No Out-of-Body Experience Necessary

Conversations with Carlos Castaneda

BY LANE SARASOHN

I was paying for two books at the Phoenix Bookstore in Santa Monica - Hubert Benoit's The Supreme Doctrine (Psychological Studies in Zen Thought) and The Zen Doctrine of No Mind by D.T. Suzuki. My modest comprehension of the Universe is summed up in these two slim volumes and they seemed like a good birthday present for my pal Matt Neuman whose own metaphysics are based on the teachings of Casey Stengel.

After ringing up my charge the guy behind the counter handed me my American Express Card and asked, "Do the words Dabo Tibi Coronam Vitae have any meaning to you?" "No," I quipped, "it's all Greek to me." "Latin, actually," said the bookseller. "It means I will give you the Crown of Life". "Is this a come on?" I wondered. "It's from Revelations. It's the motto on the insignia of Bard-St. Stevens."

"Hey," I exclaimed, "I went to Bard!". "I know," said this apparent stranger, who many years before had been a good college friend.

I hadn't seen or heard of Mike Goth since 1962. The last I knew, he'd married an heiress and was learning to race Formula One cars in Europe. Now, here he turns up in the Nineties the proprietor of Santa Monica's pre-eminent metaphysical bookstore.

Of course, I was delighted to see Mike for Old Time's Sake, but the implications of this chance reunion were for me magical, karmic, and profound. The thought rushed to mind: through this new-found old friend I might possibly meet the only person on earth I was still interested in meeting (having already met Milton Berle and Timothy Leary): author and sorcerer Carlos Castaneda. Who knows? - perhaps he'd take me on as his apprentice.

I began reading Castaneda's autobiographical books about his encounters with Native American hallucinogenic drugs and Yaqui Indian sorcery in the early Seventies while I was still taking acid and everything seemed possible.

I could always count on Castaneda for some trippy tales, do-it-yourself magic tips, and offbeat gems of wisdom. His books always inspired me (for a while at least) to get me off my spiritual ass. The Teachings of Don Juan, A Separate Reality, and Journey to Ixtlan struck deep chords in my right brain, while my left brain kept grumbling, "Is this guy for real, or what?"

In his earliest books young Carlos presented himself as a note-taking nerd, a Brazilian-born UCLA graduate student working toward his doctorate in Sociology, who happened to fall in with don Juan Matus, a brujo (sorcerer) from Mexico whose magical lineage could be traced back to the Toltecs.

But now, after three decades of studying these magical mysteries Castaneda was able to claim for himself a measure of understanding and the ability to perform certain feats of sorcery; things like sending his "dream body" out and about in Westwood (and - one would presume - beyond); visiting certain people at a prescribed time and date in their dreams; and even hobnobbing with his fellow wizards in the five (or seven) worlds he says are available to "luminous eggs"/humans like ourselves.

"Say, Mike," I said, after we'd chatted for awhile, "I read an article in the LA Weekly by Michael Ventura. He said he attended a Carlos Castaneda lecture here."

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