Castaneda Overview (v0.4uc) 5. Notes on a talk by Taisha Abelar '92. 6. Notes on a talk by Taisha Abelar '94.  * Carlos Castaneda Bibliography v1.3.3 *  Version: 1.3.3 Last-Updated: Wed Jul 6 14:09:51 CDT 1994 The many contributors have my sincerest thanks. Items marked with | are new or updated since version 1.2. "The Books" Abelar, Taisha , "Sorcerer's Crossing". 1992. Castaneda, Carlos, "The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge". 1968. Castaneda, Carlos, "A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan". 1971. Castaneda, Carlos, "Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan". 1972. Castaneda, Carlos, "Tales of Power". 1974. Castaneda, Carlos, "The Second Ring of Power". 1977. Castaneda, Carlos, "The Eagle's Gift". 1981. Castaneda, Carlos, "The Fire from Within". 1984. Castaneda, Carlos, "The Power of Silence". 1987. Castaneda, Carlos, "The Art of Dreaming". 1993. Castaneda, Carlos, Psychology Today, Dez. 1977, "The Art of Dreaming". (That's not the book, it's an article from C.C.; mostly adapted from "Second Ring". but the introduction is new and contains new information.) Castaneda, Carlos, "Seis propositiones explicatorias". Mexico 1985. (In the Mexican version of "Eagle's Gift" - "El don del Aguila" - there is an appendix, 25 pages long with a structural analysis by C.C. himself. There he talks about secrets of the assembledge point and about how stopping the dialog is connected to the rings of power. Things that are missing in the rest of his work...) Castaneda, Carlos, "Preface to the Mexican edition of Donner's _Being-in-Dreaming_". (Short but interesting) Donner, Florinda, "Shabono". 1982. Donner, Florinda, "The Witch's Dream". 1985. Donner, Florinda, "Being-in-Dreaming". 1991. Interviews ---------- ?, Magical Blend #14, "A conversation with the elusive Carlos Castaneda". ?, Magical Blend #15, "Carlos Castaneda, part II". ?, Magical Blend #35, "Interview with Florinda Donner". | Blair-Ewart, Alexander, DIMENSIONS, Vol. VII No. 9, 1992 | "The Art of Stalking True Freedom - Taisha Abelar in | Conversation with Alexander Blair-Ewart". | This is a pretty good interview with TA. Discussions | about why all the books are being published, the | "new configuration", the recapitulation, energy, | Carol Tiggs' return, etc. More hard information than | usually appears in interviews. | Blair-Ewart, Alexander, DIMENSIONS, 1992? | "The Sorcerer's Crossing - Taisha Abelar in | Conversation with Alexander Blair-Ewart (Part II)" | Blair-Ewart, Alexander, DIMENSIONS, February, 1992 | "Being-In-Dreaming - Florinda Donner in Conversation with Alexander Blair-Ewart" | Burton, Sandra, Time Magazine, "Magic and Reality". 1973. Interview with C.C. (A horrible thing - quite awful and really boring...) | Corvalan, Graciela, "Der Weg der Tolteken - Ein Gesprdch | mit Carlos Castaneda", Fischer, 1987, ca. 100p., ISBN | 3-596-23864-1 | An interview with Carlos Castaneda dating from | 1979/80 in the form of a book; most interesting. The | original is in Spanish and has been translated into | German by Joachim A Frank. Eagle Feather, Ken / Kramer, Carol, Body, Mind & Spirit #6/1992, "Being-in-Dreaming". An Interview with Florinda Donner. (Reveals what happened to La Gorda, the Genaros and the Little Sisters, Soledad, et.al.) Fort, Carmina, "Conversationes con Carlos Castaneda". Madrid (Spain), 1991. Carmina, Carlos, and Florinda Donner met several times in 1988. Carmina wrote this book about the events, conversations and revelations. Quite good. (about 130 pages.) Keen, Sam, Psychology Today, "Sorcerer's Apprentice". 1975. An interview with C.C. (Of some size and quite interesting. Timeframe: Shortly before nagual Juan Matus' departure = 1973, perhaps February) Leviton, Richard, Yoga Journal, March/April 1994 #115, "The Art of Dreaming". Part book review, part inquiry on dreaming. gopher://gopher.internet.com:2100/11/collected/yoga Nichols, Keith, Magical Blend #40, Oct 1993, "Taisha Abelar on Sorcery: Sorcery and reality in the Castaneda clan". Interview. A good introduction to sorcery, recapitulation, dreaming, the Assemblage Point, and the energy body. Nichols, Keith, Magical Blend #42, April 1994, "Castaneda's Clan". Interviews with Taisha Abelar, Florinda Donner-Grau, and Carol Tiggs. gopher://cscns.com/00/ News%20and%20Information/aspen/Magical%20Blend/ Issue%2042/Articles/Castaneda_Clan.doc Thompson, Keith, New Age Journal, March/April 1994, "Carlos Castaneda Speaks: Portrait of a Sorcerer". Interview. gopher://gopher.internet.com:2100/11/collected/new_age Wagner, Bruce, Details, March 1994, "The Secret Life of Carlos Castaneda: You Only Live Twice". A