TWO CONVERSATIONS WITH CARLOS CASTANEDA ON THE

TEACHINGS OF DON JUAN

By Jelena Galovic, Belgrade
Somehow at the same time when the Belgrade weekly NIN published an
article doubting the existence of don Juan (July 1984), Carlos Castaneda had
two encounters with the public in Mexico City. These meetings happened on
the occasion of his latest book on the teachings of don Juan published in the
United States under the title The Fire from Within. The appearance of Carlos
Castaneda in Mexico and his conversations with the audience had not been
announced or advertised, but in spite of this, the interest and enthusiasm of
all those intrigued by him were enormous. These meetings were not lectures
in the ordinary sense, but mostly his answers to many questions posed by
the audience on the teachings of don Juan, on Castaneda's books and his
personal experience. The purpose of his coming from Los Angeles to Mexico
City was to point out again to the world, and especially to the Mexicans, the
treasure and values they have, i.e. to the wisdom transmitted orally from a
nagual to an apprentice, of which the Mexicans are not generally aware.
Castaneda's presentation and explanations of the teachings of don
Juan were very straightforward, cogent and convincing. His demeanor and
words didn't betray anything of the fame, which surrounds him. For
Castaneda, writing books has never been a means to achieve fame and
popularity; fame came about independently of his will. The only purpose of
his writing has been a part of his own path to perfection, the mission with
which don Juan agreed. At these two meetings Castaneda said that his
present work with don Juan has taken him to a certain point of development.
He himself does not know what his next step will be, he only feels with
certainty that he must pass don Juan’s teachings on to others, he is not sure
in what way he will do it. Perhaps he will pass it on working with a group,
and in that case this book will be his last.
At these meetings Castaneda began his presentation by explaining why
he refused to use the microphone and why he did not allow to be
photographed. His refusal to speak through the microphone he explained by
saying that on that occasion he was not using his own energy, of which he
had not sufficient amount, but that he was using the energy borrowed from
don Juan which is incompatible with electromagnetic properties of the
device. He was adamantine in refusing to use the microphone in spite of the
protests from the audience because many of the people present could not
hear him properly in the far ends of the room. He likewise refused to be
photographed quoting don Juan’s stand on that question:
“When we are being photographed, don Juan used to say to me, large
quantities of energy are consumed and wasted”.
“To my objection that nothing happened to me although I had been
photographed many times, don Juan replied:
 “That’s exactly why you are such a nincompoop!”
“Since I haven’t been convinced to the contrary, Castaneda went on, I
respect his advice and since then I haven’t allowed to be photographed.”
Resuming his discussion on his books, Castaneda explained that he
had written in them only what don Juan had conveyed to him in terms of the
premises implying a whole system of the complex path to perfection leading
to absolute freedom. Simply and with modesty he said of himself that until
he met don Juan he was an "idiot", blind and ignorant, in spite of his brilliant
studies in anthropology.
"In my books I haven’t made up anything nor it is my literary
imagination, because I have no talent for creativity and fictional inventions.
I simply lack imagination. The outstanding ideas and the whole system of
man’s personal perfection, described in my books, belong to don Juan. My
role has been to bring them to the light of day and make them accessible to
people, so that they too are able to find the lost path to freedom, to report
on my own experience and that of don Juan’s other apprentices which we
have subsequently exchanged among ourselves and tried to complete."
Some members of the official scientific community who are
insufficiently acquainted with Mexican shamanism and tradition have been
highly critical of Castaneda’s works.
"They are waiting for me to get angry, said Castaneda, but don Juan’s
most important message and the cornerstone of his teachings is that one
should overcome negative emotions and properly distribute energy, which is
achieved through the erasure of personal self-importance and absence of
anger. The fact is that anger consumes the energy, which enables us to
work on ourselves and to achieve the second attention. A great nagual, as
was don Juan, sees people as an inexhaustible field of energy with unheard-
of and incomprehensible possibilities and potentialities. He saw man as a
luminous egg, but for anybody to see it as such, it takes energy that we
waste irreparably by getting angry because somebody has hurt our pride
and our self-importance.
