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"I was waiting in a border town for a Greyhound bus talking with a friend who had been my guide and helper . . . . Suddenly he leaned toward me and whispered that the man, a white-haired old Indian, who was sitting in front of the window was very learned about plants, especially peyote. I asked my friend to introduce me to this man."Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan (1968)
"I was sitting with Bill, a friend of mine, in a bus depot in a border town in Arizona. We were very quiet. In the late afternoon the summer heat seemed unbearable. Suddenly he leaned over and tapped me on the shoulder. 'There's the man I told you about,' he said in a low voice."Carlos Castaneda, A Separate Reality (1971)
the Wanderling
One fateful day sometime late in the summer of 1960, a day that, although running thick with destiny, found three men sitting uneventfully amongst a number of other passengers and highly transitory types in the waiting room of a small bus station in the Arizona border town of Nogales. The day was the exact same day, as described in the two paragraphs above, that Carlos Castaneda met for the very first time, the Yaqui Indian shaman-sorcerer, Don Juan Matus that he would soon apprentice under.
Two of the men in the station were waiting to board a Greyhound bus to Los Angeles. One of the two WAS Castaneda, the soon to be successful author of a dozen best selling books. The second man, who was not traveling that day, was the colleague friend of Castaneda, Bill, that brought him to the bus depot.
The third man, like Castaneda, sitting uneventfully in the bus station that prognostic day and waiting for the bus to Los Angeles, was me.
I had ended up in Nogales because a few years out of high school and tired of working as a technical illustrator --- all the while being faced by the draft in the next few years or so --- I decided to take a leave of absence and head into Mexico with a buddy of mine.
He had bought a used six-cylinder 1951 Chevy panel truck that was in pretty good shape and over a period of a few months we outfitted it like a camper with fold down bunks, table, sink, stove, and portable toilet. Early one Saturday morning we crossed into Mexico at the Tiajuna border with no idea how long we were going to be gone.
After traveling south for a while on some pretty crummy roads along the Baja Pacific coast we turned eastward across the peninsula to the little town of Santa Rosalia, taking a ferry across the Sea of Cortez to Guaymas.(see) Continuing on we passed through Guadalajara, Lake Chapala, San Miguel Allende and a bunch of other places ending up seeing the pyramids in Mexico City and Mayan ruins in the Yucatan. We stopped whenever we wanted and stayed as long as we wanted. Compared to most of the people in the countryside we came across, as well as the locals in the towns we went through, we had all the money we needed to spend on anything we wanted including gas, food, lodging, girls, and beer.
Days turned into weeks, weeks into months. Eventually we made a decision to return home. We headed north along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico through Vera Cruz then westward inland toward central Mexico turning north along the spine of the Sierra Madres. It was nearing the end of the summer of 1960 when we found ourselves in a little northern Mexican town somewhat south of the Arizona-Mexico border called Magdalena. While there my buddy got hooked up with a beautiful raven-haired local girl and wanted to stay a few days. She told us there was a horse ranch nearby owned by a guy named Maldonado that raised, sold and rented horses and she thought going horseback riding would be fun. The girl, after fixing me up with a girlfriend of hers --- and my buddy and I truly not thinking with much more than our little heads --- headed out to the ranch.
The ranch turned out to be a fairly big spread with it's own railroad spur and a rather nice hacienda type house with several out buildings and modern equipment --- tractors and such --- all pretty nice by local Mexican standards. As a matter of fact it was my suspicion that the two girls we were with probably wouldn't even be able to access the ranch if they had not been traveling with us. (see)
It had been at least six years since I had been on a horse, and even though people say it is just like riding a bicycle, that is, you never forget, for me it wasn't quite like that. About forty-five minutes into the ride something spooked my horse and not having the expertise to handle her I was thrown from the saddle. My foot got stuck in the stirrup and before I could work it loose and the horse stopped I had been dragged over the gravely soil for quite some distance. Needless to say the event ruined the whole day. I went back to the hotel to recuperate. A couple of days passed and in the meantime my full of hormones buddy took off to parts unknown with the truck and girl he had met. With no sign of him returning anytime soon and being sore and achy all over with possible broken bones and internal injuries, I made the decision to get back home to the states where I hoped a doctor could look me over. The owner of the ranch had given me some medicine to help reduce the pain --- which I am sure was intended for horses --- and, although it reduced the pain quickly and efficiently, it put me into a sort of cloud-like stupor. Feeling a need to stay at the very least with a semi-clear mind, being in a foreign country and all with no friends and not knowing anybody, I opted not to take any more after the second day.
