Life Dreams: Field notes on psi, synchronicity and shamanism 9780981831817

Citation preview

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Field Notes on Psi, Synchronicity, and Shamanism

Douglass Price-Williams

3

Life Dreams: Field notes on Psi, Synchronicity, and Shamanism

Douglass Price-Williams

Pioneer Imprints 2008

Copyright © 2008 by Douglass Price-Williams

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means - electronic, mechanical or other - without written permission from the

author, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. The experiences and stories used as examples throughout this book are

true, although identifying details such as name have been changed to

protect the privacy of others.

Book design and typography by Alden Bevington Set in 12-point Adobe Garamond Pro by Pioneer Imprints

www.pioneerimprints.com

First printing, March 2008 ISBN 978-0-9818318-1-7 123456789 10—03 02 01

Call it a moment’s work (and such it seems) This tales a fragmentfrom the life ofdreams; But say, thatyears matur’d the silent strife, And ‘tis a recordfrom the dream oflife.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Contents © About the Author

viii

Acknowledgments

ix

Prologue

xi

1

The Man With the Receding Hair

2 The Nature of the Ally

1 25

3

Interlude: Colombian Sorcery

51

4

Double Trouble

78

14 A Change of Heart

105 129 165 193 230 267 302 323 353 373

Epilogue

408

Appendix: Time Charts and Books Cited

419

5 The Scarab in the Eye 6 The Days of the Snake 7 Nepalese Shamanism

8

On the Trail of the Don

9

Between a Thunderbird and a Coyote

10

Revelations

11

Realization at Taos

12 The Lamp of Understanding

13 The Fifth Man

viii

About the Author Douglass Price-Williams was born in London, England, and emigrated

to the U.S. in 1964, later becoming a U.S. citizen. He served as a Radio

Officer in the British Merchant Navy during the last years of World War II. Before getting his Bachelors and Doctoral degrees in Psychology from the

University of London, he studied body-use under EM.Alexander, the creator of the Alexander Technique, and taught this technique in Copenhagen and

England.

Professor Price-Williams is recognized as one of the founders of crosscultural psychology and as one of the pioneers ofpsychological anthropology. He has taught on University level for nearly 4 decades; at the London

School of Economics, University of Kansas (Visiting), as Chairman of the

Psychology Department at Rice University and 20 years in the departments

of Anthropology and Psychiatry at UCLA. He has produced close to one hundred fifty published writings in his career and has served on numerous editorial boards. As an anthropologist he has done field work in Mexico

and Guatemala, two regions of Nigeria, the big island of Hawaii, Nepal,

Bali and in the aboriginal communities of Australia. He became a clinical psychologist in California in the early 1980 s and co-conducted dream

groups with artists for fifteen years.

His interest in transpersonal matters began when he studied in England

for ten years with J.G.Bennett of the Gurdjieff-Ouspensky movement. He has consulted with Meher Baba, Pak Subuh and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi,

and has studied and practiced numerous methods of meditation.

ix

Acknowledgements The first draft of this book was read by Professor Stanley

Krippner, Dr. Jacques Vallee, and a Jungian teacher and therapist. I am

very obliged for all of their suggestions and criticisms at that stage of the manuscript. Stanley Krippner in particular has my endless gratitude for encouraging me to persist in publishing this book, after

many failures to interest agents and publishers.

Indeed it still

would not have been published if Stanley had not procured a brilliant and patient editor by the name of Alden Bevington. Through the

hands of Alden Bevington the manuscript was transformed from its com­ plicated and blurred state into a readable text. This has been a difficult book for me to write; without Alden’s guidance it would have remained

unpublished. In addition the author expresses his gratitude to the Chair for the

Study of Consciousness, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, and to the Leir Charitable Trusts for their support in the preparation of

this book. There are a number of people to whom I owe another kind of debt.

These are the men and women who shared their experiences with me and

gave me, either in written form or orally, descriptions of their shared ex­ periences. Some of them are now dead, others I have lost contact with,

and the rest I still keep in touch with. I hope that some of those that still

remain might one day find an opportunity to compose their own version

and interpretation of the events that we shared.

PROLOGUE

Prologue ©

(e>\

his book chronicles a season of truly remarkable happenings in

my life. They began just after my fiftieth birthday and persist­ ed over an eleven-year period. It has taken me longer - thirteen years in fact from their cessation - to narrate them in print and fit for an audi­

ence of readers such as yourself, and only then with a great deal of edi­ torial help. While it was no simple task to live with these experiences, as

will be evident and understandable as I now recount their details, it has proved even harder to tell others about them, and then in a cogent manner.

These remarkable events, it now appears after arduous assess­

ments, fall under the general category of what has been labeled Psi

— the Greek letter first utilized by a British psychologist, Robert Thouxi

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DREAMS

less, for labeling psychic experiences. In a twist of the type to which I was to become accustomed, as will you in reading this text, it was

Thouless himself who had interviewed me for an academic position

right after gaining my first degree in Psychology. I did not get the job.

The phenomena known as Psi experiences cover a wide range of events; the chief events described in this book were primar­

ily, but not always, in the realm of dreams - dreams that correlat­ ed with waking coincidences. Carl Jung, whose work influenced me greatly throughout this period, called such events Synchronicities. While it has been difficult enough for me to both experience and then

narrate these events, as I have mentioned, it has proved even harder to reveal publicly that the initial dreams which opened me up to this strange world,

were, it appears, triggered by a luncheon conversation with a man of dubi-

ous reputation. This man was Cados Castaneda. This is not a text about Carlos Castaneda, as its reading will reveal, but one of a journey into what

was, for me at the time as a classically-trained and somewhat skeptic crosscultural psychologist, an entirely new way of seeing. Nevertheless, the ap­ parent consequences of interactions with this man, and the intriguing if not confabulatory psychic circus that surrounded him at the time, has earned

him an important and entertaining place in this narrative. This text is also

in truth one documenting my own inner development, and process of dis­

covery in this regard, land-marked by the events and characters of the story. At the time when this narrative begins (1974) Carlos Castaneda had

recently received a doctorate from the Anthropology department of the

University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). This was granted for the dissertation of his work with a mysterious Native American sorcerer called don Juan whom many later came to know of, at least in name, through the series of books that followed. I myself had joined the An­

thropology department as a professor two years prior to Carlos receiv-

PROLOGUE

xiii

ing his doctorate, though I was not on his dissertation committee. Carlos had come to visit me in my office when I joined UCLA in 1971, and we struck up a continuing luncheon acquaintance. I liked talk­

ing with Carlos; he was always entertaining and had a congenial man­ ner, though as I will describe in the first and later Chapters, I was never quite sure about his story. Basically, at the outset I suspended judgment

about him, which seemed appropriate for someone in my position at the time. Though he might have made up his story as many alleged, earlier in my life I myself had had a few experiences that were diffi­ cult to believe. With this attitude I gave him the benefit of the doubt. So when Carlos suggested at one fateful luncheon meeting in West­

wood that I gather a group of friends to witness a manifestation of what he called his “Ally” (to this day, I have never been quite sure what this

meant) at a place and time set by him, I assented without much qualifica­ tion. I have an unfortunate tendency towards flippancy for such occasions, which had led me down many unforeseen paths. For satisfying my good

natured curiosity about this man, I would certainly have preferred to have met the mysterious don Juan, who several of my colleagues at UCLA did

not think existed; but, when offered to see instead Carlos’ Ally, which I

imagined to be like Banquo’s ghost in Shakespeare’s MacBeth - I simply thought “why not!” In fact, as will be borne out, I half expected the affair to go no further than this odd suggestion. In my experience and in that

of others, Carlos often suggested something that never came to happen. «»

The weeks passed after the outset of the “experiment”, and then months.

Then after about six or seven months, unexpectedly and shockingly, some­ thing unusual happened. It was not during any meeting in Los Angeles of the group I had assembled from around the state to share in the experi­

ment, nor did it clearly indicate any manifestation of an “Ally”, at least not in the way I expected. It was rather that several of my selected group, in-

xiv

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LIFE

DREAMS

eluding myself, had curious dreams about this idea in the same time frame. If this had happened just once, I would have put it away as an odd, but

statistical, fluke. These things tend to happen, and there are many funny things that happen which cannot easily be accounted for: c’est la vie. But

when it happened again, and with more people involved, and then again on a third occasion when something even more unexpected arose — I could

no longer brush it under the carpet. At this point, seeking some sense of mechanism to these anomalous phenomena and a new evaluation of Car­

los, I entered into the only discipline in science that would assess such things openly and give them the time for quantitative analysis, the weird

world of parapsychology. This said, I made this entrance quite reluctantly. If the ‘Phenomenon’, as I began to call it, had remained at this

point of its development I would have likely coped by merely accepting

it as yet one more unsolved puzzle in my life as a researcher. After all, I had studied witchcraft in a West African setting earlier in my career

and had even discussed the enigma of UFOs at a scientific meeting in Boston a few years previously. I was quite prepared to probe beyond the

narrow confines of my own specialty if circumstances conspired as such. While all this was developing Carlos was living in a house very

V near to the University campus though he never disclosed his address to

anyone. For all we knew he might have been living in Mexico, which was in fact what he often claimed. Long after the events described here

began, I learned that the name of the street in which he had been liv­ ing was called Pandora, and it could be said that Pandoras box began to open with vehemence. As the Phenomenon escalated on an index of strangeness, the neat scientific paradigm of detached observer and con­

trolled situation could no longer be accepted, nor in fact, maintained. What began as an intellectual puzzle to be unraveled turned into something more like a vision quest. New and exotic people entered into

PROLOGUE

my life. Relevant dreams and strange experiences, all seemingly related to this quest, were now being experienced by friends outside the initial

group. In the midst of this, and to deepen my inquiry into the supposed

context of these events, I traveled to Bogota to learn about sorcery, and to the lower Himalayas to learn more about Shamanism. I also made a trip to Tucson, Arizona to follow up a lead concerning the possible true identity

of don Juan, and another to Taos pueblo to speak with a Native American

man whose name I had learned of in yet another curious coincidence.

During these times my conversations, and indeed my involvement, with Carlos Castaneda deepened, though my relationship with him waxed

and waned. I did become more and more inquisitive about him, and I met his relatives, some of his old friends, and had many conversations

about him with his anthropological teachers. Due to my position at the

University, I even came across a departmental document about his ini­

tial doctoral work during the time he allegedly met the elusive don Juan. Yet, as I mentioned previously, despite the obvious salience of Carlos

in this exploration, this writing is not really about him. In truth, if it had not been for the continual impact of synchronicities during this period I would have found no reason to write this book at all. Others who are more

focused on this enigmatic personality may find material to use from what I have to say about him; for me, however, his impact, though admittedly prominent at the start, was minimized by the proliferation of Psi occurrenc­

es that developed and continued to develop clearly outside of his influence.

At this point it is fitting to tell how this book developed. Early in my career as a psychologist I had written a textbook on introductory psy­

chology for social workers, in which I had written a whole chapter on the importance of testimony. I knew well how events in memory can be

easily distorted, or can be differently reported from various perspectives. Knowing this, from the very beginning I made the decision to in-

XV

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dreams

sen these anomalous events into a running Journal, which over the years

expanded into five or six large ring-backed folders. As the dreams and incidents were often consequent to conversations with friends and col­

leagues, discussions with these people were also recorded and inserted. In time, my friends gave me copies of their own dreams and experiences

that seemed to be related to the unfolding saga. These, too, were collected

in my Journal. After several years, the accumulated content became so

large and unwieldy that it became necessary to summarize the material

separately; two smaller black ring-backed folders were created. This pres­ ent book is derived from both sets of the original documents. For rea­ sons of style and readability, the original conversational mode has been re-instated, as the grammar of reported speech is tiresome for rhe reader. As I am not a practiced novelist, but an academic, the conversa­

tional mode is bound to lack the idiosyncrasies, inflexion and syntac­ tical patterning of the original speaker; however, all the remarks have been derived from the original reports. While the original manuscript has been edited several times, the fact remains that the end product that

you read here is accurately based on this running Journal. The origi­ nal events that were included in this Journal were jotted down in the customary dry style that I have always used for reporting psychologi­

cal experimental findings or ethnographic observations. The later re­ styling of the text was purposed that this should not obscure the range

of emotions that were felt by participants involved in these episodes.

While I have constructed pseudonyms for many of the persons in­ volved, many others have presented difficulties. Some of the more salient figures involved in this series of dreams, apart from Carlos Castaneda,

involved: a Native American writer who has published several books on the meaning of myths; an anthropological colleague who made a name

for himself studying Shamanism in Nepal; a specialist on maps and a ra-

PROLOGUE

dio broadcaster; a famous South American anthropologist; a writer of fiction and other works concerning the people of the American South-

West; and a leading writer on information management and unidenti­

fied flying objects (who alone of my original group actually suggested

that I use his real name). There are other characters in this book that are prominent in the field of parapsychology, and other writers and schol­

ars. I realized, that there was no way to effectively disguise any of these people, as their personality and professions are germane to the substance

of this book. In addition, part of the findings embedded in this story

are that there was shown to be meaning in peoples names: mainly in

their first names, but, in one case at least, the last name. For this rea­ son, these names have therefore needed to remain true to the original

although in such cases their last or other name has been left vacant. Some of these people are now dead, including Carlos Castaneda. I

have lost contact with others, while some are still alive and have received earlier drafts of this book. The manuscript itself has gone through several

changes. Some drafts were sent to publishers, who it seems either lost them or returned them without comment. What is now finally presented is the result of having an editor, who has managed to massage a rather

inchoate testimony into something readable, and hopefully enjoyable. Now, back to the story and the Psi occurrences. These continued

in their characteristic unexpected way, and nothing seemed to develop in the manner I anticipated. At times it felt as if I was in a labyrinth. The accruing dreams of others involved began to give me certain disturbing signs. Earlier there had been phenomena that indicated these signs but I had ignored them. Later though, these indications became so

obvious they could no longer be ignored. These dreams, of my friends as well as my own, suggested that it was I myself that was at the back of the shop, as it were, directing the anomalous events and synchron-

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life dreams

icities. The well-known parapsychologist and psychoanalyst Jule Eisen-

bud personally put it into words to me that I could understand: “You

are writing the script.” Even earlier than this, the Native American writer Hyemeyohsts Storm, had admonished me “to put myself into the pic­ ture.” The whole saga was now beginning to look like a detective story.

It brought to mind a classic Agatha Christie novel in which the narrator of the story turned out to be the murderer. If I identified with the char­

acters, it seemed as though I was not only the victim and the detective

— I was the perpetrator. I found this quite disturbing to my sensibilities. As I continued my humble groping through the corridors of these ex­

periences, an even more unforeseen twist came about in my understanding, one which helped me to escape from the labyrinth. For this I owe a debt to

the novelist Frank Waters, whose home I visited in Taos in July 1980, and also to his wife and friends. From this visit I learned to perceive the details

of most of the phenomena in the story symbolically. This enabled me to

structure a pattern out of the characters and events in a symbolic Man­

dala that I termed a kind of road map, presented here in a later Chapter. The events that gave birth to this book are full of ironies. The whole

story had been inaugurated at the prompting of a man whose veracity was questionable; I had set out to research phenomena outside myself only to find I had to look inside; the entire narrative had begun at the time when I

was giving a series of yearly lectures in the department of Anthropology at UCLA on the psychological aspects ofmyth and ritual and symbolism. Now

i here I was, experiencing symbols and living out a myth, and yet initially I had I not recognized it. It was not only ironic; I felt humiliated and very foolish.

The switch in perspective to symbolism had another unintended con­

sequence. The apparent paranormal events performed the function of drawing my attention to certain things that otherwise I surely would have ignored. These Psi occurrences did introduce problems of their own, and

PROLOGUE

for me particularly, as experiencing them does not magically obliterate the

critical faculty. As a psychologist I knew from study that parapsychologists bend over backwards to control factors that tend to mislead people into

thinking that something paranormal had happened; prudent precautions taken in laboratory situations that can be observed by an experimenter.

