Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan’s Teachings

M: A friend and professor at UCLA, was on Carlos’ doctoral committee. One afternoon we were discussing the metaphysics that I had learned as noted above, and he loaned me Carlos’ doctoral dissertation. That lead me to read his series books. For the most part, I had already experienced much of what Don Juan Matus (DJM) was attempting to teach Carlos, so in general I was “impatient” with Carlos’ writing and style. The attribute to ‘know’ purely through perception is an attribute in my family (by way of further introduction) and for those like myself, being in a crowd is like having a thousand radio stations, the sentience of others, all blaring at the same time. Anyway, attributes like that can be a benefit or a burden, and my efforts with the psychologist-group noted above went a long way to retraining for myself. My ancestor, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca (my mother was from Seville, Spain – a haughty Andalucian, and like my ancestor, my grandparents came from Seville and Granada). My mother married an American in the early 30’s overseas.

M: There have been many books written about Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, and one full length docu-drama (once I rented it from Blockbuster) but it’s in Spanish and although subtitled, the subtitles are awful. Cabeza de Vaca was a member of the court of Carlos Primero (Charles the First) who followed Ferdinand and Isabella, and was simultaneously King of Spain, Lord of the Indies, and Emperor of (snip). Cabeza de Vaca was his Treasurer to the new world expeditions, and was shipwrecked off of what is now Florida in about 1515 or so. He was taken prisoner by an native tribe (The Iguase) and trained in “sorcery” because he was seen as having natural abilities. The documentation of his life includes “miracles” of what could be called biblical proportions, which of course didn’t play well in the Catholic land of Spain. After the Iguase released him, fully trained, he wandered on foot for nine years across the southeast and into what is now Belieze and central Mexico, where the ancestors of the Maya and Toltecs ranged, but he was at that time “more able” than the reports represented by Carlos about the “old ones” and their abilities. In about 1526 he returned to Spain and documented his journey in a book titled “Nafragios” and he campaigned for the freedom of the natives that the Spanish military were enslaving.

M: Short story, but very well documented, and perhaps it explains to you a bit more of myself.

R: “So, here are steps one, two, and three, you’ve got to do those first.” “Please tell me step four.” “No, you have to do steps one, two, and three first.” “Screw that, I’ll find someone else to tell me step four.”

M: On the airplane, I was reading a book that’s a great deal like a condensation of CC/DJM, but from another source. The author gives classes it seems. Like CC, she reports her experiences and perceptions and how they changed her life working with another teacher, but after each discussion/report of her experiences she has each chapter end with “workshop” – like questions, something that I’ve seen in technical training texts as an approach. Ah, if it were only that simple!

M: I got a sad “kick” out of another’s “correspondence course … to become a sorcerer” (paraphrasing) and I find it very sad, in the way that the “steps” you note above impress you.

M: I don’t know of much in life that can be that regimented, other than simple structural items – like how to nail a board to another perhaps. There can be no “got to’s” except driven by one’s own imperatives. Learning those imperatives, then placing into practice true self-impeccability, is the task and the challenge as defined by each of us as we operate into the realities that we form and perceive.

M: I have often wished that I could reach down and grab hold of a person’s energy, drag them out of their body point blank, and expose them to the universe as it really is. On two separate occasions, I became sufficiently impatient to actually do that – but – the downside is that if a person is not “really” prepared for what would happen, it takes a great deal of after-the-fact fill-in to make up for the shock that happens to them in that sort of “catapult”.

M: Professionally, my background is to wander about in the planet and teach others how electrons move around and work in current electronic systems, and for that matter have been credited with several physics discoveries about how electrostatic field and wave boundaries function and displace. My task through my life has been to move beyond ‘religion’ into understanding why I know and feel as I do and have forever (seeing passenger ships sink before the event, seeing airplane crash in real time – but miles away) and to make some rational attempt at integrating myself into society and to attempt explanation in terms of what science does NOT know but has some early indications of. There is an advanced physics model, in the subset form of quantum mechanics called quantum electrodynamics, that could be projected to explain “consciousness,” for example, and even how consciousness can continue into infinity since there are models of wave behaviour that already explain that possibility. Roger Penrose, of Oxford (who has shared awards with Steven Hawking for describing the ways of the universe) I have learned has similar ideas.

