The Freedom of Don Juan
A Conversation with CARLOS CASTANEDA
by Graciela Corvalan (translation from Spanish by Alina Rivero)

Q. For some time we have not heard much from Carlos Castaneda. Where has he been? What has he been up to?
A. I had a task to complete and a responsibility I could not refuse. That's what I've been doing for the last year. Don Genaro and don Juan are no longer with us. It is the Toltec Woman who directs us. She sent la Gorda and me out to work. I took the name Jose Luis Cordoba, but everyone knew me as Joe Cordoba. La Gorda worked with me that whole year, and for more than a year we posed as Joe Cordoba and his wife.

We found work at a truck stop, and I had to start at 5 a.m. every morning. La Gorda worked long hours too. At the end of the year, the Toltec Woman told us it was time to move on. We had been such good employees the boss didn't want to let us go - the truth is we worked very hard. Day and night.

At one time la Gorda and I found employment as a maid and butler. We ended up being kicked out without pay and worse - in order to protect themselves in case we should protest - they called the police. We landed in jail for nothing at all.

You know, now I really am Joe Cordoba, and this is quite wonderful because I can't fall any lower. This is all I am.

Q. What did you learn from this task?

A. The Toltec Woman teaches us through situations. The best way to learn, I think, is to put ourselves in situations where we can discover we are nothing. The other path is that of personal pride. If we follow it, we spend our lives trying to figure out if someone will love us or not. According to the Toltec Woman, the best way is to begin by knowing that it doesn't matter.

Once we were visiting a friend when some journalists from the New York Times came looking for Carlos Castaneda. La Gorda and I began to work in my friend's garden. We watched the newspeople go in and talk with my friend. When he came out to the garden, he yelled at us and insulted us in front of the newspeople. You see, he could yell out his heart's content at Joe Cordoba and his wife. Nobody tried to defend us. Who were we? Nobodies. Like so many other laborers-animals working under the hot sun.

The task taught us how to withstand hardship and the emotional impact of discrimination. Don Juan saw pride as a monster with 3,000 heads. No matter how many heads you cut off, there are always hundreds of others. We humans like to trick ourselves into believing we really are someone, something. The important thing is not to react. If you react, you are lost. You can't be offended at the tiger when it attacks you; you just step aside and let it pass.

Q. Some people who know you claim you work at your writing as laboriously as any serious novelist, sometimes 16 to 18 hours a day. Is working that hard part of your task?

A. I don't work at all. I simply copy the page that I see in my dreams. One doesn't create out of nothingness. It's absurd to think one can. My father once decided to be a great writer. He fixed up his study to correspond to a great writer's study. When the room had been completely remodeled, he set about to find the perfect desk for his perfect room. When he found the desk, he spent a lot of time finding the right chair to go with it. As he sat down to write, he discovered he had forgotten to purchase a proper cover for the desk top. Once he finally sat down and faced the blank page, he had no idea what to write about. That was my father.

He wanted to write the perfect sentence. He did not understand that we are only intermediaries. I see each page in my dreams. The measure of success of that page has to do with my ability to reproduce it faithfully. Creation is never a personal task.

Q. If don Juan is real, then, who is he?

A. He is a free man, whose spirit thirsts for freedom. He is a totality, an incredible presence; he is present as a whole in each moment we call "now." Don Juan is free from our basic perceptual prejudices. He can see. To give everything now is his way, his rule. There is no real explanation for this. It just is this way.

What is wonderful about don Juan is that, though ordinary people perceive him as being totally crazy, no one can perceive him as he really is. In this world, don Juan is impeccable and he knows how to go about unperceived. He offers the world a transient image -for an hour, a month, 60 years. No one could ever catch him unaware! He always knew that this world is only for a moment and that what comes afterwards. That's beautiful! Don Juan and don Genaro loved beauty intensely!

Don Juan's idea of time is very different from ours. That is probably why he could wait for Carlos Castaneda. What he taught me was that everything is transient. He tore through my perceptual prejudices until my whole system was shattered.

Q. You have spent a great deal of your time trying to "erase your past." Yet you have given interviews from time to time to promote your books. How do you reconcile your roles of writer and sorcerer's apprentice? When do you choose to communicate with the outside world and why?

A. Don Juan gave me the task of recording a tradition. He was the one who insisted I give conferences and interviews. He wanted me to promote the books. Afterwards he told me I had to stop because that kind of work was taking too much energy.