most interesting interview. Articles -------- Cox, Murray, "Notes from the New Land: Join the expedition at the Monroe Institute where researchers use the science of sound to explore altered states of consciousness". Omni, Oct 1993. Magical Blend #5, "A comparison of Aleister Crowley and Carlos Castaneda". Magical Blend #40, Oct 1993, "Carlos Castaneda on don Juan". This is from a transcript by way of David Christie, not an interview. Gnosis #2, Spring/Summer 1986, "Magical Autobiographies". The New Thunderbird Chronicle vol 1, no 3, Oct 1989, "Taking the Fifth" et passim. The threshold of the Eagle's spiritual Aerie. Drawing of Carlos on the cover (with sombrero covering head). Critical -------- de Mille, Richard, "Castaneda's Journey: The Power and the Allegory". 1976. de Mille, Richard, "The Don Juan Papers". 1980. | Fikes, Jay Courtney, "Carlos Castaneda: Academic | Opportunism and the Psychedelic Sixties", Millenia | Press, 1993, ISBN 0-9696960-0-0. The gist of this one is | that CC's works are fabrications, although the DJ | character is based on a real-life sorcerer. Much info | about the Huichol Indians. Noel, Daniel C., "Seeing Castaneda". 1976, ISBN 339-50361-7. Collection of critical reviews, large bibliography. | Williams, Donald Lee, "Border Crossings: A Psychological | Perspective on Carlos Castaneda's Path of Knowledge", | Toronto: Inner City Books, 1981, ISBN 0-919123-07-04. A | Jungian interpretation of Castaneda's books up to The | Second Ring of Power. Dry and scholarly. Related Books ------------- ?, "Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge: A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution". 1992, ISBN 0-553-37130-4. Chapter 1 ("Shamanism: Setting the Stage"). Blackmore, Susan J., "Beyond the Body: An Investigation of Out-of-the-Body Experiences". 1992, ISBN 0-89733-344-6. Published on behalf of The Society for Psychical Research. Chapter 12 ("The Physiology of the OBE"), et passim. Capra, Fritjof, "The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture". 1982, ISBN 0-553-01480-3. Chapter 11 ("Journeys Beyond Space and Time"). Classen, Norbert, "Das Wissen der Tolteken". Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-9802912-1-9. (My poor little book... about the Toltec knowledge. A practical and philosophical guide. It includes a German version of C.C.'s ``propositiones explicatorias'', only published in Mexico before.) Coerper, Hellmut, "Der Zugang zum Wissen". Fellbach 1981. ISBN 3-87089-310-9. (C.G. Jung, Psychology and C.C. Intellectual, but interesting...) | Corvalan, Graciela N.V., "Conversation de fond avec | Carlos Castaneda", traduit de l'espagnol et annote par | Eva Martini, Paris: Editions du cerf, 1992, 128p. Drury, Nevill, "Don Juan, Mescalito and Modern Magic". London & New York 1978, ISBN 1-85063-015-1 (Arkana). (Old, but interesting, too...) Dubant, Bernard & Marguerie, Michel, "Castaneda - le saut dans l'inconnu". Paris 1982, ISBN 0-85-707-085-3. (They wrote further books on C.C.. Something for the French fans and readers...) Eagle Feather, Ken, "Traveling with Power". 1992, ISBN 1-878901-28-1. Apprentice to Don Juan talks about perception. Fikes, Jay Courtney, "Carlos Castaneda, Academic Opportunism, and the Psychedelic Sixties". 1992, ISBN 0-8191-8585-X. (The title disqualifies itsself. Somekind of a weird book in the tradition of de Mille...) Fox, Oliver, "Astral Projection: A Record of Out-of-the-Body Experiences". 1962, 1990, ISBN 0-8065-0463-3. Expanded from original articles published in the "Occult Review" in 1920. Chronologically ordered accounts of his experiences. Hutchison, Michael, "Mega Brain: New Tools and Techniques for Brain Growth and Mind Expansion". 1986, ISBN 0-345-34175-9. Chapter 12 ("Tuning the Brain with Sound Waves: Hemi-Sync"), et passim. Leary, Timothy, "Flashbacks: A Personal and Cultural History of an Era". 1990, ISBN 0-87477-497-7. Chapter 20, short "Biography" of Castaneda, Leary's stay at 'La Catalina' hotel and run-in with a would-be sorcerer. L|tge, Lothar R|diger, "C.C. und die Lehren des Don Juan". Freiburg 1983. (A practical guide. Frugal...) Monroe, Robert A., "Journeys Out of the Body". 1971, 1977, ISBN 0-385-00861-9. First book: initial experiences. Monroe, Robert A., "Far Journeys". 1985, ISBN 0-385-23181-4. Majority of the book is a "tale" of the OBE journeys of ``AA'', and what he learns. Monroe, Robert A., "Ultimate Journey". Doubleday, ISBN 0-385-47207-2 M|ller, Burkhard, "Castaneda's Erben. Eurasburg 1991". ISBN 3-9802912-0-0. (A book about experiences with C.C. and the Toltec knowledge.) Pearce, Joseph Chilton, "The Crack in the Cosmic Egg: Challenging Constructs of Mind and Reality". 