The occurrences reported here, on the other hand, happened in a daily life framework. There was no way in which these situations could be fully controlled, particularly when I did not even know they were to

happen. They arrived on the scene unexpectedly and sometimes, if not of­

ten, unwanted. Over time I found that pondering over the problem con­ cerning whether these events were truly considered to be paranormal, or

whether my friends and I had missed factors that could otherwise explain them, had become arduous and a distraction. This assessment came not

from a capitulation to cognitive incapacities, but rather from a growing understanding of what particular approaches might provide the answers I sought. Seeing that there was meaning in the symbolism of these events placed the intellectual problem into the background. It didn’t ignore the

problem, which is still present for me, but the issue became a second­

ary one. These events meant something, and that required a response. This new bend in the road revealing a verdant and previously unseen

symbolism, was refreshing but soon too revealed its own dilemmas. The first arose simply because I was now using a new terminology. Symbolism has

many different interpretations in the scholarly world. At a time in our cul­ ture when symbolism is equated as a kind of cosmetic (“Merely symbolic” as newscasters constantly say), and at a time when the word “myth” is misun­

derstood as a mistaken belief (usually regarding the beliefs of other people,

not our own) it becomes a problem to show that these terms are properly

talking about underlying emotional patterns and implicit forces in our lives. The second dilemma concerned the art of interpretation — Herme-

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life dreams

neutics as it is called by philosophers. In order for the symbols to have

any effect at all they needed to be interpreted. I did so through the framework of the psychology of Carl Jung. It needs to be said that I had never met the man, nor had any clinical association with his psychol­

ogy. I had indeed discussed his theories of symbolism along with those of many other authorities in my lectures, but I was not a Jungian, nor

became one. It was simply at this time in my life that his terminology and ideas provided the crucial key in translating these experiences into

my inner world of emotions and strivings. For other people, I can under­

stand very well that Jung’s concepts may not serve this purpose. Indeed,

at another time in my own life, they may not have had this effect. Very curiously however, Jung’s presence hovered throughout these phenomena.

Being psychologists it was natural that my colleagues and I would la­ bel the very first of the anomalous experiences “synchronicities”, following

Jung’s terminology. More interestingly, it was the image of a scarab in one of our dreams that escalated our attention to possible paranormal events — the scarab being the very example in which Jung first discussed synchronicity. So perhaps it was not surprising that I used his concepts in understanding

the images that constituted my labyrinth. To myself what is more aston­ ishing - a fact that I cannot easily explain in an ordinary way — was that a Pueblo Indian from Taos who appears later in this story, and whose first

name had consistently cropped up in dreams and imaginations, turned out

to have a decided and personal linkage with this eminent Swiss psychiatrist. Mindful of the fact that I needed a road map to understand my

own experiences, this Prologue is provided as a road map for you, as you now proceed to engage this unusual, but profoundly indicative, series of events.

THE MAN WITH THE RECEDING HAIR

CHAPTER ONE

The Man With the © Receding Hair

Carlos Castaneda leaned forward across the luncheon table, speaking

seriously. “I know now how to raise my Ally.”

His use of the word ‘raise’ slightly disturbed me; it evoked Biblical

images of Lazarus coming out of the grave. A bit puzzled too, I queried, “What do yoiiu mean - raise? Do you mean to manifest it, show it?”

“Yes, but the problem is...,” Carlos hesitated; “the problem is that so far I have only done this with my circle, and it could be the result of

suggestion. They may have recognized the cues that were involved in the

ritual.”

1

2

LIFE DREAMS

I assumed in this that he was referring to a ritual for raising the ally. He then paused a long time.

“Could you form a group?” he finally asked me. Elaborating a little, he said that he wanted a group of people who would not be prone to suggestion, and he wanted me to pick them. The idea, he explained, was that the group would meet in a house that was

either going to be torn down, or alternatively was only half-built. “I don’t want any associations with this house,” he finished.

I left the restaurant that day in the frame of mind that I usually found myself in after meeting with Carlos: that is to say, half-intrigued, half­

bemused, always entertained. I often took him half-seriously, and was always left wondering slightly whether I was dealing with a lunatic, a conman or just someone who had got himself involved in a weird business. It

was no different on this day in February 1974, and as I went back to my

office in Westwood I had not yet decided whether to follow up on Carlos request or not. There were too many other important matters in my life to

worry about. I had yet to finish a book, several students had their essays ready for me to read, there was a grant proposal to get ready. As usual a thousand things were clamoring for my attention. To explain to some of

my friends that Carlos was proposing a meeting at some deserted place in order to demonstrate an apparition was not a task that I felt like exerting myself in. Moreover, I had noted before with Carlos a tendency to propose

some scheme and not follow it up. I decided to leave the idea aside for a while.

Early Reflections on an Enigma I sat at my desk remembering what I knew about the man. I had first met him when I was being interviewed for a full professorship at the Los Angeles branch of the University of California - UCLA as it is

THE MAN WITH THE RECEDING HAIR

3

generally known. I was being appointed in two departments, Psychiatry and Anthropology, and I was interviewed by about twenty people. There seemed to be no end to the people that were deemed necessary to meet with me. As I was leaving a meeting where I was interviewed by several members

of the Anthropology department, the chairman of the department (whom

I found out later was also the chairman of Carlos’ doctoral committee)

pointed to a short, dark man sitting at the table in the departments library and asked whether I would like to meet ‘Carlos

I didn’t catch the

last name; it sounded Spanish. I did not know who this man was, and

I presumed it was just another of the countless people who wanted to

interview me. But this man Carlos apparently was not interested in what I did - a merciful break - but talked instead all about some Indian character «

called don Juan, and how he had learned sorcery from him and so forth. I did not understand why the Chairman had wanted me to meet Carlos,

but the man seemed affable, and indeed sounded interesting, and even resonated a little with some experiences of my own.

It was not until I returned to Honolulu, where I was spending the year

on leave from my current University, that I found out who this man was. I was browsing in a book shop in the Ala Moana complex and found a book with the title of The Teachings of Don Juan. I realized I had been talking with its author, Carlos Castaneda.

When I first read this book, telling how the young graduate student in Anthropology had encountered a sorcerer on his first fieldwork in

Arizona and Mexico and then had been slowly indoctrinated into the art of sorcery with dramatic results, my immediate reaction was somewhat

egoistical. When I learned that Castaneda was now a kind of folk-hero,

soaring Anthropology to new heights of insight, I could not help thinking of my first field trip in 1959, when I had been working with a so-called witch doctor among the Tiv of Central Nigeria. I had gone with this man

4

LIFE DREAMS

to many healing rituals, in which he had sacrificed an animal, prepared

herbs and performed other ritual tasks. My big moment with the Tiv came when Angkungul (the man’s name) needed to read out a list of twentyfour rituals, and as was often the case, by the time he came out with the eighteenth or nineteenth, he could not remember the remainder. One day when this happened he had both forgotten what he had

intoned and as well did not remember the rest. Having written the names down in my field notebook, I told him he had left out so-and-so and so-

and-so. This had impressed the other Tiv that sat around in the ritual, and

they muttered, “A fa, A fa” (He knows, he knows). When I came to Rice University in Texas from London in 1964, one

of the Houston newspapers did a little piece on me, describing me as a “witch doctor’s assistant.” In 1964, in the South, this did not go down

at all well, and I had to shrug off the embarrassment. Now here was this

South American graduate student scoring heavily with his experiences in the cultural supernatural. Oh, how times had changed! Of course, as I recognized, there were immense differences between us. In fact, looking at it more circumspectly, there really was no comparison at all. Carlos had really dived into the world of the occult; he had learned how to feel and

behave like a crow - he had become a crow, it was implied; he had tasted

the values of being a sorcerer. I had, like most anthropological workers at that time, observed from the outside; I did not believe in the tenets of witchcraft, rather I saw witchcraft from its economic and social aspects,

understood some of its psychological features, but of course could not identify with it. Yes, his book was intriguing, but I really did not know

whether to accept the whole tale or not.

When I arrived at UCLA, Carlos re-introduced himself and reminded me of our meeting some months before. This set the pattern for talking

with him at infrequent intervals, at first just in my office and then meetings

)

THE MAN WITH THE RECEDING HAIR

5

for lunch or coffee. He would consistently suggest meeting, and he had

my phone number, though I could never get hold of him. During our

very first meeting in October or November of 1971, not knowing about

his penchant for secrecy and privacy, I naively asked him for his phone number. He gave me a local number which I filed away in my address

book. I didn’t have an occasion to use it until perhaps a year later when I was forced to cancel a luncheon meeting with him. I found out the

number belonged to a laundromat!

All these meetings were characterized by little stories narrated by Carlos with verve, ingenuity and animation. He was a fascinating

storyteller and I was continually captivated. The stories were mostly about

his ongoing odyssey with don Juan and his colleagues, but also about early memories with his son and episodes with colleagues known to us both.

These references were often slightly malicious; as in the case of a Professor

whom Carlos had presented with a term paper on Shamanism. Carlos had submitted the paper with two inverted pages, one paper stuck to another, (

and a numbered page completely missing. Carlos said that he was given the paper back in exactly the same condition he had presented it, with an

A+ and a comment saying “Good Work!” Carlos also commented about

his editors and his literary agent - whom he called Uncle Ned. But mostly

he focused on his sorceric experiences and practices. I began to realize, especially after talking to other friends who had

similar conversations with Carlos, that he had the tendency to try out

episodes from the current book he was working on. I did not keep a record of these conversations; there was no reason to, but now as I tried to re­

collect what I knew about him, two conversations stood out. The first was an occasion when I was crossing a street in Westwood

outside my office. He had been telling me how don Juan had now disappeared and left him on his own. Carlos felt alienated without him

]

6

LIFE DREAMS

but recently don Juan had been appearing in his dreams. There was one dream in which don Juan was yanking Carlos by the hair, trying to get his

attention. Then Carlos commented: “You know, don Juan was so realistic

that I couldn’t tell the difference between don Juan in my dream and don Juan as I remembered him.” I could not resist the question, and as

the lights turned and we began to cross the pedestrian walkway, I asked, “Then, how do you know, Carlos, when you really met him that it wasn’t

then a dream?” I felt like I had asked the key question at a philosopher’s

convention, and was curious to see how he would handle this. We had arrived at the median island. Carlos stopped and looked at me pensively.

He paused several seconds. His eyes twinkled. “I suppose I can’t really.

But during the times I met him there would be hotel receipts, bus tickets — and other things like that. I felt it was a real occasion.” We completed the

crossing to the other side. It was an honest answer and it satisfied me. The other occasion I remembered was more significant. We were

lunching at the Chatham restaurant in Westwood, and he was telling me about a new experience connected with sorcery in Mexico. Carlos had encountered a talking coyote, which moreover was bi-lingual; it addressed

Carlos in both Spanish and English. The story triggered one of my flippant rejoinders, to which I am unfortunately prone. So I said in jest, but with

the usual English dead-pan expression of seriousness which I reserve for '

these remarks: “You know Carlos, you can’t trust a word those coyotes ( say; they’re trickster figures.” Instead of giggling or even smiling, Carlos

re­

appeared to withdraw, as if a dark cloud had come over the sun and his

face went into shadow. I thought, “Oh my God, I’ve offended him.”

The conversation went on to something else. However, as it turned out, the joke was on me. A year later a new book was published which I

eagerly read. And I found there, in the context of the bi-lingual coyote, my little remark about trickster figures. Only it was don Juan who was the

THE MAN WITH THE RECEDING HAIR

pontificator, with the added sententious comment that it would have been better for Carlos if he talked with a rattlesnake, as they were more reliable.

I did not know where this addition came from, but I do remember my joke, and I began to wonder more gravely about the physical reality of don Juan.

I now speculated whom to choose for Carlos’ experiment. I may have

mentioned to Carlos two people that were good candidates to be members of this group, who I shall call Fred and Prentice. Fred had known Carlos for a long time, though on an infrequent basis as all Carlos’ friends seemed

to be. Prentice was a professor at UCLA, and moreover he had been on

Carlos’ doctoral committee. Fred and Prentice did not have much in

common except for the fact that they knew Carlos, and their attitude

towards this kind of phenomenon would be very different. Prentice would likely be much more skeptical from the beginning and indeed might reject the enterprise altogether. Fred I knew would go along, but with a

somewhat facetious air. To be more precise, it was a complex attitude, for though Fred had read all of Carlos’ books and found them absorbing, he

often exhibited cynicism towards Carlos personally. Indeed, most of us in the University who knew Carlos had these kinds of ambiguous feelings

about him. I certainly know that I did.

Years later, a student reminded me of an episode which reveals the foundations for this view I held. I had been in the habit of asking Carlos

to speak to my classes. Sometimes, as in the case of my Myth and Ritual

class, the audience was large, with some three hundred students. However,

in this case it was a graduate class of perhaps no more than ten to twelve

students. The class lasted three hours usually, beginning at two o’clock, and I had asked Carlos to come in at three and speak. In the case of the

larger classes, I never told them in advance that Carlos was coming, partly because I feared the word might get round and hundreds more would

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DREAMS

arrive, and partly because I could never rely on Carlos to appear at the time stated, or indeed at all. He had that reputation for making appointments

or deciding on projects and not following through.

On this particular afternoon I did not really know whether he would

come or not, but nevertheless I told the students that he would be coming and duly prepared the class. I had left the door to the classroom open and g, at two-thirty a dog wandered in, came straight towards me, and then left

as suddenly as it had entered. Many years after the incident this student reminded me that I had addressed the animal, “No Carlos, not now. We

— said three.” without missing a beat. Everybody laughed, and in the course of time it became one of the quips attributed to Professor Price-Williams.

Although humorous in intention, the remark accurately reflected an attitude towards Castaneda which many people shared. Shape-shifting was

not part of our Weltanschauung; we definitely did not believe Carlos could turn into a crow (or dog), yet... It was to the credit of Carlos’ story-telling ability that there was sometimes a little doubt in us. Maybe... just maybe.

The Dream Group So it was in the spirit of this, this benefit of the doubt, that I began to

organize the group. After some re-consideration, I felt I could not seriously ask Prentice. I was sure he would judge me as crazy for even thinking about

it, but Fred I left in. Who else then? I had a close friend whose office was down the hall from me, a psychologist very open to unusual phenomena yet properly critical of the methodology generally used in the investigation of such matters. In fact he and I constantly discussed anomalous material such as dreams, psychic phenomena and Carlos’ books. I knew that he,

F.rroll as I shall call him, would provide just that mixture of skepticism and willingness to experiment which the event called for. He had never met Carlos, though had seen him at a distance. This absence of knowing Carlos

THE MAN WITH THE RECEDING HAIR

9

seemed to me to be an advantage when considering someone for joining

this group. Both Fred and Erroll were willing, partly from curiosity, partly from the spirit of adventure. I recall Fred, who did know Carlos, commenting

to me, “Bet that you never hear another word from Carlos about this.”

I privately held the same suspicion, and indeed as the days and weeks

went on and we heard nothing more about this “manifestation of the ally” business, it seemed that our sense was right. Carlos was involved in one of

his long absences (“Carlos is in Mexico seeing a sorcerer.” was how one of

his women friends explained his absence to me). It was just as well then, that I did not know what I discovered through academic circles a good year later; that Carlos had proposed exactly the same notion to someone else altogether, independent of our group. Carlos had not followed through

with it there either. Other matters claimed my attention. I needed to visit the San Francisco

Bay area to talk with my publishers. While I was in San Francisco, I rang an

old friend of mine, a psychologist. Penelope was a statuesque blonde, and very bright, warm-hearted person. We made an appointment for dinner in Sausalito, with her saying that she wanted me to meet another old

friend of hers, an architect named Mel. When I arrived at the restaurant,

Penelope was nowhere in sight, but sitting alone was a gray-haired man

who proved to be Mel. After several drinks waiting for Penelope, Mel and I decided to eat. We had a marvelous meal, drank some good red Merlot,

and discussed all manner of things. During the meal I spontaneously told him I knew Carlos Castaneda (whom Mel knew about and had read the first two books) and related to him the story of this ill-fated ally group.

Then I asked impulsively: “Would you care to join the group?” I warned him of all the difficulties; that first, the meeting would likely

never take place; and that if it did, I might be only able to give twenty-four

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LIFE DREAMS

hours notice for him to fly down to Los Angeles; moreover that having

spent all that money, the meeting might turn out to be a waste of time as

nothing would take place. All I could promise was a free room for the night

at my house and a free dinner. But Mel was enthusiastic and agreed to this crazy project. I left the dinner thinking that I now had three members for this group, but at the same time suspecting that Mel would forget all about it after the cocktails and the Merlot had been assimilated.