The road from Magdalena leads directly to Nogales. I got off on the Mexican side and walked across the border to the U.S. side --- heading straight for the bus station. Because of the injuries I was holding myself up and steadying my pace with a walking stick. So too, despite the heat of the day, in that the side of my face was so scratched up and wasn't really healed, I was wearing a hooded sweatshirt pulled up over my head along with a large pair of dark glasses.
After buying a ticket to Los Angeles I began feeling somewhat more in control of things being back in the states. Because of that safety net, and since I was still in such pain, I took some of the medicine the ranch owner gave me --- then settled in on one of the benches.
The bus station was not what I would call extremely busy, however people did keep coming and going and I soon found myself constantly moving farther and farther down so people traveling together could sit together. In the process, without realizing it, I had moved some distance away from my walking stick. I was sitting in this sort of oncoming stupor as the medicine began kicking in looking out across the depot from a newly aquired vantage point when out of the blue I saw two people I thought for sure I recognized sitting together talking. Knowing one of the men without a full and total element of doubt was kind of on the iffy side, but I was sure I had met him in my youth many years before, a onetime Pothunter turned reputable archaeologist that I knew as Larry, whose full name was William Lawrence Campbell, known in and around the desert southwest as Cactus Jack. As a young boy a man that I was told was an archaeologist had given me my first prospector's pick, an item I had treasured way into young adulthood. Unexpectantly, some six, possibly eight years after the bus station encounter we are talking about here, while traveling with my Uncle and a tribal spiritual elder, I briefly crossed paths with Campbell when he stepped up to our table in a small roadside cafe near Taos, New Mexico. In the process of that meeting not only did he confirm he was indeed the man that had given me the prospector's pick when I was a boy I also recognized him as being the man I had seen that fateful day in Nogales. Although the subject of Castaneda came up and he talked openly about a number of things related to Castaneda with my uncle and the elder during the hour or so we were together that day, before I was able to turn the topic of the discussion to the bus station specifically, apparently done with HIS side of the conversation, he finished his meal and without any attempt to pay, got up, went to the mens room, then simply left.[1]
The other man sitting in the bus station that day I knew I knew for sure. It was Carlos Castaneda. I had seen and talked to Castaneda probably only a few weeks, possibly just days, before my buddy and I left on our trip to Mexico some months before.[2] Why either Castaneda or Campbell would be in a bus station in Nogales in the heat of the summer and how either of them would even know each other was a mystery to me. Of course, although the bus station was not very large, because of my disguise, neither of them, even though they may have noticed me, would not have recognized me. When I started to get up to go over to pay my respects and ask what the heck the two of them were doing in Nogales I discovered my walking stick was either gone or out of reach. Plus, my mind was beginning to haze over from the medicine, sort of removing me from the surroundings.
Before I was able to get to my walking stick and stand up someone put their hands on both of my shoulders from behind, gently inhibiting my ability to get up. It was my buddy. He told me that after several days with the local raven-haired Mexican girl, followed by a somewhat sizable argument between the two, he decided to check in on how I was doing at the place we had been staying in Magdalena. There he learned I had gone north on my own. Figuring the only way home after crossing the border would be the bus station in Nogales he looked there first. He basically picked me up under the arms and dragged me out to the truck, all the time me trying to tell him I had two friends in the depot I needed to talk to. I was jarred out of a deep sleep the next day hundreds and hundreds of miles from the bus depot after we got stopped at a routine highway immigration check point outside of Oceanside, California and the officials wanted to see who the "dead guy" was laying on the floor in the back of the truck.
Later on, after motoring north then west toward the South Bay, with me sitting back in my usual spot in the front seat on the shotgun side, I asked my buddy why he didn't let me see my two friends at the bus station. He said I could NOT have been at the bus station for any length of time by the time he arrived and figured there was no way I could have any friends of any stature there, guessing I must have been hallucinating or something. Taking it upon himself he simply took me out to the truck, threw me on the on the bunk in the back, and headed home.