1971, 1988, ISBN 0-517-56661-3. Chapter 9 ("Don Juan and Jesus") et passim. Pearce, Joseph Chilton, "Exploring the Crack in the Cosmic Egg: Split Minds and Meta-realities". 1974, ISBN 0-671-80638-6. Chapters 15 ("Reversibility Thinking") & 16 et passim. Pearce, Joseph Chilton, "Magical Child Matures". 1985, ISBN0-553-25881-8. Chapter 18 ("Not Doing") passim. Rogo, D. Scott, "Leaving the Body: A Complete Guide to Astral Projection: A step-by-step presentation of eight different systems of out-of-body travel". 1983, ISBN 0-13-528026-5. Chapter 6 ("The Monroe Techniques"), et passim. Rucker, Rudolf, "Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension". 1977, ISBN 0-486-23400-2. Chapter 4 ("Time as a Higher Dimension"), Annotated Bibliography discussion of "A Separate Reality". Sanchez, Victor, "Las Ensenenzas de Don Carlos. Mexico 1991". ISBN 968-6565-09-4. (Practical guide. Very good, but in Spanish. Victor is working on a second book at the moment. It seems to be very interesting. By the way, he knows C.C. and studied with him.) Smith, Adam, "Powers of Mind". 1975, ISBN 0-345-25426-0-195. Timm, Dennis, "Nagual Junior". Anthologie, 1982, ISBN 3-9800414-2-5. (Anthology with some dubious interviews and texts...) Timm, Dennis, "Die Wirklichkeit und der Wissende". Frankfurt 1989, ISBN 3-596-24290-8. (Philosophical study, but including some interesting texts from American anthropologists who studied with C.C. and comment on his work... mostly positiv!) Ulrich, Hans E., "Von Meister Eckhard bis C.C.". Frankfurt 1986, ISBN 3-596-26541-X. (Esoterical bullshit; boring...) Watson, Lyall, "Beyond Supernature: A New Natural History of the Supernatural". 1988, ISBN 0-553-34456-0. Chapter 8 ("Description: Paranthropology"). Wittman, Ulla, "Leben wie ein Krieger". Interlaken 1988, ISBN 3-7157-0120-0. (Practical intentions... but sometimes boring, repeating, repeating, repeating...) Miscellaneous ------------- MT (Michael Topper) Initiates' Class Tapes: #56 (8/10/91) Assemblage Point, #90 (4/18/92) Shaman's Path. NovaDreamer -- Tools For Exploration, (415) 499-9050, (800) 456-9887. signals when you are dreaming to help induce lucid dreaming. -- $245 Sources ------- Details ISSN 0740-4921 USPS 001707 Box 58246 Boulder, CO 80322 USA [They claim to be international] Magical Blend ISSN 1040-4287 USPS 002-677 Business Offices (916) 893-9037 PO Box 600 Chico, CA 94927-0600 USA [Back issues must be paid in advance, call for pricing] | [may be defunct--ed] | DIMENSIONS (Canada's New Age Monthly) ISSN 0836 5059 | Voice (416) 928-6730 | Fax (416) 928-1446, | 3 Charles St. W., Ste 300 | Toronto, Ontario M4Y 1R4 | You can write to Castaneda and the rest of his clan c/o: | Toltec Artists | 183 N. Martel | Hollywood, CA 90036 | (213) 938-9500 (Tracy Kramer--agent) | Nagualist Newsletter | 1057 E. Imperial Hwy., Suite #117 | Placentia, CA 92670 | [A high quality work published by people who prefer | to remain anonymous.] | Nagualist Network in LA. | John O'Neill <74631.1463@CompuServe.COM> | (213) 463-9062  * Carlos Castaneda Speaks, An interview by Keith Thompson *  Author: Keith Thompson Literary agents are paid to hype their clients, but when the agent for Carlos Castaneda claimed that he was offering me "the interview of a lifetime," it was hard to disagree. After all, Castaneda's nine best-selling books describing his extraordinary apprenticeship to Yaqui Indian sorcerer don Juan Matus had inspired countless members of my generation to explore mysticism, psychedelic drugs, and new levels of consciousness. Yet even as his reputation grew, the author had remained a recluse, shrouding himself in mystery and intrigue. Aside from a few interviews given seemingly at random over the years, Castaneda never ventured into the public spotlight. Few people even know what he looks like. For this interview, his agent told me, there could be no cameras and no tape recorders. The conversation would have to be recorded by a stenographer, lest copies of Castaneda's taped voice fall into the wrong hands. The interview -- perhaps timed to coincide with the publication of Castaneda's latest and most esoteric book, The Art of Dreaming -- took place in the conference room of a modest office in Los Angeles, after weeks of back-and-forth negotiations with Castaneda's agent. The arrangements were complicated, the agent said, by the fact that he had no way of contacting his client and could only confirm a meeting after speaking with him "whenever he decides to call . . . I never know in advance when that may be." Upon my arrival at noon, an energetic, enthusiastic, broad- smiled man walked