THE OLD MAN IN THE DESERT
"We were on one of our excursions deep into a remote part of the southern New Mexico desert to visit a very strange man my Uncle was somehow associated with. After arrival the two sat together in the shade outside the man's shack and talked for a good part of the day while I either played with the dogs or sat in the cab of the truck fiddling with the radio."The Wanderling, from The Boy and the Giant Feather
Was the old man I met in the desert and said to have tuberculosis not unlike how Julian Osorio, the teacher of Don Juan Matus is written, AND Osorio --- the actor that according to Carlos Castaneda, during one of his theatrical tours met Elias Ulloa, who inturn transmitted to Osorio the knowledge of his lineage of sorcerers and thus down to Don Juan and then to Castaneda --- ONE and the SAME person?
The old man in the desert attested to in the above was neither Native American nor American Indian like the Navajo or Hopi I had been used to interacting with in most of the travels I participated in with my Uncle in the desert southwest. Neither was he brown Mexican or Anglo white. However, as the ten year old boy that I was, I still thought he was an Indian, primarily because he looked like one --- although he spoke Spanish instead of any Indian dialect I was familar with. As I look back now there is a chance the old man may have been Yaqui or possibly of strong Mesoamerican heritage. To be truthful, at the time, my sophistication in such matters were just not refined enough to assimilate all the subtle nuances.
I bring it up because of what Carlos Castaneda himself says about Osorio. In POWER OF SILENCE: Further Lessons of Don Juan (1987), in a section called "The First Abstract Core," Castaneda, who never met Osorio, is, in the description, actually quoting the words of Don Juan and in doing so, in an alarmingly uncanny sort of way uses almost the exact same words that I have in my description of the old man in the desert. Castaneda writes:
"He was not Indian or even a brown Mexican, but he was not Anglo white either. In fact, his complexion seemed to be like no one else's, especially in his later years when his ever-changing complexion shifted constantly from dark to very light and back again to dark. When I first met him he was a light-brown old man, then as time went by, he became a light-skinned young man, perhaps only a few years older than me. I was twenty at that time."
If you have followed the thread of the story from Ken Eagle Feather or some of the other links listed below, you may recall that Osorio was around 40 years old when he first crossed paths with Don Juan and somewhere near half that age when he first met Ulloa, making Osorio at the time of that meeting about 20 years old or so. I also write that when Ulloa first saw Osorio during that meeting Osorio was laying face down in a field bleeding to death through his mouth, having lost so much blood that Ulloa thought the young actor was going to die. Yet when Don Juan met Osorio twenty years later he was described as very slim and muscular. His hair was black, thick, and wavy. He had a long, fine nose, strong big white teeth, an oval face, strong jaw, and shiny dark-brown eyes and a light-skinned young man, perhaps only a few years older than Don Juan who himself was 20 years old at the time. A fairly remarkable recovery for a 40 year old man found dying face down in his own blood with tuberculosis twenty years before.
In my opinion the old man in the desert was the actual, real honest-to-goodness teacher of whoever the genuine person the Don Juan Matus character represents, the Diablero of Yaqui or Yuma descent that he sought out after leaving Osorio following Ulloa's death and that Castaneda was never able to meet or confirm. In A Separate Reality (1971) Castaneda writes:
"I remembered that Bill and I had once driven all day looking for the house of an "eccentric" Mexican Indian who lived in the area. We did not find the man's house and I had the feeling that the Indians whom we had asked for directions had deliberately misled us. Bill had told me that the man was a "yerbero," a person who gathers and sells medicinal herbs, and that he knew a great deal about the hallucinogenic cactus, peyote. He had also said that it would be worth my while to meet him. Bill was my guide in the Southwest while I was collecting information and specimens of medicinal plants used by the Indians of the area."
Castaneda says he and his colleague Bill had spent a whole day looking for the house of an "eccentric" Mexican Indian who lived in the area. At the time of the above quote he and Bill were sitting in the Nogales Greyhound Bus Station --- the implication being that the area was somewhere adjacent to Nogales. Since the two of them had just returned from their Road Trip around the desert southwest, and it ended in Nogales rather than several hundred miles further toward the west than say, Yuma, then more than likely they had just come in from New Mexico or the general northeastern Sonora region. In The Active Side of Infinity (1998) in a section titled "A Journey of Power" Castaneda presents what was said in a discussion between he and Bill during the time they were both still at the bus station in Nogales:
"Bill obviously didn't believe me. He accused me of holding out on him. "I know the people around this area," he said belligerently, "and that old man is a very strange fart. He doesn't talk to anybody, Indians included. Why would he talk to you; a perfect stranger?"
"Do you know where his house is?" I asked him.