A second friend I decided to phone and possibly enlist while I was in

the Bay area was Jacques Vallee, an astronomer and computer expert, who also was interested in paranormal subjects, having written several books on

UFOs. As with the others, I cautioned him of the hazards of the enterprise, but in his case he often came down to Los Angeles for professional reasons,

allowing him to co-ordinate the trip with one of his business purposes. If the ritual proved to be a bust, there was always some meeting he could

attend. This was around the beginning of May, and I had by now recruited

four group members beside myself. I felt I had done my share. Now it was up to Carlos to follow through: not one of his strong points.

An Experiment Begins The summer came and went, though in Los Angeles time reckoning by climate is not relevant. By early October I had not seen or heard from

Carlos in 8 months, since March. The Fall semester at the University had started and I had embarked on my “Psychological Aspects of Myth and

Ritual” lectures. Then, on October 15 1 woke up with a strange dream

about Carlos fresh in my mind. My notes of this dream were brief.

“I was in some sort of eating place - cafeteria, restaurant, in which there were long tables, cups. etc. I got into a

conversation with a person who was sitting at one of these

THE MAN WITH THE RECEDING HAIR

tables. This man was thin, and had receding hair. I turned away from him, and as I did so two or three other men came up to him and greeted him by saying: “Carlos, how are you?”

I realized then that this man was Carlos Castaneda. I went back to him and said: ‘Sorry, Carlos, I didn’t recognize you. You look thinner andyour hair is different. ”

I would not have made too much of it, if it had not been for a meeting I had with Erroll later on when I arrived at the office.

Almost the first thing he told me when I entered his office to ask him about some mundane matter was that he had memory of a long and

strange dream about Carlos upon awakening that very morning. I remained

quiet about my own dream and asked him to describe his. After his verbal accounting he later gave me a written description, which I present here.

“My most vivid memory of the dream sequence itself is asso­ ciated with that moment in which I was conscious ofjust

awakening from sleep. The time was around 9.30 a.m. My first awakening thought was a sudden shocking realization

that the curious, anonymous person who had been in my

dream was Carlos Castaneda. I would stress at this point

that the realization that the person was Carlos was immedi­ ate and accompanied by a feeling of total, 100% certainty. I

knew it was him. This was in spite ofthe fact that I had seen Castaneda give a talk at UCLA about a year and a halfago

and the person in my dream was considerably different in appearance from the person I had seen in real life. This real­

ization that the dream person was Castaneda was accompa­ nied by an emotion which I don’t really have an appropriate

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E AM S

labelfor - although it was similar to the affect which, for me,

is associated with the feeling that I have just had a major intuitive insight about something which was importantfor me.

1 was conscious at the time offeeling that emotion, and re­ membering wondering why I would feel that way, since

knowing that the person in my dream was Carlos didn’t seem

to be a very important insight. "

Erroll then proceeded to describe the substance of the dream.

“The dream itself consisted ofa series of brief vignettes which

in retrospect seem to have been separated from one another by intervals of non-dreaming. Each of the vignettes consisted

of my watching small groups of men (It seems like there might have been anywhere from four to seven persons) who were doing something which related to various shallow, fresh-

ly-dug, holes in the ground. None of the people were actually

digging at the time nor were any tools visible. My inference that the holes were freshly-dug was based on the appearance

of small neat mounds of dirt surrounding the edge of each

hole. Most of the figures were walking back and forth be­ tween the holes and I seem to remember that they were doing

some kind of work although I didn't seem to pay much atten­ tion to them at the time. At the present writing, my best rec­ ollection is that they were all Caucasian males, who seemed

to be ‘academic types’ (maybe anthropologists), and that they

were dressed informally in short sleeve shirts and working pants. Each of the vignettes was ofa similar, but apparently

different, locale. The notion that different locales were in-

THE MAN WITH THE RECEDING HAIR

volved was based on the observations that the trees in the background were differentfor each vignette. ” Erroll elaborated further. "Each vignette followed a similar pattern which was as fol­

lows. 1. I would be kind of disinterestedly watching the men

walk back andforth. 2. All ofa sudden there would be a man squatting atop the

dirt of the hole nearest me. He would be staring at me with

a kind of unpleasant leering grin on his face. His skin was swarthy and mottled and unhealthy looking. 1 remember

wondering what his racial heritage was but found myself unable to make any kind ofconvincingjudgment in that re­

gard. His eyes were dark and the white of his eyebalk had a yellow tinge which contributed to the 'unhealthy impression I had ofhim. It was also my impression that he had lost a lot

of weight recently as he was rather thin and gaunt looking and seemed to have too much skin. The hair on his head was

thick but very short. It looked like one of those haircuts they

give Marines when they first go to boot camp. My impression was that it was ofa much lighter complexion than the rest of

his skin. He never said anything, but just maintained eye

contact until I began to feel very uncomfortable, at which point he would look down the hole.

3. Seemingly after some time had passed I would find myself in a new vignette watching men walk back and forth, and

the whole episode would be repeated. I cant recall exactly

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life dreams

how many times this happened, but it seems like it was may­ befour or five. ”

This was a remarkable dream, and it prompted me to quickly to tell

him mine. There was not much time for comment, as time had gone on and I realized I had to rush up to the Anthropology department to give

my lecture. It was while I was in the Anthropology office waiting to go to

the lecture room that I received a further surprise. Somebody asked me whether I had just seen Carlos in the hallway. I thought Carlos was still

outside the country, but I looked all the same, and there he was talking to some of his friends, including Fred. I moved over to them and somewhat bluntly, and without any explanation, I asked him what he had been doing last night. He seemed reluctant to answer, and realizing that I had been rather curt, I quickly

explained to him that two of us had dreamed about him the previous night.

Now more forthcoming, he said that he had been doing an exercise which — entailed being conscious in his dreams. This dreaming involved going to a

certain place, a restaurant m West Los Angeles. He said that, as he had been

doing this, he had the impression of a truncated conical growth coming out of the top of his head, resembling the shape of a clay-pot. He also

said that he had spent the night in Baldwin (not sure whether this was Baldwin Hills, which is a part of Los Angeles, or another town simply called Baldwin). More importantly, I was also not sure, when I recollected this conversation the next day, whether I had actually told him some parts

of the dream, which might have included the state of his hair. There was no

time to jot down notes of what he said to me as I was already late for my lecture and had to rush down the stairs.

It is worthwhile adding that I found out the next day that Prentice, the man whom I first considered putting in this dream group and then had

THE MAN WITH THE RECEDING HAIR

decided to omit, also met Carlos at this time in the hallway, and had said to him: “You look thinner.” »

The lack of proper reflection on my part regarding these incidents showed in the fact that during the ensuing lecture I alluded to these

dreams, joking that it was the beginning of a modern myth and would be reported in The Bruin - the campus newspaper. I was though apparently

serious enough about it to, later on that night, write down carefully both the dreams and the conversation with Carlos. I did not realize at the time

that this act was to launch in my life a personal Journal that was to endure

right up to the present. My notes at the time were more like what an anthropologist would

formulate, that is to say, careful descriptive accounts of events. Also, I knew enough about describing paranormal happenings to know that that careful

recording was essential, preferably as soon after the event as possible. The next day I spoke with Fred, who though having been present when I encountered Carlos had not understood my allusion, but now as I related to him what had happened he became quite excited. He recalled that he too had somehow dreamt of Carlos in the same time period, the e night of October 14. He was the only one of our little group that kept a

dream diary at that time, which he had maintained for years. I had in fact kept records of some dreams over the years, but it had never been on a

regular basis and only if the dream seemed definitely unusual. In the light of the unfolding events, now Erroll and myself were quick to take up the habit more seriously.

Fred went home, and prior to looking through his dream journal records made a preliminary memory report of his dream, which he brought

to me. The value of careful recording soon after the event was again shown, for when he Xeroxed and sent to me the original from his dream journal

some time later, it was slightly different. I have used his original record

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life dreams

here. It turned out that Carlos was not in the dream directly, but there was

a tangential reference to him.

“I was [a teacher's assistant] for B.E., and being soundly

rejected by the class - B.E. was his ever-popular self, but whenever I would say anything there would be muttering, rude remarks, catcalls and the likefrom the class. Largely, I kept silent - I do remember following up a comment ofB’s

on, I believe, a study of Gorillas - an Ethological study. The

class had been asking for more information, which he didn’t

have. I then said something about the original study being based on only 9 weeks offieldwork, and got the actively hos­ tile reactionfrom the class... People are still coming into the

class - asking those there about it - and the latter are enthusi­

astic about it. ”

At first glance, this dream would appear to be completely unrelated to

the events in our group, or the other dreams, until Fred added:

“At one point in the dream - I don’t remember where - I no­

ticed that I had a largefaldjpot on the top of my forehead,

with hair on all sides of it, including below. It was partly covered by the way the hair was combed up over it in a tuft.

At the time, in the dream itself, I associated this with R.f., who is balding in the back with a ‘spot’. ”

Upon waking, Fred also associated this dream to his own 9 weeks of fieldwork in a West Indian peasant community, as part of a project

he had worked on with, among others, two of his closest friends. Two

THE MAN WITH THE RECEDING HAIR

17

who had been linked, along with Fred, in a friendship with Carlos in the

‘sixties. Furthermore, as Fred indicated in a note which he sent to me three days later, Carlos had told him in a recent conversation that he had

just returned to the United States via New York to visit these very two men who both taught in a University there. As this conversation with

Carlos had occurred on the 15th, it was the morning after Fred had the

dream. This made the coincidence even stronger, yet Fred’s dream wasn’t

enough, to my mind, to warrant inclusion in setting up a case that it was parapsychological. Nevertheless, the latent association with Carlos

and particularly the reference to receding hair was definitely intriguing to me. It was a very curious fact that none of the three of us; myself, Erroll,

or Fred, associated these dreams with the aborted demonstration which

Carlos had suggested six months previously. This possible association completely eluded us until Erroll and I were having lunch three days

after the initial dreams, talking yet again about these intriguing events.

Suddenly, I put down my knife and fork. “My God,” I cried, “Do you think this was Carlos meant by ‘raising —

his ally’?” “You mean, he tried it through dreams?” asked Erroll, “but there’s no

ally in them.”

f

It needs to be mentioned that neither of us really understood clearly

at this point what ‘ally’ meant. “I don’t know,” I answered, “but you, me and Fred are all part of this

group.”

Saying this brought to my mind instantly that there were two other

people to contact; my friends in the Bay area. I rushed back to the office and phoned up my scientist friend, Jacques, only to discover from his wife that he had left for Europe ten days previously and would not be back for

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DREAMS

weeks. That left my new friend the architect, Mel. After getting no answer for a couple of days, I finally got a hold of his son on the 20th, who told me that his father was on his way home

and that I could speak with him shortly. When Mel and I were finally on

the phone, I asked him whether he had a curious dream on the night of October 14th/15th or indeed any unusual occurrences.

“Well,” he answered, “my father has just died, and I had to go to Ann

Arbor for the funeral.”

I offered my condolences and we spoke for some time about his father,

Then I mentioned that I had been secretly asking to find if anything had occurred relating to Carlos Castaneda. “Well, that’s funny,” Mel responded, “I remember recently having a

conversation with someone about that experiment in Los Angeles that you proposed to me in Sausalito.”

Mel paused a few seconds. “That’s funny,” he repeated, “I can’t remember whom I talked to about It.

Mel speculated that the conversation in question had been at a lunch meeting on the previous Monday. This would have been the 14th. He just wasn’t sure though; he would need to go to his office tomorrow and look in his appointment book.

When he rang me the next day, Mel had consulted with the man he had met for lunch a week before, but this man did not remember any such

conversation. Then Mel said this: “At about 11.30 a.m. yesterday [Mel had glanced at the clock. This would have been the exact time I had been

phoning his son], when I was on a particular bit of windy road coming back from Fort Bragg, I remembered this conversation with some man about the Carlos Castaneda meeting. I distinctly remember replying to this man, who apparently had asked whether I had gone to the meeting:

THE MAN WITH THE RECEDING HAIR

19

‘No, I haven’t heard anything yet, but it is about time that I did.”’ But Mel

still could not remember who this unknown man actually was, and now on the phone with me, he was beginning to wonder whether he had been

remembering a dream. It was only at this point that I read out the dreams of the Los Angeles

group to Mel. Mel was struck with Erroll’s description of the shallow freshly-dug holes, as on the Tuesday morning [the date of Erroll’s dream] he had been consulting in Ann Arbor with the undertaker where his father *>

was to be cremated. The undertaker had spoken to him about a hill where

ashes were inserted in small rectangular holes.

During the following month all of us pondered over these experiences. There were no easy answers, nor did we really expect any. In my case,

and I think for both Erroll and Fred, there emerged a greater respect for

Carlos. Maybe there was some truth to his story after all. Also, both Erroll and myself agreed that we should cultivate a better understanding of the

parapsychological literature.

An Enduring Interest Through many years, and certainly further catalyzed by these events,

I had an interest in psychical research; however, I was always decidedly ambivalent about it, an unfortunate personal characteristic which

protruded into many domains. I was interested in mediumship, for reasons

that will be clear later, and I had personally experienced a few incidents that could be best categorized under the heading of the paranormal. On

the other hand, with some exceptions, I had not been at all impressed by professional psychics. In fact, if someone identified him or herself as such,

I would generally look towards the door. Nevertheless I acknowledged that some people, many who did not earn their living by doing it, undoubtedly

had genuine paranormal experiences.

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My ambivalence was exemplified by a memory of my student years in London, when I found out that the head of the Psychology department

at my college was somewhat interested in the subject. His name was C.A. Mace, a fine old man, famous for his work in philosophical psychology. One day he asked me to join him for a talk he was giving at the British

Society for Psychical Research. I was honored that he chose me, and felt very proud when he joined me for a beer in a pub before the meeting. At

that time I had not expected esteemed professors to be nervous at talks, but he told me that he was, in this case.

“The thing that worries me, Douglass, about this place (he was referring to the Institute) is that you never know whether you are addressing a Fellow of the Royal Society or a raving lunatic.”

I sat sandwiched in the audience between two elderly men: the man

on my right looking like a true Fellow of the Royal Society and the man on my left resembling a member of Maces second category. Everyone in the audience seemed to me, then in my late twenties, to be at least seventy.

Mace started on an interminable talk on the philosophical roots of modern

psychology. The lecture did not appear to bear on the subject of psychical research at all. It all had to do with the structure of the mind, and what previous famous psychologists had to say on the subject, like MacDougall and Shand, two of his favorite antecedents. I believe in the final sentence

or two there was a reference to the subject matter of the Institute, but I

could see that he had lost the audience by that time. The man on my left had a definite glazed look. At the end of the talk questions were entertained. There was a very long

silence. Finally, to the limit where its absence was becoming embarrassing, a question was asked. One old man who looked to me to be well over a

hundred, asked in a querulous and quavering voice: Does that mean, Professor Mace, that you don’t think there is life

THE MAN WITH THE RECEDING HAIR

after death after all?”

Mace answered this question by further plunging into the depths of

what MacDougall and Shand had written years ago. There was another painful silence. Then a second old man sprightly

inquired whether Professor Mace thought that ants might have consciousness. I forget exactly how Mace coped with this, but I don’t think it triggered another incursion into MacDougall and Shand. Thankfully, the man on my right asked an abstruse question about quantum physics

worthy of his persona. Mace’s talk was duly published, suitably re-written and without the questions.

Since this early foray into psychical research, I kept an open mind on the subject, and when I arrived at the Neuro-Psychiatric Institute at UCLA I discovered that surprisingly there was a lady there who was a

full-time researcher in this area. This was Thelma Moss, who became a good friend. Later, when she left the N.P.I., she wrote a book in which

she complained that only one of her colleagues was at all interested in her work. That was me. Now, partly due to Thelma and partly due to this new Castaneda business (as I came to refer to it), I was renewing an interest in the paranormal.

I began reading deep into the subject of mutual dreams, telepathy,

clairvoyance, and even sorcery. I started to re-read a favorite book of

mine that I had originally looked at years previously in England, G.N.M. Tyrrell’s “Apparitions”. It turned out this very book came to feature in a

curious little incident involving Erroll.

My Father’s Watch It was the night of November 24th, just over a month after the mutual

dreams occurrence, and I was reading this book of Tyrrell. I had reached the section where Tyrell was distinguishing different types of apparitions.

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DREAMS

The first type was that which was produced for another by intentionally

transmitting it to them. The method of inducing them, according to Tyrell, was simply to hold the receiver in mind. I put the book down and decided

I to project myself to Erroll, visualizing him in his home setting where he would usually sleep. Then, I suddenly remembered that he had said he would be away that particular night, and got confused. Deciding to drop the idea, I put out the light and went to sleep.

