Topic: Interview with Carlos Castaneda by Sam keen

[Michael]

Some of you may not have read this - I have had it in an old Journal for many years - found at a friend's house. I have just discovered it online.

Ignore the non-English at the bottom - the "окончание..." link means to continue, click to go to the next page.

http://www.castanedadzr.ru/cc/inter/inter16a.htm

[Jennifer-]

Excellent stuff!

Thank you M, I havn't read any thing new by CC in a long time.. refreshing as well as inspiring to perhaps reread his books.. might be good- to explore again with ever changing eyes.

[Jahn]

Thank you M for the link. Through my research on CC I have not found that interview. It is a very early one, one can tell on the style and later I see that it was made in 1972. He is still much in sorcery -magic talk and not yet in the Toltec lineage and more structured. And then comes this little story about his Nagual animal that I like so much:

"We might be able to talk to any animal. For don Juan and the other sorcerers there wasn't anything unusual about my conversation with the coyote. As a matter of fact they said I should have gotten a more reliable animal for a friend. Coyotes are tricksters and are not to be trusted."

[erik]

Once when I was with don Juan and his friend don Genaro I saw the loneliness they shared and their sadness at leaving behind the trappings and points of reference of ordinary society.

[tangerine dream]

CARLOS CASTANEDA: The idea that I concocted a person like don Juan is inconceivable. He is hardly the kind of figure my European intellectual tradition would have led me to invent. The truth is much stranger. I wasn't even prepared to make the changes in my life that my association with don Juan involved.

I hadn't thought of this.  Godd point. 

That is what don Juan means by having a gesture. A gesture is a deliberate act which is undertaken for the power that comes from making a decision. For instance, if a warrior found a snake that was numb and cold, he might struggle to invent a way to take the snake to a warm place without being bitten. The warrior would make the gesture just for the hell of it. But he would perform it perfectly

Don Juan and I were in Tucson not long ago when they were having Earth Week. Some man was lecturing on ecology and the evils of war in Vietnam. All the while he was smoking. Don Juan said, "I cannot imagine that he is concerned with other people's bodies when he doesn't like his own." Our first concern should be with ourselves. I can like my fellow men only when I am at my peak of vigor and am not depressed. To be in this condition I must keep my body trimmed. Any revolution must begin here in this body. I can alter my culture but only from within a body that is impeccably tuned-in to this weird world. For me, the real accomplishment is the art of being a warrior, which, as don Juan says, is the only way to balance the terror of being a man with the wonder of being a man.