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About three years ago, a friend called. Would I like to go to lunch with Carlos Castaneda? Why
I received this invitation I was never told. It turned out that there were four of us and Carlos.
We met at the Pacific Dining Car, one of the best -- and most expensive
-- steakhouses on the West Coast. (Carlos picked up the check. ) He was much thinner, older
-- obviously ill. He was decked out in an elegant suit. But for all his fragility he seemed much livelier, happier, and
even funnier. The food was fine, but really we lunched on laughter. Even his saddest stories of
Don Juan were like jokes; but this time the joke wasn't on Carlos, or on us
-- the joke was between the wizard and God, and a splendid joke it was.
I won't repeat those stories. I wasn't there for the purpose of recording them. They
were his to tell or not. Best that anything he chose not to write should die with him.
Two moments, though, caused not laughter but silence. A woman at the table said she
loved her job, her husband, and her child, but still she felt a lack
-- she had no spiritual life. How could she achieve a spiritual life?
Answering this woman, Carlos didn't change the lightness or generosity of his manner;
yet a steely thing came into his voice, a tone that make his words pierce all of us. He said
that, when she got home at night, she should sit in her chair and remember that her child, her
husband, everyone she loved, and she herself, were going to die
-- and they would die in no particular order, unpredictably. "Remember this every night, and you'll soon have a spiritual
life."
Notice that he didn't tell her what sort of spiritual life to have, much less whether it
should agree with his. He didn't suggest she read his books more carefully, or attend the
movement classes he'd begun to teach. He gave her a practical instruction, something she
could accomplish within the parameters of her life as it was, and then assured her that this
would set her on her own spiritual path, whatever that might turn out to be. This is the mark
of a true teacher.
Later in the conversation, this woman asked how she could discipline herself to follow
his advice, and follow it deeply, so that it wouldn't be just an exercise. Carlos said: "You give
yourself a command."
On the page, there's no duplicating how he said it. He spoke quietly, but it was as
though he'd suddenly jammed a knife into the table top.
"What's that mean?" one of us asked.
"It means you give yourself a command. " And that was that.
A command is not a promise. A command is not "trying." A command is something
that must be obeyed. His tone invoked something deeper than the idea of mere will. His was a
call to action. He wasn't talking about mulling or meditating or analyzing or wishing. To step
on the path you step on the path. There is no substitute for that.
About a year later, the woman who'd asked those questions at our lunch sent me a
pamphlet that Carlos had printed privately. He'd requested she send it on to me. One passage
goes:
"Sorcerers understand discipline as the capacity to face with serenity odds that are
not included in our expectations. For them, discipline is a volitional act that enables them to
take anything that comes their way without regrets or expectations. For sorcerers, discipline
is an art: the art of facing infinity without flinching, not because they are filled with
toughness, but because they are filled with awe...Discipline is the art of feeling awe."
Any manifestation of the universe, any way in which it behaves toward us, isn't
merely about us, isn't merely psychological, but is a movement of the universe. What happens
to us, no matter what it is, connects us to everything, and in that connection, what can we
feel but awe? "A live world," Carlos wrote, "is in constant flux. It moves; it changes; it
reverses itself. " We try to defend ourselves against that, but we cannot. The only freeing
response is awe.
-- Michael Ventura
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