“If I got angry every time people say that I am short or ugly,
Castaneda went on, I would waste so much energy that I couldn’t be able to
do anything else but to indulge in being angry and thus would have no
energy left for dreaming. Therefore, you should start by not getting angry”,
-- and then, addressing to an elderly lady from the audience, he said:
“Don’t get angry even if you are told that you are a useless old
woman! We, don Juan’s apprentices, are not enlightened, but we have lost
the feeling of self-importance and we don’t get angry even with the
criticisms prying into unimportant details of our private lives.”
Asked to say something on don Juan’s end and on the work of his
apprentices after don Juan’s departure, Castaneda said:
 “After he was consumed by the fire from within, don Juan went to
another plane in 1974. For the leader of our group he left a woman-warrior,
Florinda. She is an unheard-of tyrant, torturing and humiliating us and thus
destroying the remnants of our self-importance. For this purpose she
assigned for me two exercises. The first, to enter the office of an important
businessman, Smith, and answer a telephone call for him. Until that moment
my moral beliefs would not have allowed me to do this, but having been
forced to commit such an act, I have destroyed the false image of myself as
a good, honest and decent man. The other test was even harder. Thinking
that the name Carlos Castaneda has become too well-known and important,
Florinda sent me to work as waiter in an inn in a USA town bordering with
Mexico, in the area where Mexicans are hated very much. I worked there
under the name of Perez, one of the commonest Mexican surnames. I was
doubly devalued by this new name: first, this Mexican surname made me to
be detested by the Americans; and second, by having a surname possessed
by every other Mexican, I fell into anonymity. I was working hard for about a
year, preparing food and serving the customers, who even threw fried eggs
into my face. When I complained to Florinda that people were throwing
plates at me, she said quietly and curtly:
“Well, then duck your head, so that they may miss you!”
“When I started this second test, Florinda told me that she didn’t know
how long it was going to take, one year, maybe two or even ten years. After
a year and a half, she suddenly appeared, told me that the work was
finished and that we were going back immediately.
»I can't leave just like that, I said to her. I have to take leave of my
friends, to give notice to my boss and to settle accounts with him.«
»Nobody will notice that you are not there, she retorted. Do you think
that you are so important that they can't do without you?
To numerous questions on the nature of the nagual and on how he
chooses his apprentices, Castaneda said:
»The Spanish conquest of America has completely changed the
naguals and their teachings. Before the advent of the Spanish, they had
been working on the encounter with the ''unknown'', trying to create the
inner fire and melt with the cosmic energy. The arrival of the Spaniards
introduced a new element: they had to face the conquerors who were
tyrants and for whom they were no match. A majority of them succumbed,
they were not able to endure the test, because it proved much harder to use
the tyrants for accummulation of personal power than to face the unknown
and master the forces of nature. The new generation of naguals that has
emerged after the Spanish conquest, has changed the system of teaching:
the first thing to do was to face the tyrants and their harsh character. By
enduring the tyrant such as he is, a warrior learns patience, forbearance; he
becomes invincible and erases his self-importance. Only when he has
achieved all this can he face the unknown. Thus the Spanish invaders
helped in the creation of a new, invincible nagual, man of knowledge, and
warrior to whom everything is a challenge.
“The new naguals, of which don Juan was one, actually have no
apprentices. I lived long in the conviction that I was don Juan’s disciple, and
only at the end of our joint work I realized that he was using me to “focus”
himself. For all my stupidities and nonsense, because I was a “moron”,
difficult for myself and others, don Juan never lost his patience, perfecting
thereby his own impeccability. Thus, early on in the beginning of our joint
work, one day don Juan and I set out to the mountains in search of medicinal
plants. He was walking lightly and quickly, like a young man, while I was
suffocating and losing breath, because I was a heavy smoker at that time.
Having run out of cigarettes, I became nervous and was pestering him
demanding from him to divert to the nearest village to buy cigarettes. Don
Juan kept pacifying me by claiming that we were in immediate vicinity of a
village where I would be able to buy some cigarettes. For fifteen days we
were walking through the mountains and when we finally reached a village I
had no more desire to smoke or buy tobacco. That was the way don Juan
made me give up smoking, without telling me once to relinquish it.