across the room, extended his hand, and greeted me unassumingly: "Hello, I am Carlos Castaneda. Welcome. We can begin our conversation when you are ready. Would you like coffee, or perhaps a soda? Please make yourself comfortable." I had heard that Castaneda blends into the woodwork, or resembles a Cuban waiter; that his features are both European and Indian; that his skin is nut-brown or bronze; that his hair is black, thick, and curly. So much for rumor. His mane is now white, or largely so, short and mildly disheveled. If asked to guide a police artist in making a sketch, I would emphasize the eyes -- large, bright, lucid. They may have been gray. I asked Castaneda about his schedule. "The entire afternoon is available. I should think we'll have all the time we need. When it's enough, we'll know." Our conversation lasted four hours, continuing through a meal of deli sandwiches that arrived midway. My first exposure to Castaneda's work had been as much initiation as introduction. It was 1968. Police officers were clubbing demonstrators in the streets of Chicago. Assassins had taken Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. Aretha Franklin's "Chain of Fools" topped the charts. All of this amidst an ocean of sandals, embroidered caftans, bell-bottoms, jangling bracelets, beads, and long hair for men and women alike. Into all this stepped an enigmatic writer named Carlos Castaneda, toting a book called The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. I remember how it transformed me. The book I began reading was a curiosity; the book I held when I finished had become a manifesto, the kind of delirious cause celebre for which my psyche had been secretly training. What Castaneda seemed to be affirming -- the possibility of awesome personal spiritual experience -- was precisely what the Sunday-morning-only religion of my childhood had done its best to vaccinate me against. Believing in Castaneda gave me faith that someday, some way, I might meet my very own don Juan Matus (don is a Spanish appellative denoting respect), the old Indian wise man/sorcerer who implores his protg Carlos to get beyond looking -- simply perceiving the world in its usually accepted forms. To be a true "man of knowledge," Carlos has to learn the art of seeing, so that for the first time he can truly perceive the startling nature of the everyday world. "When you see," don Juan says, "there are no longer familiar features in the world. Everything is new. Everything has never happened before. The world is incredible!" But, really -- who was this Castaneda? Where did he come from and what was he trying to prove, with his mysterious account of a realm that seemed to be of an entirely different order of reality? Over the years, various answers to that question have been offered. Take your pick: (a) dissenting anthropologist; (b) sorcerer's apprentice; (c) psychic visionary; (d) literary genius; (e) original philosopher; (f) master teacher. For balance, let's not forget (g) perpetrator of one of the most spectacular hoaxes in the history of publishing. Castaneda has responded to the bestowal of these conflicting ID tags with something like ironic amusement, as though he were an audience member enjoying the spectacle of a Chekhov comedy in which he himself may or may not be a character. The author has consistently declined -- over a span of nearly three decades -- to engage in the war of words about whether his books are authentic accounts of real-world encounters, as he maintains, or (as numerous critics have argued) fictional allegories in the spirit of Gulliver's Travels and Alice in Wonderland. This strategic reticence was learned from don Juan himself. "To slip in and out of different worlds you have to remain inconspicuous," says Castaneda, who is rumored (his preferred status) to divide his time nowadays between Los Angeles, Arizona, and Mexico. "The more you are identified by people's ideas of who you are and how you will act, the greater the constraint on your freedom. Don Juan insisted upon the importance of erasing personal history. If little by little you create a fog around yourself, then you will not be taken for granted, and you will have more room for change." Even so, scattered clearings in the fog offer glimpses of tracks left by the sorcerer's apprentice in the years before his life faded to myth. The scholarly consensus, unconfirmed by the author himself, is that Carlos Cesar Arana Castaneda was born in Peru on Christmas day 1925 in the historic Andean town of Cajamarca. Upon graduating from the Colegio Nacional de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, he