After we returned from our trip to Mexico my buddy and I basically went our separate ways. He got married and bought a hardware store and I returned to work for a brief time then turned my attention to full time study practice in Zen under the auspices of my Mentor. After a rare opportunity arose, my mentor arranged for me to study under the venerated Japanese Zen master Yasutani Hakuun Roshi --- without much success on my part it must be added. Then, pretty much as expected, Uncle Sam seemed to need me more and I was drafted into the Army. (see)
Except on the rare occasion when my buddy and I inadvertently crossed paths someplace we never really saw much of each other after I was drafted. In the meantime the 1960 incident in the bus station slowly slipped away from my my memory banks, and, except for the one short interlude mentioned below, it was all but forgotten --- until 1968 that is. Then, in 1968, Castaneda's first book, THE TEACHINGS OF DON JUAN: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, was printed. The book became a huge, best selling success and almost overnight Castaneda became a public icon and incredibly wealthy --- with the Nogales bus station playing a key role.
The one short interlude that briefly interrupted the all but forgotten portion of the incident transpired three years after my initial 1960 bus station visit --- while, of all things, I was still in the Army.
At the end of August, 1963, during the Martin Luther King speech, I was a member of a team operating classified transmitting equipment in a AN/GRC 26-D communication van parked along the beltway in Washington D.C. a few miles away from the Lincoln Memorial, the site of the King speech. Somewhere in there, either before or after the King speech, and I don't remember which because at the time I was doing all kinds of travel for the military, for whatever reason, the Army decided they wanted me to participate in other extra-curricular military activites for a couple of weeks out west. They put me, along with a handful of other slovenly GI types, on board an unmarked company C-53 with all the windows covered over on the inside by aluminum foil and masking tape and flew us out on a cross-country middle-of-the-night flight to a place called Pinal Air Park, sometimes called Marana Air Park, near Marana, Arizona.
The air park is a small off-the-radar former air field located about halfway between Phoenix and Tucson and basically run for the most part now by Evergreen, a former CIA subsidiary. Interestingly enough, for our purposes here, the air park, being in Marana, is located probably less than an hour and a half drive over a wide open desert highway from Nogales.
When we finally caught a weekend break in our duties, a few GIs and myself, dressed in our best-cover civilian attire, albeit sporting white sidewall haircuts, crossed into Mexico at the Nogales gate for a few days of non-military extra-curricular activities of our own making.
It had been three years, and because of the training and the transition between civilian life and the military, a lifetime ago, since I had been in Nogales following the horseback accident. For some unexplained reason ever since the Army had sent me to Arizona and I discovered how close I was to Nogales I had been chaffing at the bit to get back to see the bus station. The first chance I got I broke away from my group of buddies and crossed back over the border to the U.S. side and headed straight to the depot. Why I am not sure. It was almost as though I was expecting to meet someone or experience some sort of a feeling about something. But nothing. In 1963 it was still a good five years before Castaneda's book was to be published. Any meaning regarding the station in relation to Castaneda or Don Juan Matus was yet to bear any significance. Even so, there I was walking around almost in reverence, looking in all the nooks and crannies, both inside and out, drawn as though on a spiritual quest.
To tell the truth, even though it had been only three years since I had been there I was not able to fully experience a total recall of the place, only a vague remembrance. Walking across the border and to the bus station I knew I had been there and seen the place before, but even so, for me it was more like standing in front of Edward Hopper's painting Nighthawks. Something about it is familiar and maybe even hauntingly based on reality, yet, although you know you could fit in and might even belong, you are still somehow removed because you know it is a painting and cannot step into it.
NIGHTHAWKS by Edward Hopper. Oil, 1942, 30X60 inches. Chicago Art Institute
Flash forward now to present day and a fresh perspective. A contempory reader of my works by the name of John Esposito informs me that after coming across DON JUAN MATUS: Real or Imagined on the internet he decided to check out the Nogales Greyhound Station for himself. Since I haven't been back since that 1963 visit Esposito offers some interesting insights. Esposito writes:
Of course this is 46 years later, but the station is in an old building in the old part of town, and is probably the same station. Naturally, it might have had some renovations, in particular new seats (i.e. newer than 1960).It is not at all contradictory for CC to have claimed that DJ was "seated on a bench by the corner" 30 years after claiming that he was "sitting in front of the window." This is because the seating area is all but surrounded by windows. There are windows on two sides, the counter on the third side, and a niche with vending machines and no seats on the fourth. In other words, ALL of the seats are near windows, regardless of whether they're in corners. Both front corners of the seats are near windows, as is one of the back corners, too. The only inconsistency I see is that there are no benches, but it seems very likely that the old benches were replaced with the rows of connected plastic seats within the last few decades.
