Page:Para leer a Carlos Castaneda.djvu/124

 Castaneda tells the story of how he met Don Juan in a bus station in Nogales, United States, on the border with Mexico. It is a power story, which teaches us that the intent guide the steps which the spirit makes us take to find our destiny.

Castaneda tells how a friend invites him to a journey through the desert. The author was doubting between doing field research or urban anthropology. Bill was a research anthropologist who, feeling near his death, wants to say goodbye to his indigenous informants and the desert, who saw him live his best times. Castaneda does not understand the journey being made and at the last moment, when Bill takes him to the bus station, his friend points Don Juan and tells him that he is a Psychotropic plants expert, but warns him that it is very difficult elder to address.

When Castaneda goes to Don Juan, he lets him talk while watching him. In this brief encounter, while Castaneda is bluffing about his alleged knowledge that wishes to exchange with Don Juan, he traps him with a deep gaze which shakes his foundation and end up "hooked" by the nagual. Don Juan invites him to visit and quickly takes his bus, disappearing from the scene.

When his friend asks, what did he talk about with Don Juan, Castaneda cannot explain, because he knows that Don Juan "did something with his stare", but invited him to visit, although left no address. Bill gets upset by professional jealousy, because he could never address Don Juan, told him that perhaps in Yuma he could be found. Castaneda instead of returning to Los Angeles goes to Yuma searching for Don Juan.

''"Without paying attention to my defeat feelings, I took the trip with him. We visited every place where there were Indians in Arizona, and New Mexico. One of the final results of this trip was that I discovered that my anthropologist friend possessed two defined facets. He explained that his views as a professional anthropologist were very moderate and consistent with anthropological thinking of the time, but personally, his anthropological field work had presented experiences of great wealth that he never spoke. These experiences were not congruent with the anthropological thought of the time because these were event impossible to catalogue..." C.C.''

THE INTENT OF THE INFINITE

Castaneda tells how he went searching for Don Juan at the Yaqui region and finds Don Juan home in a community near Potam, north of Guaymas in Sonora State, northwestern Mexico. There he found two Yaqui characters that are the focus of this story. One was Jorge Campos and the other Lucas Coronado, one was a cheap crook, "a ruthless mercenary, shameless, and crude" and the other a "super-sensible artist, tormented, weak and vulnerable", two extremes of Castaneda personality before he met Don Juan.

These characters will take him to Don Juan and the story, Don Juan demonstrated to Castaneda the two led him "to the infinite threshold". Castaneda had to use all his personal power to "find" his teacher. Don Juan was waiting for this power demonstration to confirm what he "saw" in Castaneda at the bus station.

Don Juan tells Castaneda that in particular the fraudster Jorge Campos, means a lot to him. Somehow, this Castaneda facet had been enunciated against him, especially from the Academy and anthropologists. Many people claims that