From my book - Carlos Castaneda in the Astrological Eye
This picture is not difficult to verify on Carlos Arana. The vein of a dogmatist has probably all readers noticed. When Carlos starts to accept the phenomenas of the sorcerers world he does it half-hearted and primarily to be able to communicate with the other apprentices. As soon as he in their company starts to ask questions from the angle of his ordinary view of the World, he then creates worries and he get the answer that he talk too much. In difference to the native Indian apprentices Carlos can’t let go his old view of the world. What is shining through is the earthbinded stubborness to be Capricorn.
This stubborness is also a protection against the permanent attacks made by Don Juan. But lessons and “attacks” that would get the common adept to change is not enough for a solid Capricon, to change a Capricorn requires some extra efforts. So Don Juan explains for Carlos the incredible efforts that Don Genaro made to Carlos, with the aim that Carlos would be able to experience the Nagual.
"He (Genaro) disintegrated your belief system, though you are not yet aware of it. But even in this case you required more than the most. Some single outcomes from Nagual would be enough to raze your perception, but still, until this day you seem unaffected of the barrage of Nagual. By this you have presented the way of knowledge as more complicated than it is. But beside that, this resistance is oddly enough your best personality trait".
"To learn, the pupil must change his life, accept the thought of his own death, control all his own thought and action within that perspective. When these pressures are revealed one can understand how the apprenticeship goes more quickly for some Indian boys /.../ Our repre¬sentive, trying desperately to satisfy two schools, cannot give his heartfelt allegiance to his teacher‘s discipline. He is literally torn between two worlds of reality. To his effort to control his vision in both, we owe this report. "(Richard de Mille, The Don Juan Papers, pp 28)
Literally torn between two worlds of reality ” Castaneda was aware about his double loyalties. In one of the few interviews he gave he ponders about his difficult situation in the beginnining as apprentice. This interview lasted four hours and is done by Keith Thompson in Los Angeles, 1993.
“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/…/ 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.”