studied briefly at the National Fine Arts School of Peru. In 1948 his family moved to Lima and established a jewelry store. After the death of his mother a year later, Castaneda moved to San Francisco and soon enrolled at Los Angeles City College, where he took two courses in creative writing and one in journalism. Castaneda received a B.A. in anthropology in 1962 from the University of California at Los Angeles. In 1968, five years before Castaneda received his Ph.D. in anthropology, the University of California Press published The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, which became a national best seller following an enthusiastic notice by Roger Jellinek in the New York Times Book Review: "One can't exaggerate the significance of what Castaneda has done. He is describing a shamanistic tradition, a pre-logical cultural form that is no-one-knows how old. It has been described often. . . . But it seems that no other outsider, and certainly not a 'Westerner,' has ever participated in its mysteries from within; nor has anyone described them so well." The fuse was lit. The Teachings sold 300,000 copies in a 1969 Ballantine mass edition. A Separate Reality and Journey to Ixtlan followed from Simon & Schuster in 1971 and 1972. The saga continued in Tales of Power (1974), The Second Ring of Power (1977), The Eagle's Gift (1981), The Fire from Within (1984), The Power of Silence (1987), and The Art of Dreaming (1993). (Bibliophiles may be interested to learn that Castaneda says he actually wrote a book about don Juan before The Teachings, titled The Crack Between Worlds, but lost the manuscript in a movie theater.) In assessing the impact of his work, Castaneda's admirers credit him with introducing to popular culture the rich and varied traditions of shamanism, with their emphasis on entering nonordinary realms and confronting strange and sometimes hostile spirit-powers, in order to restore balance and harmony to body, soul, and society. Inspired by don Juan's use of peyote, jimsonweed, and other power plants to teach Castaneda the "art of dreaming," untold numbers of pioneers extended their own inner horizons through psychedelic inquiry -- with decidedly mixed results. For their part, critics of Castaneda's "path of knowledge" dismiss his work as an ongoing pseudo-anthropological shenanigan, complete with fabricated shamans and sensationalized Native American religious practices. The writings, they claim, have netted an unscrupulous author tremendous wealth at the cost of denigrating the sacred lifeways of indigenous peoples through commercial exploitation. Castaneda's presentation, writes Richard de Mille in Castaneda's Journey, "appeals to the reader's hunger for myth, magic, ancient wisdom, true reality, self-improvement, other worlds, or imaginary playmates." Appropriately, the Castaneda I encountered was a study in contrasts. His presence was informal, spontaneous, warmly animated, and at times contagiously mirthful. At the same time, his still heavily accented (Peruvian? Chilean? Spanish?) diction conveyed the patrician formality of an ambassador at court: deliberate and well-composed, serious and poised, earnest and resolute. Practiced. The contradiction, like so much about the man, may strike some as a bothersome inconsistency. But it shouldn't. To reread Carlos Castaneda's books (as I did, astonishingly, all nine of them) is to see clearly -- perhaps for the first time -- that contradiction is the force that ties his literary Gordian knot. As the author had told me, intently, during our lunch break: "Only by pitting two views against each other can one weasel between them to arrive at the real world." I had the sense he was letting me know his fortress was well guarded -- and daring me to storm it anyway. Keith Thompson: As your books have made a character named Carlos world-famous, the author called Castaneda has retreated further and further from public view. There have been more confirmed sightings of Elvis than of Carlos Castaneda in recent years. Legend has you committing suicide on at least three occasions; there's the persistent story of your death in a Mexican bus crash two decades ago; and my search for a confirmed photo and audio tapes was fruitless. How can I be sure that you're truly Castaneda and not a Carlos impersonator from Vegas? Have you got any distinguishing birthmarks? Carlos Castaneda: None! Just my agent vouches for me. That's his job. But you are free to ask me your questions and shine a bright light in my eyes and keep me here all night -- like in the old movies. You're known for being unknown. Why have you agreed to talk now, after