I have a friend in Los Angeles who gets all my mail. Whenever I come, I put all the mail in a box, swirl it around and pick out one letter. This is the only one I read and answer. It is the only one I should answer. In your case, I pulled your letter out. I had trouble finding you, but I had to. The Toltec Woman knew it, too.

Q. You have written about being a particularly difficult student of sorcery. Why did you have so much trouble?

A. I was very, very stubborn. I didn't want to learn. I fought the teaching and that is why don Juan had to use drugs with me. That's also why my liver's in shreds.

Don Juan had to trick me into learning. I had to teach my body new sensations so that it would learn in spite of me. La Gorda's body learned very quickly. No one who met la Gorda before can believe she is the same woman today. When I met her, she was an enormously fat woman, heavy and beaten by life. Now she is young, full of life and very attractive.

Q. You have mentioned the Toltecs often. What do you mean by the Toltecs? Are they a nation or a secret society? How many are there? Who are they?

A. The word "Toltec" has many meanings. One can speak of a Toltec in the same way one can say someone is a Democrat or a Republican. The word itself has no anthropological connotations. To be a Toltec means to know the mysteries of dreaming and the art of stalking. The Toltecs are those who keep alive a 5,000 year-old tradition.

Q. What is the Toltec system of knowledge?

A. Toltecs know that the idea of free will is absurd. A Toltec understands that common sense deceives us, that ordinary perception shows us only a fraction of the truth. There has to be more to life than just passing through, eating, and reproducing ourselves. So what does it all mean? Why do we live in routines? These are old questions, but the problem is we have never learned to see. We are conditioned to believe that everyday perception is the only real perception. The art of the sorcerer is to destroy this perceptual prejudice so that one can see past common sense.

Toltecs cannot waste time. I was one of those people who could not get along without friends. I couldn't even go to the movies by myself. Don Juan told me I would have to leave everything behind, including those friends with whom I had nothing in common. I resisted this.

One day, however, coming back to Los Angeles, I got out of the car a block away from home and made a telephone call. As usual, my house was full of people. I asked one of my friends to pack my bag and bring it to me. I told him he could divide the rest of my stuff among the group. They didn't pay attention to me, naturally, and took things thinking they were only borrowed. I didn't see them again for 12 years.

When I went back, I called them all and we got together for dinner. This was my way of thanking them for their friendship. Now they are all married and have children. But I had to thank them and close that phase of my life.

Toltecs find sex a terrible waste of time and energy. They lead an ascetic life which, from the world's point of view, is unacceptable and incredible.

Q. Do the Toltecs believe in the concept of love, earthly or divine?

A. I object to the sentimental overtones of that word. Romantic love is another of man's illusions. Life is war. Peace is an anomaly. Pacifism is a monstrous notion because human beings are beings of struggle.

Q. How can you say that the effort to save life is monstrous? What would you say to people like Gandhi who believe so strongly in pacifism?

A. Gandhi was never a pacifist! He was one of the greatest warriors in the history of mankind. What a warrior he was! Pacifism means giving up; pacifism is the attitude of those who have no goals in life, who choose to be complacent and hedonistic.

Without enemies, we are nothing. Having an enemy, living with the knowledge of adversity, is part of our human form. We have to free ourselves from this human form, but that takes time. At first we are beings who struggle. This is our first level, what don Juan calls the good "tonal" in a person. The tonal is like the raw material in each person.

Q. What is the purpose of life, then, according to the Toltecs?

A. To get out of this world alive, past the fearsome eagle, whole. This is the way of the sorcerers: to leave with everything one is and only with what one is.

Impeccability
The Way of the Toltecs
A Conversation with CARLOS CASTANEDA (Second Part)
By Graciela N. Corvalan (Translation from the Spanish by Alina Rivero)

In the early 1980s, Graciela Corvalan, a writer and publisher from St. Louis, Missouri, was writing a book consisting of a series of interviews with contemporary mystical thinkers in the Americas. She and three friends met with Carlos Castaneda in Los Angeles and discussed his work with him. Carlos Castaneda requested that the conversation be published first in Spanish. Fulfilling this requirement, the author published a Spanish version of the interview in Mutantia, Buenos Aires, Argentina. The first part of the English version of that conversation originally appeared in Seeds of Unfolding, Vol. I, No. 4 (Summer 1983), and was re-published on this site in February 2005 under the title The Freedom of Don Juan. The first part of the interview concludedwith Castaneda’s description of the purpose of life, according to the Toltecs: “To get out of this world alive, past the fearsome eagle, whole.” The second part of the interview, originally published in Seeds, Vol. II, No. 2 (Spring 1984) and reproduced here, continues with this theme.