M: Just to be certain that it’s clear, though: the quest has been very personal as it must; nothing is a coincidence; the impetus for my quest was to understand myself, and learning of ancestral background assisted in that acceptance and understanding – to a limited point.

R: ** I mean, except for volitional dreaming, I haven’t know that anything else was possible, I’ve just sensed that it must be and hoped it was. And the very wild dreams I’ve had, well, I could always just call them dreams, even the most recent ones where I finally learned that my head wasn’t being rubbed when I woke up one morning alone 20 some years ago and the hand I was holding wasn’t me holding it in similar experiences. I’d had these experiences and thought that perhaps it was an “ally,” so, true to the books, I’d held the hand tightly where, without having read the books, I would have let it go, but finally I did get a bit scared and let it go. For years I’d thought that that was my physical body doing that. Then recently I had a series of such experiences in the early morning and discovered that the me having the experience was in only, almost, the same position as my physical body but was not my physical body. I’d never made that distinction before and all these years had “know” that I woke up once having my head rubbed by someone not there, etc. Very strange stuff, but, as I’ve said, all able to be written off, especially now that I’ve noticed the extra me in those once thought to be physical me’s, as dreaming.

M: Just as we can assume and develop anything (positive or negative) we are free to go into self-denial, even self-denigration, and write off anything to the extent that nothing will be accomplished for ourselves. We tend to learn in fits and starts on occasion, and it requires a true commit to ‘the way’. One element has been really profound: the more I have evolved the further down the crater becomes, if I slip off ‘the way’.

R: ** So back to you, I can imagine that you were, at least a little bit, hoping to find someone out there in the world who could relate to being able to go into the second attention and what you found was another wanna-be. Well, at least this wanna-be has long thrived on the notion don Juan instilled of doing it all on my own.

M: Ah, well, ultimately you have to do this on your own. If you were to be catapulted beyond your abilities, it would be simultaneously enlightening, and disruptive to the point were it could take years to recover. If I, or another, were to reach into your sentience, catapult it out, and show you by demonstration what ‘freedom’ is r e a l l y about, you would long for the feeling in an obsessive manner – no question. If I could somehow bottle this and market it as a feeling of what whole existence is truly in a new form of reality (but reality nonetheless), I’d have the planet addicted to it in a short time. Alas, it cannot be. We cannot achieve what we don’t evolve ourselves toward. On one occasion in particular, one of the apprentices, a woman, aged about 46, and her husband (aged about 46), wanted me to interact with their daughter so that she could understand what had happened to her parents in their transformation. Their daughter was about 26 at the time, and their son (although younger) wasn’t resistant and has now learned ‘the way’ assisted by his parents. Anyway, the apprentices, husband and wife, orchestrated an evening for me to work with them and their daughter. Although the two parents and self immediately bonded our cocoons immediately together (side note: this apprentice, the woman, and self could ‘become one’ very early in our relationship – it took only two evenings together. The husband, although he could ‘see’ our cocoons soon in his development, couldn’t participate because he couldn’t risk the privacy violation that bonding requires. I gave the husband huge credit for ‘facilitating’ what his wife and I could do together, and not being jealous, because bonding together our sentient energy consciousness evacuates privacy and is more intimate than sexual contact could be – back to the original point.) That evening, we couldn’t get their daughter ‘out’. She was hiding in her body. I, for once, decided to escalate and basically reach into their daughter and dragged her out in a catapult way. Their daughter, screamed on this occurrence: “Mom!” You’re a huge sphere of bright gold,! Dad! you’re indigo blue!” WOW! What have you become?!”. Mission accomplished. The family had a lot to discuss that evening after that event, and it was time for me to leave. This ‘event’, and my decision to catapult the daughter, was facilitated because her parents – the natural source that predisposed her in her DNA – were already ‘able’ and it was responsible to catapult her into a new reality of what her parents had become.