The next morning, the 25th, when I got to work, Erroll came in to my office and told me that he had this dream about me.

“My first recollection is ofstanding in the doorway of [Profes­

sor Price-Williams’] office. He was in the process of shuffling around assorted books, papers etc. on his desk, swearing and

apparently talking to himself. Upon noticing me he remarked that he had lost a watch and that he had to find it because it didn’t belong to him. As he said this I reached up to the top

shelf of his bookcase, removed a pocket watch that was there and said Is this it?’. I then looked rather carefidly

at the watch before handling it to him. It looked like this.

[Erroll made a drawing ofthe watch, see Figure 1]

I immediately recognized what Erroll had drawn. It was very similar to a silver pocket watch given to my father on his thirteenth birthday. This

watch was now in my safety deposit box, in need of repair, as the hands

and central spindle were missing. It is known as a Half Hunter, an old type of English pocket watch, and the lid opens up by pressing the winder

at the top. As can be seen from my photo of it [Fig 1], beside that of

Erroll s dream watch, there are many similarities between the two. On my fathers watch there is an inscription on the inside of the openable lid. The

THE MAN WITH THE RECEDING HAIR

inscription is arranged in semi-circles around the central glass aperture, with my father’s name (the same as mine) on the right of the aperture, and his birthday, 12th July, 1894 on the left. Enroll's version had drawn the

inscription as straight lines. Both Enrolls inscription and the inscription on the actual watch are on the openable lid.

In G.N.M. Tyrell’s book, amidst the section that I had been reading

before dropping off to sleep, there was a lengthy discussion about the time limit necessary to impose for demonstrating that telepathy had taken place. Tyrell had decided that there should be a 12-hour limit between

projection and receptio

Figure 1: The Dream Watch

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life dreams

For what it is worth, the following details can be added to this incident. The edition that I was using of G.N.M. Tyrell’s Apparitions was the second printing of Collier Books, a paper back, published in 1969.1 had dog-eared the page that I had concluded before dropping off to sleep, page 51.1 had read from the beginning of the book up to that page. The 12-hour limit notion, mentioned above, is on page 48. Other items in

Erroll’s dream can be found in the pages that I had read. On page 25, can be found the date 1894 (the date on my fathers watch), which, in

Tyrell’s book was the date of a book by a German, called Hallucination and Illusion. On pages 41-42 Tyrell gives an example of a hallucinatory voice that distinctly said “I can’t find it.”

Although at the time I merely looked upon this dream transmission

attempt with Erroll as a curiosity, it helped later to widen my perspective

of dream telepathy and mutual dreams, away from what I considered the

narrow standpoint of Carlos’ sorcery. The next month passed, and save for a significant dream I had in

December, the precise significance of which eluded me for several years (a significance described in Ch.6), the year ended without further incidents.

But this year, 1974, had been a significant one for me. A new dimension had entered into my life; I felt an excitement, a thrill even, of the emergence

of something unexpected and strange.

■r?'

THE NATURE OF THE ALLY

CHAPTER TWO

The Nature of the Ally ©

Three weeks after the New Year the events started again. I had not seen nor met with Carlos since our chance meeting in the hall of the Anthropology department, nor even spoken to him on the phone. These disappearances were usual of him, yet all the same I wish I could have

spoken to him about these dreams and had the chance to ask some leading questions.

On January 26th, I picked up my mail in the Anthropology office and

descended in the elevator to the ground floor on my way to the parking lot. Realizing that I had left my umbrella in my office, I turned back to retrieve it, and now returning again to the parking lot, I had the strong feeling I

would encounter Carlos. As I arrived at the entry of the parking lot, at the 25

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DREAMS

spot where the stairs went down to the lower level, Carlos emerged from below, and a spontaneous conversation ensued.

I told him that I was getting psychic on him, that I had expected to

meet him. At this, he smiled perfunctorily, and launched into an exposition of the trouble he was having with the practice of sorcery.

“I know what to do,” he said, referring to the task of creating an

effect in the practice of sorcery, “but what holds me up is the attitude of

impartiality that don Juan had.” What Carlos faced here was for him a paradox: how to want to do something, yet at the same time not to want it to happen, which was the same thing as doing nothing.

I knew about this from my own experience. Earlier in my life I had

been first a student, then a teacher of the Alexander Technique, a method of mind-body use that had as its main principle the art of “non-doing.”

I had even referred one of Carlos’ woman friends to a local practitioner

of this technique. I now told Carlos about EM. Alexanders ideas about “end-gaining” and “means-whereby.” In order to prevent faulty use of

the body in simple acts like getting out of a chair, Alexander, who I had

received my training from in England, would tell his pupils to focus on the relationship of head-to-torso-to-legs in the performance of simple acts, and to inhibit the desire of the end result, namely getting out of a chair.

The same principle applied to Carlos’ sorcery it seemed to me. This was

also found in the Zen principle of archery, where one does not concentrate

on hitting the target, and I may have mentioned this at the time as well. At last Carlos came round to the dreams, my area of piqued interest. It turned out that the dreams were a surprise to him also.

1

-

“I have the general intent, but I don’t understand the mechanism,” he said. “I am transmitting [this was his word] very strongly, the whole time. I am sending the nature of my Ally,” he then announced, as though the

=

I

THE NATURE OF THE ALLY

idea had spontaneously come to him.

I

“Specifically the kind of shape the ally has for this North American

continent.” I still was not clear as to what exactly the Ally was, and I wanted to tell him about the group, but he cut me short, saying he did not want to tell

me what the shape was — the awareness of it would be novel he said, when

it came. Also, as he continued to speak it became apparent that in having

left the choice of the members of the group up to me, he also did not want~j to know who they were.

Of all the people I had selected for my dream group, Fred was the only one familiar with Carlos, and though I had spoken to Carlos of Erroll, the two men in the Bay area were completely unknown to him. This time I decided to be very punctilious about taking notes; I went

directly to my office in the Psychiatry department and wrote down what I

remembered about the conversation and formally recorded all the current

members of the dream group. Reviewing the list I thought it a pity that we did not have any women in the group, so added a new friend of mine,

Nalini. I had come across Nalini by accident one day in Westwood, when

she reminded me that she had been in my large Myth and Ritual class. We had coffee together and she told me that she had seen Castaneda as a

guest lecturer, but like most of the others in our group did not know him

personally. Recalling all this, and deeming her suitable, I wrote down her

name. When I got home that night I told my wife what had happened.

She suggested yet another name, conveniently, another woman. This was Thelma Moss. Thelma's work as a clinical professor at UCLA., but with a

27

LIFE DREAMS

28

focused research on ESP seemed fitting for the task. Having a parapsy­

chologist in the group sounded an excellent idea, so the very next morn­

ing I wrote Thelma’s name on the list. Both of these later additions were | made initially without contacting the women themselves.

Little Animals ‘Flushed Into Being’ I did not expect any more rapid developments, but nevertheless, on

the same morning as I had written this last name on the list, Erroll came in to my office excitedly. He said he had woken up with another strange

dream about Carlos.

"Castaneda

was standing on a sand dime with a

rope around his neck. The end of the rope went straight up into the air. In the sky, in a diffuse circle, flew, or “swam”, a

|

swarm offishes. The fish resembled the kind ofcarp that one

\

sees in Hawaii. ”

At this point I still did not tell Erroll of my recent conversation with Carlos, or that I had put his name on a list. There were others to await

news from, and I did not want to contaminate the experiment. Erroll did ask me whether I had dreamed also about Carlos, and I answered in the negative. But I did have a short dream, recorded in one sentence in my

notebook.

"With a close woman friend of Carlos and two little

[ white mice. ” This friend, who I will call Gretchen, was one of my students and a close friend of Carlos. The conversation with Carlos had been on the

THE NATURE OF THE ALLY

29

Monday, the report of Erroll's dream and my own had been on the

Tuesday, and on the Thursday I received a surprise from an unexpected colleague. I had gone to a doctoral oral with Prentice, who it will be remembered had been considered for the first dream group but was then eliminated.

As we were sitting and waiting for the other members of the committee, he mentioned that he had a dream about me the previous night. Prentice,

you would realize if you knew him, simply was not the sort of person

that would tell his friends that he dreamt about them, so I was surprised straightaway. This surprise only grew as he recounted the content of the

dream.

“You [Douglass] were owning a carp farm in Hawaii and lookingfor a manager to look after it. I suggested Gordon [a student in the Anthropology department]. You asked me

about him.”

z

My first thought was that Prentice was not on “the list.” What was he coming up with this dream for?

After Prentice’s report, I decided to tell Erroll everything about the

experiment. As we talked it over, he speculated that if Carlos himself did not appear in a group member's dream, as he had with Prentice and indeed my own, other people might not feel constrained to mention any dreams.

Even further, both of the women did not know that there was a group at all, that I had created the list, nor let alone that that they were part of it. None of the others at this point, of course, knew of my conversation with Carlos and what had been decided. So Erroll suggested I phone them all.

I decided to phone Thelma first, in Erroll’s presence. I did not want to suggest any more than what was necessary, so I merely asked her if she

3

30

LIFE DREAMS

had any strange dreams during the last few days.

“What sort of strange dreams?” she asked. “Well, about Carlos Castaneda or myself.” “No,” she said.

“Well, what about fish?,” I asked. Novelists would call it a pregnant pause. There was a significant

silence.

“Yes,” she finally answered, “I had a dream about fish on Wednesday

night.” Thelma soun

when sleeping or walking. His relatives are also present; there are many children, I note. At 7.46, Parko starts drumming, the first drum-beat.

Conversation stops, with everyone paying attention. The sick man is in the background, sitting behind Parko. As Parko starts to drum, he also

sings. At 7.50, the drumming changes to a harder and faster beat, and the song also changes. All this time Parko has his eyes closed; then at 7.58,

he opens them, stops singing and changes the rhythm. He looks around. A moment later, Parko switches the drum around to beat the other side, and starts a new song. He is demanding that incense be brought and

burned. Incense is necessary, otherwise the gods will not possess him. The \ words of this new song, I learned afterwards, are ritual instructions:

u

“I take the incense first... In the end I will take the blood.” The song

is addressed specifically to the patient. After this, Parko places butter on the patient’s neck, then eats a bit.

At 8.08 Parko is making loud drumming. He is calling on the gods, by their proper names, one by one. This continues for ten minutes, sometimes interspersed with wailing. At 8.20, he talks about the sick

man. The shaman says he needs water from a river. In fact, he makes this

very specific; he requires water from the spot where the bridge crosses the ■—

river. At this point, Parko starts to bounce in his sitting position. Then a hiatus occurs. Parko opens up the Prediction part of the ritual,

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178

which is for the members of the audience. For example, Parko announces that one of the women present will soon become sick. Another person

" will have pain in the stomach. One man in Melemchi is going to die (the name of this man is not specified). However Parko does specify the

manner of his death. It is not by sickness, but by accident. Maybe he will

drown in the river, or killed by a landslide, or be struck down by a falling

tree. Members of the audience look apprehensive. “His La has already

gone to the cemetery,” Parko adds chillingly. There is silence in the hut. Then Parko suddenly starts a loud drumming, making a blowing sound

with his mouth. He stops abruptly. Then, almost as an afterthought, he makes another prediction that a man will die at the time of the full moon,

that is in a few days time. Parko finishes the Prediction phase of the ritual by throwing rice on the tormas. At 8.38 he stops, relaxes and grins at

me.

After the short break, the puja for the patient begins. I note that the patient’s father-in-law moves up from the audience and sits next to the

patient. This man places butter on the candle to keep it alight. Parko intones in song that there is somebody in the room who is impure. He is referring to a woman in menstruation. At 9.00 Parko becomes possessed

by what he called his grandfather. As I later questioned his kinship structure more exactly, I learned that this was an ancestor two generations before his grandfather. A rite for the patient, who has now moved his

position to squat in front of the Bonpo, now commences. Parko calls for a long life for the sick man. A new song starts, with the whole audience joining. A white particle, perhaps a bit of rice, is placed on top of the drum; an insect (as far as I could tell) is placed on the ritual scarf. The

“Look to the right, and tell me what you experience.”

e

“Heavy and blank. Dark.”

“Now look to the left.” o

“Just the opposite: light and free.”

“That’s correct,” Storm commented, sounding pleased. “The left side

alone has this capability.”

He then asked me what apparel I had mostly been wearing in my sessions with the shaman in Nepal.

I considered for a moment. “I wore a blue parka.” “Has it been washed since your return?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

BETWEEN A THUNDERBIRD AND A COYOTE

“Good. Then hang it up on a tree in your garden. Sit with your back

to it on an accurate east-west alignment. Have you got a compass?” “Yes.”

“You might first feel angry thoughts or emotions. Keep careful notes

what you experienced.” When I did this later, my thoughts were empty, quite blank. I did

experience a slight breeze going over me, particularly though my breast

bone. It seemed as if the wind passed through it. However, I never did find out what Storm thought I might achieve by doing this.

Storm continued to be very friendly, saying he wanted to include me

in his “family.” I was not sure what he meant by this. He also said that

he wanted to introduce me to the “dreamers,” though again he did not specify what this denoted.

Further phone calls ensued. Storm always spoke in an elliptical and telegraphic manner. He went hurriedly from one statement to

another, allowing no opportunity for questions. Often his manner was conspiratorial, as if he and I were engaged on some secret project. “Perhaps you are,” commented Fred, when I told him of these

conversations. “Maybe,” I responded, “it would be nice to know what it is.”

Storm, as I continued to think of him (“Chuck” never: did sound right, although when I finally met him, I called him this) was ]particularly

emphatic about the proper use of language in dealing with these esoteric matters. “It has its own language. It cannot be reduced to an explanation

in everyday, mechanical terms.” Already I was coming to partially understand this; I needed his emphasis, however, as it was a difficult

threshold to cross.

243

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244

Carlos Returns Soon after these phone conversations with Storm, Carlos unexpectedly

rang me. He had departed some time previously and before I had gone to Nepal, not saying to where he had gone, and I had not expected him back in Los Angeles for another year. As usual, he was mercurial about his timetable, and as usual, dramatic about the reasons for a quicker return.

“I have misunderstood the idea of‘leaving the world’, he announced. “It does not mean going into a monastery or anything like that.” This

perplexed me, for if I remembered correctly he told me some time ago that he was to embark on a ritual journey with La Gorda - the woman sorcerer. I had difficulty in envisaging him sequestered in a monastery.

“What it means is changing one’s form.” “Changing one’s form?” I echoed.

“Yes. It’s being going on for the last nvo years. You remember when I had that funny seizure?”

Carlos was alluding to an illness he had some time ago, I remember he had asked me to recommend a doctor. I got a name through Thelma

Moss. “Yes” “Well, the seizure thing went on. It culminated between August 15th aiind September 17th.” The last date was about one week ago.

“How so?” I asked.

“My old form and my new form have united,” Carlos continued, “The

balance between them has resulted in the new form being the center of

gravity. My body feels lighter and freer. I see hues differently - particularly

in the yellow part of the spectrum, between greens and yellows.” “That’s nice,” I commented rather fatuously; I really did not know

what to say. He plunged into detail over this change of form. It had been a

BETWEEN A THUNDERBIRD AND A COYOTE

245

battle between his old form and his new form, shifting backward and forwards. He had made a conscious choice to adopt the new form, and

he emphasized the word ‘conscious’. In this new state, his perspective seemed more pointed, as if he came in from an angular direction: “needle-pointed, dart-like,” he muttered, “these are attempts to describe

the indescribable.” Carlos began to speak about mythological notions.

“I had to reach the place where don Juan had gone.”

“And where is that?” I asked, not really expecting an answer. In answer, Carlos spoke about a myth ofnorthern countries concerning a place called ‘Agartha’ (as it sounded).

“Also known simply as Garth,” he said. “It is said that an ancient pope ® had got messages from this place; these are now hidden in the Vatican.” »

“Are you intending to go there?” I asked. “You can’t go there in the body,” he answered, “only in the mind. However the body has to be in the best condition.”

“Oh,” I replied, being at a loss what exactly to say. “Tell me about your trip,” Carlos asked. “There’s much to tell you,” I said, “but I dreamed about you while I

was in this Himalayan village.” “Tell me.”

There were two dreams I had regarding Carlos, I told him first about the one on August 9th.