declining interviews for so many years? Because I'm at the end of the trail that started over thirty years ago. As a young anthropologist, I went to the Southwest to collect information, to do fieldwork on the medicinal plants used by the Indians of the area. I intended to write an article, go on to graduate school, become a professional in my field. I hadn't the slightest interest in meeting a weird man like don Juan. How exactly did your paths cross? I was waiting for the bus at the Greyhound station in Nogales, Arizona, talking with an anthropologist who had been my guide and helper in my survey. My colleague leaned over and pointed to a white-haired old Indian across the room -- "Psst, over there, don't let him see you looking" -- and said he was an expert about peyote and medicinal plants. That was all I needed to hear. I put on my best airs and sauntered over to this man, who was known as don Juan, and told him I myself was an authority about peyote. I said that it might be worth his while to have lunch and talk with me -- or something unbearably arrogant to that effect. The old power-lunch ploy. But you weren't really much of an authority, were you? I knew next to nothing about peyote! But I continued rattling on -- boasting about my knowledge, intending to impress him. I remember that he just looked at me and nodded occasionally, without saying a word. My pretensions melted in the heat of that day. I was stunned at being silenced. There I stood in the abyss, until don Juan saw that his bus had come. He said good- bye, with the slightest wave of his hand. I felt like an arrogant imbecile, and that was the end. Also the beginning. Yes, that's when everything started. I learned that don Juan was known as a brujo, which means, in English, medicine man, curer, sorcerer. It became my task to discover where he lived. You know, I was very good at doing that, and I did. I found out, and I came to see him one day. We took a liking to each other and soon became good friends. You felt like a moron in this man's presence, but you were eager to seek him out? The way don Juan had looked at me there in the bus station was exceptional -- an unprecedented event in my life. There was something remarkable about his eyes, which seemed to shine with a light all their own. You see, we are -- unfortunately we don't want to accept this, but we are apes, anthropoids, simians. There's a primary knowledge that we all carry, directly connected with the two-million-year-old person at the root of our brain. And we do our best to suppress it, which makes us obese, cardiac, cancer-prone. It was on that archaic level that I was tackled by don Juan's gaze, despite my annoyance and irritation that he had seen through my pretense to expertise in the bus station. Eventually you became don Juan's apprentice, and he your mentor. What was the transition? A year passed before he took me into his confidence. We had gotten to know each other quite well, when one day don Juan turned to me and said he held a certain knowledge that he had learned from an unnamed benefactor, who had led him through a kind of training. He used this word "knowledge" more often than "sorcery," but for him they were one and the same. Don Juan said he had chosen me to serve as his apprentice, but that I must be prepared for a long and difficult road. I had no idea how astonishingly strange the road would be. That's a consistent thread of your books -- your struggle to make sense of a "separate reality" where gnats stand a hundred feet tall, where human heads turn into crows, where the same leaf falls four times, where sorcerers conjure cars to disappear in broad daylight. A good stage hypnotist can produce astonishing effects. Is it possible that's what don Juan was up to? Did he trick you? It's possible. What he did was teach me that there's much more to the world than we usually acknowledge -- that our normal expectations about reality are created by social consensus, which is itself a trick. We're taught to see and understand the world through a socialization process that, when working correctly, convinces us that the interpretations we agree upon define the limits of the real world. Don Juan interrupted this process in my life by demonstrating that we have the capacity to enter into other worlds that are constant and independent of our highly conditioned awareness. Sorcery involves reprogramming our capacities to perceive realms as real, unique, absolute, and engulfing as our daily so-called mundane world. Don Juan is always trying to get you to put your explanations of reality and your assumptions about what's possible inside