Q. Did don Juan and don Genaro leave “whole”? Did they escape the eagle?

A. Don Juan will never die. He left this world alive and kicking, whole! So did don Genaro. Toltecs never die. But they must leave this world through the left side of the eagle, on tiptoe .

Q. Is the eagle a metaphor or a real entity? Does it resemble the allies who guard the entrance to the other side?

A. The Toltecs believe in an entity they call the eagle. It is an immense darkness, stretching to infinity, through which lightning flashes. They call it the eagle because it has wings, a black body and a luminous chest.

The eagle holds everything that is, it encompasses all the beauty that is human and all the savagery and ugliness that are not properly human. The eagle is the blackest mass imaginable. It is not human and it has no pity.

The eagle devours all energy that is about to disappear because it feeds off this energy. Like a giant magnet it draws vital energy from the world. This is what don Juan told me. But he and the others are sorcerers. They live what is a metaphor for me.

The only way to escape the eagle is to leave on tiptoe, holding one’s breath. When one is ready to leave the world, one must offer the eagle something, a sacrifice of the self. This offering is called the personal recapitulation.

Toltecs cannot save themselves individually, only as a group of eight. They can only leave the world in that basic nucleus. The others stay behind to maintain the tradition alive.

Q. How does one “recapitulate”? Is this similar to reviewing your life before death?

A. First you have to make a list of every single person you have ever known in life, a list of all those who have made you put your ego on the line, that multiheaded monster of personal pride. You have to bring back all those who have helped you play the game of “Do they love me or don’t they”–a game in which you spend your life licking your wounds. Recapitulation requires a great effort of memory. The images have to be drawn forth carefully and set before you. Then, with a movement of the head from right to left you blow each image away, as if sweeping it from your vision. The breath is magical.

At the end of the recapitulation there are no more tricks, games or self-deceptions. Then, the task alone is left–the task in its simplicity, purity and crudity.

Q. Is recapitulation possible for everyone? Can anyone escape the eagle?

A. Yes, but one must have an unbending will. If one wavers or hesitates, the eagle will devour him. Doubt is not possible. For example, in order to recapitulate, doña Soledad hid in a hole for seven years and never came out. She stayed there until she had finished with everything. That’s all she did for seven years.

Doña Soledad’s transformation was truly amazing. She exerted such will power that she was able to change herself. But by developing her will to such a level, she also developed a stronger personal pride. That is why she will not be able to fool the eagle. But she is fantastic! She has such power! Before she was Pablito’s “mamacita,” always washing clothes, ironing, cleaning, offering little meals to people. You should see her now. She is a young, strong woman. Not anyone to fool around with. Even if she cannot escape the eagle, she will never be the weak being she once was.

Q.You have often mentioned other sources in your books–the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Tractatus of Wittgenstein, the works of St. John of the Cross, St. Augustine, and the poets Juan Ramón Jiménez and César Vallejo. Do you have time to read and find out what is happening in this world? Have you found many parallelisms between teachings of don Juan and other esoteric traditions?

A. I don’t read anything anymore. My car is always full of books, tons of books, things people send me. I used to read books to don Juan. He loved poetry! But he only liked the first four lines of a poem. After that, he said, the strength was lost. For him the idea and the image are there in the first four lines or they’re not. Afterwards, don Juan thought it all repetition.

I have been interested in the works of Husserl and have been in contact with practitioners of hatha yoga, which I think is wonderful. But there is no way to explain don Juan’s teachings through these systems. Husserl never transcends the theoretical and philosophical level in his work. He doesn’t deal with man in his everyday life. The phenomenological method is a good base for research but Western man, that is, European man, has only produced a political man. This political man represents our civilization. Don Juan’s teachings open the door for another man, a much more interesting man, a man who already lives in a world of magic, a magical universe.

Once I met a disciple of Gurdjieff who modeled himself completely after the master. He had shaven his head and sported this huge mustache. I invited him to come over. As soon as he came into my house, he grabbed me by the throat and started beating me. He told me I had to leave my teacher because I was wasting my time! According to him he could teach me everything I needed to know in six or seven lessons. Can you imagine? Six or seven lessons can teach you everything…

Q. In your previous books women rarely played an important part in your apprenticeship. They appeared as dull, ordinary mortals or evil-tempered witches. Now the men are gone or have taken a secondary position to figures like la Gorda. Why have don Juan and don Genaro been replaced by la Gorda and the Toltec Woman?

