CONVERSATIONS WITH A YOUNG NAHUAL (MEMORIES OF YOUNG CARLOS CASTANEDA)
BYRON DE F ORD ORD-S OLANO OLANO
Title: “Conversations with a Young Nahual” Copyright © 2008 by Byron de Ford-Solano Po Box. 973-1000 San José, Costa Rica Telephone: (506) 2250-8120 E-mail:
[email protected] ISBN:
RECOGNITION
I am very much indebted to those people that with their help made possible this book. Particularly, I wish to thank professor in Linguistics Gilda Arguedas for editing it, and Ronald Steinhardt D.D. for helping me in English translation.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROLOGUE .........................................................................................................................5 CHAPTER I .........................................................................................................................6 CHAPTER II ......................................................................................................................24 CHAPTER III .....................................................................................................................52 CHAPTER IV .....................................................................................................................75 CHAPTER V ......................................................................................................................90 CHAPTER VI ................................................................................................................... 132 EPILOGUE ......................................................................................................................139
PROLOGUE
Exceptional persons as Carlos Castaneda was, and he is have multiple facets, they are like diamonds. By no means, it is that they have double or triple personalities. They are individuals extremely rich in interests and abilities. This way of being allows them to have many different kinds of friends. I only know one of Carlos facets. This is the one I write about in this book. I refer, mostly, to those experiences that I had next to him that had an impact in me.
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CHAPTER I
Without any reason, I hurried up to board the bus that would take me from Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, to Manhattan. As a matter of fact, when one is a soldier, one seems to be in a hurry all the time. I sat on a seat next to the window. It was one of those splendid days of late spring. Soon the bus began to fill up with many soldiers that were heading to the same place, to spend there some days free from the staggering ambience of the military camp. Almost all of us were young recruits far away from our homes, and that have lived clustered together in barracks, dining rooms, and letrines, without ever having known each. To my eyes all looked alike. They looked like young dogs without knowing where to go. I didn’t realize that someone had sat next to me until the young G. I. placed a black box strangely shaped on his lap. Obviously, he was hyperactive. He didn’t stop moving for even a second. When he greeted me with a “Hi”, his face reminded me of those that are seen in the encaustic portraits of young men made in the Alexandria of the first centuries of our era, large and very expressive, round eyes, with wavy hair, straight nose, a little bit wide fleshy lips, and olive skin, so often found in the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. He was snort, but well proportioned, and strongly built. He opened the box that he had on his knees, and brought out a shiny golden trumpet. He began to handle it as though he were ready to play it. “Do you play that instrument?” I inquired from him in English. He answered me in Spanish, “Yes, I play it. I love making music with it. The sound of the trumpet is fabulous, and in Manhattan, trumpets sound like no where else. It is because of much cement of the city. That’s what I’m going to Manhattan for, to play the trumpet”. “Excuse me, but how did you know I speak Spanish?” “Sometimes beforehand, I know a lot of things”. He looked at me mockingly, and went on, “As I was telling you, this instrument sounds different in Manhattan than in any other part of the world”.
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“Are you going to play in a particular place?” “Yes and no. I am not going to any particular saloon or bar or any joint. I’m going to play it in Washington Square; that’s exactly where I’m going to play it. Afterwards, late at night, I’m going to the Bronx, and play it there”. “Anyway, my name is Byron; what’s yours?” “Carlos Aranha. As it is a Portuguese name, the “nh” sounds like the “ñ” is Spanish. So, my last name is “Araña”, you know, like those little animals that have lots of legs. And what’s your name?” “De Ford, Byron De Ford”. “It’s terrible to be called Byron De Ford”. “Why do you say that?” “Because it’s just horrible to be called Byron De Ford”. “Why should it be terrible?” “Because it implies that you belong to Ford”. “What’s that?” “You belong to a Ford, you belong to somebody called “Ford”. The words say so; you belong to a Ford. How terrible!” “I like my name. It sounds well”. “You cannot like it. You don’t belong to anybody called Ford. Or, is it that you belong to a Ford?” “Not at all”. “Do you belong to the owners of the cars Ford?” “No”. “That’s even worse! If you were to belong to the automobiles Ford, you would enjoy a great fortune that would demand a lot from you, but at the same timey it would give you a lot. Such fortune would give you freedoms you cannot even dream of. But just to belong to Ford, and what is that Ford? It’s just a bunch of rules and regulations, and a bunch of nonsense that are not the real you. If you were just Byron Ford, it would be much better, but Byron De Ford belongs to some ancient phantom. How terrible! Your last name sounds French, from before the Revolution. Imagine, the load that your
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last name carries. I don’t want even to even think about it. I bet that the De Fords arrived here, running away from the guillotine”. “No, that’s not true, they arrived to the United States long before the French Revolution”. “You see how much you know about your last name, a name that is strangling you; that “De” makes you the possession of somebody, that is not you”. All this he expressed not in an offensive moody but in a mocking one. I don’t remember what else he told me about my last name. My memory came back when he asked me, “Where are you from?” “Presently, I am from California”, I answered. “Is this your first time in Manhattan?” “No, I was here twice when I was a kid, but I don’t know the city”. “Why do you speak Spanish?” “Because I was born in Costa Rica. I was taken to Cuba when I was hardly a year old, and I lived there until I was nine years old”. “Then, you are partly Costa Rican”. “Besides that, I am partly Cuban, Gringo and Spaniard”. “Then you’re a hybrid. The hybrids are the ones that will triumph. They have more emotions, somehow more natural knowledge, and somehow more intelligences than the others”. “What do you mean by intelligences?” “There are plenty of intelligences, many kinds of intelligences. But anyway, how do you like California?” “I like Los Angeles a lot”. “Is that where you live?” “Yes, and I like it a lot”. “Do you know there was a Spanish writer, I don’t remember whether his name was Menendez Pidal or Menendez y Pelayo. But the truth is that the name doesn’t matter. It’s what he said that matters. This Menendez said that California was a mythic
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place where the warriors went to recover after their deeds. After I get out of this damned army, I’m heading to California, just where you live in California”. I laughed and said, “Are you telling me that you are going to rest after your prowesses in the army?” “Listen, the army is just a vehicle for myself. I’m going to fight against all those ties and conventions of society that have been imposed on me, but don’t make my real self. Those social ties are my enemies and the vehicle I have to fight them with is the army. With the army I would change my nationality. I don’t belong to anything or anybody. I have to choose what really is mine. My nationality was imposed on me; the family is another imposition. Your enemies are what you really choose”. “Then you don’t believe in tradition?” “Oh, in the ones that I like, in those that do something for me. In these I believe, but not in the others”. We talked for quite some time. He spoke more than I did. The bus began to cross over a bridge, and suddenly, we were in Manhattan. I felt the invisible force of that city. I felt excited. The air was pleasantly, cool. The sound of the city was unique. Then, I thought if the trumpets really sounded different in Manhattan. Then he asked met “Where are you going in the big city?” “I’m going to the home of my grand aunt. I guess I will have to take a taxi there”. “Taxis are very expensive here. Where does she live?” “On 80th St. and 5th”. “I suppose you mean 5th Avenue?” “Yes, 5th Avenue”. “When we get off the bus, I’ll tell you how to get there. No, I’d better tell you now, we’re going to get off in the Broadway Terminal at 52nd St. We’ll be right on Broadway; then, you will walk to 57th Street. When you get to 57th Street, you’ll take any bus that will get you to 5th Avenue. There you’ll get out. There you will see a jewelry store called Tiffany’s. What gems you will see there! You know that gems are the most evolved minerals in the world; particularly those that have blue sparkles. If you look at them with an empty mind, they will fill you with a vital force”.
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“By the way, you haven’t told me where you’re from”. “I am Brazilian”. “But you have lived a long time in New York”. “No, I haven’t lived long in New York”. “But you know it well, you must have spent much time in the city”. “The truth is that it is the first time I come here”. “How is it you know it so well?” “You don’t need to have been in a place to know it”. We got out of the bus, and he asked me, “What are you doing at your aunt’s?” “She has booked some theater tickets for me”. “What are you going to see?” “The opera ‘Simon Bocca Negra’, and a new play called ‘I am a Camara’ and work by George Bernard Shaw, ‘Don Juan In Hell’”. We reached the sidewalk, and then, we parted from each other with a warm “Good bye”. I did as he told me. When I got to 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, I stopped to look at the jewels that were in the showcases. I looked at them attentively at least consciously; they did not fill me with a vital force, perhaps because I didn’t have an empty mind. This first meeting with Carlos took place in a world that was beginning to agonize. Years afterwards; in one of our many encounters we spoke of that first meeting on the bus that took us from New Jersey to New York. Carlos, with a tolerant gesture said, “It was an agreeable time”. It was more friendly and secure. There was a system that offered certain convenience, if one was well equipped with the masks and disguises. Well, but one couldn’t create very much. To be creative, one must be a real person; and to be so, it is impossible to be wearing masks and disguises”. “What masks and disguises are you talking about”, our beautiful friend Lidieth Maduro asked. We were in the living room of our apartment, that although it was old, it was very comfortable. It had been rented by Carlos, Oscar, a guy from Uruguay and myself. It was across from Los Angeles City College. It was 9 o’clock evening, and as it
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had become the custom to produce a certain ambiance, we put over the standing lamps large scarves blue and green and we used to turn on a pink light. This gave a certain beauty to the faces, lit by the glow of blue, green, and rose. Although, there were sofas and large chairs, we used cushions that we put on the floor around a low round table where we used to burn incense, and on which we put a large punch bowl that we filled with wine. Margaret Runyan, Carlos’ ex-wife says in her book that the wine we used was “Mateos”. Carlos said, “At that time, and still nowadays, in order to be able to belong to one social media people have to wear masks, sometimes brusk ones, other times very refined ones, as those of a princess with its respective disguise. There are invisible masks and disguises, but of a great reality. When you put on the one of princess, you act, laugh, walk, and talk as a princess does. Of course, such a rich disguise only is used in very special occasions. Presently, in this very moment you are Lidieth. I should say Neneca. Now you are you, but this coming Monday when you work as a receptionist, you will put on your mask of receptionist and you will not be Neneca nor Lidieth. But this system is starting to wither away, while as in those old days it was quite alive?” It was in May of 1951, when Carlos and I met for first time, at least in this realm. The days that we were living were in November of 1955. Large changes had taken place and they were already felt in California, later on in the rest of the United States and then in certain other parts of the world. Carlos continued, “The truth is that the vitality of any order is established and lasts while the people act spontaneously as their desires demand. People do things because they wish to do them and without giving it much thought. Afterwards the formulas of how to do things come in, and then the vitality is diminished little by little and the masks begin to age just as the disguises do. This vitality is what Byron calls “the luminous force””. “What do you mean by luminous force?” “I have never said such words”. “What you explained to me one day was that the effort is the force that gives way to create something without thinking about it. One does it and it comes out well. This is
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called the luminous force. The desire comes to you, you hurry up to make it, without asking yourself, you believe it, then you give it form and power. This is the way the great movements and civilizations are made. But not soon the norms and rules take power spontaneity begins to dissolve, and this way of being begins to decay. These are the days of the masks and the disguises. They are very comfortable, but the personality disappears, and what is left is a bunch of beings wearing masks to achieve something or other. But the luminous force, which is in the atmosphere, the food, the hormones, the pheromones take hold of a few ones that will build the new systems. It cannot be stopped. Look at the French Revolution; the nobles were just disguises and masks that had lost their personality. The luminous force moved the mob of people, and they took the force in their handstand the heads of the masks and disguises were cut and rolled in the streets. Then afterwards the force took the elevated beings and they began to build a new regime”. Our friend and companion Oscar Rubio entered the room. As usual he was so courteous with the ladies. Lidieth extended her hand towards him and he took it lovingly. “Osquitar, where were you?” Carlos asked. “I went to Malibu Beach with Anne Jefferson”. “Where did you leave Anne?” “She will be here soon. She went to say “hello” to some friends”. Anne Jefferson was about 27 years old. She had long wavy black hair, beautiful white skin, and an excellent figure. Anne always wore black dresses with white collars. She admired very, much Mary Stuart and she had decided to dress similarly to this decapitated queen who always wore black. In those days Carlos used to call Anne “the saintly girlfriend of Oscar”. Oscar on the other hand was a perfect gentleman and a dandy. Anne came in and before she could talk Lidieth said, “I am not interested in those invisible masks. I want a disguise and face, and a body of a slender woman, something I could get into and be slender. If it would exist, I would wear it all the time”. Anne, with a velvety sweet voice said to Lidieth, “But Neneca, you are so
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beautiful as you are now”. “Anne, you say that because you fit in size 10”. Anne delicately sat on one of the cushions to speak with Carlos, “Were you talking about the masks we were conversing about the other day, those invisible masks that I must wear all the time and that they become so heavy?” Lidieth, a little bit irked, “Aren’t you tired of talking about those things? Tonight an orchestra is playing mambo at ‘Cafe Caliente’, and a small group of Panamanians are playing in ‘El Sombrero’. Let’s go to both places and have a good time”. Those two nightclubs were located on Olivera Street, the oldest district of the city, where supposedly the Spaniards had founded the first mission guided by Fray Junipero Serra. In those two cafes the famous Rita Hayward had began her glorious artistic career. I went to pick up my Australian girl friend Madge Moore, to join Carlos, Anne, Oscar and Lidieth at the ‘Cafe Caliente’”. Carlos didn’t drink alcohol at all and in this kind of places, he became very quiet. He looked like a young adolescent in one of his first outings. He didn’t often go to dancing places. Oscar and I did, also Lidieth who was a good friend of the owner of the nightclub and conductor of the permanent orchestra of the ‘Cafe Caliente’. The night became frantic with the rhythm of the mambo. Carlos didn’t like to dance. Oscar and I didn’t stop doing so. After the mambo, the orchestra finished its show; the one of the ‘Cafe Caliente’ began to play soft Latin American rhythms and sometimes a ‘paso doble’. As it was the usual thing for the conductor to dog he asked if anyone wanted to sing. Lidieth rose her hand, and he brought the microphone to her. She told something in his ear and the music accompanied her while she sang directly to Carlos. “Each time that I come and see you, I come without lipstick so that people wouldn’t say, that I kissed you, you that are my life, you that are my heaven. Kiss me little by little otherwise, I would die…” I have never seen Carlos so small and so blushed. Next day we had Swimming. The swimming lessons were called “Acuatics”. And once one had completed the whole course, one was issued the lifeguard license. Oscar,
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Carlos, and I were in the course. They took it to relax and have a good time. I put more effort in it. They both were seated next to the swimming pool. Oscar began to complain about the things that Anne said. I uninterested by Oscar’s words, began to practice the mile. Once in a while I would look at them emerged in an intense conversation. When I got tired of swimming, I approached them. Oscar seemed to be quite disturbed. Very seriously Carlos spoke to me, “Can you imagine what Anne told Oscar, imagine what kind of woman is Anne, she states that if ones desires are made while one is defecating, one gets them”. I couldn’t stop laughing. Laughing briskly, I got into the water saying, “Anne makes her wishes while she shits”. Oscar got furious with me. Carlos calmed him down and I apologized to him. Afterwards, when I was alone with Carlos, he told me, “Listen Byron, stop laughing. What Anne said is very, very serious. When one makes the effort to defecate the whole body and mind is focused on that effort. No doubt, it’s a moment of great force; it’s a moment of total concentration. Do you know, that more than one has died in that moment? I wonder who told that secret to Anne”. “I wouldn’t ask her”. I never knew whether or not Carlos did so. Some years later in Malaga, I heard some tantric yoga that desires come true if one desires them when one ejaculates. I was 25 years old and was the oldest of the group. Some may wonder how this group of youngsters made their living. Well, I got my G. I. bill; this was a sort of pension the government paid veterans to study. Oscar, so he would study, got money from his well-off family. For Lidieth, her job was just a pastime. She worked in a very elegant cosmetic shop in Wilshire Boulevard. She didn’t need to work. Her father during the Second World War arrived to L.A. from Costa Rica, where he had an automobile shop. He put up one very successful in Beverly Hills as in those war days there was a great lack of automobile body shops and mechanics. Lidieth’s Mother, doña Angela had studied as a young girl in a very high class school in Costa Rica, ‘El Colegio de Sion’, under the guidance of French Nuns the art of making patterns for dresses and the most exquisite stitching. The famous designer, Don Loper was a client of Sr. Maduro; from
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time to time doña Angela used to visit the place where she met the famous designer who told her the great difficulty he was facing in his business for the lack of workers that could make patterns. Dona Angela, gracefully, offered him her help without realizing that she was getting into a very lucrative profession. It so happened that in her house, she not only made patterns for Don Loper, but also for other famous designers. Anne Jefferson was an excellent exc ellent executive secretary that with her boss bos s managed International Schools, in those days located near Exposition Park. Madge Moore had lost her Australian father, and she had come with her Mother with the money they inherited to Los Angeles. Madge studied to be a secretary to insure her economical security, but her real field was painting. Madge became years later one of the heads of the art department of U.C.L.A. As Carlos had plans to go into very advanced studies, he didn’t use, as of yet, the G. I. Bill, instead he modeled figures that were originals for concerns that made kitchen ornaments. These ornaments generally portrayed black and white ladies with crinoline from the old south. When their heads were lifted a third part of their body was hollow to place there cookies, biscuits, and so on. Peter, the man who bought from Carlos the original samples did not understand why Carlos didn’t make more works for him. He could not understand that Carlos needed more time for more important things, Carlos only made the right amount of models to survive, Carlos studied, read, and in those days he devoted much time to make sculptures, something that he did very well. He made a beautiful bust of Neneca in marble, life size. Years later, he made a beautiful nude in stone of Gudrun Edwards, who by the way, was his great love. Also he painted, mostly in oil and was realistic. Although his paintings were good, these didn’t reach the excellence of his sculptures. He also worked in clay, but his passion was the chisel, and the stone. Our group was quite open to everybody, but most took us to be eccentrics. In those days, Carlos didn’t write, most of the time he read. I remember he liked Garcia Lorca’s poetry. Particularly one poem about a girl whose name was ‘Preciosa’ and that was chased by the wind. We all were good students. At that particular time the most important thing for Carlos was to have a complete command of the English Language. He worked hard to do it, and he did it; as a matter of fact, he’s a very good
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writer of this language. He spoke Portuguese, his mother language and also Italian and Spanish that he learned as a kid. Afterward he became a master of the English Language. As both Carlos and Oscar’s goal was to learn English, they forced me to speak in this language all of the time. I was bilingual since I was a child, although I was not very good in either one. Neneca had arrived in Los Angeles when she was eight years old. All her education had been in English, so for her it was the same to speak Spanish or English, but out of courtesy, for Madge, Anne, and Gudrum who didn’t know Castilian, we tried to speak English all the time. One night Carlos decided to tell us the story of his ancestors. Neneca had told him that when one was capable to tell a story in a language, it was that one dominated it. So Carlos that night decided to do so. There we were: Oscar, Neneca, Anne, Madge, and myself. Carlos first told us about his Grandfather don Carlos Aranha, who had been the minister of economy of Gitulio Vargas, the dictator of Brazil. The Aranha Family was an old aristocratic Brazilian family. The youngest son don Raphael Arahna was quite bohemian. He was a poet and writer. The Arahna Family lived in Rio de Janeiro, when this city was the capital of that nation. The young Raphael Arahna liked to visit the small towns of his country, coun try, and thus, was how while he visited a small village near Sao Paulo, which today is part of the big city, he met a lovely young girl, the daughter of immigrants from Sardenia who had bought a farm and had a small market in town. Mr. Castaneda the Father of the Young girl, and his wife came to this faraway land, so distant from Sardenia, fleeing from a man that chased the young girl. He was a Turk about 40 years old that had a boat with which he made business in the Mediterranean. He felt in love with the young girl and swore that he would either have her or kill her. The situation became so dangerous that her parents decided to marry her to young Castaneda while the Turk was at sea. They sent them to the distant land of Brazil. When the Turk came back to Sardenia he was furious and swore he would look for them all over the world and kill them. Although the Castanedas were well settled for some years in the distant Brazil, they were always fearful that the Turk would show up some day. They were blessed with a lovely daughter. The young Arahna poet fell in love
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with her and she with him. For different reasons their respective families were against the marriage. The Aranhas, for social reasons; the Castanedas, because the young Arahna did not promise to be a hard working young man. But their love was strong enough and they married and had a child on December 24th of 1931. They called the child Carlos de Jesus. Carlos was able to tell this story in good English. Anne and Neneca applauded him and they served some wine to feast. This time was one of the few that Carlos accepted a cup of liquor. The conversation became very lively, but Madge had to go back home to finish homework in shorthand. I took her. I those days, I was going out with her. When we arrived to her house she asked me in, so she could introduce me to her girlfriend, who shared the apartment with her. I accepted. We walked across a garden, and in the back of it, there was a small little house where they lived. She opened the door and we came into a sort of ‘atellier’. There were paintings all over the place. Madge had me sit down. I began to look at the many pictures that surrounded me. Madge, who had left for a moment, came back accompanied by a beautiful Nordic blonde. How beautiful was Gudrum! I was bewildered by her beauty. “Gudrum, this is Byron of whom I have talked so much about to you”. It was easy to talk to the Swedish beauty. She was so sweet and intelligent! She offered me tea. I drank it while I talked about I don’t know what. Then I left cordially. I was happy that when I got back to my apartment, Lidieth and Anne were gone already. Thus, I could tell the good news to the boys about the Swedish beauty I had just met. I thought Gudrum was perfect for Oscar. Oscar . She was tall, blonde and a nd Oscar was also tall and blond. Madge had asked me to pose for her for a painting; she was making for one of her classes. At first, I thought it was boring and it would take time from me. But she had asked me so many times that I gave in. I arrived to her place around 7 o’clock and we began to work. Madge had made some sandwiches and some chili with beans hoping the boys and girls would show up. I spent about two hours posing and around 10 o’clock Oscar and Carlos arrived. But the girls couldn’t show up because they had previous
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appointments. “Byron has the spirit of a monk. You are a monk”, Carlos said when he saw the sketch that Madge had made that was, just a few lines. “As far as I can see, I don’t see anything of Byron in those lines”, Oscar replied. Then Carlos said, “That’s because you are not using your intuitive mind. The lines that shaped the mouth show a monk with profound desires that cannot express. And those dots in the eyes of the monk are deep abysses. What is inside of you, Byron? They are enigmatic. What obscure desires do you have at the bottom of your eyes, what secrets guard your lips?” Madge was mesmerized by Carlos words. Oscar smiled and was ready to go along with what Carlos was saying about me. But suddenly Carlos said something that really hit me, “Look at this! It is like a little block of ice, it’s like a frozen pain”. I stopped him, “Please Carlos, don’t go on”. I felt as though he was reading my innermost. Madge, who was so interested hearing his words, asked me, “Why shouldn’t he continue? I want to know all he has to say.” The front door opened and Gudrum came in without any makeup, with disheveled hair, wearing a black sweater, grey skirt, and Swedish shoes. Carlos and Oscar were astonished by the Scandinavian figure and Gudrum asked, “Are you all students?” Carlos answered, “I work and I study psychology”. “I am a student in U.C.L.A. I particularly like to sculpt and I also paint”, Gudrum said. “The chisel and the stone are my favorite artistic expressions! It is such a strong media”, Carlos said. “But you just said you studied psychology”. “I am not a man of one interest. It’s true that we are in an age of specialization, but that will soon pass. By nature human beings are curious. All is intriguing to them. Not, to be interested in many things is like a being spiritually amputated”. Madge interrupted by saying, “The Renaissance man had many interests. I study shorthand not only because it will help me economically, but also because it is
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interesting. To write phonetically is something new to me, as my mother tongue is English. Besides that, shorthand, by compelling me to make repeatedly very clear signs and to memorize them has given me precision with my brush”. “Everything is interrelated”, Oscar said and continued, “It has been clear to me that to be able to pronounce correctly one sound improves all the rest of the sounds, at least in English”. Gudrum talking to me, “Byron you study shorthand with Madge, and what else?” “I study shorthand because men who know it are well paid in courts and there are few men who know it. I study it to make money in the future”. “I suppose that you are interested in another profession”. Gudrum asked me. “No, Gudrum, No. It’s true I like many things. I enjoy literature, psychology, speech, and so on; but professionally I am not interested in any. I am only sure of washing dishes well. I know it’s a work I do well. I also know, that I can be a good life saver; that’s why I’m so interested in finishing the course of ‘Acuatics’; so I can get the life savers license in the state of California. To work in a court in shorthand might be difficult for me. I am quite timid”. Carlos laughingly told me “You’re not in the very least timid. What happens is that you create around you situations to get rid of people you do not like? You find tedious people who believe they are moral and dignified because they work in a tedious job, so you put barriers between you and them. When you are in the street, you look at only people you like, the rest you ignore. Whatever situation you don’t like around you, you blot it out from your mind. You, too, create situations when you so like it; that are quite pleasant. That’s one of the reasons why I like to go out with you. When I go to social affairs with you, I get into your realm and I also ignore what I don’t like”. Oscar interrupted to say, “I feel quite well with you socially, Byron. Wherever you go you pay attention to only those you like. Somehow you’re able to make the rest nonexistent”. Gudrum smiling said, “Perhaps you’re a warlock”. Carlos excitedly said, “I buy it”. This was an expression commonly used by him to show approval.