brackets, so you can see how arbitrary they are. Contemporary philosophers would call this "deconstructing" reality. Don Juan had a visceral understanding of the way language works as a system unto itself -- the way it generates pictures of reality that we believe, mistakenly, to reveal the "true" nature of things. His teachings were like a club beating my thick head until I saw that my precious view was actually a construction, woven of all kinds of fixated interpretations, which I used to defend myself against pure wondering perception. There's a contradiction in there, somewhere. On the one hand, don Juan desocialized you, by teaching you to see without preconceptions. Yet it sounds like he then resocialized you by enrolling you in a new set of meanings, simply giving you a different interpretation, a new spin on reality -- albeit a "magical" one. That's something don Juan and I argued about all the time. He said in effect that he was despinning me and I maintained he was respinning me. By teaching me sorcery he presented a new lens, a new language, and a new way of seeing and being in the world. I was caught between my previous certainty about the world and a new description, sorcery, and forced to hold the old and the new together. I felt completely stalled, like a car slipping its transmission. Don Juan was delighted. He said this meant I was slipping between descriptions of reality -- between my old and new views. Eventually I saw that all my prior assumptions were based on viewing the world as something from which I was essentially alienated. That day when I encountered don Juan in the bus station, I was the ideal academic, triumphantly estranged, conniving to prove my nonexistent expertise concerning psychotropic plants. Ironically, it was don Juan who later introduced you to "Mescalito," the green-skinned spirit of peyote. Don Juan introduced me to psychotropic plants in the middle period of my apprenticeship, because I was so stupid and so cocky, which of course I considered evidence of sophistication. I held to my conventional description of the world with incredible vengeance, convinced it was the only truth. Peyote served to exaggerate the subtle contradictions within my interpretative gloss, and this helped me cut through the typical Western stance of seeing a world out there and talking to myself about it. But the psychotropic approach had its costs -- physical and emotional exhaustion. It took months for me to come fully around. If you could do it over again, would you "just say no"? My path has been my path. Don Juan always told me, "Make a gesture." A gesture is nothing more than a deliberate act undertaken for the power that comes from making a decision. Ultimately, the value of entering a nonordinary state, as you do with peyote or other psychotropic plants, is to exact what you need in order to embrace the stupendous character of ordinary reality. You see, the path of the heart is not a road of incessant introspection or mystical flight, but a way of engaging the joys and sorrows of the world. This world, where each one of us is related at molecular levels to every other wondrous and dynamic manifestation of being -- this world is the warrior's true hunting ground. Your friend don Juan teaches what is, how to know what is, and how to live in accord with what is -- ontology, epistemology, and ethics. Which leads many to say he's too good to be true, that you created him from scratch as an allegorical instrument of wise instruction. The notion that I concocted a person like don Juan is preposterous. I'm a product of a European intellectual tradition to which a character like don Juan is alien. The actual facts are stranger: I'm a reporter. My books are accounts of an outlandish phenomenon that forced me to make fundamental changes in my life in order to meet the phenomenon on its own terms. Some of your critics grow quite livid in their contention that Juan Matus sometimes speaks more like an Oxford don than a don Indian. Then there's the fact that he traveled widely and acquired his knowledge from sources not limited to his Yaqui roots. Permit me to make a confession: I take much delight in the idea that don Juan may not be the "best" don Juan. It's probably true that I'm not the best Carlos Castaneda, either. Years ago I met the perfect Castaneda at a party in Sausalito, quite by accident. There, in the middle of the patio, was the most handsome man, tall, blond, blue-eyed, beautiful, barefoot. It was the early '70s. He was signing books, and the owner of the house said to me, "I'd like you to meet Carlos Castaneda." He was impersonating Carlos Castaneda, with