A. Don Juan believed women have more talent than men because they are more receptive to the world. They do not waste themselves as much in this life. It’s natural that he would leave me in the hands of a woman. It couldn’t have happened any other way, because only a woman can teach the art of stalking. Women know this art well because they have always lived with the enemy. They have always had to tread softly in a male-dominated world. That is why the Toltec Woman came to teach us.

Women are very powerful beings. Josefina, for example, is a real wonder. She’s crazy. Crazy! Josefina could never function in this world. She flies very far away but she always comes back because she doesn’t want to leave this world alone. She wants to take me and she tempts me all the time with her tales of wonder during her flying. But la Gorda saves me. She is my foothold and my equilibrium.

Josefina is a being without attachments to the material world; she’s ethereal. She can leave any time. La Gorda and I are much more careful.

Q. The Toltec Woman sounds very intriguing. What is she like? How does she differ from don Juan?

A. The modality of the Toltec Woman is totally different from don Juan’s. For one thing, she doesn’t like me at all. She loves la Gorda, though. She is a very strong woman and her muscles move in a special way. She is old, but she appears to be a young woman made-up to look old. Do you remember the movie Giant with Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean? She plays the part of an older woman at some point, but one always knows she is very young. That’s what the Toltec Woman looks like.

Do you ever read the National Enquirer? That’s the only thing I read when I come to Los Angeles. A friend of mine saves me back issues. I saw Elizabeth Taylor’s picture there recently. She is really a “giant” now!

The Toltec Woman is responsible for all of us now. Things have changed a lot since don Juan left. I miss him. But I had to learn from women. The Toltec Woman gets very angry and she hits us a lot. We walk around with these great bruises from her beatings. And she gives us terrible tasks! There is a great deal I do not understand and things I will never be able to explain. But I trust don Juan completely. By now I have learned to trust that which I don’t understand. Don Juan proved to me over and over how foolish my desire to understand things was. He was right.

The Toltec Woman will leave soon. She’s told us two other women will take her place. The Toltec Woman is very strict and her demands are terrible. But as awful as she is she is better than the ones who will come after her. Maybe she won’t leave yet. One can’t really stop the body from complaining and being afraid of the undertaking ahead. And yet… there is no way of altering destiny.

Q. In your last book you speak of the “holes” in people who have had children. How do you then explain doña Soledad’s attitude towards Pablito or that of la Gorda towards her daughters? It seems inconceivable that having children would take away the “edge” from life.

A. Well, I can’t really explain it all that well. There are differences between people who have reproduced and those who have not. In order to tiptoe past the eagle one has to be whole. A person full of holes cannot get through. Don Genaro is a crazy, crazy man. Don Juan is a crazy, serious man. He goes slowly but he gets farther. In the end they both get there.

Like don Juan, I have holes and I will have to follow his way. The Genaros have another way. They have a special edge that don Juan and I don’t have. They are more nervous, they move faster. They are very light. Nothing stops them.

Those who have had children, like la Gorda and me, have other characteristics that compensate for that loss. We are calmer, and even though the path is long and arduous, we still get there. Generally, those who have had children know how to take care of others. It’s just different.

Most of the time people have no idea what they are doing or why they do it. They are not conscious of their acts and then they pay! I had no idea what I was doing.

When I was born, I took everything away from my mother and father. I left them mangled. I had to give them back the edge I had taken away from them. Now I have to regain that edge myself.

Q. Are the holes irreparable or can they be repaired?

A. Nothing is irrevocable in life, and the holes can heal. It is always possible to return that which does not belong to us and to recoup that which does.

Q. What are your immediate plans?

A. La Gorda and I will probably travel. She wants to travel and go to “Paricci,”as she calls it. Now that she shops at Gucci and looks very elegant she wants to go to Paris. I keep telling here there is nothing there but she still wants to go. She’s even learned English very well. That, too, was part of her task.

Q. Will Carlos ever be free and join don Juan and don Genaro on the other side?

A. I have lived at a level lower than that of the Mexican peasant, which is to say a great deal. The difference between the peasant and me is that a peasant has hope and works to attain things and believes in the future. I, on the other hand, have nothing and each time will have less.

Right now my only freedom lies in being impeccable, because only by being impeccable can I change my destiny and leave this world whole. If I do I will join don Juan and don Genaro; if I don’t, I will not change my destiny and the eagle will devour me.

In this world I never am more myself than when I am Joe Cordoba, frying hamburgers all day long, my eyes filled with smoke.

http://www.seedsofunfolding.org/issues/02_05/features_1.htm