I do, however, see a problem with CC's claim that DJ walked 50 yards to his bus
(Active Side of Infinity, p. 39). It hardly seems likely that it was even 50 FEET, but then it's all too easy to exaggerate with numbers, and CC may have been a world class exaggerator! It's trivial, but it bothered me because it caused me -- for decades -- to visualize the event quite differently. I was expecting a dusty rural bus station, and what I got was quite urban, right at a very busy border crossing. (see)
In Castaneda's first book, THE TEACHINGS OF DON JUAN: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, and in most of the other books in the series afterwards, Castaneda goes on-and-on one way or the other in his various bus station Introduction Scenes of how, BECAUSE of being in the depot that day in Nogales following the Road Trip with his colleague Bill, he met the shaman-sorcerer he calls Don Juan Matus --- the man he not only eventually apprenticed under, but who also became the main thesis he wrapped all his best selling books around.
Because of that alleged bus station meeting, when people hear about ME being in the Greyhound bus station in Nogales in what appears to be the exact same time as Castaneda and how he describes it in his books, they always want to know if I saw Don Juan or the "white haired old indian" in the bus station too --- AND IF SO, did I see Castaneda talking or interacting with him in any way, shape or form.
Without beating around the bush, the answer is basically a flat NO --- although I must admit that doesn't mean the meeting did not happen, only that I wasn't witness to such a fact.
The closest that any of what Castaneda writes about happened just as I was trying to get up but couldn't because I no longer had my walking stick with me nor was it within reach. As I tried to move I knocked my dark glasses askew across my face and before I could readjust them, my eyes, apparently with pupils dialated wide open from the medicine, allowed a huge amount of bright light to pour in inhibiting my ability to see clearly. Suddenly, directly in front of me blocking most of the light pouring into the room and my eyes, a darkened silhouette of what looked to be a white haired old indian, who could have been anybody, seemed to appear out of nowhere. He stood silently before me, and as my eyes cleared, without a word handed me my walking stick. From that moment on, replicating almost down to the letter my experience as described in THE MEETING: An Untold Story of Sri Ramana, the whole episode began to flow forward as though in slow motion and I somehow felt totally absorbed yet at the sametime, separated and far removed from my surroundings. All the while the phenomenon unfolded, taking forever as it did, there was a dominating background ringing sensation in my ears similar to that caused by pressure deep under water that inturn disallowed me to construct clear, conscious everyday thoughts. Before I could gather my abilities to respond, which I didn't necessarily want to anyway because it felt so good, my buddy interceded and I ended up in the truck only to wake up days later in California, long gone from Arizona, Nogales, Castaneda, and things shaman.
The second thing most people want to know after I mention the "white haired old Indian" in the bus station handing me my walking stick is: Did I recognize him? For more on that, please see Footnote [3], below.
Finally, for most people, the most staggering question after the "white haired old Indian and if I saw him or not" question IS --- since I was at the bus station on the same day in question that I saw Castaneda and, as stated above, reported seeing a "number of other passengers and highly transitory types in the waiting room" as well --- WHY is it that NONE of them, or for that fact anybody else, EVER come forward like I have and stated they saw Castaneda there too? Why only me?
The answer is quite simple. For one thing I had met and interacted with Castaneda previously. I knew him. It would have been highly unusual that anybody else traveling or going in and out of that funky little border town bus station that day for any reason would have known or recognized him. Most people think of Castaneda as they have come to know him, famous. And he was, but only so AFTER his first book was published. However, as I have presented in CARLOS CASTANEDA: Before Don Juan, prior to his book being published "Castaneda wasn't even 'Castaneda.'" If you recall, the bus station incident did not transpire until after the Road Trip ended in the summer of 1960. Castaneda's first book was not even released for public consumption until 1968, EIGHT full years after the Road Trip/Bus Station episode. Up until that time (the release of his book), for the most part, nobody had ever heard of Castaneda. Before his book Castaneda was truly not much more than a cipher of an undergraduate lost among hundreds of similar unheralded blank-faced vacuous students enrolled in the anthropology department at UCLA. It isn't likely anyone at anyplace or anytime would have recognized him, know him, or know of him beyond the small circle of hibituates he typically traveled in.