an impressive coterie of beautiful women all around him. I said, "I am very pleased to meet you, Mister Castaneda." He responded, "Doctor Castaneda." He was doing a very good job. I thought, He presents a good way to be Castaneda, the ideal Castaneda, with all the benefits that go with the position. But time passes, and I'm still the Castaneda that I am, not very well suited to play the Hollywood version. Nor is don Juan. Speaking of confessions: Did you ever contemplate downplaying the eccentricity of your teacher and presenting him as a more conventional character, to make him a better vehicle for his teachings? I never considered such an approach. Smoothing rough edges to advance an agreeable plot is the luxury of the novelist. I'm not unfamiliar with the spoken and unspoken canon of science: "Be objective." Sometimes don Juan spoke in goofy slang -- the equivalent of "By golly!" and "Don't lose your marbles!" are two of his favorites. On other occasions he showed a superb command of Spanish, which permitted me to obtain detailed explanations of the intricate meanings of his system of beliefs and its underlying logic. To deliberately alter don Juan in my books so he would appear consistent and meet the expectations of this or that audience would bring "subjectivity" to my work, a demon that, according to my best critics, has no place in ethnographic writing. Skeptics have challenged you to exorcise that demon once and for all, by presenting for public inspection the field notes based on your encounters with don Juan. Wouldn't that alleviate doubts about whether your writings are genuine ethnography or disguised fiction? Whose doubts? Fellow anthropologists, for starters. The Senate Watergate Committee. Geraldo Rivera . . . There was a time when requests to see my field notes seemed unencumbered by hidden ideological agendas. After The Teachings of Don Juan appeared I received a thoughtful letter from Gordon Wasson, the founder of the science of ethnomycology, the study of human uses of mushrooms and other fungi. Gordon and Valentina Wasson had discovered the existence of still-active shamanic mushroom cults in the mountains near Oaxaca, Mexico. Dr. Wasson asked me to clarify certain aspects of don Juan's use of psychotropic mushrooms. I gladly sent him several pages of field notes relevant to his area of interest, and met with him twice. Subsequently he referred to me as an "honest and serious young man," or words to that effect. Even so, some critics proceeded to assert that any field notes produced by Castaneda must be assumed to be forgeries created after the fact. At that point I realized there was no way I could satisfy people whose minds were made up without recourse to whatever documentation I might provide. Actually, it was liberating to abandon the enterprise of public relations -- intrinsically a violation of my nature -- and return to my fieldwork with don Juan. You must be familiar with the claim that your work has fostered the trivialization of indigenous spiritual traditions. The argument goes like this: A despicable cadre of non-Indian wannabees, commercial profiteers, and self-styled shamans has read your books and found them inspiring. How do you plead? I didn't set out to write an exhaustive account of indigenous spirituality, so it's a fallacy to judge my work by that criterion. My books are instead a chronicle of specific experiences and observations in a particular context, reported to the best of my ability. But I do plead guilty to knowingly committing willful acts of ethnography, which is none other than translating cultural experience into writing. Ethnography is always writing. That's what I do. What happens when spoken words become written words, and written words become published words, and published words get ingested through acts of reading by persons unknown to the author? Let's agree to call it complex. I've been extremely fortunate to have a wide and diverse readership throughout much of the world. The entry requirement is the same everywhere: literacy. Beyond this, I'm responsible for the virtues and vices of my anonymous audience in the same way that every writer of any time and place is so responsible. The main thing is, I stand by my work. What does don Juan think of your global notoriety? Nada. Not a thing. I learned this definitively when I took him a copy of The Teachings of Don Juan. I said, "It's about you, don Juan." He surveyed the book -- up and down, back and front, flipped through the pages like a deck of cards -- then handed it back. I was crestfallen and told him I wanted him to have it as a gift. Don Juan said he had b