"68_carlos_radio" - читать интересную книгу автора (Castaneda Carlos)

Radio interview with Carlos Castaneda - 1968 "Don Juan: The Sorcerer"

Interviewer: For six years from 1960-66 Carlos Castaneda served as an
apprentice to a Yaqui Indian brujo, or sorcerer named don Juan. During
those years, Mr. Castaneda was a graduate student in Anthropology at UCLA.
His experiences with don Juan lead him into a strange world of shamanistic
lore and psychedelic experience and adventures in what Mr. Castaneda calls
states of non ordinary reality, some of which were frightening in the
extreme, and all of which are fascinating in the extreme. His experiences
with don Juan are recounted in a book which has been published this year
by the University of California Press called "The Teachings of don Juan:
A Yaqui Way of Knowledge". Mr. Castaneda is with us here at KPFA today and
has agreed to discuss the book and his experiences with don Juan. Let me
begin by asking you how you managed to meet this remarkable personality,
don Juan, and can you give us some idea what sort of a person he is?

CC: I met don Juan in a rather fortuitous manner. I was doing, at the time
in 1960, I was doing, I was collecting ethnographic data on the use of
medicinal plants among the Arizona Indians. And a friend of mine who was my
guide on that enterprise knew about don Juan. He knew that don Juan was a
very learned man in the use of plants and he intended to introduce me to him,
but he never got around to do that. One day when I was about to return to
Los Angeles, we happened to see him at a bus station, and my friend went over
to talk to him. Then he introduced me to the man and I began to tell him
that my interests was plants, and that, especially about peyote, because
somebody had told me that this old man was very learned in the use of peyote.
And we talked for about 15 minutes while he was waiting for his bus, or
rather I did all the talking and he didn't say anything at all. He kept on
staring at me from time to time and that made me very uncomfortable because
I didn't know anything about peyote, and he seemed to have seen through me.
After about 15 minutes he got up and said that perhaps I could come to his
house sometime where we could talk with more ease, and he just left. And
I thought that the attempt to meet him was a failure because I didn't get
anything out of him. And my friend thought that it was very common to get
a reaction like that from the old man because he was very eccentric. But
I returned again perhaps a month later and I began to search for him. I
didn't know where he lived, but I found out later where his house was and
I came to see him. He, at first, you know, I approached him as a friend.
I liked, for some reason, I liked the way he looked at me at the bus depot.
There was something very peculiar about the way he stares at people. And
he doesn't stare, usually he doesn't look at anybody straight in the eye,
but sometimes he does that and it's very remarkable. And it was more that
stare which made me go to see him than my interest in anthropological work.
So I came various times and we developed a sort of friendship. He has a
great sense of humor and that eased the things up.

Q: About how old a man was he when you met him?

CC: Oh he was in his late 60's, 69, or something like that.