Why has Bill not come forward? It could be he was never aware he was Bill --- or for that matter, never aware either, that the young Hispanic he was traveling with eventually turned out to be Carlos Castaneda. So too, in either of the two cases, if he found out or become aware of the situation later in the scheme of things relative to his life, maybe, on an official level, he just let it go. (see)
After reading the Don Juan books years later I always ask myself, and continue to wondered to this day, if my Mexico traveling buddy had NOT shown up when he did and stopped me from going across the bus station, and instead I interacted with Castaneda and his colleague at such a level that I dominated their time and redirected their attention, would Castaneda have missed altogether meeting the old man he says turned out to be the shaman-sorcerer Don Juan Matus? Castaneda would have continued to be a nobody and Don Juan would have gone unhearlded. Or would've they? If nothing else, Castaneda might have met Don Juan as preordained, but most likely I would have been on the same bus to L.A. with him, and since we knew each other and Bill wasn't riding with him that day, most likely Castaneda and I would have sat together --- which inturn could have modified the downstream outflow for both of us.
NOTE: If you have not read any of the Footnotes as of yet please scroll down toward the bottom of the page.
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FOOTNOTE: [1]
If you read the page on William Lawrence Campbell reached here, through the Pothunter link, or through the previously cited links above, you will have learned that, at least in his later years anyway, Campbell was known for his ability to spin tall tales. One of the stories he told, and I cannot be sure how accurate it is, involved Carlos Castaneda.
As mentioned above, my uncle and I had been sitting in a small cafe near Taos, New Mexico with a tribal elder friend when Campbell, whom my uncle seemed to know, stepped up to the table and invited himself to join us. Before long the conversation turned to Castaneda and Campbell told the following story. However, before we go on, what he told should be prefaced with what I wrote in the Road Trip:
Why has Bill not come forward? It could be he was never aware he was Bill --- or for that matter, never aware either, that the young Hispanic he was traveling with eventually turned out to be Carlos Castaneda. So too, in either of the two cases, if he found out or become aware of the situation later in the scheme of things relative to his life, maybe, on an official level, he just let it go.
It was well after the fact that Campbell learned that the young Hispanic he was traveling with throughout the desert southwest on the Road Trip eventually turned out to be Carlos Castaneda. When the incident below happened Castaneda wasn't even "Castaneda," nor did Bill ever find out who he was until years later. If you recall, the Road Trip ended in the summer of 1960. Castaneda's first book was not even published or released for public consumption until 1968, EIGHT full years after the Road Trip. Up until that time (the release of his book), for the most part, nobody had ever heard of Castaneda. So said, even though Castaneda is called Castaneda by Campbell, and thus then by me in the text, at the time of the conversation in the desert we are talking about here (i.e., at the archaeology site during the late spring, early summer of 1960), Castaneda was NOT the Carlos Castaneda he came to be AFTER he met Don Juan Matus, the powerful Yaqui Indian shaman-sorcerer he apprenticed under. Within the bounds of memory, as told by Campbell over coffee and food in the cafe near Taos I present the following:
"Castaneda had shown up at the archaeology dig site a few days earlier. The two of us had seen each other or passed by each other on a number of occasions at the site, but we were yet to meet or talk. Although other student level people were either working at the dig and/or participating in various aspects of camp maintenance, Castaneda wasn't. He basically went around most of the day bugging high ranking anthropologists asking nothing but a continuous stream of unending questions. As I viewed it, in that he didn't seem to be there to participate in the dig nor particularly willing to help around the camp Castaneda wasn't being received very favorably by anybody at any level.
"It was just after sunset and a number of us, like we often did, were gathered around the fire bullshitting and going over the days events in the evening twilight. Castaneda had joined the group but basically just sitting there looking at the fire. Sitting directly across from him was a young woman that I had not seen before who had been reading a book until it got too dark to see. Her legs and lap were partially covered with a blanket and when the darkness set in she had placed the book on her lap folded open to the page where she had left off, with the cover facing up. I was just in the process of introducing myself to Castaneda, shaking his hand and telling him my name was Campbell like in the soup when a powerful gust of wind suddenly came out of nowhere -- like a
Vortex or dust devil --- which was a nearly impossible happenstance for so late in the day. The wind tore loose part of a close by canvas shelter top and the sudden noise of the flapping canvas and swirling dirt and dust must have startled the woman with the book because without thinking she jumped to her feet and in doing so, grabbing the blanket, the open book fell from her lap right into the fire."Without a moment of hesitation Castaneda reached into the fire and pulled out the book, brushing it off and folding it closed. He then handed the book back to the woman. When he did he looked at the title then at me. The title of the book The Hero With A Thousand Faces (1949) by Joseph Campbell. When he looked back at the woman she was gone."