“I am not a nagual, Castaneda went on. Why should I boast of
something I am not? I have met naguals, and don Juan was one of them. He
had for me a charted path and a task, but I refused to carry it through. Since
I am not an Indian like him, my path cannot be the same as his. I still have
many things to do and from now on I will be going my own way, although
under the guidance of Florinda. Not even I myself know what is in store for
me on that way; the only thing I know for sure is that I have to pass on to
others the knowledge don Juan left to us. This knowledge is accessible to
everyone through my books; they should be read carefully and the practices
described therein should be applied in one’s personal life. However, not
everybody will experience what I have experienced, because people are
different, but everyone should start by saving energy which is lost through
giving exaggerated importance to one’s personality.”
In discussing the disciple-master relationship, one of the questions put
to Castaneda was:
“How does a nagual choose his apprentices?”
Since Castaneda remained silent, someone from the audience replied
that it is destiny that determines this relationship. To this Castaneda lively
reacted, explaining that don Juan’s whole teachings were a struggle against
destiny and how to overcome it.
“It can be said that initially it is destiny that determines whether
someone will embark on to the road to perfection, but in the course of
further study everything depends on the apprentice, on his strength, will
and perseverance. If someone succumbs on this road due to difficulties or
his own weaknesses, he can justify that by invoking destiny, while it is only
due to his weakness. The apprentice must not depend on his master’s
approval or disapproval; nobody can tell him what is his next step, the
disciple has to feel it and find in himself. It is false and preposterous the way
some disciples are subjected to their gurus who tell them even who they are
going to marry. The way of don Juan is not the way of dependence, either on
the master or on destiny, but his way is one of personal responsibility. By
applying in everyday life some of the tenets of don Juan’s teachings, even
my books can, for a time, substitute a teacher. Then they can stop being
merely interesting and become an instigation to action.”
The last statement of Castaneda caused many people from the
audience to ask him to form a group with which to work. At that moment he
had to refuse this, because, as he said, he had several unsuccessful
attempts in this regard.
“Many, especially the young, come to the group believing that the
doors of perception will open instantly to them as soon as they have
ingested a couple of hallucinogenic mushrooms or cacti.
“New arrangement of energy which is saved through the control of
negative emotions, without its being wasted on anger or sulkiness,
Castaneda went on, must be performed every day, step by step. That’s how
we progress. In the beginning we still get angry sometimes, but gradually
we learn how to refrain from anger. The new way of living, without anger,
can’t be achieved overnight, that’s why we have to pass through an
intermediate period in which we try to dissipate our anger and forget the
insult.
“One day, at the very beginning of our companionship, don Juan and I
set out to the mountains. On the way, he suddenly asked me:
What do you think, are we equal?
Since don Juan was just one of so many humble Indians I knew, I said
to him, patting him reassuringly on the shoulder:
“Of course we are equal!”
Don Juan first remained silent, then after some time he answered:
“No, we aren’t. You are a nobody. You are too full of self-importance,
and according to the values of the nagual you haven’t even started on his
way. I am, however, an impeccable warrior with perfect forbearance and
control, whose life is so ordered that nobody can disturb it.”
“These words of don Juan made me so angry that I sat down quite a
distance from him, without uttering a single word for several hours. Then I
suddenly felt fear, I was afraid that he might part leaving me all alone in the
mountains from which I wouldn’t know how to find the way back. That time
fear taught me how to dispel my anger and that was the first step to a new
way of living.”
Stopping one’s internal dialog is also related to the feeling of self-
importance:
“For what does a man keep talking about, but about himself and
always himself, don Juan would say to me. At the time when I was still
making sculptures, he suggested to me that I should make a figure of man
and put a magnetic tape into his mouth that would repeat incessantly “me,
me, me”.