"I was watching an assassination ofan important person. I

saw a sniper on top of a large building. A long time after­ wards when everybody had left the scene, the assassin crept into the house in which I was in and then leaped into a bus and escaped. I reported his description to sheriffs, as I was

LIFE DREAMS

246

the only person that knew what the assassin looked like. His

description reminded me of a movie hero type - dark and handsome, almost like a mask. ”

“What’s that to do with me?” Carlos asked.

“There was another part,” I continued. /

“I was talking to you, telling you that I knew the assassin. I told you

that the assassin was blind. The next thing I knew was that you were

escaping by helicopter. I talked to the sheriffs, who said that the danger of assassinations like this was that they sponsored further assassinations.

The implication was that you were the nejo-t^rget." Carlos immediately interpreted this dream to mean that it referred

to losing his old form and regaining a new one. That, in a way, the ‘assassination’ referred to his old body, and that ‘going up in a helicopter’

referred to his new body or form. He picked up on the blind aspect, saying that since he now had his new form, he could see new hues. His

old body was ‘blind’. I had a feeling that this dream was more personal to myself, but I did not pursue it in the conversation. I then told him about the other dream,

which had occurred first, on July 21st, also in Melemchi. I read it out to

him from my Journal.

“I was walking along a street where Carlosfound me. He suggested implicitly that Igo along with his party, I had the impression the road was Maple Road (a street adjacent to

my home in Surbiton, England, where 1 grew up). We went

along to an apartment where there were many of Carlos' fiends. One of them was called Cliff. He seemed displeased at my being with the group, but tolerated it when he

BETWEEN A THUNDERBIRD AND A COYOTE

learned that Carlos had wished it. "

Carlos became quite excited about this dream.

“That’s Clifford...,” he shouted. “He’s a colleague of...” Carlos specified the last names of these two men. It turned out that these two men were early enthusiasts of Carlos, and had wanted to be his apprentices. The

one called Clifford was upset that Carlos was telling Fred and myself all this information.

Years later I was phoned up by this man, Cliff. He had changed his name, but I knew who he was. At this time he seemed almost paranoid

about Carlos. He told me that there was a ‘Huichol shaman’ that was pursuing him and causing him harm. It was clear from the context, and

indeed Carlos confirmed it afterwards to me, that the Huichol shaman

was Carlos. Cliff’s behavior was very strange, crying and dragging his leg. He appeared completely terrified. I was never sure whether I was dealing

with a truly clinical case, or with an adroit impersonator. He told me that he was fleeing to Denmark to escape the ‘Huichol shaman*. I never heard

from him again. Another point, relevant to this dream, which proved significant in

retrospect, was that at the end of this year, I found out that Carlos’ literary agent had an office on a Maple Road in Los Angeles.

After this discussion about my dreams, Carlos again surprised me. He said that he wanted a meeting with my group, though he wanted to

exclude Fred because it seemed to Carlos that Fred was ‘dissociated’. I did not know what was at the back of this; I persuaded Carlos to keep Fred

in for the meeting. “I want you and the others to journey with me to this mythical place,” was the way he phrased the invitation.

247

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248

Meetings With Carlos I set up the meeting at the Hungry Tiger restaurant in Westwood, where so many of my meetings with Carlos had taken place. Erroll, Fred,

Nalini, Carlos and myself were present. It was the first time Nalini had met Carlos; Erroll had only met him once briefly, as Carlos had been leaving my office.

Carlos came to the point immediately. He saw us definitely in the

perspective of the earlier dream group. “There are four of you. Good. Four is a proper number. 7 or 3 or 2

are not numbers. It has to be four or multiples of four.” He would be sending projections again. Only this time, La Gorda would also participate. He would write down the projections and have

y- them sealed in an envelope. There would be four things written down,

and he wanted to see if our group would pick them up. There was a small ritual attached to the procedure. It was an exercise of ‘gathering the power’. We needed to chew our saliva at four places

in the mouth. First with the tongue on the lower teeth; second, with

the tongue on the upper teeth; then with the tongue half-way up the

palate; last, with the tongue as far back as one could go at the back of the mouth. Carlos demonstrated the exercise.

“Four times,” someone pointed out. “Then it has to be followed by ‘asserting’,” Carlos added.

“Asserting?” asked Nalini. I could see that she was getting lost with the exercise.

“This is a desire on one’s body” [Carlos’ exact words], explained Carlos. “It can be done by imagery or by a verbal command.”

“What kind of verbal command?” Fred asked. “In this case it might be an assertion to be able to recall dreams. It

BETWEEN A THUNDERBIRD AND A COYOTE

249

has to be an assertion that the body understands. It has to be simple, non-intellectual. It’s idiosyncratic from person to person. You have to experiment with yourself. The dreaming is done in that twilight zone just q

as you are going off to sleep.” “It’s hypnagogic then?” asked Erroll, the psychologist. “I suppose so,” said Carlos, looking uncertain. He seemed to suddenly remember that he was talking to academics. “The information comes as a

chunk. It’s non-causal, non-lineal. The recollection needs to be stretched

out, so that it becomes lineal.” I wanted to be clear what his contention was, so I spoke.

“Is it like this? After dinner tonight we would all go home and try and

remember this conversation. We might do it poorly or do it well, but we

would have a sense of continuity. We would not sense any gaps or lapses

that we could not account for. However, we then get the kind of memory you are talking about and we would ‘remember’ a piece of conversation

that the first memory would not recall. One memory is superimposed on another, so to speak; in effect, we would have two memories.” I sat back,

surprised at my elucidation, as I was not at all sure that it followed from

Carlos’ own account. “Is it like this?” I repeated.

“Yes,” he answered. He then went into a long description of such an

example of ‘hidden memories’, when he was interacting with don Juan. This admission made me realize why I had asked my question. Only two

days before Gretchen had revealed to me that she thought that Carlos 1 embodied two people.

—J

“What do you mean?” I had asked. “It’s driving me mad,” she said. “I’ve moved to an apartment on Gayley to avoid him.”

“Why?”

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250

"I can’t stand it, Douglass. Carlos_i£ two jjeople. I think it’s his

Double.”

“How long has this been going on?” I asked. “The last three months or so, from March to June.” (This was 1977). “Tell me.” I said.

She elaborated, “Sometimes both of them would interchange within 1 a short time period. And the ‘other’ would not know what the ‘first’ had

I done or said.”

I must have appeared dubious. “No, it’s not a ‘put-on’. The two Carlos’s even look different. Their

faces change. I even thought once that he was don Genaro, as Carlos was untypically agile, and bounced around the place in a way that Carlos

never does. You know, phone messages come from both of them, a second message contradicting what the ‘other’ has said. However, it is not

total.” “What do you mean by that?” “Well, sometimes there is total amnesia from one Carlos to another.

But mostly there is overlap.” “Overlap?” “Yes, it’s as if there is a part of the spectrum shared by both Carlos’s,

but the ends are separate from each other.” “This must be difficult for you," I sympathized. I was thinking of case

histories I had read of the reactions of relatives and friends to multiple

personalities.

“It’s become too much of a strain,” Gretchen admitted. “As a matter of fact, it’s becoming obvious to Carlos. But I think it’s becoming better.” “How so?”

“Carlos is incorporating the things that he has learned from don Juan

BETWEEN A THUNDERBIRD AND A COYOTE

while he had been in this Double state.” Gretchen then told me something unusually interesting.

“I think don Juan did things to Carlos all those years ago, in 1960 to n

1961. I’ve read the original field notes from that time and sometimes the J contents are blank.” “Blank?” I queried.

“For example, there would be a notation to the effect that he left Los

Angeles to stay with don Juan. But there would be no content, no field

notes. The episodes with don Juan are blank. I think that the memory of these blank periods are now coming back to him.” “That’s a long time,” I remarked, “that was sixteen years ago.”

Gretchen then told me a story that reinforced my impression that she thought Carlos was dissociated.

“Once Carlos visited me in Los Angeles and told me certain things. I learned from a close friend that Carlos had done the same thing, said -i

exactly the same things, even worn the same clothes, at exactly the same I hour, the same day, in San Francisco!”

At this point in the conversation, Gretchen seemed to accept the idea of the Double in the paranormal sense. Perhaps, I realized, I was making

a mistake in thinking that Gretchen perceived this as dissociation.

“What did Carlos have to say about that?” I wanted to find out. “He had no memory of either visit.”

Gretchen apparently was thinking of the phenomenon know as bi-

location, a paranormal event in which a person has been seen in two distinct places at the same time. For example the Catholic saint, Padre Pio, was believed to have been seen in such a way. I would have needed more evidence than the word of Gretchen to have believed this of Carlos. Dissociation is a perceived separation of the mind from emotional states and even from the body. In extreme cases there is a

251

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252

total separation or split of the entire personality, with accompanying loss

of memory.

Now, these two days later at the Hungry Tiger, sitting opposite to

Carlos at dinner, listening to him talk about ‘hidden memories’, I felt like saying out loud ‘Would the real Carlos please stand up?’. Nevertheless, I was suspicious. It had indeed crossed my mind after the Double episode

Valerie had witnessed, that Carlos might be prone to dissociation. All the same, it could be an adroit maneuver to cover up inconsistencies in his

story. And if so, Gretchen was in the game. Her revelation of reading the original field notes was particularly suspect to me, as I doubted there was

any such material. On the other hand, I realized, Carlos himself could have duped her. “This is becoming too complicated,” I grumbled to

myself, trying to remember precisely those lines of Sir Walter Scott - how did it go?

“O what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!”

These reminiscences had prevented me from listening attentively to Carlos’ story. He was by now in the presentation talking about 24 Toltecs, and how they were all finally going to this mythical place, which the

Indians call La Gloria.

“You’re already there,” whispered Nalini to me naughtily, remembering the name of my wife. I gestured her to be quiet.

Carlos then ended his account of the Toltecs and returned to the task at hand.

“The important thing about this exercise is keeping at it. The intent is everything. It has to be persistent. You have to feel confident, a feeling

of certainty.” This was enough for today.

BETWEEN A THUNDERBIRD AND A COYOTE

As Carlos departed off alone to his own place, and the rest of us

walked slowly up Westwood, Nalini murmured to me: “What an old fraud!” I felt it necessary to defend Carlos. “Yes, I know he comes over that way. But wait and see what happens.” Carlos, on the other hand, was

impressed with Nalini. He phoned me afterwards that he thought she was

“strong” and that she would “tilt the balance” for us.

The results of this exercise were confusing. In the next few days

both Fred and I dreamed about Carlos, and Nalini had a hypnagogic impression of white light striking both sides of her face. We wondered

what Carlos or perhaps La Gorda had been imaging. It turned out that neither of them had started yet. He wanted to meet us all at five o’clock.

I told the others, warning them that Carlos would probably cancel the

meeting. As a matter of fact he did exactly that, but then changed his mind again and we did finally meet in my office. “I’m interested in any body sensations you might have had,”

he announced immediately. I looked at Nalini. Carlos mentioned specifically a tingling sensation on the top of the head. He mentioned the word “apperception.” That was an old-fashioned psychological term;

I wondered where he had picked it up. However he qualified it’s meaning

to him; he meant by this term a sensation quicker than usual. “I did have some tingling in my feet,” offered Nalini, and repeated the

white light experience. I had already told him about that on the phone. In

fact, I wondered whether Carlos had fused the top of the head sensation

with the white light experience of Nalini from an old experience of mine that I had told him about some time previously, and which I referred to

in a previous Chapter about the Mold. “‘v Yes, ~" TI am interested in just that kind of thing,” Carlos now told Nalini.

“The chewing of power exercise brings a lot of extra energy,” Carlos

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254

remarked, “but this energy is for observing oneself. When I first did it, I found I lost my temper often. This is really sham rage’, almost a reflex. It goes away very quickly. I felt there might be some truth in this. I had

a terrible rage, only last week, with a colleague, which came and went quickly.” “What we are doing now is different from what we did before, with the dreams,” Carlos continued, “before had been too dark, no purpose

in it. He added wryly that “the only purpose had been to scare Thelma , who had backed out of the group. A week later Carlos inquired of me by phone if there had been any results from the exercise. I reported to him that both Nalini and Fred

had reported stiff necks on their left side, and that Erroll had a similar complaint for eight hours. I myself had a stomach-ache. It did not

seem very promising. Carlos was more optimistic. He thought this was indicative that the exercise was working.

“By somatic disorders?” I objected incredulously.

“It’s the way the body codes impressions from the left side, he

explained ingeniously. Since his re-appearance Carlos had become very involved in the contrast between left and right. I noted that he talked in

these terms about the body and not the brain. By referring to the left side a-, of the body, he was implying the right side of the brain. (Neither he nor

I knew anything at the time of the complexities of left-handed persons in this respect). He then diverted to a discussion about the Zen concept of

“no-mind.” He had been reading Suzuki Roshi. “The ordinary mind needs to disentangle from the ‘no-mind in order

to know the ‘no-mind’ for what it is,” he continued as if he was giving a

lecture. “Sorcerers worked from the opposite premise. They urged that one had to entangle the ordinary mind with the ‘left’, before disentangling it. It is a paradox!”

BETWEEN A THUNDERBIRD AND A COYOTE

I gave my own interpretation, following his nomenclature, and

phrasing it as a question: “Since the left side is basically unknowable to our right side, then we have to ‘lend’ ones right side in order to give a

language to the left side?”

He liked that interpretation. “I’m going off to Mexico, should be back in a week or ten days time.” Carlos sounded very cheerful.

Erroll’s Out of Body Experience The phone call from Carlos had come just before I learned from

Erroll that he had had a fantastic experience. It had taken place in the early hours of that same day as I talked with Carlos, and on the following day he recounted it to Fred and myself, recording it on tape.

"Ifelt very tired the day before (October 12). Ifell asleep. I woke up shortly with a headache and could not get back to sleep. All of a sudden I had a tremendous surge of energy,

and I remained atvake during the early hotirs of the morn­ ing. I left my bed and went into the garden and sat there. I

was naked except for a jock-strap, and sat up a tree. I lis­ tened to the hum of the traffic on the freeway. Then - and

this is difficult to describe - my modalities seemed, to merge.

The images of the lights from Los Angeles appeared like the

lights from a landing airplane. These intermingled with the

noise of the freeway. Smells, sounds, sights, all intermin- j

gled."... “Synesthetic?” Fred interrupted.

“Yes, it was synesthesia.” j Errol! continued...

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256

"Then the energy outside of myself and the energy inside myself became interchanged. It seemed as if some kind of

wall between me and outside of me was permeable. Like a

permeable membrane. This led me to being aware of my home, Bill Bailey’, flashed through my mind. You know the tune?”

“Sure, I know the tune,” I responded shortly, “what’s so strange about that?” “I knew, knew,” Bernard emphasized, “that this man’s name was

Bailey. Only it was not Bill Bailey, but Bob Bailey. Bob was the name of

my father, you know.”

“And was it?” I asked with further impatience. Bernard announced with an air of revelation: “I leaned over to him and asked politely, ‘Excuse me, sir, but isn’t your name Bob Bailey’? The

man was absolutely astonished.” “You mean it was his name?” This was getting too much. “Of course.”

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I did not know what to make of this development. Neither did Bernard. “What does it mean?” he asked.

“No idea,” I said.

“Do you know anyone called Bob Bailey?” Bernard asked of me. “No one at all,” I said emphatically. “Bailey told me he came from North Carolina,” Bernard added.

The name, “Carolina,” jiggled my memory. I recalled the conversation with Carolyn only three days previously when she had mentioned Lew’s

last name. Had it been Bailey? I could not remember. “Wait a minute, Bernard,” I interjected, “perhaps I do know a Bailey. Let me get back to you.”

With a feeling of excitement, I searched for Carolyns office number. “Carolyn. What was the name of that guy at Taos?” «T

Lew.

»

“Yes, I recall that. I mean his last name.” “I’m not sure. I think it was Bailey.”

I rang Bernard back immediately, and told him Carolyn’s story. “So Bailey is tied in with Mariano?” he observed.

“Yes.” The phone rang; it was Carolyn again.

“I just checked with Vince. I was mistaken. Lew’s name is not Bailey.”

She told me the correct name.

I rang Bernard back and told him the latest addition. “What’s absolutely fascinating about this,” he said in his careful way, “is that - which I’m sure you’ve noticed - it’s the wrong name.”