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Oscar laughed and said, “You’re very much of a warlock”. The conversation continued for some time quite pleasantly and we all agreed that we were all a little bit of witches and warlocks. Next day, after ‘Acuatics’ around 5 o’clock in the afternoon, I met Madge on the campus, which was waiting for Lidieth. “Lidieth and I are going for a drive. Why don’t you come along with us?” Madge said. “I don’t know if I have the time”. “Don’t play hard to get, that attitude doesn’t fit you at all. You sound like those people, that each time you have more of them that are ashamed of having a good time. They can’t say I’m just going for a drive, because I like it. They always have to say that they are going to or coming from work. This makes them believe that they are useful to society. You, as well as all of us, we are very proud of living to have a good time”. Lidieth parked the car in front of us and we got into it. She took Sunset Boulevard towards Beverly Hills. I was a little bit tired and sleepy and I began to drowse in the back seat of the car. I relaxed myself. The breeze was brisk and lively. And we went through that magical street through which one way or another all Hollywood had passed. I remembered how Carlos used to tell me, “Hollywood has a level of consciousness different from the rest of the world. It produces dreams that do become reality either for good or for bad. People see themselves in the movies, and they begin to act as in a film. When I was in New Orleans men and women used to remind me of the characters in ‘Gone with the Wind’; some look like Melanie, others like Scarlet and most guys acted like Rett Butler. First I thought the film had captured very well the Old South. Afterwards I saw ‘Birth of a Nation’ and the characters didn’t coincide with those of ‘Gone with the Wind’. Lillian Gish acted quite different from either Vivien Leigh or Olivia DeHaviland. Griffith directed ‘The Birth of a Nation’. He was the son of a southern coronel. The references for the characters for his movies were members of his family and friends, who had lived the Civil War. When I saw this I began to realize that today southerners are products of ‘Gone with the Wind’. In other words, they entered the dream world of Hollywood. And Hollywood has done so with thousands of things. So,
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one’s imagination transferred to celluloid, is capable of transferring millions of persons to another level of life. Hollywood in the Second World War forged the American soldiers. Germany also did so, but Hollywood made United States’ dream of a war that went from a tragic war, to a comic one, or to a musical. Hollywood made out of the American soldiers a naïve, intelligent, daring, youthful, and very little militaristic. In that dream, it was very beautiful to be a soldier. The European dream of a soldier was unbelievably, heavy. And the whole world began to dream the dream of United States. Going further, Hollywood showed how beautiful and agreeable it was to be a housewife with the help of all those magical machines, and the women of the whole world began to dream of fridges, autos, vacuum cleaners, etc., etc”. I thought to myself that it was very interesting what Carlos said about the American movie. I didn’t like to go and see pictures. I wanted to live my own life. I didn’t want to see it through actors and actresses. The dream of Hollywood didn’t bewitch me. I rejected it. Suddenly Lidieth asked me, “Did you go to sleep, Byron?” “Not at all, I was just thinking”. We began to talk about divers things, but not about anything important. Our first stop on Sunset Boulevard was at a cafe on the Strip called ‘Googies’. We went there to do what everybody went there to do, in other words, ‘to make the scene’. At Googies many looked at Lidieth with admiration. I liked to be seen with beautiful girls. Madge was a fine good-looking redhead. We missed Oscar, as he loved to make the scene. Carlos didn’t care at all for that kind of thing. Actually, Carlos was not interested in other people’s lives. When they used to come to him with gossip, he used to say “I don’t give a damn if someone makes a kite out of his ass”. Carlos was far from being shy, but he preferred small gatherings to big ones where there is a lack of warmth. Me was a man of great human quality. Particularly, he liked people with whom he could with sincerity exchange ideas and emotions. He was a man of profound sentiments and emotions; this made him a lover of human beings with their virtues and mistakes. He always brought along with him a healthy and sincere happiness. His sheer presence made one feel well. Few times I saw him angry, but
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when he was, he was indeed so. He didn’t like jokes in the very least. He found them very inconsiderate. After we left, Googies, we continued driving on Sunset where there was a real parade of sport cars. Our second stop was at a cafe called ‘Truman’ in Westwood. Over the coffee we ordered, Madge said, “Carlos’ story about his family, the one he told us the other night had something of an oriental tale. Carlos is very imaginative, I just don’t know where his reality starts and fantasy begins”. Lidieth gave up her poise and looked at Madge and told her in a serious tone of voice, “Listen, Madge, life is a story one tells oneself. The one that has a good imagination creates his own tale, his own story; if one doesn’t have much imagination, one depends upon what others say is one’s life”. I found Lidieth’s words fascinating. Afterwards, I told Carlos what Lidieth said and he answered me, “Neneca has a very special antenna, which captures intelligences which are in other levels of existence. She transmits what she hears. One becomes stupefied by her words and she doesn’t even realize it. You are somewhat like her; you capture other intelligences. You two are receptors, and you two put into words whatever wisdom comes to you without realizing it”. Years later when Carlos developed his philosophy under the guidance of Don Juan, he called these persons ‘Cabuyas’. We returned to Madge’s house, she invited us to have some wine. There in a small living room, we found Carlos and Oscar. Oscar seemed rather bored while Gudrum and Carlos conversed in a low voice. When we came in the ambience became more festive. That night it became more obvious to me that Gudrum was interested in Carlos and not in Oscar. The beautiful Swede didn’t stop putting to whatever Carlos had to say, and her eyes seemed to be piercing his. There was something lascivious in her movements. I don’t know what they were talking about, as their conversation was quite separate from the one that Oscar, Madge, Lidieth, and I were carrying on. Gudrum and Carlos developed an amorous friendship. They had in common that they liked the intimacy of the few. Little by little we saw less and less of Gudrum and
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Carlos. I had never seen Carlos so happy as in those days that he was so close to Gudrum. From the days of the army few were the friends that I maintained. There was Arnaldo del Pino with whom I exchanged correspondence for years. From the days of the army, Carlos was the only friend that remained for the rest of my life.
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CHAPTER II
When I was honorably discharged from the army, I went back to Los Angeles, where I had already lived for five years. When I was fifteen years old I left Costa Rica to study in California. Although, I had been born in Costa Rica, I spent the first ten years of my life in Cuba. When I went back to San José, Costa Rica, I found it sad and sort of close in comparison with the openness and liveliness of beautiful Havana. Once again, I had felt quite well when I located myself in Los Angeles. At once out of the army, I went back to Los Angeles, where I found a unique social atmosphere. I found there a personal liberty, which I never found anywhere else. Where one’s last name mattered little, one was treated only as a person, and as such accepted or rejected. I believe that what attracted me so much of L.A. drew Carlos there and made it his adopted land. Once again in civilian life, I decided to go back to study at Los Angeles City College liberal arts. In this campus I met Oscar Rubio, the Uruguayan fellow, whose main purpose there was to learn English. Through him, I met Don Summer, with whom I established a good friendship. So much so, that we decided to take an apartment across from the college. The apartment was in the last floor, and it was rather old. It was big: two bedrooms that well accommodated two persons each, a very large living room, where two persons could sleep comfortably. So the size of the apartment gave us the opportunity to enjoy an agreeable privacy. Every so often Oscar and Don used to go late in the evenings to a cafeteria nearby where the boys and the girls used to gather. I rarely went with them. I preferred to remain at home hearing music. Don had quite a few records, those of 33 revolutions, which he very kindly used to lend to me. I used to hear them in the living room where the phonograph was. One night, when Oscar returned he told me that he had a good time talking Portuguese language he knew well, with a young man from Brazil. A Saturday that we decided to go to Malibu Beach by car, Oscar asked me to pick up the Brazilian fellow. In the first moment, I didn’t recognize Carlos neither did he recognize me.
It seems that there is a big change in looks when one goes from military to civilian life. When driving to the beach Carlos told me, “You know I think I have seen you before, and not on the campus”. It was long ago. For a while we continued talking about our having met before. I went swimming; Oscar just went into the water while Carlos remained on the beach admiring the beautiful girls that passed by. At sunset, when we were returning r eturning home, we stopped at the restaurant of Theda Th eda Barra. Theda Barra, a famous actress from the silent movies. While we were eating sandwiches, Carlos sort of jumped on the chair and told me, “Trome (I still don’t know the meaning of that word), now I remember where I met you. It was in a bus going from New Jersey to Manhattan”. At that moment I didn’t remember. But suddenly that trip in bus came vividly to my mind. Oscar, who had a very good physique, met several good-looking girls that lived in the apartment house. These persuaded Carlos to visit us almost every evening. The Gallo wine that had recently come out on the market accompanied our conversations. Don Somers decided to go back to his home to Layfette, Louisiana. He sold to me all his records and phonograph at a very reasonable price. Carlos took the place of Don and life in the apartment began to change. In the kitchen, Carlos sculpted either for pleasure or to make the ceramic figures that he made to sell. Sometimes he put aside the sculptures, and brought out the easel to paint. He used to read a lot. His presence produced an electrifying merriment in the place. The first night he spent in the apartment after each one had finished his studies we sat to drink juice and talk before going to bed. Suddenly the hanging lamp called my attention because it began to rotate. At first I thought there had been a tremor, but it was not so. Oscar with an aire of indifference said, “Look at the phenomenon that is taking place”. Carlos got excited and said, “It’s fantastic, it’s fantastic!” The lamp stopped moving and Oscar explained, “Probably it’s the spirit of my Grandfather that’s around here”. Carlos said, “No, no, this has to do with forces, with energies which have been
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produced for one reason or another. It had to do with those things that cannot be perceived with our five senses. One can only understand when one goes beyond them”. I really have nothing to say. I thought it could have been a sort of collective hallucination, but when I explained my thought to my friends Oscar said, “No, no, these phenomena are real and they come from beyond our realm”. Carlos answered, “Or it might be just part of our level of existence. It might well be that we produce them unconsciously”. Phenomena like this used to take place often when we three were together. When only two were present nothing happened. There were some that were more spectacular than others. I remember one in particular. We had come back from the movies, and we had left Madge, Gudrum, and Neneca in their respective houses. Carlos closed the door with the key and put across the safety chain. We sat down to exchange opinions about the picture, ‘Day of Wrath’ by Dreyher. “Oriel, a friend of ours from the university had spoken to us about Dreyher pictures. Oriel was small with a good-looking face. He looked very much like a Spaniard. His parents were from Asturias. He had been born in Panama, and he had never gone to Spain, because he repudiated Franco’s regime. Although, he was from a very wealthy family, he proclaimed himself to be communist and atheist. The picture had to do with witches in Denmark during the Renaissance. Each one saw it from his point of view, depending on his culture, principles, and spirituality. Except for myself, all had been born in Roman Catholic homes. I grew up in a family of free thinkers. Oscar saw it from the point of view of a spiritualist. He
found
in
the
heroine what he called the ‘gift of witchcraft’. Carlos asked him, “What is witchcraft for you, Oscar?” “The innate possibilities of certain persons to produce phenomena those are beyond the laws of nature”. Carlos asked, “And where do you think that gift comes from?” Oscar stated, “From a source that we don’t know, but it’s quite simple. It’s the same source from which the gift of music, rhythm and painting and so on come from. It’s nothing else but this”. Carlos turned to me and asked me, “Why were you impressed by the picture?”
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I thought for a moment, “As I was born in the midst of an ambience strongly influenced by the French Third Republic, Zola and the rest. It was just too hard for me to imagine something that was in the realm of magic. I thought Oscar’s explanation was quite intelligent. Then I answered, “I saw the picture as a great work of art, the customs, the acting, the camera, the music, the story, all excellent. It is enigmatic without being complicated. I really don’t know why it impressed me so much”. Carlos asked me, “What scene in particular impressed you?” “When the young woman in that stormy night wishes the death of her husband who was coming from giving the last rites to his friend, also a pastor. While the husband is walking in a midst of a field, he conjures his death, and he says, ‘It seems as though the angel of death has touched my cheek.’ Then you see a goat. And then I felt as though the world had stopped for a moment. I felt as if something completely unknown to me had materialized on the screen. It was not what I was looking at. It was something that had penetrated me. It was marvelous”. Then Carlos told me, “You just grasped something very serious, something very real, something very profound, but not mysterious. The real artist is a real magician, because he can play with energies that he himself doesn’t know. It is a matter of energy. Dreyher got out of everybody that worked for him that force that is capable of making the invisible, visible. The thought is invisible, but through an unknown force that some manage better than others it materializes. I should say, that all human beings have the power of making the invisible, visible. But, of course, some know how this is done. Some are much more able to do this than others; these are called the magicians of whom so much has been spoken about. They are the ones that do have a method to materialize”. Dreyher drove us to see more and more art films. In those days there was a small theatre, the ‘Coronet’ in Hollywood that showed films of high artistic value. The ‘Coronet’ became a meeting place for the fans of what used to be called, ‘the good cinema’. If one went alone to the ‘Coronet’ for sure one met one or two people that would discuss the film just seen over a cup of coffee. I became so involved in cinema that after finishing economics in U.S.C. I decided to go in the
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same university to the department of cinema. In the summer school of 1959, the cinema critic, Arthur Knight, gave a course on the history of films. Carlos and I took it. It was precisely in this course that we made the acquaintance of Milan, a Slavic young man, who years later, became a well-known writer. As Milan had communistic tendencies, his interest in cinema was political and didactic, while Carlos looked at it as an art that showed some thing of a different dimension. Although, Carlos and Milan spoke a lot, they never established a good friendship. Their points of view were very different. Even after the course, they often met at my apartment that had become a meeting place of people interested in Cinema and other artistic forms. This apartment was one that I took long after the one I shared with Oscar and Carlos across from City College. Oscar was only interested in the glamour of Hollywood cinema, the other kind, he found boring, heavy, and impossible to understand. Carlos called me up one night to ask me to go to see ‘Ordet’, also Dreyher’s picture. Carlos found the picture very impressive. When we left the old Vista Cinema located around Sunset, Vermont and Hollywood Boulevard. We saw Milan. Carlos made a gesture of boredom and told me, “Surely, he is going to give us a long speech of Marxism”. But it wasn’t so. Instead, Milan said to us, “Most certainly, I don’t believe in life after death, and even less in resurrections, but the realism with which Dreyher presents the coming back to life of the young woman, convinced a psychic aspect of me”. Carlos answered him, “Milan, you are beginning to see the light”. We went to a bar on Vermont, whose name was ‘Ali Baba’ and we began to talk about films. Carlos then said, “It might be that we are just projectors, yes, like any other film projector, and someone puts films that are our lives”. “And who decides to put the picture of our lives?” Milan asked. “It might well be a certain second ‘I’ an ‘I’ full of curiosity, an ‘I’ with an infinite
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desire to experience many ‘Is’”, Carlos replied. I will never forget the impact that Carlos’ words had on me. Although, I have never read any of Milan’s books, I understand that there is something of what Carlos said. Yes, the period we lived in the apartment across from City College was filled with many metaphysical events. It was a time in which we managed to combine the esoteric with what we were learning in the university, within a bohemian framework filled with classical and popular music and beautiful girls. It was an epoch that each one in his field was very creative. It was the beginning of many positive aspects in the lives of those who made up the group. The day that Carlos finished the beautiful marble bust of Neneca we made a party, a party that was very much our own. By that time our grout had become a small society not open to just anyone. The person had to bring along with him something new to participate in it. Without being conscious of it, we wanted to create a sort of new era filled with mysticism, full of beauty that would delight the soul and the body. Some have gone as far as saying that Carlos is one of the fathers of the New Age. Perhaps, it is so! The worst evil in the world is false morality that had become an epidemic that the human being had suffered for millenniums. This was our opinion. The beautiful old man Neneca used to call Bernard Shaw. He had taught her all about false morality which she used to call a poisonous cruel, old bitch, made up of the seven capital sins and of a thousand more. Anne Jefferson during the party declared, “This beautiful bust of Neneca made by Carlos captures that something she has above most people, that something that makes her of the new species”. Don Somers that had come to visit us from Louisiana said, “And what do you mean by the new species?” She smiled delightfully, “Haven’t you realized, as of yet, that one species of man disappears so that a better one takes over? The homo sapiens is agonizing and we are that new being that will make out of this planet the Eden; by so many dreamed and that has never existed. We, the new race will build it: we that are pure in love, profoundly
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compassionate, and devoted to the invisible”. Oscar interrupted to propose a toast to the new race. We did it with kisses and embraces. The bust of Neneca was set on an old small armoire, which I never knew what purpose it ever served. There the bust of our beautiful Neneca remained. Sometime after, Rosendo joined the group. He said that he had knowledge of some Indian rituals that open extra sensorial channels. Those were the days that many were reading or had read Huxley’s ‘The Doors of Perception’. Rosendo was the kind of guy that was too pretty to be a man. He had something of a smart aleck. He enchanted ladies. But he didn’t get along very well with males. His conversation was not interesting at all. After some weeks of hanging around, Carlos decided that it was about time for Rosendo to show us whatever he knew, if he was to continue in the group. For us his presence was not too agreeable. So Carlos quite frankly told him to get down to business and to show us what he promised. The coming Friday was picked to be the most suitable to hear what Rosendo had to say. The girls, Neneca, Gudrum, and Anne took charge of bringing a hot meal, vegetable lasagna, for those days it was a new dish. Carlos, Oscar, and I would bring the wine and the desserts. As usual, Rosendo was late. He asked for a broom that he lay down on the floor, and he told us to remove our shoes and to put the front tip of them over the pole of the broom. We did as he said. In front of the broom and shoes he put a rectangular coffee table covered by a glass; over it he threw some sand. Them he told us, “Now sit around the table, let’s put out the light, and set your hands over the sand and move it from right to left”. This had to be done for some time and in silence. “Now, start”. We did just as he said. We started to move our hands over the sand that was on the table. The time went by, and it seemed that nothing happened. It was very dark and it became hot. To be sitting on the floor made things more difficult. I thought to myself, “How boring!” Suddenly, Neneca, some how irked removed her hands from the table and said emphatically, “This is unbearable!” Carlos added, “It’s been already over thirty minutes”.
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Anne said, “Well, enough is enough”. It was then when I looked in the darkness where Neneca’s bust stood, which was emanating a soft green light and the face had grown a large beard and over the head there was a sort of shiny turban. Everybody ran except me. They ran toward the entrance door and got out of the apartment. I simply had no strength in my body to move, and I couldn’t remove my sight from the apparition. If it hadn’t been for Oscar, who came back and pushed me out, I would never have been able to get out of the place. Soon, we found ourselves alone in the apartment: Oscar, Carlos, and I. Oscar and I brought our mattresses to join Carlos in his room. “What happened, what happened?” Carlos asked. “I don’t know. I have no idea”, Oscar said. “As far as I am concerned, I’m getting out of this apartment, I’m not going to live here anymore”, I said. Someone knocked at the entrance door it was Don Somers. I felt happy to have more company. We told him what had happened. Don looked at us and said smilingly, “For lack of knowledge, you had a bad experience. This sort of things happen frequently in my hometown, Layfette, and even more so in the Cajuns. Louisiana is plagued with this sort of things; there is nothing new in them. The French that settled in the Cajuns know how to produce strange phenomena”. “Why did this happen?” Carlos asked. Don then said, “You all fell in a kind of collective hypnotic state. The sound of the sand over the glass left part of your minds blank without knowing it. Rosendo filled these blank spaces in your minds with a fantasy. It’s sort of foolish. I don’t find it very creative. I wouldn’t have been scared, because I have played at this kind of things since I was a child; there is nothing either good or bad in it”. I said, “But how do you define hypnosis? So much is talked about it, but no one defines it”. Then Don continued, “The mind becomes obsessed by a sound, by a light or
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whatever might be, and becomes careless, and it’s power of attention becomes zero in part of his mind, and it’s precisely that blank is the one that becomes open to be influenced”. “Who explained that to you?” Oscar asked. “My Grandfather and my Father. Probably it was necessary for them to give a reasonable explanation to the phenomena that were taking place around them, and that could not be taken as supernatural powers, because this meant to give power to those who produce them. Therefore, this sort of hypnotic phenomena, that by the way are as old as the world is, must be taken as a joke. But one must also understand that they can be advantageous if used with wisdom”. “But, how is it possible that the part of the mind that goes blank can be filled with someone else fantasies?” I asked. Then Don continued, “It’s a sort of gift, in other words, you can’t learn to do it”. Oscar answered, “That’s very bad if one cannot learn to put visions or illusions in others. Really, not very much, can be done”. Then Carlos said, “No, no, no, it is not so. Everything can be achieved. It is a matter of daring and to dare and be successful, one must put aside, for a while all the rules and regulations that we have been taught. One has to decide to make it freely and alone. All famous men have done it, and many who have not been famous. They have attained their objective. But it is necessary to go back to the rules and regulations not only to enjoy the objectives that have been achieved, but also to have a balanced mind; otherwise, one goes completely astray by severing oneself from this world; unless that’s what one wants”. I asked, “ I wonder how was it that Rosendo got this knowledge?” Carlos answered, “It might well be that he never learned to do so, it could be a gift he was born with; or perhaps, it comes as a tradition in his family”. I answered, “Well, all this leads me to take steps tomorrow to find a new place to live in. I am not going to stay alone with that bust of Neneca, or whatever it is”. “Listen Byron”, Oscar said, “You are not going to let Rosendo get you out of this place, where you have felt so well, and where you have studied very well; where you
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have met and enjoyed the company of Madge and the other girls, where you are so near college. Perhaps, what Rosendo wants is to get one of you out of here, so he can take the place”. Then, Oscar made a long pause and said, “Besides, this is just one of the many experiments that are to come”. Don interrupted to say, “But Byron is not going to remain while that bust is here”. Then, Carlos said emphatically, “Well, it’s just very simple, the bust has to go from here. Is that all right with you, Byron?” I answered, “If it were so, I would remain here”. Carlos, with his usual enthusiasm, said, “Well, every thing will be fixed. Tomorrow, we will give doña Angela the bust as a gift. Just imagine, how doña Angela will feel when she sees her beautiful daughter in marble?” Next day, Oscar, Carlos, and I drove to doña Angela’s. We set the statue in the back seat of the car, and none sat next to it. Doña Angela received the bust with exclamations of admiration for the beautiful work, and she gave thanks to Carlos for having sculptured so well her beautiful daughter. Then Neneca showed up, and when she saw the bust in her house, she became horrified. After all, she was present, the night before when she saw the phenomenon of seeing her bust glow with green light, and grow a beard; of course both had disappeared already. Neneca said, “Under no circumstances I will have that thing in my house”. Doña Angela discussed vehemently with her daughter and called her superstitious and immature. But, Neneca had the upper hand. The three of us returned to the car with the bust. Carlos a little flustered up said, “What the hell are we going to do with this thing?” Oscar said, “We must take it to somebody who appreciates art, and who wasn’t present last night in the apartment”. An idea came to my mind and I said, “Cocho! Arthur will receive it with open arms. He not only will take care of it, but he will be delighted to have it. I’m sure he will keep it for the necessary time”. Carlos said, “Trome, you did it again. Let’s head right now to Cocho’s”. Arthur, whom we affectionately called ‘Cocho’ has been one of the most special
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beings I have ever met. He came to Los Angeles to free himself from the narrowness of the society he had been born in. He was a real poet. He never tried to publish his poetry. He wrote for himself and for his dear friends. He was a lover of opera and ballet. He had a rare knack to criticize painting that was the reason why he was visited so often by artists. When Carlos once showed him his paintings, Cocho told him, “Your painting lack central points, Carlos.” They discussed for hours and days what Cocho meant by central point. He accepted gladly Neneca’s bust. Then he could explain to Carlos more clearly what he meant by central point. “You sculpt very well; this sculpture has a central point. Observe Neneca’s face; it is sculptured around a particular expression that she has and that you were able to capture. The rest of the piece is like a frame to this particular expression. The strong sweetness of the bust comes from its eyes, and each curve is to enhance that expression. On the other hand, your paintings are carefully conceived, but that is not enough for a work of art. One can delight oneself with the beautiful tones of your paintings, but they don’t say very much”. Carlos thought for a moment and then said, “Madge was capable of capturing the central point of Byron in the sketch of the monk that he posed for”. Those two points that make up his eyes are able to sow the lascivious and tremendous sensuality inside of him that only she could perceive”. I answered Carlos, “Well, I must not know me very well, as I don’t feel at all what you just said”. Getting back to Cocho, he wanted to have a tranquil surrounding to enjoy music at late hours of the night, while drinking wine and eating. He drank quite a bit of wine, but along with it he ate, this made him never drunk and he never fell into alcoholism, he got exactly the joy he wanted. After experimenting working in several restaurants, he managed to be dismissed, and then he took his social security money; this allowed him to go to City College for two years where with absolute devotion he devoted all his time to learn good English. His pronunciation of English was quite distinguished and it went very much along with his likes he got a job in a very luxurious hospital. He worked in the kitchen and day after day he become more an expertise in dietetics. After three years his knowledge of diets was such that he was offered to be chief of that department
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without ever taking a course in this field. He had read almost every book on the matter, and he felt his contribution to humanity was to provide the correct diet to patients. He often used to say, “Good food cures almost all diseases”. He refused to accept the high position that was offered to him, because this meant envy from many and responsibilities that would limit his time for writing his poetry, for hearing music, and for going to the opera and the ballet during the season. Oscar, Carlos, and I returned to the apartment quite happy to have left the beautiful work of art of Carlos in the good hands of Cocho. During the following days the phenomenon became more and more comical and we began to laugh about the whole matter. Everyone that had been present came back. We made jokes about it, but without talking seriously, that something not common had taken place. Yet, for some time the metaphysical stopped being the main theme of our conversations. We devoted more and more time to our studies. It was during those days that Carlos began to visit during the weekends a monastery, I believe founded by Yogananda. It was on Mount Washington. He spoke little about his experiences there. In those days he was deeply, moved to experiment with the unknown. He knew that he had a very definite goal, but as of yet, he didn’t know what it really was. This I understood through many conversations I had with him. I lived quite indifferent towards my own life. I simply lived, because I was alive. Carlos lived looking for experiences that would let him exist in different planes. One day he said to me, “When I’m with you, with Oscar and the girls, I am living in a plane totally different from the one I experience in Mount Washington, or when I visit other groups. Imagine if in this plane, there are many planes how many existences there must be in the total existence”. “What do you mean by the total existence?” I asked him. Carlos with one of his gestures that went from a smile to, very serious told me, “The existence is made of an infinite number of planes and I want to know as many as I can”. But how many planes are you talking about?” I asked him. “The planes of existence are as infinite as everything is”. He answered me. I turned to him and said, “Do you believe that I, Byron, can understand all the
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things you talk about? I don’t believe it”. Then he told me, “You understand everything, you go from one level to another without realizing it”. I answered, “If you say so it must be so, but I really don’t know anything”. “Listen Byron, tomorrow Sunday I’m going to a meting to the Moral Rearmament; come along with me”. I asked him, “What was The Moral Rearmament? It sounds to me like something biblical and you know I don’t get along with that book, I’m referring to the Old Testament, it’s so primitive and cruel”. “What did you read it for?” “Because my Grandfather used to say that it had a great literary value. He was talking about the King James Version. Some passages are artistically beautiful, although, they say horrible things. So you are not going to drag me to hear any preachers, least of all Protestants and Puritans”. “No, you are totally mistaken they are not biblical, it’s something different. Many interesting people go there”. Thus, that was the way I got to ‘The Moral Rearmament’. The place was an elegant building on Alvarado Street in old Los Angeles. I found the people there quite sociable and they grouped themselves to talk ethics, but in a very natural way. Definitely, they were a very refined class. They served lunch in a very luxurious dining room. I liked it. I attended that Sunday. We went together but we separated little after we arrived there, because Gloria Swanson, the actress, went to meet Carlos and he integrated into the group of the famous Swanson, who still looked very beautiful was unique in her style. No one could look like her. She made a friendship with Carlos till the very last days she spent in this plane. I found out years afterwards through Carlos that she belonged to an esoteric group that had been founded long, long ago, when hermits used to live in the Egyptian dessert. They were Christian, hermits who adored fire and that meditation, prayer, fasting and solitude arrived to a point when they could stand up, extend their arms to the sky and with open eyes their fingers burned with flames and all their bodies were consumed by an enormous flame.
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The tradition of these ancient hermits lasted until our very days deformed by the centuries, but still obtaining the finality of autocombustion. Carlos asserted, “I tell you it’s absolutely true this about autocombustion. It is a reality attained by those illuminated by this tradition”. Afterwards he convinced me to accompany him for a weekend to Mount Washington, there I met several monks. I heard several speeches and ate vegetarian food. Carlos got me a private appointment with one of the monks, a young man with a very ethereal figure. One could see that he hadn’t touched meat in years. The monk spoke to me for a while about how the sexual desire could be dominated and transmuted into a positive energy that could be used for curative purposes. He told me he saw in me the gift of healing. He gave me exercises to control my sexuality and transmute it into curative energy. For the first time in my life I became interested in the esoteric. I became quite enthusiastic about the idea of being able to help others in their health. I followed the monk’s instructions: before going to bed I sat in front of a table with a lit candle. Over the seat was a cold humid cloth. I put small towels under my arms with cold water. And my bare feet stood over a cold wet towel. I remained looking at the flame until I became sleepy and then I went to sleep. The weird thing was that the exercises produced in me the opposite effect. If I didn’t stop them my sexuality would have made me fail that semester in the university. I believe they didn’t work either with Carlos, because as I know he never refused the pleasures of love. One day when I was alone in the apartment, the telephone rang and the voice of a very educated man asked for Carlos; I told him that he wasn’t in. Then, he informed me that he was calling from the Beverly Wilshire Hotel because one of the guests wanted urgently to speak to Carlos. The gentleman that was talking to me said, “Pardon me sir, but the lady wants to talk to you”. The voice of the woman who was talking on the phone had a slight Portuguese accent and she had a husky voice. She asked me, “Tell me, at what time is Carlos in?” I answered her, “I cannot tell you exactly the hour, but usually he is here at ten o’clock in the evening”. She insisted, “Why does he arrive so late?”