"I haven't the foggiest idea," he answered curtly. "I have heard people from this area say that he doesn't live anywhere, that he just appears here and there unexpectedly, but that's a lot of horse-shit. He probably lives in some shack in Nogales, Mexico."
In the third book of his series, Journey to Ixtlan (1972), Castaneda writes that after returning to Los Angeles he "prepared himself for six months" and when he "felt ready" he went back looking for Don Juan, however NOT seeking out a "shack in Nogales, Mexico," as suggested as a possibility by Bill --- or to or around Nogales, Arizona where they met Don Juan --- but Yuma, Arizona. Citing a date during the winter recess at the end of the fall semester 1960 (i.e., Saturday, December 17, 1960), after allowing a full six months to lapse without ever seeing or talking with Don Juan in any way shape or form since their initial bus station encounter in Nogales, Castaneda goes, for whatever reason, to Yuma. Castaneda writes of his experience:
"I found his house after making long and taxing inquiries among the local Indians. It was early afternoon when I arrived and parked in front of it. I saw him sitting on a wooden milk crate. He seemed to recognize me and greeted me as I got out of my car."
So, Castaneda and his experienced driving around the southwest guide, Bill, drove around a whole day six months before and could not find "the house of an 'eccentric' Mexican Indian who lived in the area" (Nogales/Sonora), but Castaneda on his own, after simply asking a couple local Indians in a effort that he calls taxing inquiries, drove right up in front of Don Juan's house in Yuma.
Noticeably, where I mention in my writings about an "excursion deep into a remote part of the southern New Mexico desert" making it (the location) possibly difficult to find, Castaneda writes about a town (Yuma) that you can drive right up in front of Don Juan's house and park. It leads me to believe we are talking about two different places and most likely two different people.
In The Active Side of Infinity (1998), only this time in a section titled "Who Was Don Juan Matus, Really?" Castaneda describes Don Juan, albeit inadvertently backing up in his OWN words MY thesis of two different men by interjecting the possibility of a seeming difference between the person he met in Nogales and the man he met in Yuma. Castaneda writes:
"When I finally had don Juan in front of me again, the first thing I noticed about him was that he didn't look at all as I had imagined him during all the time I had tried to find him. I had fabricated an image of the man I had met at the bus depot, which I perfected every day by allegedly remembering more details.
Then Castaneda goes on to say over a number of paragraphs:
"In my mind, he was an old man, still very strong and nimble, yet almost frail. The man facing me was muscular and decisive. He moved with agility, but not nimbleness. His steps were firm, and, at the same time, light. He exuded vitality and purpose.
"My composite memory was not at all in harmony with the real thing. I thought he had short, white hair and an extremely dark complexion. His hair was longer, and not as white as I had imagined. His complexion was not that dark either. I could have sworn that his features were birdlike, because of his age. But that was not so either. His face was full, almost round. In one glance, the most outstanding feature of the man looking at me was his dark eyes, which shone with a peculiar, dancing glow.
"Something that had bypassed me completely in my prior assessment of him was the fact that his total countenance was that of an athlete. His shoulders were broad, his stomach flat. He seemed to be planted firmly on the ground. There was no feebleness to his knees, no tremor in his upper limbs. I had imagined detecting a slight tremor in his head and arms, as if he were nervous and unsteady. I had also imagined him to be about five feet six inches tall, three inches shorter than his actual height."
What Carlos Castaneda did, as a writer, was to implement the so-called writer's literary license, and shuffle together bits and pieces of information regarding Don Juan's REAL teacher gleaned from discussions over time and apply it to the actor and non-diablero Shaman-sorcerer, Osorio (i.e., at least tuberculosis; not so clear on long, fine nose, etc.), in turn eliminating his real teacher from the equation. That is why by the time The Active Side of Infinity (1998) was written Castaneda had moved the "eccentric Mexican Indian," albeit correctly indentified now as a "terrifying sorcerer," to Yuma. To wit:
"I did remember Bill mentioning, in a very casual manner, but not in relation to the cloud shaman, that he knew about the existence of a mysterious old man who was a retired shaman, an old Indian misanthrope from Yuma who had once been a terrifying sorcerer."
Why would Castaneda do such a thing? He had to give his readers something. Don Juan was highly reluctant to share or reveal in real life to anybody, Castaneda included, who his actual teacher was --- because by doing so, in that his teacher was still alive, it could set into motion the possibility of eroding away or wilting his teacher's powers, White Light Shields, etc., making him vunerable to potential enemies such as predatory organic, inorganic, and other negatives. So said, in conversations with Castaneda, Don Juan was much more forthcoming regarding Osorio, but, because of his concerns, reluctant to divulge any amount of anything regarding his real teacher --- so Castaneda simply meshed the two together.
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