No Out-of-Body Experience Necessary - page 4

He'd learned these exercises somehow from Lo Ban, a Chinese Herbalist who became a brujo, part of don Juan's ancient lineage, in Mexico City during the 1870's. Lo Ban, Castaneda told us, owned a warehouse in which there were forty-three barrels containing Chinese herbal concoctions. When someone was sick they'd go to Lo Ban's warehouse. He'd diagnose their problem and have them climb into one of the barrels to soak for several hours or several days. Lo Ban was plucked off the street by his "benefactor", scared out of his wits by Yaqui magic, then trained for many years until he, too, became a powerful sorcerer.

I raised my hand. "You mentioned no drug addicts. Does that include marijuana?"

Castaneda grimaced. He said that the habitual use of any kind of drug is very, very detrimental and affects the color of one's aura. Coffee makes it a "nasty green"; pot turns it to turquoise. Turquoise, he elaborated, is the absolute worst color. ("If you want to kill yourself in six days, put turquoise sheets on your bed.") The sorcerer's aura is "whitish".

I must confess: I didn't sign up to be a sorcerer's apprentice. Even if Castaneda's magic were real - and I'm still not sure - it wasn't what I wanted for my life. Zen teaching doesn't rule out paranormal phenomena like ESP and astral projection, it just considers them "animal tricks", irrelevant to the pursuit of Enlightenment. But it wasn't the pursuit of Enlightenment that made me pass up this once in a lifetime opportunity. It was sex, drugs, and basketball.

After twenty years of marriage, Carol and I had finally worked out a wonderful sexual relationship. Could sorcery be worth celibacy? I didn't even want to cut back. Same thing with pot-smoking. And the clincher: every Saturday afternoon for the past fourteen years I've played full-court basketball in Santa Monica with Matt, Big Steve and a bunch of other pals. It's the absolute highlight of my week.

Sometimes in life one has to take stock - Castaneda called it "putting all your shit on the table" - and decide what is really important. To my surprise I said "no" to Magic and "yes" to Life's Simple Pleasures.

It turned out not to be such a bad choice. Big Steve did sign up for free sorcery lessons and went to the park the next Saturday. He said the exercises were interesting and required concentration, but nothing special happened. The following week Castaneda cancelled out.

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