No Out-of-Body Experience Necessary - page 3

Much of the rest of what Castaneda covered that evening I already knew from his eight published works. He finished by saying that answering our questions was stimulating and helpful to his memory. Would anyone be interested in meeting like this again? I and about twenty others put our names on a list. One month later we were back in the basement of the Phoenix. This time I brought my wife, Carol. I needed a second opinion.

The room was more crowded this time, and the crowd was more knowledgeable. Someone asked, "How is it possible for the dream body to go out and see people and things in the physical world if the physical body has been left behind?" Castaneda responded that it is "the memory of the retina" that enables the dream body to see.

"What's your opinion of the various gurus from India and elsewhere whose teachings and meditation techniques are so popular in the United States?" Castaneda answered that he'd spent a year seeking out these masters, yogis, and self-proclaimed Incarnations of God. Without exception he found them all to be raging egomaniacs.

"Does one need a teacher?" "No," he said. What's really important is one's dedication and self-discipline. He spoke of his own youthful preoccupation with sex and courtship and the search for love. At one point in his life he said all he could think about, all that he cared about was "Jane or Myra, Myra or Jane."

I raised my hand and asked Castaneda if one had to be celibate if one wished to practice sorcery. My question seemed to embarrass him, making him cough before he answered. He explained that the energy level a person has throughout their lifetime depends on the amount of passion brought to the sexual act at the time of their conception. Because his father was old and sexually disinterested in his mother Carlos' own energy level had always been very low.

On our way home I asked Carol what she thought of Carlos Castaneda. She wasn't all that impressed. Several women in her aerobics group at the time earned their mad money performing chakra balancings. One of her girlfriends did crystal therapy, and another combined past life regression with foot-reflexology. From where we live we can see the hilltop mansion of the Maharaji. And sometimes, when everything is just right, Shirley MacLaine shops at our local market.

It was two months before the next call came from the Phoenix. Carol didn't want to go, so I brought Big Steve, a basketball buddy and psychotherapist with an interest in metaphysics similar to my own. Carlos Castaneda showed up with a gauze bandage wrapped around his right hand. He needed some volunteers, some people who sincerely wanted to learn more about sorcery.

He said one can only go so far alone, but a group of at least eight persons is capable of producing impressive results. As an analogy he told us that if you place less than fifty-two ants in an ant farm the behavior of the ants will be disorganized and chaotic, but if there are fifty-two or more, the ants go about their activities in an orderly and productive fashion. A "critical mass" must be reached.

Castaneda wanted a group that would meet once a week, Saturday afternoons, in a local park to practice various movements resembling Tai Chi. No pregnant women. No drug addicts. No bullshitters. No nut cases.

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