The reason I am able to recall Campbell's story so vividly from that day in the cafe is because of how fascinating all of the incredible coincidences seemed to be, yet how nonchalant both my uncle and the tribal elder reacted to it all. Years later I discussed the incident over a period of some hours in some depth with my uncle and he basically dismissed the whole thing saying Campbell was merely a gadfly. However, I looked at the incident somewhat differently. In Castaneda's eighth book Power of Silence, Don Juan tells Castaneda that when a person's Spirit has something extremely important to communicate, it will "knock" three times. As found in CASTING BONES: The Art of Divination if one has the ability or is spiritually intune with such things, three clear, unambiguous "meaningful coincidences" will be received showing that a certain decision is needed to be made or that an indication of a prediction is correct:
- Campbell steps up to introduce himself to Castaneda. As soon as he says his name an unusual (for that time of day) vortex-like gust of wind comes up and blows loose a nearby canvas shelter top.
- The noise startles the woman sitting directly across from Castaneda that had been reading a book. She jumps up and the book falls into the fire.
- Instinctively Castaneda reaches into the fire and pulls out the book. When he hands it to the woman he sees the title of the book is The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell.
Even though I mention I discussed the incident above many years after our conversation in the cafe and my uncle basically dismissed the whole thing saying Campbell was merely a gadfly, he did not dismiss everything totally. In so saying, he still knew and maintained a great respect for the natural order of things, the unfolding of events, the role of those involved in the events, and the power within and behind those events. For example, during that later discussion or one closely related, I tried to get my uncle to clarify some of my questions regarding the emaciated man thought by me to possibly be the Death Defier. The following, regarding that discussion, is found in a footnote to Julian Osorio, said by Castaneda to be Don Juan's master teacher:
During that discussion I tried to entice him
(my uncle at the original source) to repeat for me what he had said that night outside the cave, verbatim, in whatever language it was, then translate into English the actual indepth meaning behind the words. He told me it ended that night in front of the cave and not to concern myself. However, he refused to say the Defier's name out loud intimating that he, my uncle --- and I quote --- "did not want to be found." According to Wallace, as told to her by a Castaneda confidant, by invoking the Death Defier's name in Tula, that is Nahuatl, the Defier's spirit will awaken.
So said, my uncle saying Campbell was a gadfly or not, my uncle still carried ahead of himself that great respect in the unfolding of events. That respect --- if you want to call it that --- truly shows up in the above where my uncle says he refused to say the Defier's name out loud intimating that he, my uncle --- and I quote --- "did not want to be found." It shows up over and over in his actions as well as in the many conversations I had with him, one example being the above interaction between the mysterious woman at the firepit and Campbell. Regarding that interaction, Campbell said:
"Without a moment of hesitation Castaneda reached into the fire and pulled out the book, brushing it off and folding it closed. He then handed the book back to the woman. When he did he looked at the title then at me. The title of the book The Hero With A Thousand Faces (1949) by Joseph Campbell. When he looked back at the woman she was gone."
My uncle told me that even though Castaneda looked back immediately after handing the book to the woman and she was gone, such was not the case with what Campbell saw from his vantage point across the fire. If you recall it was just after sunset and a number of people, including Campbell and Castaneda were gathered around the fire talking and going over the days events in the evening twilight. Campbell told my uncle, even though the woman was gone for Castaneda in the almost micro-second it took him to look back, such was not the case for himself. Campbell said, looking toward the woman across the fire after Castaneda handed her the book, he caught a glimpse of her dark silhouette between the flames rising superimposed against the twilight sky, and then almost in a wisp of smoke the blackened silhouette seemed to sail through the air beyond view in the darkness.
In that I had a similar incident transprire as a young boy at the Sun Dagger site, I was curious if it could have been the same woman. As it turned out she did not seem to be.