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“Because Carlos has evening classes”. Imperiously, she asked me, “And who are you?” The tone of her voice and, the question bothered me. I answered, “Please, tell me who you are so I can give you more information”. “I am doña Paquita Aranha, the aunt of Carlos”. “Pleased to hear you madam. I am Byron De Ford. I study at the same university that Carlos does, and we share an apartment with a young Uruguayan”. “You have a distinguished name”. “Thank you”. “Mr. De Ford, it is about three o’clock in the afternoon, could you come over here to the hotel and have tea or coffee with me? I am interested in talking to you as soon as possible. It’s of foremost interest to me”. I answered, “I’ll be glad to. I am a little far away from the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, so I’ll be there in a matter of one hour and a half”. “I am in room 208, so we will see each other soon”. I rapidly dressed for the occasion with a suit and tie. I was surprised by the appearance of doña Paquita. She was about fifty five years old, tall with very good bearing, with a well taken care of white skin, light eyes with dark hair, very well combed. She wore a dark blue dress of a thick silk, and the classical white pearl necklace, the fashion of those days. From the beginning we got along fine doña Paquita was quite a lady. Over tea, we spoke amiably about light things. Afterwards she looked at me with melancholic eyes and said, “You just don’t know just how much worried about our Carlitos. It’s been so hard to find him! For years, I have been trying to find his whereabouts. At long last, a detective agency that I hired told me where he was living. I had gone to other agencies but all of them failed”. Doña Paquita sighed profoundly and told me, “The whole thing cane about because of a misunderstanding. It was one of those things that are said in families; particularly, when they are old. Families have their own legends. It was said that centuries ago, an evil Moor fell in love with one of my ancestors, when she rejected him,
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he put a malediction on our family. Literally the story was told throughout centuries and it was said that one day the Moor’s curse would take place”. She made a pause and continued, “Carlitos didn’t live in Rio with us, when his parents married, they settled down in Buenos Aires. It was when his mother, who was still quite young, died that my brother went back to Rio bringing along his child who was eight years old. The boy lived with us till he was fourteen almost fifteen but he wanted to leave our home because he imagined that he was the Moor’s malediction on the family. He thought I had said so and so assumed the whole family thought so”. Then I asked, “But why would he have thought you said so?” “I might have said that he didn’t take after the Aranhas, because we had light eyes and were rather tall. Carlos looks very Mediterranean just like his Mother, a lovely girl. By the way, you know how imaginative he is. It might well be that he dreamt, that I had said so. It is in the family, my dreams are so real that they become a reality for me. This is nothing new among the Aranhas then, Carlitos decided to go to a religious school up in the mountains between Brazil and Peru. I don’t quite remember where that school was located. His father sent him there and when he graduated at the age of eighteen, he simply disappeared. It is not until now, that we finally know his whereabouts. I need you to help me have several meetings with Carlitos. Would you do that for me?” “Madam, I will try, but I don’t have much influence over him”. She answered, “No one has it. But please try to help me”. At the end of the conversation, I found doña Paquita simply enchanting. When I got back to the apartment Carlos wasn’t there yet, and I had to take some books to a girlfriend of mine. It was already ten twenty in the evening. Then Carlos and Oscar showed up. Oscar asked me, “While I wasn’t here did anyone call me?” “No, no, but Carlos got a call”. “Who called me?” “Your aunt, your aunt Paquita, doña Paquita”. “The old hag! How in the world did she call me?”
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“She’s at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. She came especially to see you”. “Damn it! How in the world did she find me?” “Through a detective agency”. “How do you know that?” “She told me so”. “Well, well, well, how was it that she told you so? You don’t know her”. I got flustered up; I perceived Carlos was angry. I asked myself, “What in the world did I do?” Then I asked Carlos, “Carlos, I did meet her”. “But how in the world did you meet her?” Oscar who had gone out of the room entered again and said, “What’s going on with you two?” I answered Oscar, “I told Carlos that His Aunt is here”. Oscar turned to Carlos and said, “I didn’t how you had any aunts, you never talk about them”. “I don’t have uncles or aunts, I do with my past- whatever I want. The old hag!” I excused myself telling them that I had to take some books to my girlfriend. I had made a date with in a nearby cafe. “I just have to go to leave these books”. Carlos quite irritated and quite aloud said, “Of all people the old hag is here”. And turning to me he said, “And you said she wants to see me”. “That’s the reason why she is here. But, Carlos, please excuse me, I have to take these books to my girlfriend. When I get back we’ll talk more about it”. I left as rapidly as I could. I told myself, “I got myself into quite a mess. Why in the world did I go to see that lady?” I had recently met Linda in a cafe because she wanted to buy some romantic literature I had taken already the course. She was a very beautiful girl and very friendly. I tried to talk to her, and we did so for quite some time. I think we could have been very good friends, but things didn’t work that way. It was the only time we spoke. Years later met once again when I went to study there. Linda had a tragic end, she was probably killed by the Manson Family.
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When I returned to the apartment, around two o’clock in the morning, to my surprise I found Carlos and Oscar talking quite jovially about his aunt. I don’t know how it was that Oscar managed to talk Carlos out of his angry and gloomy state. I never knew what Oscar old him. But the fact was, they were taking very amiably. Carlos looked at me and smiled, “How in the world did you meet my witch aunt Paquita?” She’s a very nice and courteous person. She must have been quite good looking in her youth”. Then Oscar joyfully told me, “We just called her up in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and it was easy to find her. She invited us two for lunch tomorrow”. “Oh you are lucky, Oscar!” I said to him. Doña Paquita came into the lives of Carlos, Oscar, and myself for some days. Carlos and Oscar took her out every day. The climax of doña Paquita’s stay was when she came to our apartment. We invited Anne, Jefferson, Madge, and Neneca, whom we thought were the appropriate girls for the occasion. We didn’t invite Gudrum because of her particular way to dressing and her Swedish frankness that definitely wouldn’t go with Doña Paquita. Neneca told us what we should offer in food and drinks at the small party. She brought from her house a beautiful crystal set of cups, a china set, and thus we had a sort of buffet dinner. Doña Paquita discreetly observed the apartment and said, “Young men, you live with discretion and propriety. Good taste is so very important indeed. This is what gives warmth and quality to life. There is nothing more boring and hideous that a rich person stupid and with bad taste”. She turned to Madge and asked her, “Carlos told me you were from Australia”. Madge in he very limited Spanish said, “I was born in England. My family moved to Australia just before the war”. “So, you have relatives in England”. “Yes, I do. Imagine I have my four grandparents there”. Doña Paquita exclaimed, “One is very lucky when one has known one’s grandparents!”
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“Yes, it is very important. It gives one much security”. Anne asserted. Doña Paquita asked Anne, “Where is your family from?” Anne answered, “All my family comes from Groton, a city in Massachusetts. They have live there since the colony; I’m the first to have left the town”. Doña Paquita continued, “It is quite interesting to come from that state so rich in history and tradition. Also, it has produced so many great thinkers. I read quite a bit of Emerson”. Neneca interrupted to say, “My four grandparents are from Costa Rica, but as I didn’t grow up there, I have never been close to them”. Doña Paquita with a gesture of assertiveness said, “But the important thing is that you know who your four grandparents were”. Neneca surprised, “But there are some people who don’t know who their grand parents were”. Doña Paquita answered, “Yes, my child; most people don’t even know who their grandparents were. In reality they don’t, even know, who they are. Thank God, that we all here know who our ancestors are”. Anne turned to Doña Paquita and asked her, “But tell us, doña Paquita about you”. “Well, we Aranhas are ‘capas redondas’”. Neneca quite surprised inquired, “And what’s that of ‘capa redonda’?” Carlos laughed and said, “A few Portuguese who conquered Brazil were ‘Capa redondas’. That means that they came from aristocratic families.” Doña Paquita added, “They were the founding fathers of the country, the first in civilizing the savages. They brought the cross and a certain degree of civilization. But we still have a great mission in front of us. Most of Brazil is absolutely savage. There is much to be done there. But we must be full because we are few, I mean the civilized ones, and if we don It lead a very well thought out policy, so that the savages don’t take over and this country becomes: a savage one”. The party was quite agreeable and interesting. Doña Paquita remained for some more days enjoying the many wonderful things
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that Lost Angeles offers. Before leaving to Brazil, doña Paquita deposited in a bank $10.000 under Carlos’ name. When Oscar heard about it, he told Carlos, “$10.000 is a lot of money, now you can study whatever you want and wherever you want”. Carlos made a gesture of reproach with his lips, something he did quite often and that with the passing of years became more obvious. Then he said, “I want to be myself structured by my own self. I don’t only want to forge my future but also my past. Perhaps it’s even more important to shape in one’s own way ones past! I know it can be done and I would do it and nothing can stop me from it. I will fight it, be whatever it may be”. That was the energetic answer that Carlos did. I don’t know whether or not the money that came from his family ever arrived to his hands. Personally, I think he didn’t accept it. When I left for Europe for several years, I lost myself from every body there. So, I didn’t hear from Carlos for quite some time. It was years later that our mutual friends Lee Hildreth, Fernando Montealegre, and Oriel Garcia contacted me and by phone told me that Carlos had been driving a taxi for quite sometime, partly, in order to meet the needs of Sergio, the child of a German girl that he had protected during her pregnancy. The child wasn’t Carlos’. When the child was born, he took care of the mother and the child, and after two and a half years of doing so, she just suddenly disappeared leaving the child behind. He continued taking care of the kid in the best way he could. He had a Mexican friend that took care of him while he worked. When Sergio was nearly six years old, the mother showed up again with the grandparents and legally the child was taken from Carlos without any retribution. When Carlos became famous, Sergio, who was already eighteen, contacted him. Carlos helped him with his studies; I don’t know where Sergio went to school but it was not in California. When doña Paquita left Los Angeles, she sort of left a feeling of harmony. Carlos became quite warm and calm. Something very important had taken place in him. The last months of that year were permeated with tranquility as also the apartment because we were very much involved in our particular studies. It was in the month of November when the opera season began. In those days I was the only one interested in this artistic media.
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When Carlos heard me that I was going to see several operas, he said, “You know, Byron, I’d like to go along with you to any of the operas that you are going to see. I really would like to go with you. You just tell me when we can do it”. We decided to go to hear ‘Lucia’ because that day we were both free. Besides, I was a friend of the manager of the Shrine Auditorium, Jimmy Holz, who gave me special prices within the fifteen minutes before the curtain went up, because these very good tickets belonged to the press that many times was not present. Carlos was totally imbued by the music. He really was hit by the ‘bel canto’. During the intermissions we greeted and talked to many people we knew. At the end of the show, we went to have a cup of coffee at the cafeteria at the corner of Pico and Hoover. I was very much taken by what Carlos had to say, “Do you know something, Trome, man before he spoke howled. Yes, he howled. Afterwards came the languages and the chanting. The music with words expressed better certain human sentiments than the words alone. Not even poetry could express it. But the most profound and obscure feelings of men could not be expressed but by howling, but now this howling was cultivated, in other words controlled. It became precise and profoundly civilized. This is what opera is”. After seeing ‘Lucia’, we went to see the picture of the opera ‘Aida’, with Sofia Loren. This time the only thing he spoke about was Sofia, who became his favorite actress. This was the last December in the apartment, across from Los Angeles City College. That December was like the end of a chapter to start another one. Carlos was going to go to Los Angeles State College. I matriculated at the University of Southern California. Oscar went back to Uruguay. Gudrum moved in with Carlos. Anne Jefferson stayed alone in the little house and Neneca went on living with her parents. That December, I should say, was filled with a special kind of bliss. A new coffee shop had been opened, ‘The Renaissance’ on the Sunset Strip and it became our meeting place. School was over and during the afternoons, the cold weather didn’t stop us from going to be beach. At night, we made small parties in our apartment, or we went to the small
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nightclubs on Olivera Street to dance. It was in one of those small parties in our apartment, when we spoke again about the esoteric. This time the conversation began because Madge had gone to the exhibition of hypnosis at Los Angeles City College. Madge said to us, “Hypnosis is a reality”. Neneca turned to her and said, “But how is it that it comes about?” “I believe that a part of the brain goes numb, and opens itself to influences from the outside” Anne answered. “And how is it that that takes place?” Gudrum asked. Anne answered her, “By making the brain concentrate in one thing alone and leaving the rest of it without putting attention to anything”. Neneca continued, “Doctor Patty, my psychology professor said that anybody can learn to hypnotize”. “That I don’t believe” stated Carlos, and went on saying, “You are born with the gift of hypnotizing. It is a gift, no different from singing or dancing or any thing else. That’s why many psychologists ant psychiatrists, who don’t have that gift make ridicule of those who do. It is a matter of envy”. Then Gudrum said, “Carlos, do you know how to hypnotize?” Carlos answered, “I have tried it and I have been successful at it”. Gudrum went on, “Why don’t you try it on me?” Carlos said, “I could not do it because we are just too involved with each other”. I got into the conversation, “Quite a few years ago, when I was still in high school, a good friend of mine jokingly tried to hypnotize me and he succeeded in, doing so. The problem was that afterwards he couldn’t get me out of the hypnotic state”. Carlos looked at me, “You never told me that”. I went on, “Yes it was a very agreeable experience for me and rather disagreeable for my friend. For me it was very agreeable, and afterwards when I got out of the hypnotic state I felt very relaxed”. Carlos asked me, “But what did you feel while you were in that state?” “I didn’t feel anything. But those who were present said that I mumbled strange
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things and that I changed my behavior, but as I said before, I don’t remember a thing”. Anne Jefferson interrupted by saying, “It seems to me that you fell into a trance”. Neneca inquired, “And what is a trance?” Anne answered, “It is a state far beyond the hypnotic one. It is a state as was said before in which the brain leaves a great part of itself open and becomes susceptible to alien influences”. Neneca emphatically said, “That is if one allows it”. Anne said, “They say so in order not to scare people, but the truth is that a person in a profound hypnotic state can well be influenced against his own will. Of course, it isn’t convenient for everyone to know this fact”. Neneca talking to Anne, “What you just said really scares me”. Anne answered, “It shouldn’t upset you. For example, the psychiatrists and psychologists the only thing they try to do is to adjust the patient to the rules and regulations of his society, whether these are wrong or right. For instance, in Nazi Germany normality was to be a Nazi; so the psychologists and psychiatrists had to adjust the patients to the Nazi regime. This fact cannot be allowed to be of public domain. Isn’t it so?” Neneca, a little disturbed, “I guess you’re right”. I came into the conversation to ask Anne, “I would like to know more about this business that I fell into a trance”. Anne explained, “When one falls into a hypnotic state, when the brain becomes open to the suggestions of the hypnotist, one enters into a state in which the spiritualists call mediumship. This means that alien thoughts and personalities may enter the vacuum of the brain; in other words, it is not only receptive to the direct suggestions, but also it’s open to thoughts and personalities probably in form of energies that are hanging around the subject. As I am not a spiritualist, I believe that what enters the empty part of the brain is something related to the universal knowledge, what Jung calls ‘the collective unconsciousness’”. Then Oscar said, “More or less what in Theosophy is called the Akasic Books that supposedly had all the human and not human knowledge”.
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Carlos immediately asked, “Could a living person enter a person in trance?” Anne answered, “Definitely yes. This is very well known by the big bosses of the police”. Gudrum added, by asking Anne, “How is it that you know so much about this?” Anne answered, “I come from a family that for centuries that had been involved in Clairvoyance, spiritualism, and mediumship. Members of our family have worked for the secret service and police, for instance some cooperated with Edgar Hoover”. Carlos said, “So you are of the opinion that what manifests in mediums is the collective subconscious?” Anne answered, “That’s precisely the way I think”. Gudrum who had stayed as an observer of the conversation turned to all present and said, “And why there shouldn’t be a collective consciousness? If in reality is a collective unconscious, why shouldn’t there be a collective consciousness?” There was a moment of silence that was broken by Carlos, “It’s possible that both exist: a conscious and subconscious collective. But the real question is where are they? Are they energies that just float around?” Gudrum that paid so much attention to what it was said, made a remark, “It might well be that they are in another dimension far beyond our five senses”. Carlos, “Why not? They might well be in other dimension”. Neneca, then asked, “This fourth dimension that so many are talking about, because of the atomic bomb, should it be time? Would it be in it where all this knowledge is kept”. Carlos said, “Yes, for many, the fourth dimension is time; but why should we stop in time? Beyond it there are many, many, many, many more dimensions. One could say that the psyche is the fifth dimension where time takes its form and meaning. Universal knowledge might be well found in another dimension, it may well be that knowledge is status quo. Besides, also it might be in more than one dimension”. Neneca said, “This is getting too complicated. Anyway, we from where we are now will never find out. But what I find fascinating if that universal knowledge might be found far and beyond the hypnotic state”.
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Gudrum replied, “The only way that we could find out something about it is if one of us could enter that state. According to Anne, it is possible that Byron, once fell in to that state, if he would he willing, and if one of us is capable of taking him beyond the hypnotic state. At least for me it would be very interesting because it would open new horizons and I would become conscious of the tremendous amount of possibilities around me at that are far beyond the knowledge of our five senses”. Anne emphatically said, “I know how to hypnotize. I have the gift and technique”. There wax a silence and everybody looked at me. I began to laugh; I felt suddenly strangely important. It came to my mind for ant instant, if in reality, could be the vehicle of such a thing. And I said, “Could I possibly be capable of reaching knowledge far beyond what is known? Could I be a medium?” In those days the expression ‘to channel’ was not in use. We went to work and Anne started with a relaxation technique and shortly after I went into a state which I don’t remember a thing. I stayed in that manner for about an hour and a half. As I was informed when I came back to normality, an Alexandrian doctor of the first century of our era spoke to me. His name was Andreas. He conversed extensively with those present. Apparently, they talked about various themes and particularly about the therapies of his days. He gave to Neneca a therapy to lose weight that consist in drinking one and a half more water than that which she urinated. By the way, she used it and it gave her very good results. I don’t have any idea what the Alexandrian doctor spoke about with Gudrum, Carlos, and Oscar. When Andreas talked to Carlos he told him that he could be to America that what was Hesiod to the Hellenic world. As I didn’t receive any message and was not conscious of the whole thing, I was not much interested in my mediumship. It was not but thirty years later when a grand lady, doña Esterlina who was in her eighties guided me in how to use properly my gift that I could even hear what was said to me. I reached a point that I was able to hear what was communicated through me. Those last weeks of the year were quit beautiful and they closed a chapter in our lives. The following semester each one of us went to a different university. I looked for a room in about the last boarding house that existed around U.S.C.
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The owner of the establishment was an old lady that had been nicknamed ‘John’ and who was an ex-agent of the F.B.I. I don’t know why they called her ‘John’ because she was a very delicate feminine lady who was in her sixties. The boarding house she ran was in an old Victorian style house of three stories. It was a house that had been quite beautiful at the beginning of the twentieth century and that had been built by one of the foremost families of Los Angles. It was located on Adams Boulevard and as the owner of the house was a prominent senator, President Taft had spent days in it. Besides the North Americans who lived there, there were quite a few foreign students who resided there also. Carlos had moved to live in an apartment with Gudrum, because Madge had moved to Westwood where she found a job nearby the art department of U.C.L.A. The ambience of U.B.C. wasn’t so friendly as that of City College. This, really, was the first private institution that I studied in. I didn’t care very much for the bourgeois society of that university that is in its vast majority students from well o do families and from extremely rich families from foreign countries. My life changed quite a bit. The Shrine Auditorium, which was the center of the ballet, opera, and the symphonic orchestra of Los Angeles, was nearby where I lived, so I began to attend musical performances. As a matter of fact, the best of opera, ballet, and orchestras performed there. But it was not after one of those shows at the Shrine Auditorium that I met Lloyd Perry, it was after a presentation of ‘Duel of Angels’ with Vivienne Leigh and Mary Or at the Huntington Hartford Theatre. I established a conversation with Lloyd at the counter of the Brown Derby Restaurant, and over a cup of coffee. This restaurant was just across from the theatre. Lloyd was no more than thirty-five years old. He was tall, well built with a very impressing red beard. By the way he dressed, I could see he was a motorcyclist. We began to exchange impressions about the show we had just seen. We also coincided in being present at several shows of the prior year, which was a particularly brilliant year of the lovers of ballet, opera, theatre, singers, etc. It was during that year that among the many luminaries that had performed in L.A. were: Galina Ulanova with the Bolshoi, Maria Callas, the Old Vic Company, Edith Piaf, Amalia Rodriguez, Sir John Guilgud, Il
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Teatro Picolo di Milano, Imperio Argentina and many others. By the way, it was the custom among certain of these divas and ballerinas that an unknown young man would take flowers to the dressing rooms before each show. Jimmy Holtz who was the administrator of the Shrine Auditorium took charge of sending flowers the particular ladies. The day that Maria Callas gave her only performance in Los Angeles, Jimmy asked me to deliver the flowers to the famous diva. I gave the flowers to a lady that opened the door of the dressing room of the famous singer. I never saw or met the great Callas. During a great part of that year, Carlos had been living at John apartment house because Gudrum had returned to her native Stockholm. They deeply loved each other, but for quite some time I did not see them because their relation was very intense, very creative, so they had not much time to socialize. One day Carlos showed up at Johnny’s Boarding House. He was looking for me. He told me that Gudrum was going away. He was quite moved by the parting of the lovely girl who was his great love. His sensibility is hard to describe. In those days, Stockholm was a very far away place, and he felt that perhaps they were not going to meet again. Their respective goals in life as far as their professions separated them: She was to achieve her goals in Sweden, and he in Los Angeles. Carlos was very particular in the way he managed his feelings. Gudrum, who was leaving L.A. next day, and Carlos asked me to take her to the airport and see her off. He said he just couldn’t make it. Carlos exclaimed, “I just cannot bear see her go”. And thus, I took the beautiful Swedish girl to the airport. Carlos didn’t show up at all. And Gudrum didn’t expect him there. After some days Carlos came to John’s and told me he was moving to the Boarding House. I told him, “But U.C.L.A. is so far away from here”. He laughed and answered me, “It will take me an hour to get from U.S.C. to U.C.L.A. It’s worth it. Here I’ll be with my friends. And the proximity of the Shrine Auditorium will open doors to me to learn about music, theatre, and so on. You, Byron, will introduce me to the opera”. “Sure, I will”, I answered. And in this way during that year, he did not only study
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ardently his profession but he also merged into the world of music, theatre, ballet, and opera.
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CHAPTER III
John’s Boarding House was the last of its kind in the neighborhood of the University of Southern California; it didn’t only offer sleeping room but also the three regular meals of the day. The old Victorian building had many rooms to accommodate the guests. The three-story house was surrounded by gardens. In the back garden where once stood the stable stood a small house that also had quite a few rooms that were rented to elderly folks. In the house, she only put up the students that the majority were of foreign nationalities Indus, Japanese, Iranians, South Americans and so on. Undoubtedly the house had been once the abode of a very high-class family. Johnny had been an agent of the F.B.I. and. was a good friend of Mr. J. Edgar Hoover. The important thing was that John’s Boarding House offered privacy, good food, a very good location, and a very cosmopolitan ambience. When Don Somers came back from Layfette, Louisiana to continue studies in U.S.C. he was the one to introduce me to that Boarding House. I decided, to move in with two more friends: Eric DuCruett and Tony Ray. They too join the house when one heard prayers and chants in Hindu, Islamic and, of course Christians. Tony was a sportsman or should I say, a weight lifter, while Eric was a ballet dancer. They became very good friends. Tony realized that the ballet dancer could teach him flexibility in the whole body as well as two powerful legs that the weight lifting would never give him. So Eric sort of coached Tony. Carlos came several times to visit me at the Boarding House. Then, he decided to come and live there. John was devoted to the mysteries of Tutankhamen. Since she was very young, she became aroused by the mysteries of the Pharaohs. It was quite impressive the library she had on the subject. She was a real erudite in this field. Carlos and John forged very good friendship. She told him about the many cases in the F.B.I. that clairvoyance and other esoteric methods had been used successfully in solving many crimes. Carlos gave much attention and love to the lady,
which made her quite happy, particularly, because her two sons lived in Hawaii and they sort of had forgotten their Mother. I didn’t see Carlos very often; we coincided mostly in supper when I was present as I used to work quite often nights. As I said before, the year 1958 was quite special in Los Angeles, because of the many artistic events that had taken place. The Bolshoi was the first in arriving and it performed seventeen shows of which I saw fourteen, one with Carlos. A few of us went to see ‘Les Sylphides’ with Galina Ulanova. Afterwards after the show, we all went to the cafe that I owned which was the Oedipus Rex. There we spoke for hours about what we had seen last night. As usual, Carlos observation impressed me a lot because somehow, he captured what others didn’t and he could analyze them. His observations for me still today are like windows that open to another I plane. They were a way to look at things from quite a different angle. Carlos saw in the ballet something that I never conceived. He said to me, “Byron, since the beginning, man had the fantasy of flying. And he dreamed of flying without artifacts. I, truly believe, that the nearest thing to flying without machines is the classical ballet. The male gives breathtaking jumps accompanied by the music, but when women dance on points, they almost achieve to leave the floor behind. I asked him, “Do you think women are built in such a way that are more capable to dance ballet than males?” Carlos answered me, “No, it is not exactly so, the male dances even when he goes to war. Isn’t marching really a dance? Of course, it is, but women somehow have a better balance than males. The so-called, ‘Modern Ballet’ has nothing modern about it. The most ancient dances are with the feet on the floor; it’s true they jumped like certain tribes in Africa but the female, when she dances on points, reaches the highest form of this art. By the way, when did they begin to dance on points?” he asked me. I answered, “I really don’t know. I believe it was at the end of the eighteenth century, but I really don’t know. Ask DuCrett and he will tell you”. Next, he told me, “I tell you, it is the newest of dances. The women that dance on points reach the climax of a very ancient art; from there the only thing she could further
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do is fly”. That same year at the Philharmonic Auditorium Hall Sir John Guilgud presented his show ‘The Seven Ages of Man’. He came on stage dressed in a tuxedo and he began to act one of the lines of the children in Richard III; then, he went on to recite Romeo and so he went on until he reached King Lear and finally he closed the show with Prospero’s parliament from ‘The Tempest’. Carlos saw the show first and he told me I had definitely to see it. I saw it alone and I loved it but I would have enjoyed it much more if I had been with Carlos. It was at the end of this show that once again I met Lloyd. As he had seen all of the events that had been shown in Los Angeles we had much to talk about. And thus it was the way that our friendship continued. We exchanged phone numbers. And he called me up one day to go to his house to hear some African music. He lived north of down town Los Angeles. It was a neighborhood totally unknown to me. It was a very old part of the city that still kept some of the Old Spanish architecture. Lloyd’s house fitted better in New Orleans than in Los Angeles. It had balconies all around it and the rooms were very large filled with old furniture and ornaments. Lloyd told me, “One of my great, great, great, grandmothers was a native Indian from this land. She was a real southern Californian Indian. She married an Irishman, that’s why I have a red beard. Then my great, great grandfather married a Spanish woman and since then the family had lived in this house. As I am the last vestige of the family, I inherited it. Some day I must marry to have some children who will take over it. But the truth is, that as of now I am not apt to marry anyone”. I asked him, “Besides the motorcycle and the arts, do you have any other interests?” He answered, “My great, great, grandmother, the Indian one, believed that we all have a sort of register in us of the emotions of our ancestors. I have a kind of mysticism that has to due with the Indians of California and Northern Mexico. I feel it profoundly. It is my religion. I have a gift to see by the color of the feet, hands, and face the emotions that people have inherited from their ancestors. If you want to know where I get the money to live, I tell you from renting the many rooms of this big house”.