Yes, it surely was the wrong name, - I contemplated as I placed the receiver down, but why? By now I was more sensitive to the meaning of names. Bailey, I looked it up: the word refers to the outer wall of a

REALIZATION AT TAOS

precinct, a circuit of defenses, like the Old Bailey, the famous law courts

in London. That might have been my association, I pondered, but not that of Carolyn. Very likely her false memory might have been due to an association with F. Lee Bailey, the famous defense lawyer. I didn’t know

what her association had been, but the name happened to bear the same

meaning as had been attributed to Lew’s behavior; he had been blocking our approach to Mariano. A defense mechanism, I further considered, but whose? My own, Carolyn’s, Bernard’s or Lew’s? Or perhaps that of

the Phenomenon itself? At any rate, Lew was right; we had to search

inwards. As I thought more about this incident, I saw that conventional psychological explanations could reasonably account for the misnaming, but that the name should emerge in the context of Bernard’s experience I was a totally different matter. Jule would have loved this, I thought to

myself. Though I now was starting to have a healthy respect for these events,

1 had a childish reaction to this particular incident. The memory of the image of the laughing dark man in the restaurant had really provoked me. ‘So’, I mused, ‘the cosmos is telling me, with its defense symbol, to avoid

the external reference and meditate on my navel; and not to go to Taos?’

My thinking on these matters, and in fact my world view in general, had obviously been affected by the events of these last years; nevertheless my

previous models of rationality still had enough strength to object. So

quite illogically and angrily I decided to act in direct opposition to my inference. “To hell with it,” I said obstinately to Carolyn on the phone, “I’m going to see Mariano despite it all.” “Let me find out a few things first,” Carolyn advised.

In any case, there was no way in which I could easily rush off to Taos. There was too much pressing work at the University. So, I heeded

Carolyn’s advice and decided that I myself should engage Lew on the

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phone. When the time for the call came, I told him that I was not a Castaneda “groupie”, and that certain events had occurred which had culminated in

seeking this man Mariano. I promised I would send him a review of some of these events which would explain my situation; which I promptly enacted.

Meetings With Carlos and Lynn Andrews While I awaited Lew’s response, I had two conversations that were

of some pertinence to the situation. The first was with Carlos and the second with Lynn Andrews. The meeting with Carlos was our first since

my phone call with Gorda. “I’d love to listen in on this conversation,” said Valerie when I told her about the meeting. “Are you going to confront him?”

I thought it over. “Not sure. Probably not, unless he brings it up

first.” “Why not?” Valerie was a confrontational type. “Difficult to say,” I demurred, “I have a feeling that if I do, it’s all

over between us. And I’m not sure I want that. What he says is always interesting.”

“Even if it’s a pack of lies?” she insisted. “Even then.”

“Well, I would have it out with him,” she declared. On the phone, Carlos never mentioned our last conversation, nor mentioned Gorda, nor the Anthropology' meetings. It was if they had

never occurred. Instead he focused on my Mariano situation, after I had told him about the sequence of Carlos-Caroline and Mariano, and about Guam. He presented me with a theory' of parallel beings; that all of us had such a parallel being living somewhere; and that mine could be this

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Mariano living in Guam. (Carlos was grouping all the Marianos into one

person) The conversation edged onto other matters; I felt there was a difference

in the confidence that existed between us now. He was slightly cautious with me, as if he was testing the waters. I was reinforced in this belief a

few days later, when Erroll told me that Carlos had unexpectedly visited him at his home and had also phoned him, after our lunch meeting. “Douglass humors me,” he had told Erroll. “I know that he takes

notes of our conversations. I have fun in telling him things which are ^wrong, so that he can write them down.”

I sensed that my relationship with Carlos was at an end.

A Conversation With Lynn Andrews I need now to briefly describe my interactions with Lynn Andrews. Lynn was also a friend of Chuck Storm. She was clearly intrigued with

Carlos, and, when I first met her, she had wanted to meet him. At the same time, she displayed some reservations. “I think he’s a genius,” were her words, “but I wonder whether he

does not steal his material from others.” As I saw her infrequently, and that she 'was not positioned to be

continually updated, I told her briefly some: of my involvement with Carlos and the dreams, particularly the later developments about Taos. It turned out that she knew Lew, and told me that Frank Waters had

been one of Storm’s teachers. She did not know Frank directly, but could

probably get me an introduction if I wished it. Although Lynn was very friendly, and although I did later arrange a meeting with Carlos for her and her friend, I never pursued a closer

connection with her. I felt that my involvement with other people was becoming too enmeshed, and that I should adhere to the main track and

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not become lost in secondary matters of gossip, relationships and general philosophies of the occult and Native American thought. The main track, it was now clear, was pursuing the Mariano lead and to find out where it

took me.

The Trip To Taos Carolyn had made a second visit to Taos and felt that now it was time for me to make the trip.

“How does Lew feel about my visit?” I asked her uneasily. “He still feels the same way,” she replied, referring to his discouraging manner, “but my intuition is that you should see Frank Waters.”

Though I trusted Carolyns intuition, I could not see how I could

approach Frank Waters. Nevertheless, I decided to go. I arrived in Taos on July 8, 1980, remaining for a week. I stayed with

Vince, who had recently bought a house there. Carolyn was also in Taos,

staying elsewhere. Vince brought me to Lew’s home. Lew proved to be a thoughtful and

complex person, thinking in terms of mythology and likening himself to a Greek mythological character. As Storm had also emphasized, Lew felt that poetry should not be literalized. He reiterated to me what he

had already told Carolyn, that people should look inwards and not seek

outwardly for Indian gurus. In reply, I told him, as had Carolyn, that this was not exactly our intent; but he could not be budged from his position. He would not introduce me to Mariano, although he had grudgingly

done this for Carolyn. He told Carolyn afterwards that he knew this was illogical; he quite liked me, but he just could not bring himself to make the introduction. If I went to the Pueblo and saw Mariano myself, that was fine with him, but he simply was not going to help.

I found out from Lew while I was at his home that Frank Waters lived

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just up the road. Given the curious episode of the phone number (be it true or not), and that we had a mutual friend in Chuck Storm, I thought that Frank Waters would be interested in seeing me. By now I had a brief,

selected account of many of the unusual events that had happened, and wished Frank to see it. With some trepidation I rang him up from Lew’s house; I said that I

had a manuscript that I thought would interest him. At first he thought I was a budding novelist, and did not seem encouraging. I quickly disabused him of this idea, telling him that I had experienced a number

of anomalous events, which also happened to included his own phone T. number. I was tentative about the whole matter, imagining Frank to

respond similarly; I felt it must have seemed absurd to him. However, there must have been something in what I said that intrigued him, as he invited me to come up to his house the next day.

When I arrived I was introduced to Frank’s wife, Barbara, and two

young people. These were David and Carolyn Jongeward. David had been an anthropologist and was now writing novels. His wife, Carolyn,

was a weaver and becoming quite famous, and incidentally years later David wrote a very good and memorable book about his wife. David and Carolyn had both been apprentices to Storm, and Frank knew Storm as

well. I introduced myself, stating that I had been experiencing for some

time some unusual experiences, which had led me now to Taos. I also prefaced that I knew this was a long and complicated story, but that I

could leave a document with them that would reveal the details. I found them very congenial and interested, and they asked me many questions about my background. Frank had been interested in the Gurdjieff work, and I told him about my years with J.G. Bennett, whose name he knew

quite well. I left, arranging with Frank that I would return when they had

digested the document. I was halfway down the road when Barbara came

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running after me with the document in her hand.

“Was there ever anything about a ring?” she asked mysteriously.

“A ring?” I echoed. I thought for a moment. “No, not as I remember.” I bid her farewell, wandering slowly back to Vinces house, ruminating

over the ring.

New Discussions David and Carolyn brought me over to their house, and I met their

beautiful little daughter. They had already read my manuscript, through

Frank, and we now sat down in their den to discuss it. “You know,” said Carolyn, “when I read about Mariano, it reminded me of another name.” “What was that?” I asked.

■ “Martiniano. He is the Indian hero in Frank’s novel, The Man That

Killed the Deer. The novel was based on the people of Taos pueblo, and

Martiniano was a man who had lost his tradition and came back in search of it. Martiniano was Franks 'Don Juan’. It reminded me of your story,

somehow.”

I remarked on the similarity of the names, Mariano and Martiniano. “Yes,” she said, “Also, there’s another sequence for you.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “You went from a Carlos to a Carolyn to a Mariano. Twice. Now

there’s a third time.” “What do you mean?” I asked puzzled.

“Well, I’m a friend of Chuck Storm,” she said. “Chuck?” I was still puzzled.

X? “Chuck is a nickname for Charles,” Carolyn explained. “Oh!”

“And I’ve just now led you to Martiniano. You see: “Chuck-Carolyn-

REALIZATION AT TAOS

Martiniano.” “God,” I said, “another weird thing.”

David immediately pounced on me. “Don’t think of these events as

weird. They are teachings.” I stood chastised.

“Also,” he went on, “You keep on looking outside for what is inside.

This was the same admonition that Lew had been giving me, yet I

was now better prepared to heed it. I confided to David my dilemma of changing course in my career.

“I would have to become an intern,” I explained. “You see,” David pounced again, “in-turn.” He made a gesture with his hands resembling the prow of a ship entering my chest. “You are

deciding to turn inside of yourself.” His words and his gesture penetrated through to me. I saw immediately

that I was acting out an inner movement.

The following day was the full session with Frank and Barbara and the Jongewards, at Frank’s house. Frank told me that he himself had a dream the preceding night about me. I sensed this was one to be noted

as both Storm and Lynn had hinted to me that Frank had significant dreams. The dream consisted of myself at a switchboard, manipulating incoming messages. The messages resembled tapes or circles, and I was

joining them together. Frank perceived me in the role of combining

several traditions of many different disciplines. Barbara thought of me

as ‘Ariadne’, the daughter of King Minos of Crete, referring to the Greek myth in which she leaves a thread for her lover Theseus to escape from

the labyrinth. Like Lew, Barbara thought in terms of mythology. Her comment on the ring had come from Teutonic mythology, the evidence of which she thought she perceived in my manuscript.

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Specifically Barbara thought of the ring ofNibelung-Richard Wagner’s

mythological music drama of the 19th century. Hagen was a name in

the Prose Edda - tales of Norse mythology, and a name almost identical name to the real name of Gretchen (which, it should be remembered, in

this text is a pseudonym) was also in this myth. The study of mythology, which had occupied me scholastically for years, was now beginning to take on a personal tone. Barbara had worked on my manuscript, giving

me several pages of notes.

Both Barbara and Frank thought in terms of the Unconscious, and Barbara saw a structure to my story. My colleagues and I had met ‘pilgrims’ that had embarked on a journey to the Unconscious. On the way we had encountered ‘assistants’, like the Carolines/Carolyns, who had given us

help. She made the structure of the three Carlos’ as the pilgrims, with the

three Carolines as the assistants, and the Unconscious represented by the Marianos and Guam. Her whole treatment was an understanding of my

story as symbolic, borrowing unconsciously from mythology. Frank, too, thought the same.

“Then, there is no point in my meeting Mariano in the Pueblot I asked. “No. He would not understand anything about this at all,” Frank

affirmed. He added, “However, the contact might mean something unconsciously to you.”

David emphasized the importance of the number four and mentioned the symbolic system of the San Juan Pueblo Indians. They had a

complicated arrangement of the four kivas within the four directions,

which in turn were within the four mesas, flanked by the four lakes and

further by the four mountains. There were characters called ‘Whippets’,

who were posted at the four mesas, that prevented anybody intruding onto the center.

REALIZATION AT TAOS

This idea of ‘whippers’ fascinated me. I asked him whether these

Indians need be conscious of their role as whippers. “No, why do you ask?” I reminded him of the mistaken name of Bailey, this being the outer

defense. “Do you think Lew was unconsciously being a whippet?” I asked. “Impossible to say,” was Davids judgment. “You should read Storms

Seven Arrows,” he suggested. “Oh, I have.”

“Then you will remember the use of the number four there.” “I remember that. But the thing I was stuck on was that he wanted me to visit the Dreamers,” I said. I was not at all sure what was meant

by this term. I told David that as I understood “Dreamers”, it referred

to people who “dreamed” you when you were present with them. Or

maybe people who could send you dreams. Storm had given me explicit instructions of how to meet two such dreamers, who lived in the north of

Canada. “By directing you to the ‘North’,” David explained, “he may have meant that you should go to that place within you.” “What place are you referring to?” I demanded. “On one of his Medicine wheels, one of his circles, ‘North’ is

the place of Wisdom.”

“Do you mean to say, he was not referring to some place in Canada, but was talking symbolically?” I mused about this. Storm had given me the actual names of two Indians to meet. Their names were a kind of

animal and a kind of plant. “This place was difficult for me to get to,” I explained to David. “It

would have needed two planes, a truck and a river boat to arrive. Then, after many days and much money and armed with gifts of tobacco and

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a Pendleton blanket, I would have asked the community for these two characters, only to find out that Storm had been referring to elements

within myself! Talk about a dumb Anglo!” David laughed. “Stating that you found it difficult to get to, could

mean that your internal world is difficult and complicated. Storm does not make any distinction between inner and outer.” “Wait a minute,” I exclaimed suddenly, “He sent me a letter just before my trip here. If I remember rightly he said these exact words about the

Dreamers trip: ‘I am writing this letter because I thought it just possible

I

you may have thought I was speaking symbolically - I was not’.”

“Well, you never know with him,” commented David, “when you

think he means something external, he means something internal. And

when you think he is talking symbolically, he is referring to something

quite literal.” “Quite the little ‘contrarie’,” I joked.

Carolyn was more supportive in her emotional attitude. She, too,

saw much of life as symbolic of internal attitudes. She advised me to

take up cooking. The elements of fire and water, and what they meant psychologically, were crucial factors in cooking. So was the cauldron or

pot, which was she said a three-dimensional ring. She concentrated on the distilling function of cooking. Carolyn seemed quite emotional when

she expressed these ideas and I was impressed with her dedication and sincerity. In addition I was also impressed with her weaving, which was

shown to me when I visited her house. There was a special quality to this young woman, which I understood more when I read David’s book about

her several years later. “What should I do with all this material?” I asked Frank as I was

leaving his house, referring to the written manuscript. Frank thought it over in his quiet and deliberate manner.

REALIZATION AT TAOS

“Write it all out, the entire story. Leave it for your publishers to put

it out when everybody is dead.” The night after meeting with this group, I had a short but meaningful

dream:

"I was in a room by the sea. Suddenly water came under the door, flooding the room to a low level. I had been about

to move, and this intrusion threatened my moving. I opened the door and saw there was a large wave on the sea.

On the beach people were scurrying around to get out of the way, saving children. I was not disturbed or frightened by

this event. ”

If I interpreted the sea and the water and the wave as a movement from the Unconscious, it seemed that I could tolerate this new intrusion;

it was a comforting dream. The visit with Frank and Barbara Waters had revolutionized my thinking about the entire saga. I began to have a feeling as to what this

was all about. I desperately needed time and peace and quiet to work it all out. In the meantime, what should I do about Mariano? I had told

Carolyn from Los Angeles that I would visit him in the Pueblo, and she

had passed the message on to him. For some time now Mariano had become very friendly with Carolyn and I did not want to be rude. After

the conversation with Frank, I realized that Mariano was a symbolic figure

and it was probably pointless to seek him out. I decided nevertheless

to visit him, bringing a gift. Asking Carolyn what he might like, she suggested a set of nice drinking glasses. Water again, I said to myself. I

went to Mariano’s house in the Pueblo, only to be told that he was out in the fields and not likely to return until later.

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“What is he doing?” I asked his wife. “Irrigating,” she said. Water once again! I left my gift and did not see him. I did not think

that I would ever see him. A remarkable discovery, though much later on,

proved me wrong yet again.

Return To Los Angeles I returned home to Los Angeles completely mortified. Consistently over these past years, throughout all the coincidences and dreams, I had

failed to see what was now perfectly obvious to me. Namely, that all these

events had to be interpreted symbolically. And this lapse of recognition had occurred despite the fact that I had actually had taught a course at UCLA for eight or nine years on the psychological aspects of myth. It was

not as if I had never heard of or read what Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and others had to say on the matter. I had actually lectured on what they had written. I felt a complete and utter fool. Chagrined, I told my wife that I was an idiot. More to the immediate

point, I pondered over my course of action as to the clinical training decision. Realizing that I had been externalizing what was inside of myself, I debated whether it would be wise to devote many more years of

study to achieve something that apparently reflected an internal demand. There were other, more logical, reasons why I might go in this direction, yet I could not now ignore the basis of the urge. The dilemma was that

on the one hand the urge to take up clinical training could be seen as a projection; on the other hand, since I was conscious of the motivation,

the internal urge required an external reinforcement.