“Erasing self-importance is the first step in the proper arrangement of
energy. Without savings in energy, further work on development of the
second attention can’t continue. One of the exercises, Castaneda went on to
say, for accumulation of this power is dreaming which don Juan taught us.
The exercise consists of sustaining the image of a dream, any one that
appears, and the dreamer then tried to sustain it and prolong with volitional
effort. In the beginning each apprentice has his own dream image, but when
the dreamers have sufficiently practiced, the whole group dreams the same
image. Dreaming develops the second attention, which every man
possesses, but few people use.”
To the question on the similarities of don Juan’s teachings with other
practices of Mexican shamanism, Castaneda pointed out that knowledge
about these concepts is without major significance if based only on
intellectual and theoretical information. By way of an example, he
mentioned his own professor of anthropology to whom, although he spent
twenty-five years with Yaqui Indians, this knowledge in terms of inner
development was not of great value, because when he grew old his abilities
and powers declined so much that he died powerless, as most people do. In
contrast to this purely theoretical knowledge of Mexican shamanism, don
Juan’s teachings are intended for a practical purpose and they can be, if
applied in everyday life, of greater use than enormous erudition in matters
of Indian customs.
Castaneda refused to discuss similarities between don Juan’s
teachings and some other esoteric teachings, because such talks, in his
opinion, only lead to theoretical intellectualization.
“I haven’t come here to compare with you various teachings, but to
show the Mexicans the way which is within the grasp of their hands.”
While he was explaining how one should conquer one’s own anger, a
girl from the audience stood up and said:
“What you are talking about is already contained in the teachings of
Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.”
Castaneda’s reply was silence, and then he turned to the audience,
saying:
 “Let’s continue with questions.”
A young sociologist from the audience, well versed in Mexican
shamanism which he specifically studied with the Huichol Indians, was trying
to provoke Castaneda with many questions on the use of peyote and on
Huichol mara’akames. All these questions were answered with examples of
shamanistic practice. He explained that hallucinogenic substances were
necessary for some insensitive people, such as he was himself, as a means
helping them to move the point of assemblage between individual and
cosmic energy. Once this has been achieved, no additional means was
necessary, because this assemblage is attained in a different way. The only
thing necessary is to save energy in order to move the assemblage point,
which enables man to see a separate reality.
Since among the audience there were several members of Mexican
Concheros groups, when asked to say what he thought of their Aztec
dances, Castaneda said:
“Their dances, songs and music are the most perfect way in which a
man can move the point of assemblage between individual and cosmic
energy. If the Concheros were only aware during their dancing of their
ability to move the assemblage point, they would fly into the air together
with their guaraches. But most of the dancers are not aware of this. A few
years ago I enthusiastically accepted the idea of joining a group of Conchero
dancers, but I saw that even some of their leaders were full of the feelings
of self-importance and I realized that I would be wasting my time.”
He said that don Juan himself had pointed out to him the Aztec
dancing, explaining that he lacked the energy of dance.
“I was contemplating to write about Mexican Concheros in my latest
book. For now, I have given up the idea, because I noticed the vanity of
some Concheros, which is incompatible with basic premises of don Juan’s
teachings. Recently I myself have entered into a crisis with energy, and now
a Chinese is teaching me how to replenish it.
“The teachings of don Juan are not the only way of the Red race, as
claimed by some Aztec dancers. Don Juan had disciples from various parts
of the world, and therefore this knowledge belongs to everyone, regardless
of one’s race or nationality.”
Castaneda further discussed other ways of assembling individual and
cosmic energy. One of the techniques is a blow in the place where people’s
assemblage point is located on the luminous egg. La Gorda knows how to
deliver this blow perfectly, but if someone does not know how to do it, this
blow can be lethal:
“La Gorda is an exceptional being, an Indian from the Mazatec tribe”,
was Castaneda’s answer to the request to say something more about her.
She can break from the first attention at any moment, and with the help of
the second attention she can become invisible whenever she likes to.