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My friendship with Lloyd became stronger as he used to come often in the evenings to talk to me in the Oedipus Rex. One day he invited me to go with him to meet don Marcelo Ocaña. According to Lloyd, don Marcelo knew a lot about the mysteries of plants and how some of these had the power to transport you to a different plane of existence. As I was never fond of motorcycling, I asked Lloyd to go by my car to don Marcelo’s. And so we did. I had never been to East Los Angeles and I was glad to see this old part of the city. Don Marcelo’s neighborhood had a kind of old classy atmosphere. Of course, it was not a chic neighborhood any longer, but it kept still some old Hispanic families that had been founders of the city. Many were completely Indian who had learned literally centuries ago the Spanish language. Spanish was their mother language. They considered themselves Californians and North Americans, and they found offensive to be called Mexicans. They said that Mexico didn’t exist when they were already Californians. They said that they belonged to very antique ethos. I had never had any connections with them; thus, it was don Marcelo the first of them that I met. His very old house was very well kept up. I noticed how three Indian ladies waited on him. He was a very special man. He was one of those special persons who you just don’t know why he was so. I looked with great interest to a large poster of one of Cacteau’s pictures. In those days the posters were as of yet not in fashion. Probably don Marcelo had obtained it from some cinema after it had been used for publicity. He offered me a tea of herbs. It had a good taste and left a pleasant freshness in the mouth. “I noticed how you have been staring at the poster”, he said to me. Cocteau is one of my favorite directors. I am very interested in his way of thinking. He arrived to conclusions that not many in the occident have been able to reach”. “Do you know his book ‘Opium’?” “No, no”, I answered. Don Marcelo went on saying, “Well, in this book he explained through opium we
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can feel the vegetable in us. In other words, how is the life of the vegetable? And this state of mind is not motivated by anything, but never the less exists in us. From it comes the desire to embrace everything, in this way get to know the divine warmth of love. In the process of using, opium deep mysteries kept in the brain are clarified. And what is the brain, if not a transmitter of the eternal ‘I’. The eternal I transmits through the brain its temporal objectives. But this is just one of the many expressions of my supreme ‘I’. My supreme ‘I’ can express itself in an infinite number of dimensions. This is the ‘I’ that searches for an absolute consciousness. This is what some call heaven. This state of festive fullness that once achieved is eternal. Some saints have described this as the eternal contemplation of God. If God is everything, He is the only One and the Many, the Infinite. Nothingness is just another state of existence. If nothingness is part of the whole, the complete consciousness of everything, this is the perfect state, in other words, the perfect equilibrium of the Supreme I. The total consciousness of the five senses is very limited in comparison with the state beyond them that embraces any infinite possibilities”. Don Marcelo took me to the last floor of his house where he had many posters of his favorite films and pictures of his most loved actors and actresses since motion pictures began. One large part of one of the walls very well lit by light was devoted The Divine Garbo as he called her. There were many pictures of the famous actresses. Most of them I never had seen. Then, I heard voices of people entering the house and I could detect that of Carlos, it was a great surprise for me. It so happened that Carlos was an old friend of don Marcelo; it was not till that afternoon that Carlos and Lloyd met each other. Carlos came with Annex Jefferson that as usual looked so beautiful. We spoke about several things. Don Marcelo’s hospitality was excellent. He gave us several exquisite dishes of which he called Californian food; he also provided us with native drinks and delicious desserts. Everything he offered us was real Indian American food. Don Marcelo said, “The tubers and corn cultures were the most important in this continent. They appeared in different parts of this immense continent. The culture of the tuber is more harmonious, more silent; very deep in thought and didn’t give much
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warriors”. Suddenly I became aware that it was rather late. Anne needed to leave as she had some other appointment. Carlos decided to remain longer with us. We agreed that once that Anne left and we decided to go, I would take Lloyd first, and Carlos would go with me to John’s Boarding House. So Marcelo continued by saying, “Really they are not cultures that conquer others; the real cultures have a spirit which makes them unique. The American cultures with their many variations lean more to repose, quietness, and a silent harmony. A life giving little importance to the time element. The Spaniards who represented the European culture were mostly interested in the worldly power. They were ardent in their pleasures and paints of this world. The European culture is never in repose. It is always on the move. Carlos asked don Marcelo, “And how do you evaluate United States?” Don Marcelo thought for a second, then he pronounced himself, “It is a fascinating hybrid, where the bells of God and the devil toll at the same time. There is San Francisco where the skyscrapers seem to reach the heavens but they remain set on the earth. To me San Francisco is the final boundary where this strange land sweet benevolent, and sometimes grotesque and different and rather audacious meets. Sometimes it adores the golden calf, but other times it is incredibly generous. If United States had wanted after the war, it would have brought most of the art treasures of Europe to this land. Something the Europeans always did when the won a war. But United States didn’t want to take away from France the Louvre. The streets of Los Angeles, for instance, could be adorned with the most beautiful Italian statues and those that remain from ancient Greece. But United States didn’t want to take away from the old world its charm, its loveliness. On the contrary, it gave much money to rebuild what the war had destroyed”. We continued for some time paying attention to what don Marcelo had to say. Around three o’clock in the morning, we said goodbye to our wonderful host, and we took the car to go home. We took a small road going south, at the end of it, I turned left, and I entered a magnificent boulevard. For a moment, I thought I was on Wilshire
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Boulevard, which was absolutely impossible because this street ran in another part of the city. In the center of the street there was a long green area planted with beautiful flowers and trees whose flowers were of different colors: some lilac, some others red, and others yellow. They had indirect lighting. The houses on both sides of the street were magnificent mansions that reminded me of some I had seen in El Vedado in Habana. “Where are we?” Carlos asked. Lloyd answered, “take it easy, take it easy. It is over three o’clock in the morning and nothing evil can happen to us. After three o’clock in the morning nothing metaphysical evil can occur”. I went on driving over the boulevard astounded by its beauty; the street itself was made of a material that was white and shiny, something like the marble of Naxos and the air was perfumed by orange blossoms. In the sky, almost full moon shone and almost in the center of the blue immensity there was a brilliant star. I turned on the radio automatically and the music that came on was a Mozart’s Concerto nº 4, ‘Water Flute’. The boulevard went on and on until we stopped in front of a low wall that bordered a wavy dark velvety sea. Here I turned left and I got into one of the old East Los Angeles streets. Carlos very excitedly exclaimed, “What in the world happened?” I totally messed up said, “I have no idea”. Then Carlos said to me, “Turn around, Byron, and take that boulevard again”. Emphatically Lloyd said, “Today we will not find it again”. I drove looking for the boulevard until the sun began to rise and I couldn’t’ find it. Many times returned to look for it and we could not find it. Lloyd was right when he said, “Don’t look for something you will not find in this plane. We broke the barrier and we entered another plane where another city of Los Angeles exists. Probably, we entered an emotional plane where Los Angeles is built emotionally; that’s why it is much more beautiful than Los Angeles materially built. One day Carlos asked Lloyd, “How many cities of Los Angeles exist?” Lloyd answered, “I am not sure. Los Angeles is one of the most magical cities of
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the twentieth century; it is the home of the seventh art, the most magical art of all arts. The world lives under the spell of films, whether for good or for bad”. Lloyd told this to Carlos and other friends that remained in the Oedipus Rex until it closed. It often happened that friends gathered at the Cafe to talk. I appreciated this a lot as if it hadn’t have been, so I couldn’t have seen them because of my work. Whatever happened in the boulevard did not exist in this material plane. It had impacted us for good. It was so real that it was too hard or impossible to accept the experience as a hallucination. Lloyd spoke to us about the ancient inhabitants of California. He said that there were legends that located the country of the amazons in Northern California. And that in the southern part of this land there was an iniciatic school that taught how man was made up of several bodies. This knowledge was given to the Europeans from the people that taught this theory in this valley. What Lloyd talked about had to do with the experience we had had. But how had this happened? The sea that we had seen was not less than twenty miles away and that almost full moon we saw that night was moonless. I always have had the idea that perhaps one of the infusions that don Marcelo had given us produced hallucinations. But be as it might have been, the reality was that we had had an extraordinary experience. It really doesn’t matter at all whether it was produced by some kind of narcotic, what matters is that we lived it a marvelous moment of some unknown reality. Once Carlos told me in the house of Lloyd that until now we have taken the esoteric phenomena as serious experiences, but we hadn’t thought of studying them, as it should beg, as they are a real part of our lives and our objectives. We just took them as something that took place without understanding them, but we accepted their existence. In those days, Carlos was a student of psychology. He was an excellent student not only because of his dedication. He was polifacetic by nature. When he decided to investigate something, he did it with all of his heart. I remember that when we began to live across from City College, in that apartment, that represented an important chapter of our lives, Carlos knew very little English; I was honored to give him the first instructions of a language that I had never quite dominated. As a matter of fact, I have
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never managed to really command any language but I did what I could to teach him what I knew. I insisted that he should keep writing simple sentences that expressed good descriptions and feelings. I thought that was the best for him. In those days, Carlos never thought of being a writer. Also I taught Milan a little bit of English. I said to Milan that as he knew so much French, to use in his sentences as much English vocabulary that came from that language, and I explained to him that most of the English cultured words came from French, and so he did. Both of them took English grammar at City College with an excellent English teacher, Mrs. Walter, who by the way never liked me in the very least. Although she didn’t like me, I thought very highly of her teaching. Mrs. Walter, on the contrary, became very fond of them. Probably saw in them great talent. By the way, for a very short time, Milan lived in John’s Boarding House. Some time passed. I didn’t know when Carlos was going to finish his studies of psychology, but one day I got a note from him that he had left under my door asking me to meet him at Curry’s, the cafe where so many students of U.S.C. used to go. I had not seen him for some days. When I arrived to Garry’s he was there already. I noticed that he was quite perturbed. Something that was not very common in him. I sat at the table with him and he spoke rapidly to me. He wanted to talk to me about what had happened to him. In weak persons, the experience that he had had would have humiliated him bat in the case of Carlos it gave him more force to go ahead. He was looking for a way out that would favor him in his quest. At that moment, probably Carlos wanted to express his feelings that were so seriously perturbing, and he thought I was the person. He knew that I vehemently exploded when I got angry. Not in vain had I spent the first years of my life in Cuba and most of the time in Matanzas, so my refined ways completely disappeared when I became angry. When this happens, it blooms in me the aggressiveness sometimes vulgar that characterizes certain Cubans. My first words after I heard Carlos’s story were, “That piece of shit is envious of you. I can imagine the son of a bitch one of those half men that doesn’t attract anyone and not even for his titles and merits got the job he asked for. I bet anything the bugger reached his position by dirty means. The damned shit has no imagination nor human quality, in other words, he’s a big turn with a suit on”.
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Carlos broke out in laughs, “My God, Trome, a turd with suit on?” “Yes, yes, a turd with a soul of shit”. By golly, you really got his number!” And I added, “And I could say much more!” The God damned dean of the department of psychology had called Carlos to advise him not to continue for a Ph.D. in his career. In those days, Carlos had obtained his masters degree. The reason the dean had advised him to continue in this field was that Carlos had little chance of having clients because of his physique. Carlos was never an ugly guy. He was short but he had a good build and a pleasant face and dark Mediterranean skin. Next day, I went to U.C.L.A. to look for my cousin, Maria Teresa Romero, who was a big shot in the administration of the university. As a matter of fact, she had a very poor opinion of the man who had offended so much Carlos. That same day, I went to see doctor Zeledón an excellent medic made in Philadelphia in the last century. He was quite wealthy and a real gentleman, those that were formed by their elegance of the end of the nineteenth century, Doctor Zeledón had opened his office in East Los Angeles. Next to his office, there was a pharmacy that was also his. Little by little, he had surrounded himself with the offices of medics of different specialties; I asked him if he would be interested in a psychologist. Don Zeledón answered, “Send him to me, I am interested in specialists”. I took care that the damned dean would hear not only that Carlos was working in the field of psychology, but that he was very well liked. I had told the whole story to Dr. Zeledón and as he was very witty, he began to call the psychology department of U.C.L.A. asking for Carlos. Carlos was quite aware that if he would tell me what had happened to him, I would go into a sort of tantrum, something that occurred to me quite often in my youth. Carlos came out of his perturbed state of mind thanks to the doors that had been opened to him. The truth is that he always sort of enjoyed my tantrums that were accompanied by a definite vulgar language. Those seven years that I spent in Havana and Matanzas formed a great deal of my personality. When I was a kid, I used to run away from my house in Matanzas with friends to play in the Japanese Park and the
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‘Sonora Matanzera’ that used to rehearse at the ‘Ojo de Agua’. I was the only white kid around and I learned to move my body just like the little black boys. There in ‘Ojo de Agua’, my blood was permeated by the black one to the music. Also there in Matanzas I learned to make the ‘Acua’. I learned some other witchcraft tricks; I learned even to do how to conjure up ‘Belzebu and Maria Padilla and todos los diablillos de la pandilla’. When I get angry, I feel that I’m taken over by the Cuba that I lived in as a kid. Carlos instead of being bothered by my outbursts of bad temper found that they were sometimes accompanied by a sense of social justice. It was in those days that I had to make errands at the Veterans Administration; also Carlos lad some business there to do. We decided to go together to the V.A. whose offices were in Sepulveda Boulevard. We finished doing what we had to do there sooner than we thought. It was only three o’clock. From Sepulveda Boulevard to where we lived was rather far. Carlos hadn’t brought his book of notes to go to the library of U.C.L.A; and we hadn’t brought swimming trunks to go to the beach. So, what could we do? Suddenly it came to me an idea, and I told Carlos, “Listen, Carlos, my aunt Maria lives in Belle Air. Let’s go to visit her. She’s very agreeable”. Carlos thought for a minute and asked me, “¿Tu tía, Maria Mantilla?” “Yes”, I said. “Sí”, I said. Carlos continued, “I would like to meet her, you always talked to me with great respect for her. Yes, yes, let’s go. But how do you know that she’s in?” I answered, “I’m not going to call her up. I feel that we have to go without telling her even though this is not the polite way to visit anyone. Something tells me within me that I ought to go”. I started the car and drove to my aunt’s house. The maid let us into a small salon whose French windows looked over a terrace and a garden. One could see the sea far away. I noticed how my aunt was very thoughtful. It seemed that something bothered her. She welcomed us warmly. She was tall, slender, and very elegant. You could see that she had been very good looking in her younger days. Something in her eyes told me that she was very intelligent; they were deep and dark and made a beautiful contrast
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with her white skin and hair. She was a little distant. Some believed that she was proud. She looked at Carlos with interest and smiled at him. No doubt, she looked at his presence agreeably. Right away, she offered us Cuban coffee. Although, she was born in New York, she remained very Cuban. We spoke about several things, but I felt she had something in her mind bothering her. Suddenly, sternly she looked at me and said, “You know, the government of Cuba has officially invited me to go to Havana?” She made a pause and in a very asserted way, she told me, “They invited me because they are making a homage to my father. The truth is that my father was José Martí”. She said these words with determination. Very spontaneously, I answered, “Of course, you are Martí daughter”. She looked at me with surprise and asked, “But did you know it?” “Of course I did. The whole family is so proud of it. Imagine, that my Uncle Cesar had married Martí’s child. The family has spoken about it with pride. She made a gesture of surprise and at the same time of joy. Carlos, hearing this intimate conversation, very excitedly, said, “But what a great honor is to meet the daughter of Martí, one of my favorite thinkers”. I thought to myself, “How strange that this conversation took place in Carlos’ presence”. Aunt Mary began to talk about her father and Carlos was very interested in what she had to say about him. He became even more interested in her words as she told us that her Father had met and had become a good friend of Annie Besant in New York. Aunt Mary said, “I must She left a profound mark in me. I had the immense luck of having them talk about clairvoyance, telepathy, mesmerism, and how they both agreed that these phenomenon should be look upon with scientific eyes”. The conversation was interrupted when Caesar Romero, her son, who was an actor of certain prestige, came in. Then we talked about different things. The conversation kept being very agreeable. After we left aunt Mary, Carlos asked me, “Why didn’t you ever tell me that you were a relative of Martí?”
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I answered, “I am not a blood relative of Martí, I am a relative of my Aunt’s husband, Caesar, Senior”. My uncle Caesar had already died. As it happened so often, aunt Mary and cousin Caesar liked Carlos a lot. Particularly the actor enjoyed his conversation a great deal. So much they liked Carlos that he was invited to the annual Christmas Party that the Romeros gave. This was the only large party the Romeros gave during the year and it was assisted by many of the luminaries of the Hollywood of those days. We went first to the party and Carlos right away met his friend, Ms. Swanson; so, he remained talking to the group she was in. In those parties, I used to try to talk to and wait on as many people as I could, as I was part of the household. Usually, when I went to one of those parties, I used to remain to the very end of them, and I would stay to sleep at my Uncles. Around three thirty in the morning, the majority of the guests began to leave and there only remained a small group that seemed to be quite interested in their conversation. The group was made up of my Aunt Mary, Caesar, Tyrone Power, and Guilbert Roland and another star of previous days, Virginia Bruce. She was a very beautiful blonde who I heard was a good actress, but because of certain personal reasons she didn’t continue her stardom. “It is necessary to wake up in each individual the sparkle of the Divine and this is the prime duty of art”, Virginia Bruce said. Gilbert Roland replied, “I think in some portion the films are doing so”. Tyrone Power pointed out, “The worst thing is to lower the sublime and miraculous to ridiculous forms of cheap magic”. Virginia then said, “Each one of us should love the human race as one loves ones lovers, fathers and sons”. Gilbert Roland answered, “That would be the way to make somehow divine the human race”. Aunt Mary gave her opinion, “All the efforts would go to cleanse the way for the minds to think freely, this is the way to find the true morality and thus, reject the false one that is the one chains men. The superior aspects of the human being have to be
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educated”. Carlos said, “Perhaps we are only aware of part of us, by habit or laziness we see ourselves as we see ourselves; just like some kind of dolls that move all around with incomprehensible emotions and a few thoughts. For instance, look those pictures from the Renaissance that expel light all over. Look at the painting of ‘The Virgin of Guadalupe’, it is impossible to see where begins and where it ends. The brilliant sun that expels her body may be the way that human beings really are and that the painter captured it. Perhaps, these paintings that shine from the inside of their bodies is the way humans really look. The human being might be like a ball of fire, lightening, and colors besides the little body that seems to be the only thing that we are aware of”. The last guest left and if was customary I remained there to sleep in the guest room, this time accompanied by Carlos. My relationship with aunt Mary was quite particular. We never were very close to each other, but I had one of the most beautiful experiences of my life with her. It so happened that I left Los Angeles and United States to go to Europe. I hadn’t seen aunt Mary for four years. Not even in Christmas had I written her. I was living in Copenhagen in a pension on Vesterborgade St. After dinner as it was my custom, I lay on my bed around eight thirty in the evening to get up at seven thirty p.m. to go out and have a drink in some bar. That particular night, I lay down half asleep with open eyes, I saw aunt Mary enter the room wearing a black dress with a small green collar. She came near my bed and told me, “Goodbye boy”, and then she left the room the same way she entered it. I sat up and I felt immensely happy. I felt a sublime bliss in me. I walked to my desk and in my agenda I wrote what had taken place. Just about three weeks later, I got a letter from my sister in which she announced to me the death of aunt Mary, precisely, the day that I had come to my room to say goodbye. Carlos continued his friendship with aunt Mary until she died. She induced him to go to the Theosophical Society. She never belonged to that society, but she had been deeply impressed in her youth by the talks that she heard that took place between José Martí and Annie Besant. The young Mary was influenced by these conversations for the rest of her life. This way of thinking made her believe the purification of man from his
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errors was the only true liberty and this was achieved by the liberty of being able to think freely. The purity of man depends upon his liberty of thinking, and any institution or movement that interrupts it is ‘anti natura’. The real objective of man was to reach the plenitude and the only way to achieve it is by the freedom of thought. When purity enters thinking, the most occult of the soul is found and there is where the truth lies; it is the soul where God delighting himself in the purity of the soul of man was the influence of Santa Teresa of Avila on Aunt Mary. Also, she used to say after the famous Spanish Saint that when one is loaded with sadness one should look to the heavens and walk. The universe is order. Life is perfect. But one is not intelligent to see it as some ancient Greek put it. Aunt Mary looked for a new religion. All this was more or less, what Carlos heard from her. He also listened to her singing. Even at her old age, she sang beautifully. When she was young, she used to sing in public. She stopped singing when her husband died. I believe Carlos seriously listened to aunt Mary’s thoughts about life’s objective. A very strong friendship Carlos developed with Gilbert Roland and Antonio Moreno, an actor from silent movies, Carlos mingled with many different groups. For quite some time I did not see him very often although we lived in the very same place. My friend Fernando Montealegre, who was a fine painter, and was extremely important in the success of Hana and Barbera, called me one day to tell me that one of his friends from Costa Rica was in town. Don José Basileo Acuña, a Costa Rican, came to visit Fernando for some weeks, and he thought Carlos should meet the illustrious gentleman from Costa Rica. Don José Basileo Acuña belonged to the Liberal Catholic Church. He founded it in France. He studied psychology in France before the First World War. He belonged to the Theosophical Society in England. He was a good friend of Krishna Murti. Sometime or another they were even roommates. Mr. Acuña was a member of the Red Cross during the First World War, in France. This country gave him a medal of honor after the war. He wrote poetry and a great number of essays on theosophical subjects in English, Spanish, and French. His translation of Shakespeare’s Sonnets into Spanish is simply magnificent.
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I knew him only by name. I accepted Fernando Montealegre’s invitation, because I thought it would be interesting for Carlos to meet him. Personally, I was not very enthusiastic about going to meet the gentlemen; I always had felt inept in front of notable people. As Carlos was always a friend of mine, I never saw him as an outstanding person. Neither my admiration for him nor his fame intervened in our friendship. For me Carlos was only Carlos. I told Carlos about Fernando’s invitation. He not only liked the temperamental and eccentric Fernando but also admired his painting. I didn’t speak very much with don Basileo, but Carlos did, and they established a good friendship. Some months later after Don Basileo had left Los Angeles, Carlos spoke about the interest he had for the Costa Rican intellectual. Carlos then told me, “In all theories one finds something that is important. I have met very intelligent persons with fabulous ideas, but remain just as theories. What I want is to see the theories put into practice; I don’t want just words”. I answered him, “Don Marcelo Ocaña does not only put into practice what he knows but also induces others to enter in other planes of consciousness. When we went to that magical boulevard, I’m sure he guides us to that different plane, I’m sure of it”. “Yes, yes, you are right”. Then Carlos went on, “But I want more than just feel and see other levels of consciousness; I want to learn, I want to be taught to do so. It’s not a matter that I’m transported by someone else to a street to a Los Angeles in another plane; what I want is to know how to do it without a guide. Yes, what I want is a master that will teach me to do so”. Then I asked him, “What is Don Marcelo?” Carlos answered, “Not everyone can be a guide, a teacher. Don Marcelo is a magician. He has great knowledge of other realities, but he is not meant to be a teacher. To be a guide, to be a teacher, one has to have the gift to do so. Each one has his own. Don Marcelo is gifted in several ways and one of them is that he can transport a person to other realities that are quite invisible to those in this plane. These realities that he can transport you to are infinitely more real than the one we live in now. For instance, the gentleman I met at Fernando’s, Mr. Acuña explained to me something that
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I had just a glimpse of thought about. He made it very concrete to me what had been latent in me. Yes, he explained to me something that clarified a bunch to things to me. Look, all the people of the sciences, the encyclopedists of all times were just screwed up old men, who lived exclusively within the five senses. They were incapable and are incapable of seeing anything beyond this, the five senses. They are literally possessed by the five senses. They are actually junkies of the five senses. They’re no different from those possessed by the Bible. One is possessed by one thing and another by another. But it comes down to the same thing. They are just junkies. These goddamn junkies of the five senses have caused the limitations of the so-called civilized society. Don José Basileo, for instance, is a psychologist of the soul, of that divine spark within us. But most of the psychiatrists and psychologists have their job of fitting everybody into the rules and regulations of the society. They have for goal to set every individual into the society whether this is right or wrong. Even reason if manipulated, by the five senses, and there are formulas, patterns that are more or less the same; its something like in music they call variations on a theme. The only them is the fucking five senses. Politics is one more variation on the same theme. It has several themes in other words variations on the theme, like Marxism, Communism, Theocracy Aristocracy, and of course Democracy. All of them have for goal not to let anyone go beyond the five senses. If you do it, you either wind up in jail or in the insane asylum. That theology and religion go beyond the five senses is not true, now the miracles are scrutinized by the so-called scientists, who are called to do so by the heads of religion. Nowadays the prophets, in order not to be called insane have to prophesy their prophecy within the realm of the five senses. Now, art sometimes is capable of escaping the five senses and its then when it becomes sublime. It is sublime because it transcended the five senses. But most of the artists are watched constantly by the inquisition of the five senses, and this is the worst of inquisitions”. I answered him, “You have given me a very good sermon. I will never forget it”. Carlos continued, “I just don’t know why I like you to hear me. Most people who listen to me simply get bored and don’t listen to me. But you are somehow different. You really are strange. I don’t know what you are but sometime I will find out and I will tell
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you. I went on by asking him, “Well everything is very interesting, but tell me where is it that Don Basileo comes in?” Carlos told me, “Don Basileo made me see very clearly that this world and particularly the Western World is totally determined by the unique formula of the five senses and worse the world worsens as the twentieth century advances. The nineteenth century, the famous century called by many ‘el silo de las luces’. It was in that century elevated the five senses to be the only god. I tell you, the worst of Don Basileo made me feel what I was suspicious of very clearly. He made me see quite clearly the screwed up psychology that I had studied for years. I felt that something was always wrong with it, but I couldn’t see what was the wrong in what I was taught. It was simply to tie up well those who wanted to live a life beyond this particular reality. So, one thing is to sin in a communistic society and another thing is to sin in a democracy, because you have to consider that what is a sin in communism might be a virtue in democracy. Don Basileo taught me the real psychology. The truth is that after everything goes much further than the five senses. I tell you for me psychology is just a sham; I’m transferring to anthropology, because even though, it is a science that doesn’t go any further than the five senses, at least, it doesn’t deny the excellence of the diverse cultures. Studying it one can find different ways that things can be made, and how the human being needs the rituals, and there are unexplainable by the five senses. Any religion or any ethical system, which may be the masonry, Buddhism or the Roman Church, all of them have rituals. Look at the democratic and republican parties, they are packed with rituals. Of course, these are accepted by the five senses. And any ritual is an effort to reach possibilities beyond the five senses. All movements have accepted them in a hypocritical manner. You see, the esoteric is only taken seriously by established movements, and when one of these is not part of the establishment it is called a sham or witchcraft. Don Basileo has many things that are quite clear to him. Put I don’t understand his respect for the ones that have achievements within the five senses only. Carlos’ attitude changed quite a bit. He felt as if time was escaping him. He expressed that he was looking for something that he didn’t know what it was.