My wife suggested that I should pray over the matter and ask for a

| dream. That night, I did so and had a dream in which I was having breakfast with a pregnant woman. Awakening in the morning, I remembered that

REALIZATION AT TAOS

the range of mountains above Taos Pueblo, which the Taos Indians regard

as sacred, was shaped like and actually named by them: the pregnant g woman. Pregnancy obviously indicated the arrival of a child. Rightly or wrongly, it seemed to me to be an auspicious dream; I made the decision

to go ahead with the clinical training and undertook the internship. At least I had made the decision consciously.

More important than this decision, in the weeks following my

journey to Taos I explored and wrote out the essence of what is presented in the following Chapter. Some events during this time, when reflected upon and perceived in an interpretational mode, took longer to decipher;

however, the meaning of most of the items involved and the fundamental structure of the main people encountered began to reveal itself. To my

initial wonder, it all became clear to me . The immediate clue that led me to these realizations was the insistence on symbolism and mythology by Lew, David, and Frank and Barbara

Waters, the emphasis on the importance of internalizing and particularly the salience of the number four, the two latter cues both pointed out by

David. Frank’s mentions of the nature of the Unconscious also proved influential and very helpful. On arriving home, I immediately read

Frank’s book The Man Who Killed the Deer, and re-read, now with a

different insight, some of the writings by Jung, Joseph Campbell, MarieLouise von Franz, James Hillman and other prominent Jungians. Whereas I could not agree with the relevance, attributed by Barbara Waters, of

Teutonic mythology in regard to my experience, I did see the relevance

of mythology in general, particularly the thrust of Joseph Campbell’s book The Hero with a Thousand Faces; and while I discarded Barbara’s structure of three kinds of pilgrims, I borrowed from her the notion of an order to the people involved. Her analysis was invaluable to me; I owed a debt to everybody in Taos.

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On my return, I talked to several people with whom I had been entangled with during the course of events. I tentatively told Fred and

Erroll that I was re-considering what had taken place, without going into

any details with them. Lynn rang me up and I met her to let her know that I had met with Frank Waters and the Jongewards, whom she knew

of through Storm.

When I told her about the new Carolyn, this making it now three,

she impulsively said: “You know, my second name is Carol.” “Lynn Carol is your full name?” “Yes.”

“I thought your middle initial was something different,” I said

suspiciously, “It’s on your book.” “That was my publisher’s idea. My name is Lynn Carol.” “Carolyn in reverse,” I pointed out. I did not see much significance

of that at the time of the conversation. “Curious.”

I told her of Frank’s dream about me. “Frank is a dreamer,” she said, “that’s what I hear.”

Further Meetings In September, I met Chuck Storm again. I showed him a figure of concentric circles that I had drawn to model what I perceived in the situation. He brought the paper up close to his eyes. Then, without a

word, he handed it back to me and shook my hand in congratulations. I showed it also to David Jongeward when he later visited Los Angeles. “That’s a nice piece of work,” he said. Later, in November, I had a lunch with Carlos. I had been feeling

increasingly estranged from him, now regarding him more like a patient than a confidant. I mentioned the apparent anomaly of the various

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Carloses and Carolines and Marianos and my lines of interpretation. He

did not seem to grasp much of what I told him, but he understood when I explained that Guam represented the Center of my being.

“Yes,” he said, “not only yours but that of Fred and Erroll also.” Carlos appeared mainly interested in whether I had slept with any of

the Carolines, and seemed a little disappointed when I answered in the

negative. By this time I had heard from him of his ideas of the four winds, all females. From what I understood, in his form of sorcery, winds seemed

to be a fancy term for mistresses, although I certainly acknowledged that they had other merits. Carlos also asked me about Frank Waters, and

among others things I told him that I had heard he was a ‘dreamer’. This

term did not seem to mean anything special to him. Also in November, I met again with Chuck Storm. As usual, he was

dogmatic and forceful, but for the first time I felt in him a genuine concern

for me. In this meeting he strongly advised me to “find a religion.”

“Why?” I asked, somewhat puzzled. I was puzzled that he would say this; it had been suggested to me by many other people during my

lifetime. “You are too uncommitted,” he said emphatically, but again with

concern for me. This was undoubtedly true, and it was not just in religion that I was uncommitted. I had a strong aversion to become committed to any single creed, belief system, discipline, or even a way of thinking. My professional life could even be characterized as marginal up to that point. To me the term ‘eclectic’ would have been a preferable, even euphemistic way of

expressing this; but maybe ‘uncommitted’ was fair in the sense it applied

to my character.

“There’s another reason,” added Storm. “Which is?”

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“You need a language to express all this in. For purposes of dialogue and discrimination.”

Another pause for shared thought. Storm was good at this sort of

thing.

“Any suggestions?” I emerged from my ruminating to ask, somewhat flippantly. “As to a religion?” “Yes."

— “Buddhism,” Storm suggested. “Find yourself a Roshi.” While Buddhism was certainly attractive to me, I wondered to myself

whether I had not actually already been converted, or committed by some *»■ incorporeal contract. Not to a specific belief or system, but to a feeling of

accepting the transpersonal, of allowing the numinous a place in my life, of recognizing that there was something beyond the ego in life, which

had to be related to. Metanoia, the Greek word usually translated as repentance, literally means an afterthought, a change of mind. “Conversion” comes from a Greek root meaning “to turn about.” Both of these had happened to me,

and I felt considerably different in their wake. While I was not about to,

nor did I have the temperament to, report a claim for ‘seeing the Light’ or “finding enlightenment’, there definitely was a sense of an internal

eruption; a sense of new vision. My task then, I was certain, was not

to publicly adopt a creed, but to understand what had happened to me

and in the events of my circle, and from there to till the upturned soil. Neither task proved to be as easy as it may have initially appeared.

THE LAMP OF UNDERSTANDING

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Lamp © of Understanding And now I tell you, the signs that I have shown you, and the dreams that you have had, and the meaning

of them that you have heard, lay up in your heart!

2 Esdras, 14,7-8

...I will light the lamp of understanding in your heart,

and it will not be put out until the things you are to write are finished.

And when you have finished,

some things you shall publish and some you shall hand down secretly to the wise.

2 Esdras, 14, 25-26 (The Apocrypha: An American translation.

by Edgar J. Goodspeed)

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After my trip to Taos, the meaning of many of these anomalous and

puzzling events were becoming clearer to me. I drew up what psychologists

have called a cognitive map, more generally known as a road map, with the intention of making some sense of all that had occurred. The map

was one of navigation, not necessarily of explanation, and with the idea

not to try to provide a scientific model of the experiences, but rather to make a cosmos out of chaos. This map of mine served as something I finally could follow, however specious it may appear or have appeared to

others.

A Structural Understanding I was aided in my process of map-making by a number of cues: the suggestion by Barbara Waters of grouping the names of characters in the

story, her idea of a mythic ring; Barbaras outer ring had been “pilgrims”, which included myself and my colleagues. I changed this somewhat,

accepting myself as a “pilgrim” or “seeker”, but then interpreting the outer ring as the first set of encounters that I would meet on my journey. Then there was the suggestion of Storms representation of medicine wheels,

and my two dreams about Guam and Pacifica, which I subsequently

labeled the “Center Dreams”. I perceived that the sequences of meeting a Carlos or Carl or Chuck (Charles) associated with a Caroline or Carolyn and in turn connected to a Mariano could be modeled as threejxmcentric

circles, rings, or even wheels, the latter seeming appropriate as it implied

dynamic movement, certainly a quality of the events. The outer circle, then, represented the Carloses, the middle circle the Carolines, and the inner circle the Marianos. Lines passing through

the center of each of these names converged on a central focus, which,

following the Center Dreams, was represented by Guam or Pacifica. At first as I was developing this model, I clearly found three examples

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325

of each name, but prompted by David Jongeward’s insistence on the

importance of the number four, and all of Storms medicine wheels

with their four quadrants, I wondered if there could be a fourth, and accordingly I looked back through my Journal. It appeared that in a

certain interpretation, it could be seen that there was a fourth Carlos, a fourth Carolyn and a even fourth Mariano, though these four new examples shared in common an unusual factor.

It is valuable to repeat here that the name Charles or Carlos merely

means a plain fellow, and Caroline is its female derivative. The Carolines

and the Marianos of the story are connected not only by their real-life inner experiences, but also, when referring to the names of island groups, by the geography of the area of the Pacific in which they are found: the

Caroline Islands lying outside the Marianas. Also upon reflection, the

repetition of the four letters GUAM seemed to be insistent. The name

Guam, beyond just signifying one island of the Marianas, had phonic corollaries in the story as well. Resemblance had occurred with Gautama o and with Guitimea, both in the context of the story of Mariano recounted by Caroline from Hollywood.

Barbara Waters, when we had spoken about my modeling of the story’s

elements, had thought that the name Juan, with its phonic association to

Guam, could be regarded as the goal or center, and there was something to be said for this, particularly as I had found out in my researches that the original name of Guam had been the Isle of St. John. It had also been

interesting that my researches disclosed that the original European root of

my surname, Williams, had been Guillaume, in which these four letters occur once again. Therefore I could see that ‘Guam’ could in this view

represent my deepest roots. It was for many reasons then that I decided that the center of the Mandala was Guam. It seemed fitting that just off the island of Guam lay the Mariana Trench, the deepest point in all the

Earth’s oceans.

LIFE

326

DREAMS

Kari

(. \ROL

Mariano (d>RER) Chuck Storm

Carolyn

(taoSj)

Martini wo Pacifica Mariano (\\ \ r» i-w : Gl • Glitimea

Caroiinf (HOLLYWOOD)

Carlos Cas it NF DA

(TAOS)

Carols n MONICA-

Carlos Hagen (map librarian)

Figure 6: The Pacifica Mandala

Figure 6 depicts this structural attempt at understanding the

relationships between all these characters. The three straight solid lines

indicate a direct connection between three of the Carloses and Carolines and Marianos. The fourth broken line traces three people which had

names in the Carlos- Caroline-Mariano theme, but who did not lead from one to the other nor were connected to Guam.

The first of them was the Karl of San Francisco, the Austrian diplomat who I never actually met (see Ch.8). Though he admittedly

THE LAMP OF UNDERSTANDING

had cropped up in the context of the only direct don Juan dream of the story, it had not led anywhere further. The second was Lynn, whose full name was Lynn Carol, and who too did not lead anywhere meaningful

that I could discern. While I had indeed met Lynn Carol many times, I

did not maintain the acquaintance (see Ch.11). The third, the Mariano of this grouping, was the one depicted in Gretchen’s dream associated with her interest in photography, a dream which she had before we met. This fourth grouping of people was thus characterized by a relative lack

of connection with myself. There was however, a more fascinating distinction shared by the members of this group. I had already noted obviously that Lynn Carol’s name was Caroline in reverse, but this theme was not isolated. In the

case of Gretchen’s dream (see Ch.8) in which Mariano had been seen in silhouette, the black figure against the white light of the window

suggested a photographic negative, and indicated to me the principle of ‘inside-out’, and of course ‘reverse’. The Karl in San Francisco, for his

part, was the representative of his home capital: the title of ambassador

had occurred in the contextual dream. An ambassador is the emissary of the central power; as the fourth Carl in the outer circle, I posited that he

was the proxy of the center and situated at the circumference. All these examples appeared to me to characterize a principle, though I was not

sure what to call it. Possibly inversion.

The next question was: what did the various groups of names represent? I turned to the people themselves to get a lead. The various

Carloses could indeed be recognized as ‘pointers’ or ‘signposts’ towards the Center. This brought to mind the dream of my student with a weather­ vane situated on top of Castaneda’s head.

With the exception of the diplomat, all of the other Carloses were disseminators of information. Hagen was a librarian of maps, Storm a

327

LIFE D REAMS

328

writer of myths, and of course Castaneda wrote all the don Juan books.

My context for the diplomat was related to his reading the don Juan books. The women, the Carolines, could, due to their nature and role in the story, be thought of as mediums or channels and perhaps propelling

forces. I hated to think of them as ‘winds’ (the term used by Carlos for his

women) but the label was appropriate. The Caroline in Hollywood was an artist, the Carolyn in Santa Monica was in the health professions, and

Carolyn Jongeward was a weaver. Lynn Carol was a writer. As for the Marianos, it is noteworthy that with the exception of the Mariano in Taos, who I have not included in the inner circle of the diagram, all of them were more like fantasy figures. Mariano Guitimea

may well have been a real person, but to the Caroline of Hollywood he was a legend and probably well embellished over time. The Mariano

of Carolyn in Santa Monica was explicitly an inner image or vision.

Martiniano was a character from Frank Waters’ novel, although perhaps

drawn from a real character in Taos Pueblo. And Gretchens Mariano was a dream character, though again it may have been based on an earlier

memory. The intermingling nature of these people was marked by other symbolic themes: Carolyn Jongeward, as has been mentioned, was a

weaver; the last name of the Karl in San Francisco pointed to a web; Castanedas father’s name (he adopted his mother’s name) was Arana, the

Spanish word for spider; Carl Hagen was a broadcaster for the Pacifica radio station in Santa Monica, suggesting a link between the outer circle and the center.

The next step in this analysis was to interpret these three groups of people in relation to my own projections. At this point, I borrowed heavily on Jung’s psychological system. It was not difficult for me now to

see ‘Carlos’ as a projection of my own shadow, and ‘Carolyn/Caroline’ as

THE LAMP OF UNDERSTANDING

a projection of my anima. As, in Jung’s theory, the Anima emerges from

investigation of the shadow, the concordance was striking. The peculiar

nature of Carlos Castaneda, with his alleged sorceric mentor, served beautifully as a vehicle to hang one’s own shadow upon. So much so in fact, that I have often dallied with the notion that this was his true role in

life - to serve as a shadow for others. The remaining three Carloses could be seen as further delineations or shadings of the shadow projection. The shadow concept does not necessarily have completely sinister connotations

as is commonly assumed; it only represents characteristics in oneself that are not recognized. The notion of the ‘anima’ in men and the ‘animus’ in women pertains

to the contra-sexual elements in oneself, and thus to relationships, particularly to the opposite sex. Furthermore the Anima is the classic

bridge to the^core of one’s innermost being, which I have called the Center here. It is probably fortunate that I did not have any amatory inclination

to the Carolines involved in these events; for the Anima proper is an internal figure, and a romantic entanglement might have wrecked the delicate process, leading to an identification.

Now, the Marianos were a quite different set. They were much more difficult to understand symbolically, and indeed the most important feature of the understanding took several years to decipher. In my

assessment, what I noted first was their ideological character.The Marianos

were products of the mind, so to speak: legends, heroes, almost magical beings. Their other attribute was the combination of the masculine and the feminine; the name Mariano of course has the Spanish masculine suffix - Mariana has the feminine suffix. In English the feminine form

appears to be the fusion of Mary and Anne. I could not help noting the intrusion of my Catholic upbringing; Mary being the mother of Jesus

and Anne being Mary’s mother. In turn I remembered the statue of Mary

329

LIFE DREAMS

330

in my garden, at the time of the snake episode. This explanation partly satisfied me at the time; it was not until I came across a particular chapter in one of Jungs books that an added

explanation seemed to be warranted. In that chapter Jung had been considering the position of a person that had worked successfully through his shadow, and then through his anima. What then happened, he asked, to the energy, the libido? His answer was that it went to what he called the Mana-Personality. It is worth quoting from Jung at this point, as the

situation he had observed closely fitted my case:

“Clearly the man who has mastered the Anima acquires

—-—------------ -———

-

— her mana, in accordance with the primitive belief that when a man kills the mana-person he assimilates his mana into his own body.”

And further:

“The masculine collective figure who now rises out of the dark background and takes possession of the con­

scious personality entails a psychic danger of a subtle na­ ture, for by inflating the conscious mind it can destroy

everything that was gained by coming to terms with the

mana.”