“During one of my earlier periods of energy crises, don Juan
recommended to me sexual continence. In his words people who are born
from a “bored marriage” haven’t got sufficient energy, so they need
additional resources. A “bored marriage” is one in which there is no genuine
relationship between the man and the woman, and consequently there is no
attraction or “fire”, and thus after years of boredom, a child is born, such as
I was, bored and without energy. Any differences among the people start
with the amounts of energy they get when they are born. But you,
Castaneda went on, addressing to the members of the audience, you who
have plenty of energy, you need not use the means I used, neither sexual
continence nor drugs.”
As an example of a man with an abundance of energy he mentioned
don Juan’s benefactor, the nagual Julian:
“He had so much energy that he traveled from one end of the earth to
another, from America to Asia, transmitting the knowledge to those who
were ready for it.”
There were some questions which Castaneda, for reasons unknown,
did not want to answer in detail.
Such were the questions on the double man and woman, on the diet
and food of brujos, on the allies. The question on the double man and
woman he deemed too esoteric; concerning the brujos’ food he said that he
had no special diet, because everything that he eats is transmuted into
energy:
“During the difficult exercises of attention we had to eat large
quantities of food to make up for the lost energy, without putting on a gram
of weight.”
As for the allies, he explained that they nowadays, in the process of
the emergence of the new naguals, have no major importance. They belong
in the tradition of the ancient Toltec warriors, which is radically different
from the practice of today. Some Toltec warriors knew about the existence
of the hole in the luminous egg, somewhere in the region of man’s belly,
where death is lurking. They also knew how to seal it and thus they became
immortal, alive even today as “death deifiers”.
“Although they possess great knowledge and power, they do not help
people to find the way of liberation, neither they themselves go to the other
plane, but chose to remain on the earth harmfully influencing people. They
gather around the pyramids which radiate their negative energy. To avoid
meeting them one should avoid these dangerous places. Don Juan thought
of himself as an inheritor of the Toltec tradition. I think that the origin of this
tradition is Asia. At the Anthropological Museum in Mexico City there is a
statue of a man in the posture of a “horse”, one of the postures from the
Eastern martial arts, which the archeologists have named “The Hunchback
Boy”, but the traits of this statue are definitely Chinese.”
The points and holes mentioned by Castaneda do not correspond to
Hindu chakras or to the Chinese acupuncture points. While the latter ones
are located within the confines of the human body, the major energy
centers, according to don Juan, are on the luminous egg, i.e. around the
human body.
Don Juan used to massage his liver by movements of the hand at
some distance from his body, but these movements touched his luminous
egg.
Answering a question on don Juan’s attitude towards everyday
matters, such as houses and cars, Castaneda said:
“If you have a car and a house, it’s good; if you don’t have them, even
better. Don Juan used to say that the world we perceive is not the only world
there is, but only a part of reality. Those who don’t see due to their lack of
energy consider this world to be the only reality. I was myself like that
before I met don Juan. I used to get up always at the same time, used to do
always the same things and days for me had no importance. Don Juan made
me break the learned predictability and taught me how to experience the
unexpected. One should disrupt one’s everyday habits in the most
imaginable ways. A different arrangement of energy means a new way of
life with great possibilities.”
Asked to comment on the relation between psychoanalysis and don
Juan’s teachings, Castaneda told about an incident which happened to him a
couple of years ago. At a similar promotion, somebody had asked him
whether don Juan was his unconscious.
”In the teachings of don Juan there is no room for Sigmund Freud.”
With this answer Castaneda made it known once more that one should
not look for connections which were not there and that don Juan’s teachings
should be viewed as an independent whole.
In addition to the testimonies of Carlos Castaneda on the existence of
don Juan, there are some more people in Mexico who were in contact with
him. Several members of a group of Mexican Concheros saw him at the
healer Magdalena’s who was leading the healers of Mexico and who is
invoked after her death by the Concheros as the “conquering soul” during
their veladas. She treated don Juan during the last years of his life in this
world and then she introduced him to Andres Segura, one of the outstanding
living shamans and the leader of a group of Concheros. On that occasion
don Juan pointed Castaneda to his future teacher, Andres Segura.
Castaneda has met Segura several times, in the presence of some members
of the Segura group.