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Once he said to me, “I an backed with knowledge that I gather from lots of illustrious people. I’m saturated with impressive opinions and interesting theories. But I am looking for action; I am frustrated because I don’t act. My lack of action enervates me”. It didn’t help him at all that Don Marcelo assured him that sooner or later his teacher, his guide would appear in his way. Personally, I did not quite understand what was a guide or a master, so I couldn’t help him at all, as I just didn’t know what he was looking for. I just could hear him talk, and this made me quite vital. His dynamic fluid of words made me vital; so for me it was something very dear to hear him chat. It made me feel good. I was not in the very least interested in the esoteric, but I was sort of impressed by the parapsychological phenomena, but I didn’t look for answers. I was content with just seeing them happen. In those days, I saw Lloyd Perry again, whom I hadn’t seen for quite some time. Lloyd spoke to me about Huxley and his book ‘Doors of Perception’. He also told me how one could get by mail ‘Peyote’. There had been several ads in the Spanish papers about the sale of ‘Peyote’. That same day that I was talking to Lloyd, I met a young doctor who was interested in the effects of ‘Peyote’. According to Lloyd, it was some kind of fruit or something of the sort that came from certain cactuses that grew in Mexico. And which had been used by the Mexican Indians since for their rituals since antiquity. I became very interested in it, because it was explained to me that it opened the perception of the brain and its surroundings. The young doctor, who was looking for someone to experiment with, thought I could be the right subject. It turned out that I took ‘Peyote’, and indeed it produced in me a perception of my surroundings that horrified me. It was about eight o’clock and I was on the balcony of Lloyds house that was adorned with , when I began to understand that flowers that grew there were not just flowers. They hadn’t changed shape, but I felt the consciousness in them. And what they communicated to me was so impacting that I didn’t wish to see what was around me. I closed my eyes to put an end to it. To my great horror, I continued seeing with my
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eyes closed. Precisely this last experience was the one that interested Carlos. When I told him about it he said to me, “You mean to say that you saw with closed eyes? That’s what was important to your experience. It was a great triumph. Just imagine you were able to see with the eyes of another part of your conscience, which was not your body. You saw with another part of your being”. I never again experimented with ‘Peyote’ or any other hallucinogen. Carlos felt I should let myself open more to my powers. According to him, I had a gift of mediumship. I refused the idea and it was not until I was fifty years old that I accepted that I was able to channel. In those days, we met Justine, a young opera singer who went to a spiritualist group. Although she sang beautifully, she never triumphed. But, her friend that I hardly knew, Marilyn Horne, who also studied at U.S.C. in the department of opera, succeeded in her career. She was guided by Bob Barness. She indeed paid heed to what the entities had to say. In that group a young man whose name was Freddy was the one who channeled. He also studied finance in the same university. Nowadays he is a very important man in Wall Street. These séances with Freddy had stop, because he was on his way to finish his Ph.D. and had little time. This drove s to meet an elderly lady, who every two weeks held a session in her home. Only by invitation one could go to these meetings. It was through Maria Kazans a new member of the group, that we got to know Madam Rose, the medium. Maria Kazans was quite unique in her appearance; she used to dress quite strangely for those days. She used to wear black leotards and tights, just like the ones the ballerinas wore. She put around her waist tweed skirts, which she varied every day. On cold days or evenings she wore a beautiful white and black ‘poncho’, which a boyfriend of hers had brought her from Colombia, his native land. Maria had a very good friendship with Madam Rose. Freddy and Madam Rose were not the only channelers that she knew. She had found out that mediums spoke about things that they couldn’t possibly know. The only logical reason that she found for this was the theory of the collective subconscious mind of Jung. She met Carlos at Rose’s and began a friendship, which looked totally intellectual, but some other times it
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had a tint of a love affair. Carlos began to accompany her on her long walks. When I used to see Carlos and Maria talking together, their conversation seemed to be so intensive that I felt I had no place with them. The group of persons that attended Rose’s séances was about fourteen. Among these people were psychologists, philosophers, and even economists. The economists usually arrived when Freddy was the channeler. I attended few sessions. I was not very interested in this sort of thing, although since I was very young I had been told that I had the gift of mediumship. Many years passed without my contacting Carlos, but we really began again our close friendship when we met once again in Los Angeles in the late seventies, and even more so our conversations became more often and deep once that he visited me twice in Costa Rica. We spoke about so many different things. One day I spoke to him about my progressions into the future when I was in trance. Carlos became very interested in this. He had never thought, about it but once that he saw the phenomena, that not even Jung could explain I through hypnosis had channeled and contacted beings that lived in a future, and that for them I and the persons in the séance were already dead. ‘La Santeria’ also did interest him a great deal. Once in New York I felt a sort of existential pain that filled me with an amorphous fear. Suddenly, I felt that time passed and passed as a movie that you couldn’t stop. I couldn’t even capture life for a moment. This happened to me after I got out of the army. It was as if everything occurred and nothing happened. Everything became like a remembrance made up of putty that as soon had taken a form it went into a different shape. The terrible movement of time slashed me from top to bottom. I wouldn’t go to the veterans’ hospital. I knew that they couldn’t do anything for me. What I felt was beyond psychiatry and psychology. In those days I met a Cuban soldier, friend of mine. He noticed immediately how depressed I was and with that frankness so Cuban said, “Chico, you look bad”. I opened myself to him and I told him everything that I felt. Then, he said energically, “You are despossed of your own self. Your ‘I’ has been taken away from you. Somewhere you lost it. But, you will find it one again in the house of my ‘madrina’, doña Hortensia. The thing was that I wound up in doña Hortensia’s house who had sons in the army. I was explained
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that in the Cuban ‘Santeria’, ‘La Madrina’ was a sort of priestess, something like a high priestess. Doña Hortensia kindly welcomed me and said, “My sons are in the army just in the same place where you were. In those places of death the bad blood makes the young men kill. The avarice of some idiot old men who have a foot in the tomb already are the ones that produce these massacres in the world. I know what has happened to you. Carlos left you and we must call him again so he enters you and realizes that you own the time and not otherwise. You realize that you own time, that time is yours”. Then, she took me to a chapel in the house. There I saw the image that looked like the Nazarene, but it turned out to be St. Lazarus. In the center altar I recognized the image of Christ resurrected, all in white; once again I was mistaken, it was St. Lazarus resurrected. The ritual began. They, because there were several people doing it, brought down the dead. I don’t know what this means, also several danced in circle around me, some feet in a sort of trance. This means that the saint came into those who were lying on the floor. The ‘madrina’ took me by the hand, and she placed me standing up in the middle of the people dancing in a circle. Some of them came near me, but didn’t’ touch me, instead, with their hands made gestures as if they were taking away something invisible that was covering my whole body. I stood there for a long time. I felt something was taking place in me, but I couldn’t explain what it was. The ceremony had lasted hours and it was finished around two o’clock in the morning. I fell asleep on one of the benches and when I woke up it was daytime, I had recovered my own self. Carlos was in me again. Since then that terrible anguish never came back to me”. Carlos continued, “You know, when I felt myself cured, I couldn’t explain what happened to me. The fact is I was well. Then it was I thought, of taking psychology, because I thought that whatever that ritual made on me could be a method that could be included in the science of psychology; later, I understood that this sort of things take place in a different level of existence”. Carlos’ interest in Buddhism and other religions began when the department of television of U.S.C. began to make a series on the religions of the world. William Holden was the MC. To the university came erudites of the religions of all the world. There were representatives from the best-known religions as well as from less known ones. For
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quite some time the Campus became saturated with the different viewpoints of different religions that told of their triumphs and failures and their histories. In those days, I was so busy it the Oedipus Rex Cafe that it was difficult for me to attend the many conferences given on the subject. Although witchcraft was not among the representative groups, there was mucho interest on the campus in this subject. I only could go to some events of the Buddhists, as this ethic interested me a lot. When I was a soldier I had gone into a Buddhist temple in Osaka, which produced in me peace and tranquility that I hadn’t felt in other religious houses. Carlos was very interested in Buddhism. One day, Carlos remained in the cafe after hours. I noticed him more hyperactive than usual. I told him, “Perhaps now with all these religious thoughts around, you might encounter what you are looking for”. He answered me, “On the contrary, Byron all this concentration of religions has deepened my search. To tell you the truth, for me they are all sects, some wealthy, some poor, some wiser, others very fanatic, but the fact is that they are all sects”. I asked him, “What do you mean by a sect?” He answered me, “There is a prototype of everything. Just like what they call the basic record from which all the other records are made. But none is exactly like the original one. The same thing happens with everything. Religions are the same thing. There is a prototype with its ethic that comes from some sort of spiritual experience that somebody had. This experience could have been good, evil, or just so, so. But, be as it may, the concept in itself is abstract, invisible, but is the absolute truth. This truth is the mold for all the religions that come from it, but it so happens that when it materializes it; becomes just a sect.
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CHAPTER IV
“And what about the Oedipus Rex?” “I acquired the Oedipus Rex Cafe in a very unexpected manner”. “I had met in the university Leo who was an extremely tall black man from Mozambique. He looked like a Zulu. He was always very well dressed with a tie, cuff links and the rest, something that was not usual to see around the campus. His eye glasses were particularly striking because their solid gold frames that was real antiquities. He spoke many languages, but he was not very talkative. The rumor was that he was of the nobility of Mozambique. Apparently he was the heir to the throne of that country if it went back to a system of royalty. Also, many said that he cured many of his student friends simply by giving them a glass of water on which he had sang some mystical songs in an African language; once he finished his singing, he looked up to heaven and gave the water to the sick. I had met him in a class of art history that we took together with the famous historian Hauser. Mr. Hauser finished his summer course talking about the seventh art. Leo said, “There in celluloid is the mystery of life”. It was, precisely, in this last class that Leo, and Carlos established a friendship. Although Carlos was not taking the course, he assisted whenever, he could, because of his admiration for Mr. Hauser. Later on, Carlos told me that he often saw Leo. One day in the cafeteria aid to me, “Leo is a very interesting guy. He knows words and passes that have great power. He actually can change the composition of water. How he does it! I have no idea. But, Leo changes common water into a substance that is curative”. He thought for a minute then he went on saying, “And if it were true that words have the power to change the elements, then those Old Christian Churches might have been on the right road. Also in India some medicate the waters. Also there they use a liquid, which they call ‘soma’ on which they pray to change it into some holy liquid”. He stood up, something that he did very rapidly and. he said, “I’m going to exposition Park for a walk”. It should be pointed out here that some years ago a Japanese photographer
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photographed water before it had been blessed and after being blessed, and it actually had suffered a molecular change. This story about curative water for me was not new; that same day in the evening at the pension, I told him how I had heard from my grandmother on my mother’s side who had attended a school for young ladies led by nuns, in the city of Cartago, the old capitol of Costa Rica, that the Mother Superior whose name was Encarnación used to cure the pupils giving them a glass of water over which she had said some prayers, then she blew in it. Mother Encarnación not only cured the students, but many of the people of Cartago. My grandmother also testified that the nun had cured an English lady from a cancer on her face. Mother Encarnación had been beatified and is on her way to sainthood. When Carlos heard all of this he said, “This is tremendous! It might very well be that everything is made up of one thing in different states of vibration; for instance, everything might be energy. Perhaps everything is energy, but it might be that behind it there is something else, and something else, and. so on, and so on. But, we must work with what we have on hand, while we can understand what energy really is. Energy is the fluid of life because the only thing that exists is life. It’s more or less the idea of Plato that everything has its counterpoint: cold, heat, hard, soft and, then life and death. And that one comes from the other. It might be that the only thing that exists is life, life in different states and levels. Somewhere, Christ said something that water was life, or the water of life. This statement says a lot and is followed by that parable “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life”. In other words, water is life itself. Do you realize, Trome, that you are all energy? Then you are all energy. Your own volition is just energy. You can do anything you want”. I thought for a second and I said, “That sounds to me like Einstein’s Theory”. Carlos asserted, ”Not at all, it goes much further then Einstein’s Theory. The will is energy. This is the core of the whole thing”. I stood up and told him, “I ate last time at five p.m. I’m hungry; I’m going to Currie’s to eat. Do you want to come along?” Carlos said, “No, I better see you tomorrow. Now I have to finish some ceramics I
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‘ m doing”. I decided not to take the car to walk the eight blocks from where I lived to Currie’s. It was a fresh night, and there was a pleasant breeze. I felt well. Although, I was alone, I felt the wind was accompanying me. There were many people at Currie’s, and most of them were students. Without realizing it I sat next to Leo. He looked to me and greeted me. Some minutes passed before he said to me, “I have problems, the two girls that work for me at the ‘Oedipus’ just told me that they were heading to New York tomorrow”. I only had been on to Leo’s Place because, I found the ambience there quite Elian to me. I didn’t find the people there interesting. I didn’t even look at the decoration of the place. I turned to him and said, “Is it difficult to get waitresses?” Leo answered me, “The matter is much more complicated, those two girls had been friends of mine for quite some time, and I put up the cafe so they could work in it. They wanted to manage a coffee shop. Frankly, I don’t know very much about the business. Now, I just don’t know what to do. If’ I just close it I’m losing quite a bit of business.
I really have to have it plan for some months. Spontaneously, I told him, “I
could help you in the eves”. He looked quite surprised. I continued, “I worked for quite some time in a soda on Sunset Boulevard and Gardner. That was in my high school days”. Leo smiled and said to me, “Let’s go, so you can see the place”. This was the second time I was in the Oedipus Rex and I had a completely different conception of the place from the first time I had been there red It looked to me as a very special local. The walls were covered with red gunnysack material. It was a, large place and next to the right hand wall there were chairs and tables made of dark wood just like the bar. There was a line soft of round lamps pegged to the walls that gave a soft rosy light which illuminated the salon. On the left sidewall the same lamps appeared but they had bluish illumination. Somehow this lighting combination enchanted the looks of the faces. The large window that overlooked the street had the
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figure of Oedipus Rex in yellow and blue neon that was not very obvious from the inside because of a thick golden curtain that hung behind it covering the whole window. The ceiling was painted bluish and there were stars that very discreetly gave a glow. The dark wooden bar was divided into three sections, the first served to put food on, the second had the hot table, where there were the different sandwich fillings, and finally there was the section where was the section where the sound equipment stood. The Oedipus Rex became an ‘atemporis’ spot and it was made so by the clientele. This is the reason why this section of this writing has not a chronological sequence: The readers, the writer, and the characters have entered a different plane. At the Oedipus Rex, people talked equally of the visible as well as the invisible. But let me go back on to how I got to own this cafe. First I just worked with Leo and I managed the place quite easily. The clients that Leo and the girls had fostered where rapidly replaced. The pillars of the cafe became Neneca Maduro, Maria Kazans, Madge Moore, and Anne Jefferson. Each one on her own came by sometime after nine o’clock, which was the hour the Oedipus Rex it opened. It closed at two a.m., but usually some remained in after the doors were shut, while I was fixing up the joint and making accounts. After all left, I used to go home and sleep until midday when I woke up to get ready to go to the cinema department where I was studying. Leo first just rented the place to me. Afterward, as I was doing very well, I bought it from him. One night a beautiful plump girl showed up carrying a guitar. She gave a special atmosphere to the place, so she continued coming to the café. At the end of the week, the clients had changed quite a bit; it became an ambience quite intellectual and somehow a bit glamorous. As Leo really didn’t care for the Oedipus Rex, he first rented it to me. I fixed it so I would take all my classes from two p.m. to eight p.m. After two months, Leo sold me the cafe in payments. It ran quite well under my management. The Oedipus Rex was on Jefferson near Hoover. After the operas, other cultural events at the Shrine Auditorium, because of its nearness to the theatre, quite a few people came to it; but the atmosphere of the coffee house most important was the
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permanent clientele that forged it. Particularly, those that remained after hours in the shop created a milieu that seemed to permeate the whole building. It was precisely in those late hours that in the conversations came up those themes that Carlos found fascinating. Carlos took part of the ideas of the speakers and expressed what he found fitting. When he said “vale”, it meant that he was agreeing with part of what was being said; on the other hand when he said, “I buy it”, he meant that he completely agreed with the statement. Usually he came late. And he did so quietly so that he wouldn’t be noticed or because he didn’t want to bother the conversations that were going on or those tables that were listening to some music. It became the custom in the shop that the clients brought their own music. Sometimes there were people that heard with great interest the baroque or the avant-garde notes of Chambourg. But it seemed that the climax of every night’s events took place after the doors were shut. As I was so busy in the business I couldn’t pay heed to what was going on. I wasn’t running the place alone, three good friends of mine helped me out. They were Oriel Garcia, who was a painter that was working for his master’s degree, Arturo Aguilar, who was devoted to learning and writing poetry, and Eric Ducreu who was in the Drama Department. Each one came to help me out twice a week. And they shared thirty five percent of the profits of the particular night. One day, one of the frequent clients, Dick Scriber, said to me, “You haven’t gone out in two months. You are working all the time. Let’s go to the beach or some swimming pool tomorrow, it will do you good”. Although, I swam every day at the University’s swimming pool, I went along with Scriber’s idea. That same night, Caroline Parsons showed up and told me, Byron, if you are not doing anything tomorrow afternoon, come over to my house. I’m going to have some interesting guests from South America. I really would like you to meet them”. I answered her, “Thank you Caroline but tomorrow I’m going to the beach with Dick Scriber”. She made a strange gesture and said to me, “Oh God!”
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I thought to myself, “What in the world did Caroline mean?” Next day Dick picked me up and we went to the nearby swimming pool at Exposition Park. I don’t know what happened but a brawl broke out, and Dick was in a fight with someone; as a result of this, we all were thrown out of the joint. It was the first time that something like this happened to me. We jumped into the oar and headed to Malibu. I comfortably lay on the beach on the sand and began to drowse. I hadn’t passed fifteen minutes of enjoying the Californian sun when a child called me. I opened my eyes and the kid threw a bunch of sand in them. It was horrible! I dried myself and Dick helped me to pick out some of the sand from my eyes. I felt my eyes burning. I told Dick I was going for something to drink in the Theda Bara Soda Restaurant. The lovely waitress, who was waiting on us slipped and threw all the coffee on Dick. For me this was the end of the party. In the evening at the Cafe Carlos arrived and, when he approached me he said, “What in the world happened to your eyes?” I told him the whole story of that day’s happenings and he laughed and said to me, “Don’t you know that Dick is prone to calamities? He doesn’t even know it, but all the tremendous energy that he has not knowingly leads to produce accidents”. Then Caroline approached us and she laughed and said, “When Dick went to the monastery to become a Trappist Monk, he was thrown out because he somehow was responsible for ten fires in the monastery”. I was surprised at what I heard and Carlos went on saying, “The Ancient Greeks knew about people who were accident prone without being conscious of it. They sometimes produced disasters. Dick, in the American folklore is something like Calamity Jane. It’s a matter of how one handles the energy. We are all energy. Most people use only a part of it, but when desires of reaching out to higher planes, it must be very well guided; otherwise, it goes astray and can do terrible harm. This is the case of Dick; somehow his desire to be a monk, something so noble did not channel it in a harmonious manner”. I asked Carlos, “Can one help him?” Carlos replied, “I don’t know very much about this matter. I heard that in the
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northern part of Mexico, the Indians have a sort of small room next to a river made up of stones. They put in it the person that is ill and set fires against the walls of the little room and on top of it, while the heat goes on, they sing some special chants. I mean by the ones that cure. They do this for some hours and, then very suddenly, they take out of the room and throw the patient into the river, and put him down on the soil to sleep inside a tent; then three women and two men take care of the person asleep. Supposedly, when the person wakes up, he or she is cured. Then, Caroline said, “I know that in a lovely city in Morocco, whose name is Tetuan, many Europeans and Americans go through a certain place in that town when they are psychologically sick. From there, they are taken to mount Atlas, and there they sit the patient in the open, and they begin to beat drums varying the rhythm. Each rhythm is accompanied by different incense. They throw the smoke of the incense on the face of the patient. This goes on until the person falls into a profound sleep, which can last for hours. I understand that they also put him in a tent on the floor, just as Carlos said. There the patient is taken by some people. And, it is said that when the person wakes up his physic or spiritual malady has been removed. By the way, in that culture, they don’t recognize such illnesses as madness as in the occident. It is curious that the concept of madness was born in the western world, and is even stranger that in Greek tragedy never portrays a mad person. Cassandra not mad, she is a seer, almost a holy person. And thus, the conversations went on always with themes that were rare but nevertheless important. Years later, I made a trip to Greece when I was in Karien, the capital of Athos; I went to see in the cathedral the frescos, that had been painted by the professor of Greco. Afterwards, I went to sit on the stairs of the portico to wait for my travel companion Ronald Steinhardt. It was the end of spring, a young blond fellow, whom I didn’t know who he was came to greet me. He looked at me smilingly and said, “Don’t you remember me? I am Conrad Rooks. I answered him, “I don’t recognize you. The last time I saw you in Spain about four years ago, you were about forty years old now you look about twenty-five.
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Conrad laughed and told me, “I just went to a cure in Swiss, here they put me to sleep for thirty days. When I woke up, all the weight was gone as well as, my swollenness wrinkles and the rest. And here I am, babe, a completely new guy”. Suddenly, I heard behind me some one who said, “Hello, Trome”. I turned around and Carlos was standing there behind me. “What a surprise!” said joyfully. I answered, “This is no surprise at all. It is quite natural that we should meet in Mount Athos, Then Ronald, Conrad, Carlos, and I began to walk toward Ivrion Monastery. In those days there was no electricity and least of all cars in Mount Athos. So there was no choice, but to walk to the monastery we all wanted to visit. The monasteries use to give hospitality for one night to the visitors. This meant a bunk, meals, and a good glass of oozo, Greek liquor. During the long walk towards Ivrion, Conrad recited long parts of his poem ‘Chapaquea’ in which expressed his admiration for the Indians of that region and the reservation in South Hampton. They maintained a relationship with nature that the European white man had lost. This had caused an emotional chaos, which was a product of the abuse of drugs according to him. Carlos, who was so interested in the American Indian, heard the poet with great interests. Of course, the beautiful nature of Athos embellished the words of Conrad. The vital breeze of the Aegean Sea permeated the ambience with a sort of ecstasies. Carlos told Conrad, “Your poem is damned good. Why don’t you make a film of it?” Conrad, quite surprised answered, “You read my mind. It has been my dream, to make it in a films”. Carlos continued, “The energy you have around you tells very much of your wishes”. Conrad enthusiastically added, “Yes, indeed, I should like to make a film out of it”. We went on walking. It was sunset, and we had to arrive to the monastery before
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six o’clock because at this hour close it, as it had been the custom for centuries to keep away the pirates. At the monastery there were men from all over the world visiting it. The place was permeated by a sort of musical silence. The Byzantine monks, elegantly dressed, roamed around greeting the visitors with a cordial distance. They were very hospital to the visitors, which were all males. After we were shown to our respective bunks in a large hall, we went to a terrace to look at the magnificent site of the sea and mountains. All the men that were there silently spoke to each other. After a moment silence, Carlos turned around towards Conrad and said, “There is absolutely nothing that holds you from making the picture, you certainly got the money”. Conrad quite surprised, answered, “How do you know that?” Carlos replied, “I can see you got money by your general attitude”. Conrad went on saying, “That’s true, but I have no idea of how to make a movie”. Then, Carlos stated, “You have only to worry about being the director of the picture”. As for all the technicalities, you can hire people to do them. To learn how to direct the movie you must see all the classics of the seventh art. This you can do at the ‘Cinematique’ in Paris, which is your city the city that moves you so much. Conrad remained thoughtful for a while and then he said, as if he were confessing a secret, “I want to make the film based on Herman Hess’ ‘Siddhartha’”. Then, Carlos added to the conversation, “But don’t you forget that you must make ‘Chapaquea’ first”. At Athos there are nineteen monasteries that can be seen in the same number of days. The walks are quite long between monastery and monastery. In the peninsula of Athos the only clock is the highest point of the mount. When the sun shows at this peak in the morning for the priests there it’s midday, and when the light disappears from it, it’s midnight. Carlos, Conrad, Ronald, and myself visited six of the nineteen monasteries. Most of the conversation between Carlos and Conrad was about Hess’ ‘Siddhartha’ and the ethic and philosophy of Buddhism. It seemed strange to me that at Athos, a place devoted to Christ, a film about Buddha was being discussed; then, I thought to myself,
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“Whatever is sacred is fitting to be spoken about in any sacred land”. Then, it came to my mind once when I was a kid I asked my Catholic grandmother if those who were not catholic could not go to heaven. She answered me, “My son, each one saves himself in his own religion”. Early in the morning when the sun was very strong, we entered a church of a monastery, and we were quite blinded by the light. We entered the temple and it seemed to be totally dark but as soon as our eyes got accustomed little by little, the icons appeared in different colors of gold. It was really a hallucinating experience. All this happened the last day Ronald and I were staying in Athos because we had to go back to Athens. Carlos and Conrad continued visiting the rest of the monasteries. The afternoon breeze was extremely pleasant. We four sat to talk around a stone table on the woods. With that very special hospitality of the Greeks, a monk brought us a large jar of lemonade with glasses. He told us something in Greek, but we couldn’t understand. We thanked him in the best possible manner. Then, he showed us some medals of the Madonna and Christ that hung from a rich golden chain his neck. He continued explaining something in Greek, but we couldn’t understand. The monk left and Carlos continued saying, “This place here is a world in its own. And this world here has existed for over a millennium. It’s a very strange world, because it takes in consideration only a half of the human beings, as they leave out women. The legend said that the last female in Athos was the Virgin Mary, also it is said that a Byzantine princess who was in a shipwreck took refuge here for a couple of hours. I was
curious to see this world. Something special must be here, and there is! We have
been witness of the magnificent art that exists only here. It’s a place that never suffered any wars, and thus there aren’t any war ruins mere here. Here we live as people did centuries and centuries ago. It seems that everything remains intact it was. We have the illusion that we live in one world in this globe, but the truth is that there are many forms of society within it”. Then, Conrad said, “There are many mysteries here. I lived many times here in Greece and many mysterious things have been said to me. I met Robert Graves at
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Charles Brennan’s home in Churriana, Malaga. You, Byron, also know Charles”. I answered, “Sure, I do also I met Gamel, his North American wife. She came from the Carolinas”. Conrad continued, “Graves used to say that here in Athos great knowledge was kept about the Great White Mother. She was the great goddess until the male god took over. This was one of the reasons for my coming here, perhaps these monks are the guardians of the knowledge secretly hidden of the period of the Great White Mother”. Carlos interrupted by saying, “It might be that brought me here was the tremendous force of the Great White Goddess”. Suddenly, I remembered Dick Scriber, which was completely out of context. I said, “Carlos, what ever happened to Dick Scriber?” As if we had been talking about him, Carlos answered me, “Well, nowadays Dick is quite well. He became a successful businessman, and became wealthy. He made some connections with people who make suits custom made. He takes the measurements of the clients in Los Angeles, and sends the orders to Hong Kong. It’s really a fine business”. Sort of surprised I asked, “How did all this happened. Dick was accident prone, and he wanted to become a monk”. Carlos laughed and said, “He was all screwed up because his energy was dispersed. When he was able to find someone to put all of his energy in one ray, he changed for the good”. With curiosity I inquired, “It must have been a very good psychiatrist or psychologist the one who cured him”. Carlos said, “He didn’t see any psychiatrist or psychologist. He went to a Cuban lady and he went through a treatment called ‘La Cubana’”. I asked, “What is this treatment called ‘La Cubana’?” Conrad with great curiosity said, “What in the world is ‘La Cubana’?” As it was quite customary with Carlos, before he explained something, he began to rub his hands together. Then, he began to explain, to Conrad, Ronald, and myself, “Maria Kazans, a good friend of Byron and myself, took him to a Cuban healer. Maria
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had become very interested in the nonconventional medicine. She became acquainted with this Cuban woman who lived around Highland and Santa Monica Boulevard. This Cuban healer, whose name was Carmita, only, treated men. She only cured males. Dick had become a friend of Maria at the Oedipus Rex a cafe that Byron had opened. By the way, in this cafe many interesting things happened, and the clients spoke about everything possible. When Maria found out about Dick’s problem, she thought the proper thing to do was to take him to Carmita and, indeed, she really fixed up Dick, he really changed. He unified his energy and directed it to positive things. When this took place, Dick became aware of what he really wanted, and he set himself to reach his goals, and so, he did. Conrad, quite interested, inquired, “And what is this ritual or whatever you might call of ‘La Cubana’”. Carlos, talking to all of us, explained, “The power that women have in their busts is enormous, and for one reason or another they stopped using it. In other words, females have tremendous power in their teats, yes in their teats. They are really magical; they make us dream of things that after we dream, they become real. They are life in themselves that is why we all want to lay our heads over them. To sleep in the bust of a woman is delicious. From the teats comes our first nourishment. They are vital energy. They possess the force of creativity. And that is why they have curative powers. They cure the souls and therefore the bodies too. Carmita, the Cuban lady, uses her teats to straighten up the twisted energies of males. This cure is as old as humanity. This knowledge was partially lost by deformed cultures and religious insanities. The healing consists in putting the penis between the teats and without touching it, she manipulates it. It is a sacred act. All that cures the soul is sacred and this was the way that Dick Scriber put together his energies and directed them to whatever he really wanted to achieve”. So this was the way that pick found his path in this world, and somehow everything started at the Oedipus Rex. By this time I had already sold the café. I did so to devote myself to the school of cinema. I left Los Angeles; I wasn’t witness of Dick’s good luck.