In other words, at this critical point in the individuation process, the

ego rears its ugly head, appropriating to itself all the victories gained in L overcoming problems with the shadow and the anima. It is not an unusual

occurrence; it is flagrant in a great number of so-called gurus, spiritual teachers, and even church dignitaries. I could not help, in the current

THE LAMP OF UNDERSTANDING

context, but to mark that the concept of Mana comes from Polynesia,

in the Pacific Ocean, and that the letters of the word occur in the word Marianas. However, despite these correlations, when I first drew this

series of circles I was far from understanding what the Mana-Personality

meant. In fact I had not even yet come to terms with the anima, nor the shadow. That was going to be my next task, but I had objectively

recognized these two and therefore was prevented from internally falling

into any inadvertent identification with them, that is, I was at least alerted

to their presence. This was not so with the Mana-Personality. A temporary inflation occurred with it; an uneasy inflation, it was true, as I always felt something not quite right with it, but an inflation nonetheless.

The Inferior Function I was alerted that something was not quite right by the fourth set

of names, which unlike the three other sets was not connected to one

another. When I showed the diagram to Carolyn in Santa Monica, she

said: “You know, when Native Americans create something - a basket, a

rug, a painting - they typically insert an imperfection." “Why?” I asked. “They do not want to better the gods. So they leave a flaw.”

While this explanation did not satisfy me, her use of the word ‘flaw’

reminded me of the flaw in the tragic hero’s character mentioned by Shakespearean scholars. With my Jungian eye, the step was easily made to refer this to Jung’s idea of the so-called ‘inferior function.

Jung’s theory of personality structure involves two attitudes - introvert and extravert - and four basic functions. These basic functions are: thinking, sensation, intuition and feeling. One of these four functions

becomes the dominant function; it is usually accompanied by two of the

331

332

11 * Z,2>'

life

dreams

others, what are called auxiliary functions, and the remaining one, the opposite function to the dominant, the inferior function, is undeveloped, remaining glued to the collective Indeed this was the case with myself. As befitting a scholar and

University professor, my obvious dominant function had to be thinking.

It did not take prodigious self-analysis to realize that my inferior function was feeling, though there was more to this than just labeling. I had

previously identified a split in my personality between love and sex, which

has a name in the clinical literature. It is called the Madonna complex. It appeared that the Immaculate Conception was deeply rooted in my soul, and this is where it belonged of course... but it had generated a conflict

with the biological drives of my being; to be remedied only by splitting. This was hardly a novel complaint, but it had caused me difficulties over the years, and now this wretched series of events had exposed my

fatal flaw. I was not much different from Castaneda, I reflected. He had

his don Juan complex; I had the Madonna complex. It made me a kind of country cousin from him. His remedy was control over women; mine was splitting in my relationships with them. This could very well have been a

factor in our affinity.

A Rite of Passage This psychological discovery jarred me to a further inquiry into the

entire nature of these events. Spurred by, and following my re-examination of Joseph Campbell’s book, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, I was able to perceive an even more foundational pattern in them. The pattern was

hardly a new one: it crops up in mythology, certain rites, and religious

credos. In broad-brush terms, it can most easily be described in the steps of separation, transition and incorporation; the primary components of many rites of passage. This also bears affinities with the three

THE LAMP OF UNDERSTANDING

333

mythological components, identified by Joseph Campbell and others,

of departure, initiation and return. In psychological language, the three components could also be called projection, insight and recollection or

re-integration., The death and re-birth themes of religious systems are clearly identified as salient components in this basic pattern. In folk-lore, the pattern is exemplified by what is called the Night-Sea Crossing. This

motif probably originated in the observation of the sun that sets in the West and disappears into the abyss, where it suffers death, and resurrects

in the East. The original Center Dreams in my story strongly suggested this motif. In these dreams I had embarked Westward for the Pacific, -i landed in Guam and returned to the East to write down the experience J

in the New York Times. Jung frequently used this motif to illustrate the

plunge into the Unconscious; indeed the whole process may be thought of as individuation, in its Jungian meaning of a striving towards wholeness, when all four functions are operating. Whatever meta-language I applied, it seemed to me that there was a clear design to most of the events

experienced, either by myself or others, when they were portrayed in symbolic language.

Understanding the Symbols The starting point was the unexpected occasion of mutual dreams. This caught our attention and served as a signal for further probing. The relevant symbols initially concerned the nature of Castaneda and the image of receding hair (See Ch.l). Hair, among other possible meanings,

has the connotation of identity and perhaps potency, as with the biblical Samson story and in many other instances in literature. The symbolic insinuation in this context was that Castaneda was losing his power.

Erroll’s dream of the grave, alongside of which paced a sick Castaneda,

LIFE DREAMS

334

reinforced this interpretation. Already by this point in the saga there was the further implication of a change of identity towards sanctification,

as the religious idea of tonsuring emerged with the dream of Fred, who

«» imaged a bald spot on his head resembling that of a monk, and at the very outset death was clearly in the picture, exemplified so well by the association of Mel to the death and burial of his father. These opening synchronicities served to catch our attention, and

to some extent forced us consider Castanedas story more seriously. Our interest was nevertheless at that point wholly intellectual, a curiosity only.

The synchronistic element is what encouraged us to probe further and what prompted me to keep a journal, so as to document carefully a set of unusual events. Our detached attitude was well-illustrated in the little

experiment which Erroll and I had undertaken, resulting in the image of my fathers silver watch of the style known as a ‘Half Hunter’.(see Ch.l) At the time the name Half Hunter did not mean anything, though

now upon reflection it did bear some symbolic meaning. In Castaneda’s

system, a hunter was the man in search of sorceric knowledge. This meaning is well recognized by a Jungian writer, Donald Lee Williams, in a book called Border Crossings, who saw in the term a person who is aware of the Unconscious, “the hunter introverts and observes the mood or other forms of the Unconscious libido.” At that time, Erroll and I were

only detached observers; that is to say we were half-hunters, intellectually participating, emotionally uninvolved, and certainly not on any spiritual Hessian path.

Curious Creatures Then came the second series of mutual dreams, with their little

creatures, half-fish and half-rodent (see Ch.2). Again, the quasi-scientific attitude prevailed with some of us. I had the dream of two little white



August

1 he George Nakamura incident in Tucson

June 9 or 10,1978

Poetry reading of George Nakamura poem

January 22

Informing Carlos of girl-friend’s phone number

January 22

First conversation with Carlos about Meetings

April 29

First Anthropology UCLA meeting

Sept. 20

Second conversation with Carlos about Meetings

Sept. 29

Phone conversation with Elena Second phone talk with Elena, indicating charade: Meeting with Barbara Myerhoff at my house

The Anthropology meeting on Carlos

Sept. 30

October 4 Nov. 7 Nov. 17

425

426

LIFE

DREAMS

Meeting with Jule Eisenbud

Nov. 19

Books Cited:

I

Richard de Mille; Castaneda’s Journey. The Power and the Allegory. Santa

Barbara: Capra Press, 1976

Chapter 11. Lunch with Bernard when he ‘sees' dark man

Dec. 1-6, 1979

Phone call with Carolyn about the name of Bailey

Dec. 30 or 31

Bernard telling me about meeting Bob Bailey

Jan. 2, 1980

Actual meeting of Bernard and Bob Bailey

Dec. 8. 1979

Finding out about Bailey's correct name

Jan. 2, 1980

First talk with Carlos after the Elena incident

May 1

First meeting with Lynn

May 4

Arrival in Taos

July 8

Meeting at Waters’ house with group

My dream of water flooding in my room

My dream of pregnant woman Second meeting with Lynn, about her name Meeting with Storm regarding Mandala

Meeting with Carlos about my sequence of names

July 11 July 11/12 c. July 14

July 17

September 1 Nov. 14

Books Cited: Lynn Andrews; Medicine Woman. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981

Joseph Campbell;

The Hero With A Thousand Faces. Bollingen Series

XVI1, Princeton University Press, 1968 ed.

appendix: time chart and books cited

David Jongeward; Weaver ofWorlds. From Navajo Apprenticeship to Sacred

Geometry and Dreams. A Womans Journey in Tapestry. Rochester, Vermont:

Destiny Books, 1990

Chapter 12. The understanding worked out in this Chapter started from my return from Taos in July 1980, and persisted through 1981, into 1982. The

first draft was completed by September 1980. The understanding of the

Mariano figure as a “Mana” figure was not realized until March 1993.

Books Cited

Jill Puree; The Mystic Spiral. Journey of the Soul. N.Y. : Thames and

Hudson, Reprinted 1980

Donald Lee Williams; Border Crossings: A Psychological Perspective on

Carlos Castaneda’s Path ofKnoivledge. Canada: Inner City Books, 1981

Philip Slater; The Glory of Hera. Reprinted, Princeton University Press, 1992

Mary Douglas; Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966

C.G. Jung; The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious. Part Two, Ch. IV The Mana-Personality. Vol. 7 of Collected Works. Princeton

University Press, 1966 C.G. Jung; Symbols ofTransformation.NcA. 5 of Collected Works. Princeton

University Press, 1970

427

LIFE DREAMS

428

John Anthony West; Serpent in the Sky. N.Y. : Harper & Row, 1979

Aniela Jaffe; The Myth ofMeaning. Zurich: Daimon, 1984

H. Corbin; Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970

Anne Morrow Lindbergh; Gift From the Sea. Reprinted, Pantheon 1991

Marie-Louise von Franz; Projection and Re-Collection inJungian Psychology.

La Salle & London: Open Court, 1982

Frank Waters;

The Man that Killed the Deer. Ohio University Press,

1942 James Hillman; “ The Feeling Function”. in M.L. von Franz; Jung's Typology.

N.Y. : Spring Books, 1971

Chapter 13. Last talks with Carlos

Dec. 9, 1982

Gretchen telling me about her waking dream

Jan. 17, 1979

The Florida reviewer phone call

April 9, 1982

Meeting with Gretchen, giving me her book

April 10

My dream about blind man

October 2

The earlier deer-man dream

Sept. 18/19, 1975

Fred’s dream of the little old man

Talk with Jay about detective work

Sept. 17/18, 1975

c. Oct. 12-21, 1982

appendix: time chart and books cited

Dispatch of letter by Jay

Caroline read Jaffes book

Oct. 25 May 1984

My note to Carolyn regarding Mariano

May 18,1984

Meetings with Mariano in Taos

Sept. 29 & 30

Books Cited: Margaret Runyan Castaneda; A Magical Journey with Carlos Castaneda.

Victoria, B.C., Canada: Millenia Press, 1996. In the copy she gave to me, Margaret inscribed: “ To Douglas, Your encouragement to publish this

book became reality. Thank you, Sincerely, Margaret Runyan Castaneda, Oct. 9 1996.”

Elsie Clews Parsons; Taos Pueblo. General Series in Anthropology Number

2. George Banta Publishing Co. Agent. Menasha, Wisconsin, 1936.

Anicla Jaffe (ed); C. G. Jung. Word and Image. Princeton University Press, 1983. Paperback edition, see p. 155

Carlos Castaneda; The Eagles Gift. N.Y.: Simon & Schuster 1981. This

was his only book that he inscribed for me: “To Douglas Price-Williams. On the Eve of a new Era”.

Chapter 14. Carola’s dream of deer and vagina

Phone call with Carola Meeting with Carola, learned of dream

Visit to don Jose Matsuwa at Ojai My dream of deer and young girl

April 25 a.m., 1984 April 25 p.m.

May 1 Sept. 22 Sept 23

429

LIFE DREAMS

430

Carola’s dream of me in shirt

July 4/5

My “Eye” dream

Aug. 11

My “Androgynous Mary” dream

Feb. 22/23, 1985

The “Flying Saucer” synchronicity

April 4

The heart episode

April 8

Meeting with the student called Caroline Mels earlier dream about Flying Saucer

April 11

September 21/22, 1975

Jacques’ Melchisidek experience Meeting with the folklore student

Feb. 21, 1976 Sept. 10, 1985

Books Cited: Barbara Myerhoff; Peyote Hunt: Sacred Joi>urney of the Huichol Indians.

Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974

C.G. Jung;

Answer to Job. Collected Works Volume 11. London:

Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958.

Peter Furst; "To Find Our Life: Peyote among the Huichol Indians ofMexico . In Peter Furst (Ed.) Flesh of the Gods. N.Y. : Praeger Publishers, , 1972

J.E. Cirlot; A Dictionary ofSymbols. N.Y. : Philosophical Library, 1962.

Douglas Baker; The Opening ofthe Third Eye. Samuel Weiser, 1978

O.G.S. Crawford; The Eye Goddess. N.Y. : MacMillan Co., 1958

Man, Myth and Magic: An Illustrated Encyclopedia ofthe Supernatural. 24

volumes. N.Y. : Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 1970

appendix:

time chart and books cited

K. Kerenyi; “ The Myth ofthe Divine Child’, in Kerenyi dr Jung: Essays on

a Science ofMythology. N.Y. : Pantheon 1950

C.G. Jung;

"The Psychology of the Transference", in The Practice of

Psychotherapy, Vol. 16 of Collected Works. Princeton University Press,

1977 Printing. John Weir Perry; The Self in Psychotic Process. University of California Press, 1953. C.G. Jung; "Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky".

in Civilization in Transition, Vol. 10 of Collected Works. Princeton University Press, 1975 printing.

Jacques Vallee; Messengers ofDeception. Berkeley; And/Or Press, 1979 Robert Flaherty; Flying Saucers. The new Angelology. Mythic Projection of

the Cold War and the Convergence of Opposites. Ph.D thesis, Folklore and

Mythology. University of California, Los Angeles, 1990

Epilogue. Books Cited:

Joseph Campbell; The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology. N.Y.: Viking Press, 1970 George P. Hansen; The Trickster and the Paranormal.TMms Corporation,

2001 Allan Combs & Mark Holland; Synchronicity. Science, Myth and the

Trickster. N.Y. : Paragon House, 1990

Carlos Castaneda; The Art ofDreaming. N.Y.: HarperCollins, 1993 Mac Linscott Ricketts; "The Shaman and the Trickster". Chapter Six of

William J. Hynes and William G. Doty: Mythical Tricksters: Contours,

431

LIFE DREAMS

432

Contexts, and Criticisms. Tuscaloosa & London: The University of

Alabama Press, 1997 edition.

C.G. Jung;

"The Psychology of the Transference". in The Practice of

Psychotherapy, Vol. 16 of Collected Works. Princeton Universin' Press, 1977 Printing.

John Weir Perry;

The Self in Psychotic Process. Universin' of California

Press, 1953.

C.G. Jung; "Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky . in Civilization in Transition, Vol. 10 of Collected Works. Princeton

University Press, 1975 printing.

Jacques Vallee; Messengers ofDeception. Berkeley; And/Or Press, 1979

Robert Flaherty; Flying Saucers. The new Angelology. Mythic Projection of

the Cold War and die Convergence of Opposites. Ph.D thesis, Folklore and

Mythology. University of California, Los Angeles, 1990

4

Non-Fiction / Psychology / Shamanism

In this remarkable book, Professor Price-Williams has given his readers a wild autobio­ graphical and transpersonal detective story that explores the boundaries where dreams

and waking life meet. This is a profound ant! intimate endeavor by an eminent scholar to explore the unexplored, explain the unexplained, and reveal the unrevealed.

-Stanley Krippncr. Ph.D.

Professor of Psychology, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center.

Co-editor, Varieties ofAnomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence

“Ulisfascinating and important book is indeed a central document in the history ofthe

revolution ofconsciousness ofthe 1960's and ~0's. and a vital link in the stray .

■ of

Carlos Castaneda. Dr. Price-Williams' casual manner. and his refusal to dram .

'hese

events, combine to disguise the remarkable nature ofthe story he has to tell.

-Colin Wilson Initiated by an informal dream-telepathy experiment suggest-

>y Carlos

Casteneda over lunch in Los Angeles in 1974, an eminent UCLA Pro Fro

or. recog­

nized as a founder of the field of cross-cultural psycholog}', unwittingly .repped into an 11-year labyrinth of wildly anomalous and synchronistic events. Play, ally putting

to the test his classical training and sensibilities, rhe ensuing experiences and dreams were recorded by himself and colleagues in thousands of pages of precise notes, finally

brought to into an astounding and unexpected coherence, and condensed into this improbable true-life narrative. As we are taken with him on the trail of the Nagual, don Juan, and Casteneda's enigmatic and sometimes prevaricate tendencies, a far deeper realization unfurls, one that shows itself to be much closer to home, and wait­

ing silently at the boundary of our common conceptions.

Following up on the unfinished business of Jung, and trailblazing with authority clear paths into long-taboo territories. Professor Price-Williams candidly reminds us of the mystery that gives blood to science, the discipline required to bring deep

patterns to light, and truly above all, of how much more we still have to learn.

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