However, as part of that initial curiosity, when I asked my uncle if Campbell had ever made mention of what the woman looked like he said he had asked Campbell once. Campbell told him he had never seen the woman around the camp previously and only saw her briefly for a few moments across the fire that night. But, if he had to describe her, he thought she did not seem like a student or dig worker, but, although not dressed in the fashion of an Indian woman, more like what Hollywood thought a movie Indian woman should look like. Fairly good looking, probably around thirty with a somewhat Rubenesque body. She had a full face, high cheekbones and long black hair done in two long braids.
In Castaneda's third book Journey to Ixtlan (1972) in a section called 'A Worthy Opponent' dated December 11, 1962, Castaneda writes that over a month before he had a horrendous confrontation with a sorceress called 'la Catalina.' 'La Catalina' had been mentioned briefly previously in his first book with a date being cited by him as November 23, 1961, intimating from the words of Don Juan Matus that it was the very first time he, Castaneda, became aware of her existance. However, it wasn't until Journey to Ixtlan was released that Castaneda attemped a visual description of what "la Catalina" looked like:
I scrutinized her carefully, and concluded that she was a beautiful woman. She was very dark and had a plump body, but she seemed to be strong and muscular. She had a round full face with high cheekbones and two long braids of jet black hair. What surprised me the most was her youth. She was at the most in her early thirties.
Castaneda's book Journey to Ixtlan did not come out for general consumption until 1972. The conversation between my uncle and me, wherein the description of the woman at the firepit was brought up, happened some two to three years prior to that.
It should be noted the above footnote in similar format and form shows up in relation to the commentary and text found in CARLOS CASTANEDA: The Shaman and the Power of the Omen.
FOOTNOTE [3]
The mentioning of the "white haired old Indian" that handed me my walking stick invariably brings up the question: Did I see or recognize anything that may have indicated the "old Indian" was or was not Don Juan Matus? So too, sometimes the questioners are refering to a potential Don Juan incident when, as a young boy, my Uncle and I were on one of our excursions deep into a remote part of the southern New Mexico desert to visit a very strange man my uncle was somehow associated with. Those familiar with my discussions on that incident ask, if not Don Juan, could the "old Indian" in the bus station have been the very strange man I met in the desert instead? The answer to both questions are the same.
In relation to that excursion, at the bottom of the page on Don Juan Matus I write, without further elaboration:
For all I know the very strange man that handed me the feather as reported in The Boy and the Giant Feather could have been Don Juan --- or for that matter, even better, the very strange man might have even been Don Juan's own unknown, albeit, unnamed master teacher said to have been a diablero. (see)
In monday morning quarterbacking my answer is: possibly. I like to think the "old Indian" in the bus station and the man that I met on the excursion was one and the same person. However, when the meeting in the desert occurred I was a ten year old boy. The meeting at the bus station in Nogales was some thirteen years later. With my uncle the meeting in the desert had meaning. In the bus station when the old Indian handed me my walking stick it was, at the time, no more than one more meaningless happenstance in a long string of happenstances, and not seemingly worthy of filing away in my memory banks for posterity --- although waking up days later and hundreds of miles away with the whole thing carrying the perfume of a dream sequence may have entered into it. Unknowingly, the stick-handing episode apparently subconsciously continued to gnaw away and fester inside me, hence I think, contributing toward my need to return to the bus station when given the chance while in the army.
As to the meeting in the desert, in Julian Osorio I write:
The
Old Man In the Desert was not Indian like the Navajo or Hopi I had been used to interacting with in most of our travels in the desert southwest. Neither was he a brown Mexican nor Anglo white either. However, as a boy I still thought he was an Indian, primarily because he looked like one --- although he spoke Spanish instead of any Indian dialect I was familar with. As I look back now there is a chance he may have been Yaqui or possibly of strong Mesoamerican heritage. To be truthful my sophistication in such matters at the time just weren't refined enough to assimilate all the subtle nuances.
And that's the problem. As a mere ten year old boy my sophistication wasn't refined enough to assimilate all the subtle nuances. Later, in the bus station following my trip to Mexico, even though in hindsight it seems I was being told something --- and you as a reader might ask yourself how could I be so stupid or naive --- for some reason, even though I had an inkling, my latent ability to grasp or sort through all of it at a higher or more sophisitcated level, at the time, still just wasn't up to it. After all it was a full five years before the incident I describe in Dark Luminosity. So too, it was well before any sort of major experience surrounding the rise of the super normal perceptual states of Siddhis as well as fifteen years before the incident with the man of spells called an Obeah high in the mountains of Jamaica. Between the 1960 Nogales bus station observation we are talking about here and the experience with the Obeah, a HUGE learning curve occurred. Somewhere along the way it was as though a deep intuitive understanding or grasping of a giant Zen Koan unfolded, after which for the life of me I cannot figure out why or if there ever was a non-understanding.