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My stay in Athos was coming to end that morning; I was taking a boat out of the peninsula of Athos to a nearby port, from where I would take a bus to Athens. Ronald and I left together, leaving Carlos and Conrad to sea the rest of the monasteries. Before we left we sat at a cafe on the pier with Carlos and Conrad. Conrad asked Carlos, “I have been thinking over what you said about the power that the bust of women have”. Carlos answered, “The teats of women must be put together to reach the great energy they have. Machismo is a sort of sickness that a great number of men, all over the world have. I feel that ‘machistas’ feel insecure in front of women because they are the font of procreation. They put barriers on women, so, that most of them have forgotten their own powers. As they haven’t used them for millenniums their powerful energy in their teats transformed them into breast cancer. Women must liberate their energies to balance the planet and then men will only be secure when they pay heed to women’s intuition. The male insecurity derives from the collective subconscious mind, as Jung would put it. You see, males always doubt their paternity”. Conrad continued, “What do you have to say, Carlos, about the great tranquility that you find in this place where there are not women?” Carlos laughed loudly and answered, “Listen, Conrad, you are quite mistaken, what you feel here is lack of energy that you are mistaking are mistaking for peace and tranquility. Here the vital energy is practically zero, which is neither harmonious nor tranquil; it is more like a catatonic state. It’s interesting to experience it. But, the true serenity is reached when one is vitalized, and that can only happen when men and women are together coordinating both energies”. Ronald and I had to say goodbye because the sirens of the boat called us. Just, as Dick encountered at the ‘Oedipus’ the path for his success, others too. The most active at the Oedipus Rex were: Maria Kazans, Neneca Maduro, Anne Jefferson, and Madge Moore. Each one had a favorite time. For instance: Maria Kazans was death; her theories on the matter were very interesting, but Carlos only accepted part of them. Mostly he heard what she had to say and then he would give her his verdict. Maria’s opinion about it was very clear and sometimes very convincing and very
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coherent; so much so, that she decided to write a small essay on death to give to her friends and talk about it. Neneca and Anne followed the example of Maria and they wrote their own essays. Neneca’s theme was sex, while Anne’s was the disappearance of the Homo sapiens. I did not keep the small essays, but I remembered quite clearly what they had to say, so I decided to put together what I remembered about them and what Carlos had to say about them. Madge did not write any essay, but her theory was that the Roman Empire had fallen because of changes of climates that had forced the nomads of the northern part of Europe and the barbarians of the Mideast to invade the civilized world. She thought that the Roman government to control the nomads, barbarians gave them a religion that could make them sedentary. Basically the religion came from nomads, but they set in it a god, Christ, a god who was a divinity profoundly urban and sedentary. She used to say that if the Roman Pantheon was built in less than a decade, why in the world would a gothic cathedral take centuries to build? The reason she gave was that to build these interminable buildings was on purpose to make out of the nomads sedentary communities. They had to stay century after century finishing the unfinishable cathedrals, in this way the nomads and barbarians became urbanites. Carlos heard with great interest what Madge had to say. He was not so sure that the Christian religion was embraced by the Roman Empire to make out of the nomads sedentary people and urbanites. He thought if this was true, the Christians when they came to America were in trouble at the beginning with the Indians of this continent who were mostly agricultural and they had cities much bigger than those in Europe. Carlos one day said, “This theory is true, it was really very stupid for the Europeans to come to this continent to make out of the Indians sedentary people when they were so already, probably this might be the confusion that still exists between Europeans and Indians in America. Probably the confusion was such that by now neither Europe nor America understand in the very least Christianity. Christianity is simply love for one another, nature, and our brethren, the animals. So there aren’t any Christians either in the old continent or the new. And it was just after the Europeans got
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to America that the Age of Faith was over everywhere. Yes, what Madge has to say is very interesting and quite valid most of it”. Now, I will try to remember as much as I can Maria Kazans, Neneca, and Anne Jefferson’s small essays. I am including the opinions of Carlos. I do this because I think the theories of these women, if they were not thoroughly convincing to him, somehow did influence him. So, I think they might be of interest to the followers of Castaneda. I call the movement ‘Castanedism’. By the way, before I go on with the essays, I feel I must inform the readers that the films that Conrad Rooks planned with Carlos at Mount Athos were both made: ‘Chapaquea’ and ‘Siddhartha’, this last one supposed to be a classic of cinema.
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CHAPTER V
Although, Maria Kazans had spoken quite a bit about her ideas about death, when she put them in an essay, and gave it. But among her minds there was lots of talk about it. Here follows it, put together by me as I remember it.
SCORPION AND DEATH
“To die by one’s own will without using deathly means is called “Samadhi” in the yoga discipline. To go from this life to the next level of consciousness by one’s own will through a meditative process is the foremost spiritual development a human being can achieve. Too attain this spiritual development the person must have certitude that the transition from life is painless and blissful. To obtain this state a person must have had the experience of having made the trip between those two levels of consciousness. Only by knowing what is in the after death one can make the change without anguish. One of the ways to have this experience is through certain meditative training, which possibly embraces all walks of life. It is well known, that in cultures like the Tibetan and Hindu many mystics have left in peace their bodies through an act of will. Possibly, as the meditation techniques advance within the discipline that teaches how to die by one’s own will, the student comes nearer and nearer to that point which is the limit between life and death. Once one crosses that frontier and is able to come back to life, the mystic gains certitude that the path between life and death is void of pain and full of bliss and is the foremost experience man can have. Could there be a greater happiness than to know that the way between life and death is the most joyful of ways humans can walk? Could it not be this was what the initiates of the Eleusinian mysteries experienced? It has been said that once one was initiated in these mysteries all fear of death disappeared. Certitude in what is beyond life makes faith the utmost reality. And this is not only
achievable through oriental methods, but also through other disciplines coming from other world cultures. Probably, always there have been persons all over the world that had reached this knowledge. Besides the way of yoga, there are other means by which one can arrive to the same understanding: mystic revelations, cognition reveal by different vehicles, like art, and many others. Of course the most important element is to have a fervent desire too acquire such cognition. When this ardent desire is present, the innermost self speaks as a Master that guides through the proper path. Once the boundary of the two levels is passed, the knowledge of the temporal and the atemporal is revealed. This is the most beautiful spiritual and intellectual possession human beings can have. Within the temporal existence it is not perceived that one goes from one dimension to the other constantly. To be within the dimension of time means to be conscious of one’s existence in this plane. During a day, one is conscious of being just a few times. It might be that the consciousness of being is just a mechanical procedure of the brain, but this seems quite improbable, on account of the experience so often felt that something has taken place at a great distance. It is more likely that the awareness of being of each individual rests sometimes in the brain and other times outside the body: again, it so happens when events are perceived which take place far away from the physical body. That the consciousness of being rests in a living brain does not mean that because a body is alive it has the capacity too be vehicle of it. It only can be said that a living body at certain moments is able to capture the awareness of his own existence. There are many living human bodies that go through years of life in a state of coma. It may well be that the consciousness of one’s existence might rest in other vehicles besides one’s body. No doubt a human living body is a means for the awareness to manifest itself. But this perception is sporadic, and never continuous. If the body has suffered certain illnesses, the awareness of being cannot correctly manifest itself. Persons with sick brains show severe changes in their personalities. If there is no consciousness of being there is no existence. There is confusion when life is taken as the awareness of existence.
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It is a lie that no one knows what happens after the consciousness of being leaves the body for good. This lie springs from ignorance fear or mendacity. In all civilizations there has been talk of those who went to the afterlife and came back; even in the materialistic Occident this experience has taken place. Many witnessed that St Theresa of Avila was dead for seventy-two hours. While she was laid out there was a fire in the chamber, which did not disturb the dead body. Even melted wax was put on her eyes to make sure she was dead. A mirror was set over her nostrils to see if there was the least of breathing. She was certainly dead, but suddenly she woke up. After this event the Spanish Saint lived decades. During this life span many times Theresa said, “My secret is my secret”. What could have been the secret she treasured so much? Probably, it was what she knew about after death. The frustrating statement that nothing is known about the afterlife is not true. Carl Th. Dreyer, the great Danish director, made a picture based on a play that has a theme developed from a deed that took place in a small village in Denmark. There, the medical death certificate of a lady who was dead for forty hours. And after forty hours she came back to life. By the way, Dreyer was a very special man, as a young man when he was a journalist he was given the task to photograph the first plane that flew from Denmark to Sweden. He did not only take the photo as the plane took off to Sweden but its arrival there. “Seek and you shall find...” the history of the world is packed with narrations of people that went to the next life and came back. But all the magic is possession of the intelligent. The fools and wicked are banned from it. And how does one know a fool? The fool tortures himself by believing that fear is good. Many die of the panic they have inflicted upon themselves. The fool is a junky of adrenaline. On the other hand, the wicked know how things are, but he lies to others because his vice is to rejoice in the suffering of humans. The fool states that God is the possession of a few; the wicked elevates to godliness those who have worldly power. So the quest for the sense of life remains for those who understand and don’t deceive themselves. This quest is for those who are intelligent and who don’t refuse to use their brains; it is rare to find people totally void of intelligence, but it is quite common to find
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men that refuse to use it. To think is a matter of free will. So, it is in the hands of each one to use this privilege that has been bestowed on human beings. If it had not been for his intelligence men would have disappeared from the face of the world from the very beginning. In front of the animals of air, sea and earth man is inferior in as much as brute force, claws, fangs, tusks and so on. But man’s intelligence makes him king. The more man uses his intelligence the nearer he is from the trip of going and coming back from the world beyond. The worst degeneration in a human being is his refusal to think. The majority of men are vile sinners. Not to think is a real sin. It is almost an unforgivable one. It’s the well-known sin against the Holy Spirit. It can be assumed that the body is just one of the vehicles that the consciousness of being uses; when it suffers certain damages it cannot manifest it correctly. This explains why a person with a damaged brain changes so dramatically his personality. In certain cases the body becomes totally ineffective as vehicle for the awareness of one’s existence. The incapacity of a body to properly manifest this consciousness does not that this consciousness does not mean this consciousness cannot do it through other means. The consciousness of being has to manifest itself in more than one option besides the body. The body serves to travel between two points: birth and death. The thing to be gained in this journey is the knowledge what was before birth and what takes place in the afterlife. If the awareness of being loses its body before achieving its goal, it might use other means to complete its quest. The body is an important vehicle, but not the only one. A corpse is nothing but a broken down, means of the consciousness of being. Sometimes a body dies because the awareness of existence reached its purpose, other times because it is not suitable any longer for the purpose it was made for. It is interesting to observe and think over so many narrations that tell how a person’s death is announced to his dear ones by a moth, bird, etc. Could it be possible that the only way for the consciousness of being too become eternal is by thinking, by using first the brain and after intuition? Fear of death springs from losing those moments when are aware we exist. It’s
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taken as truth that only a living human body with certain degree of health can have those flashes of awareness of being. Not all human beings fear the loss of the awareness of being. A living body can also lose that consciousness for good. Yet the last state is not fear as much as death. Probably, this state of being unconscious alive is no so much feared, because it has not received the terrorist propaganda given to death; particularly, by certain religions since the Homo Sapiens appeared on earth. It is clear that a living body can lose its awareness of being. It is also plausible that there are many options for this awareness to manifest itself. That is why the parapsychological phenomena are of so great importance. Only fools take as absurd parapsychology, this is the only way man may gain knowledge of the reason of his existence. The man without mental depth is ready to believe what the pompous ones have to say. For instance, all fools and all naive intelligent people don’t doubt the existence of the atom. Among those called the educated there is no doubt of its existence. Every day the atom is split into more particles; there is no end to it. Isn’t it strange that the atom cannot be seen, or touched and furthermore, it could never happen, and yet, can it be weighed? The obscurantism of yonder days is nothing in front of the fanaticism of the atomic culture. On the other hand, no one that considers himself an intellectual of the first rank believes in angels, although, all civilizations, in one way or another, have both depicted them and talked about them. All throughout history there are affirmations from people who in one way or another have acquainted themselves with angels. But for fools and pseudo intellectuals it is not fashionable to believe in angels. Today’s fashion is the atomic fantasia. Life is loaded with happenings that have to do with the ‘atemporis’, but many societies, particularly, the western one, program people to see these phenomena as just unimportant events. Yet, man cannot take this stand towards these phenomena as his reason of being depends very much on them. Without consciousness of being man drifts along life. There also are false reasons of being, such as: the parent that states he will live in his scions, or the artist that through his artistic endeavors he will live. No one can really believe so. Few are the ones that are mentioned because of their works after
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2,500 years. Most people don’t know who their eight grandparents were. But who cares if one is totally forgotten if one is acquainted with the afterlife? Whatever is the reality after death, it nullifies the ephemeral existence of this realm. The dimension that can be perceived by the five senses is just too limited; it is limited to a very small area of perception. At least, in the West much importance has been given to these five senses and other forms of perception have been put aside.
EPILOGUE
This essay cannot be finished without first taking into consideration the meaning of “shaman”. What is a shaman? There has been much talk about shamans, but almost nothing has been said about their nature. Most men perceive life only with five senses, and out of this perception spring reason and certain psychological states, which in turn forge their reality. This is the prominent reality of this world. Most of humanities knowledge is within the realm of these five senses, but beyond this limited perception there is an infinite. Reason with its five senses can only acquaint itself with a world limited by the finite. But there are persons that have cognizance far and beyond reason. They have something more than what reason and five senses offer. These are the shamans. The shamans can explain and even make feel others, who are limited by reason and its five senses, a realm without limits. The term shaman comes from Siberia; the West has the word priest to denominate the same thing. The real priest is the one that can look into the timeless world; which is inaccessible to the common man. To these men, he can serve as bridge between the world of time and the eternal, from here is born the word ‘pontifex’, which means one who makes bridges. The priest just like the Shaman serves as an ethical leader of the community. As soon as the priest or shaman is vanquished and stops being the religious leader of the community, he is called warlock. The old Celtic priest is the warlock of today. Even some Protestants look upon
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the Catholic priests as warlocks. But whether priest or warlock these men and women have a perception beyond reason, and of course, of their five senses. Two theories exist: one that states that shamans are formed and not made, the other that the gift is transferred from one priest to another. This theory is the foundation of the historical Christian churches that through the apostolic succession the gift is passed on. Through the imposition of hands the common man is made priest as the Lord Christ did it with His disciples. Christ was ‘pontifex maximus’ of the order of Melchizedek. This is what Saint Paul says in Hebrews. So, since the moment Christ transferred His priesthood to the first apostles, from generation to generation until this day, this priesthood has been kept alive. Something similar takes place among some Buddhists. The Lord Buddha before leaving this life transferred his priesthood to Ananda by giving his disciple a lotus that he was holding in his hand. Ever since in some Buddhist disciplines this ceremony persists. To whom the lotus is given the gift has been bestowed. The witch doctor is called so, because his tribe has fallen under another power. If the tribe becomes strong once again and takes over its previous oppressor, the witch doctor once again will be respected as the priest. The theory that a metaphysical power can be transferred has been questioned many times. Most critics point out that many a priest is wicked throughout his priestly life. To this criticism, it may be answered that just as a university issues a medical degree it cannot answer for the practice of the M.D. the same goes for a priest, the church can make a priest, but cannot vouch for his conduct throughout his priestly life. A good priest is the one that contacts the invisible to bring peace, harmony, and love among those near him. The one that brings hate prejudice, discrimination, etc. is contacting the atemporal world in levels of disharmony. For in that other levels exist sources of love and goodness and also of evil. Regarding whether or not women can be shamans, of course, yes, the world is loaded with witches that in yonder days were called priestesses. But, most of the present day religions give the priesthood only to males. The Christian tradition, with the exception of certain sacramental churches,
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refuses to give priesthood to women. It’s curious how so many Christians think this way; after all, the apostles’ surrounded Mary on Pentecost to receive the Holy Spirit. She was the center of the manifestation, according to tradition, art, and scriptures. Therefore, according to tradition, Mary is the only one to receive the Holy Spirit twice in her life: when she was greeted by St. Gabriel and told about her motherhood, and in Pentecost”. At the Oedipus Rex, one night a group of friends, sat at a table. Among them were Carlos and Maria. She asked Carlos, “Now that you read my essay, what do you have to say about it?” Carlos, smiling amiable answered, “Well, after thinking about it quite a bit, that to limit oneself to only two planes, as St. Theresa and St. John of the Cross and many others do, doesn’t satisfy me. We have to think of what plane were we, before we were born in this one. We must have been somewhere. I think it is more likely that there are an infinite number of planes. There is no reason why to limit oneself to only two planes, the one that one lives in, in other words time and the one after death. When I was reading St. Theresa and St. John I definitely thought that they reached higher planes of consciousness, but each one touched a different level. Between the mysticism of St. Therese and ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’ by St. John there is a big difference. Caroline Parsons interrupted by saying, “In one of the gospels Christ says that there are many dwellings in His Father’s kingdom. This is very much what Carlos is saying about there being many planes”. Carlos, diverting somehow the conversation, added, “Of course, to die by ones own will as an act of spiritual development must be marvelous. Of course, this does not include suicide that is something quite different. It is an act of desperation”. Caroline said, “To go back and forth from one plane to another must bring to oneself a great deal of security and peace”. Carlos, very friendly added, “All that Maria said is very interesting, because it makes you think and thus makes you reach new conclusions that one may or may not agree with, but whatever she says is profound and makes your brain work”. Maria Kazan asked, “And what do you have to say about the awareness of
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being”. Carlos, in a soft low voice, answered, “I don’t believe that the awareness of being takes place only when one is in one’s body. The idea that because ‘one thinks, one is’ doesn’t go with me at all”. Turning towards Fernando Arce and Fernando Montealegre who were sitting at the
table,
Carlos
asked
them,
“When
you
are
painting,
where
are
your
consciousnesses?” Fernando Arce right away said, “I am in the canvas, in the paints, and in the brushes, when I paint I am beside myself, I am in what I am painting. Fernando Montealegre continued, “The cartoons that I paint in Hanna and Barbera carry in themselves all that I really am. When I draw and paint I’m far away from my body. My mind is in each line and stroke of the brush that I make”. Caroline added, “Well, the same thing happens to me when I make my ceramics. I am the mud and in the pottery wheel”. Then, Carlos said, “The same goes for me, when I sculpt, paint or write, I sort of get out of myself. I am what I am doing. I guess with other professions it is the same thing. Going back to the same theme, death, I could change this macabre conception to one like going to a different plane of consciousness or more than one”. Fernando Arce asked, “And where does intelligence come into all this? Should we consider it one more energy?” Caroline answered, “It may well be. It might be an energy whose receiver is the brain”. Carlos then stated, “Regarding this same subject, there is a mysterious fact and that is some who have been born with a brain defect which is not found until they are adults are excellent in their field. Obviously these persons, get their intelligence in part from their brains and somewhere else”. Caroline asked, “But why is it that intelligence doesn’t manifest itself in some other way in those people who have serious brain damage like in the case of apoplexy?” Oriel Garcia, who had just joined the group said, “Apoplexy, as well as other
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brain damages, produces a change of personality; it might well be a way to get out of am unbearable life”. Then, Caroline added, “The Krishnan believe that sometimes the God Krishna takes with him the minds of his highly developed devotees; so they can, work with him in superior worlds, and by doing so he blesses those who take care of the body of the devotee who has turned into a vegetable state”. Carlos said, “Perhaps, there is some truth in this. These very developed mind distant themselves from the brain in order to partake of a more subtle plane and the body remains alive for the benefit of those, less developed, who take care of it and have an opportunity of benefiting their spirit or whatever; that is if this evolution of the spirit does really exist”. Caroline asked, “How does the brain operates in the case of a medium?” Carlos answered, “The medium has the gift to be able to allow part of his mind to retire to let an entity or the collective consciousness to use it. I tell you, Byron should be able to tell us more about it, because as far as I am concerned, he is the only medium I have ever met. The problem is that he doesn’t want to accept”. And thus, one day in the midst of this conversation a new client showed up, Roger Callway. He was a fellow about twenty-eight years old, blond, rather tall, good looking, with a gloomy look. At the beginning be used to sit alone and did not speak with anyone. Neneca became interested in him. He was somehow mysterious and it was through her that we became aware of his problem. Roger was a faithful believer in Christ. He had been in more than one Roman Catholic seminary, but there he couldn’t find his real vocation. Afterwards, he joined the Lutheran Church: where he couldn’t fit in, and then he went to the Anglican Church to the Greek Orthodox and other denominations. At the beginning it was hard for him to explain his doubts, feelings and ideas. He knew he was religious but he was profoundly disturbed. It was precisely that in those days that Roger showed up that Neneca brought us her small essay on sex, which more or less said the following:
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SCORPION AND SEX
“Sex is a significant part of the human need to reassure his existence through the sensation of body touch. According to Saint Thomas Aquinas, sex has two functions: procreation and consolation. To assume sex has only one objective, procreation, is absurd. If it were so, once women got over their menopause, their sexual appetite would disappear. Many males after losing their sexual organs continue having sexual desires. Thus even when the ability to procreate has disappeared, the sexual desire continues. This, indeed, well proves what Saint Thomas stated, that sex exists for procreation and consolation. Of course it is obvious that the sexual desire exists, so that two be attracted to each other to procreate. Nowadays it is possible to dispense with the sexual desire to procreate, as it is the case with the techniques of artificial insemination and the test tube. By the way, artificial insemination is quite old; it was performed during the twenties and even before. So, today procreation does not need sex. Those who have procreated though the test tube technique did not need the carnal desire. It is more of an intellectual decision. Even if it were desired that in the future all procreation would be through the test tube technique, this would not stop the sexual urge. Humans would retain it; in this case its aim would be what St. Thomas called sex for consolation. This does not deny the great importance sexual craving plays in procreation, but certainly it is dispensable, nowadays. Something that was unthinkable in past history when sex was the only way to procreate. When the sexual drive was the only means to procreate, it was seen as something sacred. As the need for sex appears not only when it is for procreation, it is necessary to explain this other urge. Sex goes much further than the description made of it by social and religious institutions. For instance, the basic purpose of matrimony is to protect children. This is why the family nucleus becomes the see of economics. No doubt, an aspect of economics throughout history has had for basis the family
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system in its multiple forms. The family has begun to change in the last decades, as it has become necessary for the great business concerns to have a movable working face; and this policy has brought the reduction of the family circle to Father, Mother and a couple of children, while they are not of age. That’s why grandparents, uncles, and the rest of relatives don’t any longer belong to the central family unit. Today old folks are sent to rest homes, even though they may have sons, daughters, and grandchildren. Affections have become economically dependent. Asides from a few that have not given up grandparents, uncles and cousins, the vast majority of people’s affections are subject to finances. Within the realm of marriage sex is seen as sacred, also the family as an offspring of sex, has been accepted as being kind of holy; mostly, because its economical importance. As of now, the family’s importance has been reduced, just as its number of members has shrunk. When sex was established as a means to found family circles, in order to propel the financial machine, all sex that didn’t have for objective the creation of a family was looked upon as being evil. The financial machine looked upon certain unwed persons as convenient; even though, they were discriminated against, they became cheap labor bastards and could not ask much from those who belonged to the established families blessed by society. To a certain degree bastards were despised, but they made up a working force with some loyalty for their progenitors. But, sexuality went much further than producing legitimate families to make economical nucleus and illegitimate ones to bear a working force. The sexual urge exceeded what was socially accepted, this brought great complications upon the establishment. The ideal for that society is a sex that does not go further than that prescribed by the established canons. But any society that considers that sex’s only role, role is for procreation is ‘antinatura’, and clashes with the law of life which dictates that sex has two objectives; procreation and consolation. What is for society an excessive sex drive? It’s nothing else but the design of nature. It’s what the Divinity meant it to be. It is a way to struggle against the laws of
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nature these always prevail. It is the decision of the Almighty. The society leaders could not control the sexual need that went beyond what society needed, because it is utterly uncontrollable. The gentlemen misbehaved and put in peril the family system. Also the ladies contributed to endanger the family group. The hormones of the young maidens forced them to go beyond the limits imposed by society. The unquenchable natural sex appetite is overwhelming; it’s the life force. Of course, the healthy young gentlemen full of hormones, too, broke the social rules. Thus, for the establishment the sexual force that goes beyond the need to procreate is the very devil, it is the terrible cross it has to bear. The famous kings, moralists, saints, popes, and so on have encountered the same problem to build their ideal societies, which always have been threatened by that supposed extreme sensuality that they have been unable to stop by mental and physical punishments. It is against nature to do so. All societies of past and present have not taken into consideration what Saint Thomas said, “Sex is for procreation and consolation”. For a society not to be against nature, it has to give a place to sex for consolation. And what is sex for consolation? It is the human need to be told that he exists. From the corporal point of view nothing can assure more of one’s existence than the body touch with another living being. That’s why all cultures have in one way or another, when introducing a person or saluting, some form of body touch, as it is the case of shaking hands. To touch, as part of a salute, is to say: you exist and so do I. The child needs the body warmth of his elders to grow up to be an assured adult. One exists when one feels another’s body. The multitudes waiting for the New Years at the main squares of the world closely grouped themselves together to ascertain their existence. The football player that in a moment of excitement embraces his fellow sportsman is telling him, “You are alive”. Even in the brusque boxing, the pugilists tell each other, “You exist”.
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There is a tendency to caress domestic animals. Particularly, cats and dogs keep company, because they can be handled with affection. This does not mean that all corporeal closeness is sexual. Sex is just one of the ways to get bodily touch. It must not be forgotten that for many sex does not got further than mental fantasies. But for most people sex is a corporeal act with a second or more persons. This vast majority of people look for this sexual act in diverse forms depending on the culture. No society, as of yet, has matured enough to consider as eminent the body’s need for another body’s warmth. The social exigencies cannot be met, because they are unreasonable. This error of society leads it to its own termination, because the need for corporeal touch is as great as thirst and hunger. Perhaps, psychologically body touch is the most important need, because it is the one that makes humans aware of their existence. If man does not have certitude of his own existence, he loses himself in an amorphous abyss from which all-existential problems spring. Sex has not been valued for its two functions: procreation and a corporeal way that reassures existence. It’s natural that up till today societies have set barriers on sex, as procreation is the basis for life, and as such the beginning of all social structures. It is possible that there have been some societies, which have had rules that recognized sex for consolation. It’s possible that the geisha system in Japan is one of these instances. The hetaeras in Greece were tinted with a degree of discrimination. This is clear in ‘Lysistrata’. Even homosexuality’s ample freedom had its limits in Hellas. Presently, as sex is not the only way to procreate, the consolation aspect of it demands better attention. At least in the Mediterranean the people of old did not understand the fact that males participated in procreating. In those days the male role was of warrior, provider, and object of pleasure. Therefore, in those days sex was taken only as a means of consolation. Probably, it was taken not only as an act of pleasure, but also as a therapy
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to reduce stress. The frictions between men and women, as well as the social complexities regarding sex, began when men became aware of their fatherhood. First the male wanted revenge on the female for his ignorance of his paternity. Before this took place, females must have had very relevant positions, probably even privileged ones in society. As her virtue was to have children so the world could go on, probably, she was exempt from any labor even that of house keeping. Therefore, if it was so, all the burdens fell on the male. Something is mentioned of this in Genesis, when the Old Testament god tells women that they will give birth with pain and to men that they will provide with the sweat of their forehead. Probably, the first revenge men had on women was to make them totally responsible for the household work and to call it just a duty or obligation, for which she could not claim any economical remuneration. The second revenge was to say that the only thing they were good for was to bear children. As the enforcement of law is just a matter of brute force and males had the upper hand, females had to submit. Brute force can be dominated by intelligence, but women did not have enough of it. She was accused of being a traitor to the male, as he insisted that she knew all along about his parenthood. Again, there is something of this in the deception that Eve perpetrated upon Adam with the story of the apple. It is possible that the male hated creation before becoming aware of his paternity, and precisely the knowledge of good and evil might have had to do with the truth of how children are conceived. It was thought that the females got pregnant thanks to the winds. If she knew of the role the male had in procreation, she, according to the male, was playing a dirty trick on him. He that had to work more as the mouths he had to feed increased. The only possible birth control then was abortion or killing the unwanted children. When man realized his role in bringing children to this world, he achieved a new position in society which was the dominant one, and which brought about a great social
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change. Women lost their supremacy, and with it went all the powerful female deities of old that they were supplanted by macho gods. The women’s world was divided into those who accepted culpability and those who didn’t. Somehow they accepted the new order, and those who didn’t, their voices were compelled to remain silent until the twentieth century. Once the paternity of men became widespread knowledge, women all over were marked with all sorts of negative attributes. A great number, if not the majority of women accepted that something or a lot was wrong with them. Even today most women feel unworthy of high positions, such as the papacy. Historically there can be found instances of vestiges of the great respect once given to menstruation. In Massachusetts such was the case among some of the first Europeans that arrived there. Women deposited their menstruation on the earth to make sure it would be possession of the new comers. This tradition must have dated from very old, from those days when the supremacy of the female existed because men didn’t know their role in bearing children. It was natural that in those days the blood coming from menstruation was considered sacred and even magical. How could women lose blood and not die? Once paternity was known it became the opposite; it was an object of disgust. To the extreme that in certain societies, like the Hebrew, when the woman is menstruating she is put away from the family circle. She is not accepted at the dining table or at any social event. Menstruation was considered dirty even among the Roman Catholics until the beginning of the twentieth century. Women had to cleanse themselves forty days after giving birth. Of course, it was a man, a priest, who made the cleansing ceremony in church. Girls become women when they first menstruate. It’s a dramatic experience full of grandeur. She loses blood and she doesn’t get ill. She produces blood far and beyond. Blood has been known as the essence of life. It is life. And menstruation smells like life, like the sea. Is it not true that life supposedly came out of the sea? When a boy turns into a man he doesn’t suffer anything spectacular; just some drops of a white thick
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liquid begins to come out of his penis. Some civilizations have given a sacred value to this male juice; it is called the sacred milk among some Hindus. This holy milk has only once been discredited, and that is by assuming the aids virus comes in it. That is why in many parts of the Orient the aids hysteria has not been welcome or accepted. It is curious how the so-called venereal diseases were given that name five hundred years ago or so. These illnesses are named after the goddess Venus. Syphilis can be transmitted by saliva, humid cloths, or blood contact, so is tuberculosis that can also be transmitted by saliva, sweat, food, and body contact and also by air. Why is it then that tuberculosis and so many other diseases were not counted among the venereal maladies? If someone in good health goes to bed with someone that has diphtheria has a good chance of getting it. Yet these illnesses are not counted among the venereal ones. It might well be there is a lot of charlatanism in all this, or just bad faith from the socalled moralists. What do the renaissance and the end of the twentieth century have in common? That in these periods the venereal diseases popped up. It could well be said that any illness that can be transferred through body contact is venereal. But, it is not so. Only syphilis and gonorrhea and now aids are considered as such. Eyes are prone too gonorrhea, so it is false that only through sex it can be gotten. It seems that during the renaissance and the end of the twentieth century this name was given to already well-known maladies as part of an infamous act of terrorism against sex for consolation. In both periods people began freely to enjoy sex for consolation without paying for it. Many were horrified because they saw the ancient prostitution business disappearing. It should be taken into consideration that this business which made enormous fortunes, is managed, secretly and since long ago, by prominent families in the Western World, nowadays mostly in Latin America. The idea that sex is dirty must be quite old, and probably emerged when men made the observation that the orifices that throw out the food wastes coincide in location with the sexual organs. It is a reality that the urine and semen are expelled by
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the same orifice, as it happens with feces, whose outlet has, since immemorial times, been used for sex. The most obvious wastes of the body are expelled by the same orifices that give sexual pleasure. Perhaps, if sex would have been had through the navel the perception of sex as being dirty would have been quite different. The pores all over the body expel constantly body wastes, but the sweat is not as obvious as feces and urine. If through the orifices of waste sex is had, and children come out from one of these outlets something of waste is seen in babies. It is thanks to the ability of the body to expel its wastes that the human being and all animals can survive. The same wastes are fertilizers for the foods that grow in the fields and gives man to eat. The wastes are the basis for the new life. They make possible the prolongation of life. It is natural that children are born from one of these orifices, as it is the way nature has given the body the engine to produce life. It is necessary to analyze the waste outlets in order to evaluate them properly to consider them as blessings and not maledictions. Then no one would say that man is born out of filth. Man is born out of the stuff that produces life. These orifices should rightly be considered sacred. There are civilizations that have looked upon the organs that evacuate body wastes with more respect. In the temple of Luxor in Egypt there is a large bas-relief commemorating Alexander the Great’s stay there; on it one sees Alexander receiving in a type of chalice the sacred semen from the erect penis of the God Amon-Ra. To seriously understand sex it must be understood the marvelous blessing that these orifices are. No doubt sex has hygienic problems, but it is not different from eating. As a matter of fact eating requires much more in its hygiene. Certainly the food hygiene had to be taken more seriously because poisoned food can easily kill a whole town in a matter of hours. The human became aware of the danger of poisoned food since very early in history. Probably, the basis of any civilization has been its capacity to produce food that is clean. It is interesting to notice that the word magician comes from a Persian word whose meaning is cook. The cook was considered a sort of alchemist. Sex is less dangerous hygienically than food, but the delightful points of sex are
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too near those orifices through which the body expels part of its wastes in the form of feces and urine. Sex hygiene is easier than that of food. Food hygiene is highly complicated and costly, but it has been taken so serious for so many thousands of years that it is taken for granted since long ago. Sexual hygiene is much easier to understand and control. Sexual hygiene does, of course, exist. Most prostitutes are very careful to clean themselves each time that it is necessary. From the psychological point of view, these two kinds of hygiene are looked upon quite differently. Aside from Jews, Muslims and some primitive tribes there are no taboos against foods. The mental hygiene concerning food is generally excellent, but not with regard to sex. But as it has been stated before the confusion that exists regarding the sexual organs and the orifices through which the body expels waste, gives a sense of unclean to sexual practices. The blood flow that women emanate for forty days after giving birth has been conceived as dirty by most people. A different outlook must be taken regarding all this. To produce life is necessary a great amount of substances to feed the fetus; once they have done their job become waste. This marvelous system is sacred. It should never be seen as shameful or dirty, only when man can look at it as sacred, he will respect sex and look at it, as what it really is, something truly marvelous, godly. It’s possible that the present race of man will not have the time or the will to accept sex as something mystical. Possibly, the much talked about salvation has much to do with loving all creation with its sexual side. One is saved if one has learned the value of all God’s creation. But salvation will not take place unless the calumny put on women is not removed. That is that she deceived the male by not telling him the role he played in procreation. Once the male knew about it, he convinced himself as well as a large group of women of the female natural iniquity; thus humanity entered into an age which is ruled by a male made morality quite iniquitous for the female as well as the male. How was the morality previous to the male made one, it is difficult to know and useless to delve into it. What is worth the while is to remedy the present one through just
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observations? It might well be that when women ruled, it was not better than the reign of the male, but whatever it was, it’s something of the past. What matters is now. The male morality has totally disfigured sex for consolation. This has taken place, because male’s urge to ascertain his paternity, something difficult to do unless the likes of the child are much like his, and if he knows for sure his woman has not messed around with one of his male kinsmen; otherwise he will never know for sure he is the father. He can only be certain of his paternity if he knows for sure his semen was used to engender a child in test tube or by insemination. Even though, males have used all sorts of stratagems, his fatherhood is always doubtful. Thus males have to live with the eternal doubt of whether he did father or not the child. Fatherhood is more the knowledge a man can transmit to his children; the same goes for those women that have cared for a child with love and tenderness; they are mothers. Women are the instruments of God when it comes to biological maternity. The reward she gets from being a biological mother is to know that she really exists, as she has carried in her womb another being. The real fathers and mothers are those men and women that have given themselves to raise in the best of ways their children, whether or not these are their biological offsprings. What is of foremost importance for the human beings is to understand, respect and enjoy sex for consolation. Also the vying of both sexes over biological fatherhood and motherhood must be eradicated. The male to defend his overpowering position placed all sorts of restriction over females, some physical, others mental and spiritual. Physically in some communities women have been marked as if they were cattle to know whom they belonged to. In China their feet were tied up so they could not move freely. In the Western World they were given high heels with the same purpose. Some parts of Africa cut their clitorises, so they have no pleasure, but as pleasure is something more psychological than physical, this operation hardly serves any purpose. In the Middle
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Ages they were given chastity belts whose lock only their maters could open. Women were told that they were inept, to think, stupid, and even it was insinuated they had no souls. Spiritually, more than one religion told them all the evil of the world sprang from their horrid errors. Thus a monster was made out of sex that not only hurt females by males too. The male created a society that is degenerate and unnatural regarding sex for consolation. This type of sex has for objective to say: “You exist”. It can only happen between two who have spiritual affinity. Prostitution is a degeneration of the male society. It is not possible to pay with money spiritual needs. Sex for consolation claims both needs: material and spiritual. Many a child is taught to look upon sex as something dirty. He grows up with this idea and when he reaches adolescence, he doesn’t look for the person he admires or respects to deposit his sexual love. This would mean to tarnish the object of his true love. It’s natural, he would look for someone he has little regard for, to vent his affections and thus starts the terrible disharmony that has existed between couples. This is born out of the incoherent teaching that on one hand tells the child that sex is dirty, and when he reaches adolescence it turns out that it is sacred, ‘Holy Matrimony’. What insecurity! May the future societies, if this world is to last, teach intelligently, the two functions of sex: procreation and consolation, in order to shape a world with less hate and more love and tenderness. One of the most gratifying experiences the human beings can have is to tell each other with love, consideration, and tenderness, “You exist”. Few are the ones that in this manner say you exist. Most people drift along life blundering again and again when it comes to sex. Be, damned for eternity he who interferes between two that are assuring each other that they exist”. Roger and Neneca came into the Oedipus Rex. They had been going together for several days. It was not a matter of a love affair; it was a strange relationship more like that of a mother and her son. This might sound absurd, but Neneca, although several years younger than Roger was taken by a maternal instinct towards him,
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Neneca began even to walk in a different fashion. Her seductive body movement changed for a more matriarchal one, and part of her sweetness changed to a certain degree of severity. Neneca standing and with a loud voice spoke to me. I was behind the counter, “Did you read my essay, Byron?” I answered her, “Give me a couple of minutes, and I will join you at the table”. I finished what I was doing and I went and sat at the table with them. In the group was a new comer, Lee Hildreth, a young erudite of Marcel Proust. I turned to Roger and said to him, “You are sort of down today, something wrong with you?” Neneca answered, “Roger is very much bothered by his conception of the church and what it really is?” Carlos arrived greeting everybody with a joyful “Hi”. Neneca, a little bit impetuous, said to Carlos, “Have you read my essay? You have talked quite a bit about Maria Kazan’s”. Carlos continued, “Neneca, I like it so well that there is little to be discussed about it. We agreed almost about everything”. Neneca answered, “You rascal! You didn’t like it in the very least. Probably you found it quite foolish”. Very excited Carlos said, “You are absolutely wrong. I your essay you said many things that are true; as a matter of fact, all that you say is true. The only thing that I don’t quite understand is sex for consolation. To console someone is to comfort and frankly I don’t see how you can comfort anyone with sex, unless the person raging with the desire of sex and someone offers his or his sex as a sort of alms. Of course, it’s obvious that there are different minds of sexual drives. There’s a great truth that the proximity of another body makes you feel that you exist. Also there is a delight in having it. The ecstasy of the organism has to be considered very deeply, because it goes beyond the limitations of time. Sometimes, the orgasm is so marvelous that makes you think it’s a sort of Prayer. Of course, all this depends on the person’s sensibility. It depends on how the person looks at sex, if the individual looks upon, it as, something obscure, dirty, immoral, he or she can never look on sex as something beautiful or least of all spiritual.
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Look, one thing is to drink champagne in a beautiful glass and another thing is to have it in a paper cup, it doesn’t just taste the same, baby”. Then Roger spoke for the first time, “Why do you people argue so much?” Carlos turned to Roger and said, “Our discussions are not arguments, and our exchange of thoughts makes our friendship closer and deeper. When we exchange amongst ourselves our way of thinking we give each other our blood and soul. What you call arguments is an exchange of how one of us perceives life, and thus we become more unified”. Roger looked at Carlos deeply and said, “What I have in my head no one will understand”. Carlos said, “How do you know, if you haven’t said it”. Roger answered, “I have tried to explain it since I was seventeen and now I’m twenty-eight and I haven’t gotten anywhere”. Lee Hildreth, who paid deep attention to what Roger said, said, “It’s because you have never discussed it with the right persons”. Then, Roger added, “I have spoken about with people who are very knowledgeable on the matter and I didn’t get anywhere”. Lee Hildreth with his distinguished and distant way of talking said, “If you have spoken about it with erudites on the theme and you were not satisfied with their conclusions that might be not those ones”. Roger, with a gesture of exhaustion, said, “It is a matter of Christology. I have spoken about it with Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans and so many pastors”. Lee Hildreth continued, “Whatever bothers you, you haven’t shared it with many persons. Probably, you have never met, anyone that has your problem whatever bothers you, it might well be an ideological question”. Roger more animated said, “I guess, you are right. My conflict is very much my own”. Neneca very cautiously said to Lee, “Roger has no peace with himself because he cannot accept the idea that the Father gave His Son to be massacred”. Lee quite surprised said, “And you never met anyone that had the same
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predicament that you have?” Roger very emphatically answered, “I have never met anyone”. Lee Hildreth some fatherly and with a very sincere curious asked him, “Can you state what is the conflict that bothers yow so much, or is it very private?” Roger suddenly answered, “When I have expressed it I’ve been accused of blasphemy and stupidity”. Lee inquired, “And you have only spoken to ecclesiastical people”. Roger answered, “Well, they are the only erudite in the field, and the ones that can be interested in this theme”. Lee then said, “Perhaps you have underestimated the seculars”. Roger, a little taken aback, answered, “Who can be really interested in my feelings of love towards Christ, and my belief in Him is the richest thing that I possess, but I can’t accept the idea that the Father gave Him to be violent assassinated by a mob of savages”. Lee went on, “I think I do agree with your opinion. Although I am far from being religious, I am drawn to certain of the most basic Christian thought, but I find primitive the death of Christ to cleanse the sins of everyone”. Roger, quite surprised, asked him, “How is that you are the first person that understands me”. Carlos who had been hearing the conversation got into it, and Carlos began to talk, “What is important is that you love Christ and that you have picked on erudites in the art of making people love Christ in their personal way. There are not two persons in the world that love someone in the same way. We cannot even love Christ in the same manner. In your case, you must understand that what you call erudites in Christology pretend the impossible, and that is to oblige everybody to love Christ in the same way. Frankly, I believe that these erudites are foolish people. Someone loves Christ as anyone else loves Him. As matter of fact, each person loves his deity in his own way. You love Him as a unique god, but in the same way we are all unique, and we revere what we believe in our unique way; so, there are not two persons who love in the same way. Your love towards Him, therefore, is unique. To want to compel people to love Him
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in the same way is not absurd but malevolent. Furthermore, you have had a vision of Christ and His apparition in this dimension similar to that of the Copts in Egypt. Perhaps, you should study a little bit of the Coptic Church; after all, it is one of the firs churches of Christendom. You have a vision of Christ that, by no means is just yours. There are many who share more or less your. It might be your vision to propagate it. Personally, I know a little about ecclesiastical things and furthermore, I am not very much interested in the subject. My interest lies in my personal relationship with deity or deities. You must have to open your path with your own beliefs, so that others might follow you some day”. Years later, I heard that Roger Callway had formed a community in Anaheim. Going back to Neneca, Carlos heard that her essay was very convincing in many aspects, but that she had no sufficiently attached machismo. Neneca told him, “Good, that you have told me this. Machismo is an aspect repulsive. Because they have a penis, they pretend to manage the world; although, there are less men than women in the world. They have made the laws and they have bestowed upon them privileges in all the fields. They even go as far as saying that God is a man. In other words that He has a penis and testicles. And the rest of the population of the world that has not penis, but teats that nourish the life of male and bear children is an abominable discrimination, and this is bad for everybody. Women have to develop in science, politics, the arts, because males have done whatever they could do. It is the women that can advance in all the fields of life.” Anne Jefferson thought that is was totally absurd that the Homo sapiens wouldn’t be taken over by others better than him as it had happened with the other races of men. This belief of hers made her go on in life. Here is what I remember of her essay, which she called ‘Requiem for the Homo sapiens’.
REQUIEM FOR THE HOMO SAPIENS
Just as the Cro-Magnon man disappeared from the face of the earth without any
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one grieving for him, the Homo sapiens will cease to exist without any one mourning for him. The one who might replace him will look upon the Homo sapiens just as an archeological curiosity. Therefore, what it is important in the history of the humanoids is how one species disappears, so that another more capable to face the needs of the moment takes its place. No doubt, there are signs that a man more apt than the Homo sapiens has already paced the face of the earth. There are notions this has taken place hundreds if not thousand years ago. This assay has to do with this new inhabitant of the planet, whose main character is his ability to partake of life with others without friction, and without having to compel him to do so. Therefore, he is referred to, in this work as the Homo conviviens. It is necessary to understand that this man does not need the law, as he has the capacity to partake of life with his congener without much friction and above all without any imposition to do so. The set up that has allowed the Homo sapiens’ cycle to survive is the legal structure with its elaborate system of few rewards and plenty of punishments. For sure, if it had not been for law, the Homo sapiens would have destroyed himself in a whirlpool of violence, because this species, which has ruled the world for thousands of years, does not have the sense of living with others in harmony. Without recriminations or disdain, it is necessary to measure the qualities of the Homo Sapiens, to find out his littleness as well his greatness, so that it can be understood the need of the life force to claim the disappearance of this being. Therefore, the cycle of this humanoid is at an end and he has to give way to a better-fit man to face the needs and urgencies of this historical moment, that is, if the human race is to survive at all in a future. Thus, the Homo conviviens will begin his cycle, which in turn will find his end at the moment when he will not have any longer the know how to solve the problems required to survive in that future. And once again will occur that this man will be replaced by another more able to cope with the exigencies of that future; this process will go on, while in the humanoid the desire to survive is present.
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If there were no tears shed for those species that preceded the Homo sapiens neither will there be when this man disappears thanks to the law of adaptation. If the word evolution has not been used it is because this word somehow means development, while adaptation only implies the fitness to preserve life. The extinction of a human species possibly is not due to catastrophe to its ineptness to solve the needs at a given moment. The present demands from man the ability to share life with one another; this has become imperative on account of the present development of the nuclear arms. Since its birth the capable race is allotted with the strength to break through the path that takes it to its objective, its survival; also it brings along the seed of its destruction, which is its ineptness to adapt itself to the future new exigencies. It’s fitting here to ask, why the humanoid possesses an irresistible desire to survive. Many have been the answers to this question, some philosophical, others scientific, and still others religious. It might be that one or more are to a certain extent right In this essay it is emphasized that in eons of years any accident might happen and that after a series of pure accidents an animal might have appeared, or several groups of these, that developed the consciousness of being. It might be taken as too simple this theory, yet there is no good reason to put it aside. Thus it is quite possible that with the almost eternal becoming of time and without any superior intelligence ruling so, one or many creatures emerged possessing consciousness of their existence. The realization of knowing one exists, sometimes brings along, the fear of not having an independent reality because in this state one has the fancy to be without control of oneself. Therefore, these beings with awareness of their existence put up a great struggle to retain this perception of being, thus their lives are by far much more dramatic than for those who don’t possess a reality of their existence. As it was mentioned before, it is quite reasonable to assume that in an infinite cosmos there are more than just a group of entities that know they exist, but in this essay the only one that is taken into consideration is the humanoid and his peculiar consciousness of having an existence of his own. Certainly, man has a number of characteristics that allow him to adjust to the
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environment more effectively than other animals, but his most important quality is his ability to reason. A man without intelligence cannot survive, unless someone else takes care of him. Thanks to his intelligence man has had his TRIUMPHS. A human being without discernment is a dead man. Obviously, the most important feature in the humanoid for his survival is his intelligence. The capacity of the Homo sapiens that allowed him to forge his monumental society was his efficiency to create the organizational pattern of his laws. The law is the base over which the Homo sapiens built his world. This sort of humanoid would have found his immediate destruction, if it had not been for his law, which in turn represents the materialization of his vital force. Each gender of humanoid that has walked this planet, has produced a few men among the whole, more capable to come to grips with the new needs and urgencies of the times. These individuals are the ones that evolve into the new dominant race. It does not matter here to know which were the means by which the predecessors of the Homo sapiens found their survival. What is important is the Homo sapiens and his creation of the law? To this invention today’s society owes its structure. The law was conceived as the only way to compel the Homo sapiens to live in community; this is fundamentally what today is referred to as civilization. Law is obeyed through a hierarchical system whose power is to impose rules on the masses. What makes possible the execution of the law is fear. Most Homo sapiens obey because they fear not so much the destruction of their individuality but their consciousness of existing. The vast majority of these beings are horrified at the thought they may be annihilated, Their fear brings along a glandular secretion of adrenaline which is somehow pleasant and this is of foremost importance to understand the passivity with which the Homo sapiens accepts the decrees that rule him. Certainly, law is quite diversified because of the multiple civilizations that had flourished in the world’s history. Worldwide law is a very complex body, so much so, that it is difficult to trace its origins to the point that those who enforce it don’t know where it came from.
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As it was pointed out before the creation of law made possible the Homo sapiens’ civilization. Because this humanoid lacks the appropriate traits to participate of life with others in harmony makes it eminently necessary to submit him to rules. The founding fathers of the law knew the Achilles Heel of the Homo sapiens is his horror to lose his knowledge of being; that is why the legal edicts are full of threats that end with the life of the unruly. As it is to be expected, each human species that has inhabited the earth has bad men of different degrees of intelligence and sagaciousness. The wisest of the first period of the history of the Homo sapiens were the great leaders that knew how to forge the law and impose it. No doubt many of these men truthfully thought they were inspired by a superior being that later became the central deity of the community. Even Solon claimed to have been inspired by the gods. Even today the great nations that call themselves atheist keep the law as something sacred. Once a body of people establishes themselves in a place under the same set of ethics, it gains a great deal of confidence. If still the law is within the realm of religion; it offers the individual eternal life or something of the sort; if it has become a lay community, then it promises him continuity in his descendents or the like. The emotional assurance derived from a law put on firm basis is so great that its adepts defend it ZEALOUSLY. So much so that any opinion or activity be of an individual or a group of them that shakes its substratum, it is met with a vehement mental and physical violence. Most certainly, if the new opinion of what should be the law overtakes the old one, the new one prevails. When a society becomes suspicious, and eventually convinces itself that another one is trespassing the limits of its institution, it feel with the right to intervene; in other words to put order in the challenging community. It’s ready to play the role of police in the economical, religious, and political issues of the community that questions its values, in order to defend its well being. This attitude becomes even fiercer when it touches matters pertaining to morality, thus one of the origins of war. A bellic conflict does not simply develop out of ideological or economic differences. It is more the innovating position of a community, which produces the class with the established ones.