When the trip finally concluded and my buddy and I pulled up in front of the house and I finished gathering all my stuff together from the panel truck after months and months on the road I discovered the walking stick I had become so fond of was missing. When I asked my buddy if he had seen it he told me he remembered a stick leaning next to me in the bus station when he picked me up but thought it must belong to somebody else because it had what looked like Indian or Native American stuff attached to it. When I asked what he meant by Indian or Native American stuff --- which I was not able to recall having anything like that attached to it --- my buddy said it had a small, double strand of leather string with maybe ten or so colored beads tied to the top in a slightly carved groove.
Interestingly enough, if you went to the suggested link above titled The Boy and the Giant Feather you may recall that the very strange man my uncle went to visit in the middle of the desert gave me a feather that had a double strand leather string with ten colored beads tied to the quill, one bead for each of my years he said. Somehow the feather disappeared only to surface years later in the hands of my uncle and with me by then, an adult. When he gave me the feather the double strand leather string with ten colored beads was noticeably missing.(see)
In and around the time of the Taos meeting mentioned above in the text, my uncle and I had a series of several meetings. In one of the meetings my uncle and I had just prior to his death he told me that the old man I met in the desert those so many years ago had, at age 107, died, citing the night of October 31, 1978. During the year 1978 an unusual TWO new moon's in one month occurrence transpired and it just so happened to occur in October, with the second of the darkened new moons on, of all things, All Hallow's Eve, Halloween night, October 31st, the same night of the old man's death --- a major convergence of conditions and coincidences.
To the majority of people such an occurrence most likely does not mean much. However, for the occult, voodoo and others of similar ilk, such a rare event as having the darkened second new moon of a two new moon month happen on, of all nights, All Hallow's Eve, is a convergence of major proportions that carries a deep significance. It means POWER in the hands to those who can so channel it, COSMIC POWER. Any event perpetrated during such a narrow band or limited time period carries a destiny with it that similar events at another time won't or can't.
As to All Hallow's Eve, All Saints Day, otherwise known as All Hallows Day (hallowed means sanctified or holy), falls on November 1st. The evening prior to All Hallows Day, October 31st, was the time of intense activity, both human and supernatural. Originally people celebrated All Hallow's Eve as a time of the wandering dead, but over time the supernatural beings came to be either dominated by or thought of as evil. To propitiate those spirits (and their masked impersonators) people began setting out gifts of food and drink. Over time All Hallow's Eve became Hallow Evening, which eventually became Hallowe'en.
See ZEN, THE BUDDHA, AND SHAMANISM. Scroll down to to the sub-section titled Once In a Blue Moon.
As to the "old man in the desert" dying at age 107 as told to me by my uncle, amazingly Don Juan's reported teacher, Julian Osorio, was said by Castaneda have died, coincidently, at age 107 as well. The following is from the previously cited paper on Osorio:
If Osorio was born in 1871 that would have made him around 77 years old at the time of my visit to the old man in the desert. Osorio reportedly was never cured of his tuberculosis and lived to the ripe old age of 107, 30 years beyond the 77 years of my meeting --- although how Castaneda arrived at the 107 figure is not clear as Don Juan reportedly left the world in 1973 and for all practical purposes Castaneda ended his apprenticeship with him well before that.
At the very least, having a "white haired old Indian" hand me my walking stick in the bus station DOES, if nothing else, put a white haired old Indian in the bus station at the exact same time as Castaneda. If it was Don Juan Matus or not or if Castaneda and the white haired old Indian met or not, I can't say --- you have to take it from there.
Interestlingly enough, it should be noted that the 1871 year of birth calculated for Osorio and the death of the old white haired Indian on October 31, 1978 as told to me by my uncle comes out to be the 107 as quoted by Castaneda for the death of Osorio. Castaneda writes that Don Juan Matus was born in 1891 and that he was twenty years old when he met Osorio. He also writes that Osorio was twice Don Juan's age when the two met, making Osorio 40 years old --- hence then, making Osorio having been born in 1871. Quite the coincidence of numbers from a variety of different sources if none of it is not so.