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When these last ones feel that the system that gave them statutes and allows them to survive is threatened. This gives them the right of intervention. And thus they launch themselves to destroy the new order. Even in small social orders the same behavior is found. The family that breaks away from a neighborhood’s canons is discriminated against. Even the family nucleus rebukes the member that walks away from the accepted path. It can be well said that the Homo sapiens lives subject to the law. But as it cannot be obeyed in its entirety all the time, hypocrisy is natural to the legal system. To adjust to a community means to become acquainted with its hypocritical system, which is the path to success. In other words the more that is known of the ways of simulation of a society the better off one is in it. It can well be said that the easiest thing to know in a society is its law, and that is because it is written; but the most difficult thing to understand is its hypocritical setup, because it is formed by agreements that are never discussed or talked about. Only through a very subtle learning can be understood. The unfortunate who lacks the skill to understand the hidden way of his society ends up penniless, in jail, or in a mental institute. This system cannot be reproached as repugnant; it must always be borne in mind that the Homo sapiens is not apt to share life with others and has to be compelled to do so. It is not hard to observe that violence is an essential part of this humanoid. And this occurs because vehemence brings along fear, and horror is the vivifying essence of this race. The most liked sports are the more grotesque; the most heard music, the most exasperating; the most acclaimed cinema and theatre, the bloodiest, and the most famous feast the most calamitous. The foremost national festivities from the carnival in Rio to Thanksgiving Day in USA have behind a good deal of deaths, assassinations, accidents and jails packed of evildoers and worst, of innocents. This public is lured by masochism, suffering anything but peace and harmony. It can well be said that the Homo sapiens is a specie sadomasochist “pour excellence”. That is why the most horrifying news are chosen to be printed in journals and shown on screens. And most religious talk of blood, the wrath of God, and the terrible punishments that will befall the
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sinners, who in turn hear and read all this day after day, week after week with utmost delight. Wisely, the law sets the basis to establish communities that in turn are formed by a multitude of families founded on different concepts of what this should be, it is not the same a Christian family than a Muslim or Buddhist. The totality of these family groups stands on two gigantic pillars: the concept of the father and the mother. This does not mean that all progenitors represent these two ideals. They are more like vehicles through which the idea of fatherhood and motherhood are expressed. The real father figure is the accumulation of rules and regulations by which a community defends itself from the enemies of its structure. The hygienic rules for instance, dictate how to dress, the food that should be eaten, the acceptable sexual regulations, and the appropriate way of reproduction of the species. Other rules set the ways of making war, work, and raise means. On the other hand the mother figure is constituted by the arts of hypocrisy, in other words the ways to dodge the rules and regulations of the society without being punished, and in order to climb the social scale of power. That’s why the mother figure turns out to be more attractive than that of the father. The father figure is not always rendered by the male. One doesn’t have to look around very much to see this is true. Who is the Father of Catholic Spain if not Isabella of Castile? Wasn’t Queen Victoria the one that forged the moral, economic and bellicose nineteenth century England? Among the common people this too happens that the female in the home turns out to be the father figure, either because she never married or because her companion or husband or whatever lacks the vitality to play the role. Furthermore, each day more women are occupying the executive role as head of the nation, or company. In the West the archetype of the father figure is well represented by Moses. It doesn’t matter whether or not the historical Moses, if he ever existed, gave his famous tables, which even now serve as guides of conduct, what matters is the mythological Moses, the man who imposed his will by giving a set of rules, as result of his unquestionable belief that he was God sent. The foremost plastic expression of this archetype was captured by Michelangelo in his sculpture of Moses. This statue shows a man with total assurance of his indefectible authority. It faces the world with a strength
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that leaves no room for questioning. Precisely, because the Mother figure represents hypocrisy, a condition so subtle and ephemeral, it is difficult to find her archetype in the historical or mythical figures. Nevertheless in the pictorial art it may well be that the enigmatic smile of the celebrated Mona Lisa is what Leonardo captured the archetype of the mother. By no means, it is meant that all women are teachers of falsehood. What is meant is that she has been compelled to assume an attitude as victim of a legal system that has set her on a very low pedestal. The female continues to be discriminated against. And this stems from the teachings of the great religions that teach that the disasters of the world are the result of women’s’ disobedience. Disobedient to whom has she been if not to a male god that supposedly gave the law. To poorly survive she had to elaborate the art of dissimulation, only way for women and men to dodge, at least in part, the total incarceration by the law. Perhaps if the god believed in, had been male-female the He-She would not have needed a counterpart. But this could have never happened, because the He-She would have been the product of a man capable of sharing harmoniously life with other humans. Both sexes in the race of the Homo sapiens live in constant friction. If God had been conceived as female (as it seems it has been in several cultures and is still in a few today) then the male would be discriminated against. But as it was stated before the male takes sometimes the role of the female; the greatest treatise on discrimination was written by a male, Machiavelli. The highest the social level the degree of the art of dissimulation is more sophisticated. In reality the most respected institution in the world are noting else bulwarks of hypocrisy, may these be religious, governmental or educational centers who could be head of a religion if indeed he believes in the precepts established in the god that found it? No one! The same can be said of the heads of governments and of those who dictate the cannons by which the learning institutions are guided. It becomes clear that apparently law rules society, but the truth is that the hidden hypocrisy is the mean through which the most desired goals of a society are acquired, bearing in mind that usually these goals are prohibited. This system allows the smart alecks to acquire a
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great deal and those acting in good faith nothing. But the truth is that the legal system has been an overwhelming success for thousands of years. When large groups of Homo sapiens break the established law, they redeem themselves making offerings and promises to their god or gods. In case of an aborted subversion against a government, also through punishments and repentance the members of the community reconcile. In this way the Homo sapiens could have ruled the planet for several millenniums more. But his transgression in creating nuclear artifacts that can wipe out all existence in the planet is unforgivable as his only reason for existing is the continuation of life. When the foundation of the law is torn asunder, there is no way to put it together. This deed (the total rupture of the basis of the law) signifies the end of the Homo sapiens’ cycle, as there is no possible law to prevent the total destruction of this world. The law was created with the sole reason that the Homo sapiens could to a certain extent partake of life with others of his race and for the preservation of the Humanoid. But when the rules of a community dare stop the natural development of life (which is dynamic in essence) it degenerates. Precisely it is at that moment when a law backs proceedings against the development of nature that decline of a civilization begins until it totally collapses. But what makes graver this historical moment is that the Homo sapiens went further than blocking evolution; as he has don so many times throughout history. This time he committed his most destructive act, if not his most stupid, by creating a means by which he has in his hands the capacity to wipe of from the face of the planet the human race. Even worse if it turns out to be this historical moment if it is true that there has been invented incurable illnesses in laboratories which are incurable with the purpose to depopulate zones of the earth to impose his false morality. The god of the Homo sapiens is the law because thanks to it he has been able to survive. Mythically it has been said that man was allowed to enjoy all the fruits of Eden except, one that would bring upon him death, well this was the first atomic bomb that shook the very entrails of the earth. It was then that the real death was born because it means the extinction of the human race. Therefore this deed is the one that claims that
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a man capable of living life with others harmoniously should be the new boss. And this species of man does exist. Therefore the law of life itself demands he shall take the place of the Homo sapiens who shall be forced out by the vital force of life A community ruled by terror cannot last, even less the whole world as it is happening nowadays. This is taking place as a result of the degeneration, of the Homo sapiens society who has changed his true god the law for the god of violence. And this last demands blood sacrifices. These sacrifices take place by the same token in the streets of New York or anywhere else. Such situation has taken place many times in man’s history. For sure when the god of violence reins the monstrous society of amorphous nightmares blooms. In the society art grows disharmoniously and becomes anti-art, science turns into sorcery, and, begins to preach false moralities. Morality should only grow in the temples of law, but when these turns into covens of eunuchs of the soul, from them only infamy is born. Precisely at this stage of a society is when the Moses and Draco emerge to impose a law with iron hands. But nowadays that the communities, in which peoples in the most deplorable states of ignorance possess the atomic bomb, there is no plausible Draco that can take away from them the deathly contrivance. Those who doubt that the majority of people that populate the earth revere murder, easily can be demonstrated that they are wrong, people know who Albert Einstein was because of his connection with the atomic bomb that finished with the lives of hundreds of thousands in seconds in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the sage that gave penicillin to the world is not well known even among the educated. Few are those that know the name of that man who for decades his discovery has saved millions and millions and still does. There are hundreds if not thousands of statues, institutes and all sorts of honors for Mr. Einstein. But where are the honors for the man who gave penicillin to the world? The guiltiest of the, detestable situation in which the Homo sapiens’ society finds itself are its religious leaders. One way or the other laws find their origin in religion. Even the atheist societies continue under the most religious order of old. The religious leaders are the most censurable ones. They are the ones who failed the most. And this
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has taken place as they believed less and less in what they represent. Indeed these religious leaders are the representatives of the god of the Homo sapiens on earth, but they don’t believe it any longer. Most certainly the pope is the vicar of the god of the Homo sapiens, but does he believe that he is? These religious leaders when they stopped believing they represented their god, they abandoned their flock. The Homo Sapiens’ degeneration began when he allowed the common man and even the inferior of his species to lead when the hordes of Homo Sapiens looked upon their wise with respect and even owe their civilization reached great levels. But the common man of this species leading drives the whole society to total destruction. It also might well be that the species of the humanoid suffers of a kind of senility and when they reach this state, they begin to act foolishly, and forge the catastrophe that brings upon them death. It also might be that the self-destruction of this man comes from a possible addiction to fear. Fear has served this species in many instances to survive as in the case of the law. But how much fear does it, need for its good? In all pertaining to the Homo sapiens fear serves him as a spring that triggers his action. The Homo sapiens has developed an environment so that wherever he finds himself, he is afraid; it so happens in learning institutions, businesses, churches, and amusements. Only to observe the today’s toys for children is easy to see they are representations of monsters. The newest forms of government fascism and communism make out of whole nations torture chambers. Even today’s medicine, particularly allopathy, is turning into a real nightmare. And all this is the product of the Homo sapiens, possibly because it finds pleasure in horror. It may be the adrenaline as a secretion of the stimulus of horror is a very addictive drug? Besides the possible senility of the species, the Homo sapiens may also be dependent on adrenaline. How else can the horror of society be explained? In a sadomasochist society like the one the Homo sapiens has built to live in, and which he thoroughly enjoys, where does the Homo conviviens stand? First it is to be understood that this man lives in a world that is not meant for him, therefore he exists in a state of constant restlessness. Worst still, if he has not realized he is a being different from the majority and from those who lead the world society. He sees all his desires
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frustrated, as these cannot be accomplished within the cannons of the existing society. To him is impossible to triumph, except in rare cases, as this present world is only fitting for the Homo sapiens. Naturally, the Homo sapiens is king in his own world, while the Homo conviviens is just an intruder. To change the social structure to fit the Homo conviviens this species must grow large enough to dominate. Not only its necessary to have enough of them, but also they must be conscious of their identity. When this takes place not only the Homo conviviens will be better off, but also the Homo sapiens, as the world would be more harmonious and just. The Homo sapiens must not be fearful of his last days on this planet, because the one that will take over will give him a much better life than the one he forged for himself, full of despotic teachings springing from his tyrannical spirit. The Homo sapiens lives spying on the other humanoids. He lives searching for the one that will replace him to exterminate him, physically or mentally. But this task very difficult for him, particularly, because the Homo conviviens does not have a visual mark to identify him. He is found in any social milieu in any race, and from any family. Where he comes from is an impenetrable mystery; not even genetics can elucidate. He is spread out all over the world. Too identify him is very difficult because his difference from the Homo sapiens it’s a mental attitude. He faces life in a manner totally different from his opponent. It is asked since when this humanoid exists another enigma shows up. Such is his antiquity that one of the older human species that has come down to this very day is about the meeting of two Homo conviviens Gilgamesh and Enkidu. For a Homo conviviens to succeed in life he has to make a great effort of auto analysis. Only those who have been born and grown up in an ambience of successful Homo conviviens can grow up without psychological problems, because their elders train them to play the hypocritical game of the Homo sapiens, without believing it and not allowing their ego to be hurt. But these are rare cases. Generally the Homo conviviens is born and reared surrounded by Homo sapiens, being totally difference from him that discriminate against him. This situation many times leads the Homo
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conviviens to believe that he is evil, stupid or inferior. This situation may lead him to desire to adjust to the Homo sapiens milieu, and to do so he has to acquire: the aggressiveness so particular of the Homo sapiens. The Homo conviviens then degenerates. This is the reason why asylums, jails and low class neighborhood shelters many of them in degenerate states. Only when the Homo conviviens becomes aware of what he is, he is capable to understand the reality in which he lives. He must acquaint himself with models that prompt the Homo sapiens society to discreetly triumph in it. He is able to know the emotional make up of the Homo sapiens, while the latter cannot do so with the Homo conviviens. The intelligence of the Homo sapiens determines it. This by no means makes the Homo sapiens a stupid being. On the contrary, the Homo sapiens is infinitely more astute within his milieu than the Homo conviviens. On the other hand, the Homo conviviens is superior in as much as he fits the demands of today’s survival. This is not only unimaginable for the Homo sapiens that a being can live without fear, but he finds it repugnant, weak and ridiculous It’s enervating for him to find himself in a harmonious ambience as that of the Homo conviviens… How each of these two beings understands sex plays an important role in their mental disgust for each other. Although the Homo sapiens have different concepts of love the one that determines great part of his life. Throughout his existence he has taken sex as the most important one. For him competence is part of his sex; therefore it brings about violence. Even in the highest social levels the female Homo sapiens expects a degree of brusqueness from the male. This results in a constant psychophysical friction between female and male. This type of woman finds his female opposer intolerable because of her playful and carefree way of looking at sex. The Homo conviviens woman looks upon sex as a fountain of blissful pleasure, while the other one searches for aggressiveness in sex. The female Homo conviviens finds her concept of love at a sensual level, where she meets in harmony and affinity her lover. If from this love encounter springs a baby, she doesn’t look at the babe as if she owns him; instead, she looks at the child as a person that most develops to reach standards higher than her own. The Homo sapiens mother
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thinks of her offspring as ownership and doesn’t want him to develop any further than she did. Only through the law this female has been compelled to allow her children to better themselves. The same goes for the fathers of this species. The male Homo sapiens cannot doubt his masculinity and this is based on the size and strength of his penis. Since immemorial times this has been his passport to be member of the community. Again, the masculinity of the Homo sapiens has for basis his penis, how he projects its function and capacity of action. The most unfortunate of workers while he can make believe he has a potent and large penis happily takes all the exploitation of the world. In higher levels of society the male uses more subtle means to demonstrate his virility with sophisticated gimmicks. For the Homo sapiens society the male whose penis doesn’t function he has no place in its ranks. It doesn’t matter if he excels in noble fields if he doesn’t demonstrate an erection of a respectably large penis he is nothing. The more intelligent when he finds deficiencies in his penis, he openly assures his public that although he is very muscular he refuses his well-proportioned and functional penis to enter the mystic life. And precisely these gentlemen have been setting the rules and regulations of the Homo sapiens heterosexual society for almost two thousand years. These men without having the emotional or daily responsibility of the parents are the ones that forge the structure of the families. Both the male and female Homo sapiens feel veneration for an erected penis. This attitude is mostly atavistic. That the penis can go from a bland state to a hard one and that on doing so grows is the mystery of life for this type of humanoid. Instead, for the Homo conviviens the penis is a piece of skin that inflates and deflates. This makes him see sex as something secondary and not omniscient in his life. Of course only the well-developed Homo conviviens can have this attitude. The others fall into degenerate actions to copy the feeling of the Homo sapiens. This is one of the reasons why Homo conviviens in deplorable states lower themselves to venerate the penis of the vilest of Homo sapiens. Many are the illustrious men who have gone to the lowest of the Homo sapiens males to render obeisance to his penis The Homo conviviens that is aware that
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he is a different man from the Homo sapiens never is overpowered by sex. He looks upon the rest of men for their level of excellence. For the Homo conviviens females are beings with a short penis and males with a large clitoris. Romanticism probably is the summit of Homo sapiens thinking, but to the Homo conviviens its ridiculous being he a realist ‘par excellence’. Precisely, because his realism it is quite impossible for the Homo conviviens to understand unless he is highly observant, that law in its origins was founded on the right to lie. The prophets dictated this legalistic principle as a result of hallucinations they had or simply because they were Machiavellian. And they were right in doing so, because it was the only means they had to save the specie. Without qualms the mass of Homo sapiens submit to the moral rules that are imposed upon them. Even in scientific matters he does not question very much. Thus, he lives making out of lies truths. The faith of the Homo sapiens is based on his wishful thinking, that the Homo conviviens in potentialities that might become realities As soon as the Homo sapiens finds himself well settled in a community, he feels he has the right whatever comes into his mind about others, usually his targets are Homo conviviens. These last cannot understand how they can be so easily. Calumniated. Calumny does not exist in the Homo sapiens way of thinking; it is just one more truth. Calumny as an abomination is only part of the Homo conviviens way of looking at life... He feels constantly shocked by falsehoods that for the Homo sapiens are convenient truths. These two species become even more distant from each other because of their respective ways of looking at death. As the Homo conviviens lives in a constant reality, finds great satisfaction in his introversion and relationship with nature. Also through true art he finds a great affinity with those of his own kind. All this makes him live the moment, and thus he escapes the anxiety that brings they uncertain future. He understands the impossibility of knowing the mystery of death, but he does not fear it. With all its difficulties he finds in the present development. The Homo sapiens lives in the past and future, which brings about insecurity and anxiety which in turn makes him fear death. He needs the constant courage of his own to feel secure. That is why he
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usually acts in groups and not alone. For this reason he so admires the Homo conviviens when he reads about them or sees the on the screen or theater. But he cannot be a hero. If he is capable to admire the darts, when he comes face to face with a Homo conviviens he detests him, as it is here when he feels his inferiority. The youth that make up the neighborhood gangs with its fascist tendencies is a classical sample of his behavior. He fears the individualistic attitude of his opposer. The Homo sapiens female might admire Saint Therese of Avila on an altar, but if she were to encounter the Saint in real life she would hate here. The need the Homo sapiens has to live in groups propels him to want everyone to act and believe like him, and this belief has produced the great atrocities he has committed throughout his history… the reaches the point in believing that he can murder for love, as he did during the Inquisition. Were not for love that the inquisitors burnt the heretics to send them to heaven? The Greek tragedians personify in their works heroes, in other words Homo Conviviens: Antigone, Oedipus, and Orestes. But the Helens with all their human knowledge did not quite understand that there were more than one species of humanoids, perhaps even more than two. It is in the four gospels that this knowledge perhaps for the first time brought forward. The Evangelists don’t contradict themselves in their writing: they write about a man that talks to these different sorts of humanoids. One even deforms the holiness of Melchizedek’s sacrifice by assuming that the Bread and Wine represent the Body and Blood of Christ. In other words takes this Sacrament as a sublimation of human sacrifice. The Homo Sapiens rightly understands that Christ as ‘SUMO SACERDOTE’ of the order of Melchizedek presents his believer with the mystery of a sacrament in which He becomes present in the Bread and Wine to nourish the Christ in each one. Then He talks to a more developed man as a Prince of the Law. Finally He speaks to the Homo Conviviens, who is above the law. It’s in the Gospel of John, more than in the others where Christ speaks to those who are His chosen ones and who he comes to guide and counsel. One of his foremost advices is, “to cast ye not your pearls before swine”. This concept is enhanced by Saint Paul when he states that some men must live under the law and others above it. In front of this formidable
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declaration the Fathers of the church grouped together, as Homo Sapiens usually do, to defend their own species and stay from taking over the new man, thus they formed what today is called Christianity, which has NO or nothing of Christ’s teachings. The Christianity of the past fifteen centuries should be called Judeo-Romanism, because it is shaped with the Jewish morality and the legalities of Roman thought. This was perpetrated to kill off the Homo Conviviens as if this were possible. The so-called Fathers of the Church were ‘contra natura’ as they tried to block the development of the vital force. Two religious concepts are valid: the Vedic and the Hellenic as well as the Buddhist because they entertain change, the others are wrong. Of course true Christianity calls for all to struggle to be “like your Father who is in heaven”. Which means change, movement towards greater things. The only obligation that the Homo conviviens has in life is his own development. Only doing this can he is in tune with the changing force of life. As he possesses a delicate sensibility that makes him feel the pain of others, much time in order to help others he doesn’t take good care of his duty to himself. He must always bear in mind that his feelings are unique of his species, and take constantly into consideration that the other species to walk along with the law became a great actor. He cries because it is proper to cry not because he feels anything. Not only the Homo conviviens must protect himself from this other species, but also of his own. Only a well developed Homo conviviens con help his own, who usually are a mesh of problem, by try in to help on if these, he only can harm himself. The most important thing for a Homo conviviens is to carefully look after himself so he can do what he was born for. For him to try to redeem the Homo sapiens is madness. The Homo sapiens was redeemed long ago. Many times have been said that birth is painful as well as death. Nowadays both species suffer because one has not completed it at birth and the other its death”. It was one of those days that there weren’t many clients in the café. Anne Jefferson comes in wearing a lovely light, gray overcoat. Her eyes particularly shone on that evening; she wore her splendid black hair in a chignon, and her white skin had a
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nacreous tone. She sat at one of the tables and greeted me with a gesture that invited me to accompany her. I approached her table and sat next to her, “You look particularly beautiful tonight” Laughing, she answered, “That’s because Neneca is not around”. Carlos suddenly came in and directly walked to our table and saluted us with a voluptuous energy of his. He inquired, “What’s your topic tonight?” I turned to him and said, “”I was just telling Anne, how beautiful she looks tonight”. Then Carlos explained, “Tonight is the shortest night of the year, it’s the midsummer night, and it’s when love sings three times before down: first for the young couples, then for those who have loved immensely, and lastly for the ones that are in love with love”. Smiling she looked to Carlos and said, “You just said something quite beautiful; I wonder in what category I fall, if I fit at all in any”. Carlos stated, “”You, Anne, are one of the ones that are in love with love; that’s why in your essay you talk about ‘The Homo conviviens’, which is really pure love”. Anne asked, “Do you think the homoconviviens already exists?” Carlos answered, “Most certainly; aren’t we all in this group of that new species?” Anne thoughtfully said, “It might be”. Carlos quite seriously added, “I really don’t know if your homoconviviens is a product of evolution as you stated, or is he born spontaneously, or if he came from another planet, or from another plane of consciousness. One thing I can tell you, that be as may, your homoconviviens had filled me with a sort of existential hope”. Thus we spent the night talking until the first rays of the sun appeared.
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CHAPTER VI
Around eleven o’clock in the evening, Carlos showed up in to my place; so I would go along with him to Currie’s. This coffee shop was open around the clock, and any hour it was packed with students from U.S.C. While we are having a coffee, he told me he had changed his mind, and that he was not going to work for Ph.D. in psychology, but that instead, he was going to put all his efforts a Ph.D. in anthropology. His statement took me by surprise and I said to him, “But why are you doing so? You already have your masters degree in psychology and you already have done quite a bit of work in your Ph.D.” Carlos explained to me, “I don’t know anything about the history of this continent, the mythological history of America; this is the history that tells you the truth about a culture. The more I study this field, the more I became aware that there is little knowledge of this theme. Now, I am very involved in what is the spirit of this continent where I was born. I don’t know anything about it! I have spent so much reading about the Greek, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Chinese, Roman myths, and I haven’t heard anything about the American’s. This is what I want to work on the American myths. We might be very European, but this land, from Canada to Patagonia speaks a different language, gives us a different way of feeling. It influences us in all our walks in life, even we are not aware of it. The soil is magic. I believe the cities are built on magnetic points of the earth. From the cities come out philosophy, the arts, the sciences, in other words, all the culture. From the countryside this sort of things cannot come out”. I answered him, “All this sounds very interesting and even beautiful, but what good does it to me?” Carlos laughed and said, “I just cannot make you out. Just tell me one thing, who, if you are interested in these matters, you put so much attention when I or anybody else talks about it”. I turned around to him and emphatically answered, “Simply because I am very interested in the field. What happens that I don’t know what it does for me?”
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Carlos said, “That’s OK!” I went on, “Will you continue in U.C.L.A”. Carlos then said, “For sure, I’m going to devote myself mostly to field work. What is nearest to me is Mexico”. I asked him, “Why don’t you do it here. Lloyd could help you a lot”. He answered, “Surely, Lloyd could help me a lot, but what happens is that here in California or in the East of United States there are not signs of Pre-Columbian culture. Mexico, on the other hand, is very rich in Indian cultures. Even now they preserve certain rituals that date from centuries before the Spaniards ever showed up. As I said before, Mexico is very near, while for instance Peru is very far”. Carlos started his studies in anthropology. And to do so he had to take large excursions into Mexico. As he made more research his enthusiasm grew. It was not so surprising the energy that betook him as he went into his intellectual interests. Thus, he saw less of him. But when I did see him, he told me more and more fascinating stories that filled him with an awesome strength. One day he said to me that in the Indian witchcraft was marvelous, it was a path in itself that embraced science, art, politics, and even more, it guided you to the transcendental. The fine looking Parsons girls, Caroline and Morine that were also socialites invited Carlos and I to their Christmas party. At the party a good number of persons that knew Carlos saluted him very warmly, because they hadn’t seen him in a long time, because of his field of work. If before they found his conversation interesting, now they fond it fascinating, not only because of what he said but also by the passion that he put in his opinions. The way he spoke had a strength that almost materialized his stories. A priest whose last name was Pujol, who was visiting Los Angeles, was at the party. The Parsons had met him in Spain, because they spent part of the year in Madrid where they owned a house. Father Pujol belonged to a missionary society that went by the name of OCSE. I am not sure of the name of the society. Anyway, he was one of those priests that particularly Spain produces. He was quite arrogant, opinionated and looked down upon the secular. He heard Carlos speak about the discoveries of the Indian culture. Pujol showed disgust and somehow disdain for Carlos’ statements.
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Probably, if Pujol had been in the Spain of those days, he would have anathematized Carlos, but of course, he had hold tongue, because he was not in his native land. Towards the end of the party, a small group surrounded Carlos. Father Pujol, with haughtiness, said Carlos, “but don't’ you realize how much Spain has given to all these Indians. The efforts of Spain drained her quite a bit. Now you come and tell us at the greatness of the obvious errors in which the Indians lived. I have come to America to join other priests to continue our civilizing mission”. Carlos looked upon the priest with a gesture of naïveté and said, “Mr. Pujol, your mission in this continent is finished. You people have been preaching for around five centuries in this continent. And, as you well know, ‘Much are called, but few are chosen.’ Whoever heard your words in this continent either accepted your theory or simply dropped it. There is simply nothing for you people to do in this continent. But I tell you, Father Pujol, you are not here in this group for chance. You are here because some higher force sent you. Presently, it is in your hands the evangelization of the poor Pygmies, who not even the Hindus, neither the Buddhists, the Muslims nor Christians have shown any interest in their salvation. Have you ever heard of any apostle who went to preach to them? Now here is where you come in. Father Pujol, you are here because you have called to civilize the Pygmies. You will the first one to investigate the morals and religion if they have any. Father Pujol, you came to this party to find the path you have take. Mind you, you have been chosen from many to do so”. Father Pujol was taken totally aback. Obviously, he had no answer for Carlos words. Then music at a ‘paso doble’ broke the conversation. And a couple started to dance. Caroline had great wisdom of how handle these social situations, so she put the music as high as possible. I saw Carlos less and less. He was to busy with his studies, work, classes, and field work. One day he came to see me so that I would meet a girl that was going out with him. Her name was Eve. She was about thirty years old and she appreciated greatly Carlos’ work. Carlos told me while he had a cake, that he was going to Northern Mexico to investigate the ways of the Indians there. He said he used to go by bus because this allowed him to study during the trip and besides that he arrived to his destination rested. It was on one of these trips that he met him, who was going to be his
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teacher. He said, “It is really wonderful that you found a guide, a teacher that will show you the culture of the Indians of that section of Mexico. Practically, nothing had been studied about it. If there is anything on it they are intellectual observations, but nothing really of a personal contact. This teaching that you are getting is so important, it has to do with the culture of our America”. Carlos said, “My aim is to learn from the ancient Pre-Columbian wisdom, it’s not to study rare cultures. This guide that I have met is ready to guide me ‘as he put it’ to a knowledge different from the one I have been taught. It’s a knowledge without limit”. Then I made this commentary, “In other words, it has opened doors to a way of seeing life from another angle, or even it may be to see the whole world existing from many, many points of view”. I really don’t know where my thoughts came from, but Carlos very excitedly said, “What just said is exactly what the whole thing is about. You have described exactly what this learning is about. I had to hear it from some one else. You said it so well; you didn’t have to thin about it. You say formidable things when you don’t think what are going to say”. This was not the first time Carlos had told me that I had to talk without thinking. I laughed and asked him, “And what is the name of the gentleman that is guiding you?” Carlos answered, “Juan, Don Juan”. Eve started, “Carlos has found a new Don Juan”. Carlos asked Eve, “What do you mean by saying that I found a new Don Juan?” Eve answered him, “I remember how interested you were in the figure of Don Juan in literature. You even had a book that had all Don Juans, from the first one by the Arcipreste de Hita through those by Zorrilla, Valle Inclán, Byron, Pushkin and others. In each interpretation of Don Juan, his character changes. For instance, the philosophical Don Juan of Shaw is quite different from that of Bergman or Molière. And now, appears this new Don Juan that probably goes further than the philosophical one”. I asked Eve, “Do you mean that Don Juan reincarnates?” She answered, “No, no, not at all. I believe it’s a matter of prototypes. Don Juan
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is a prototype that changes as his search goes form the carnal to the spiritual. The prototype is inspired by someone that existed. They were made of flesh and blood. I’m sure that Don Quixote was someone that existed at one time”. After this conversation I saw Carlos a couple of times. Then I got ready to go to Europe. The day before I left for the Old Continent where I lived so many years, Eve and Carlos invited me to a restaurant called ‘Byron’s’. Over the table Carlos told me, “I have learned so much from the natives of the Northern part of Mexico. They have me taught me so many things. They have explained so much to me. Do you remember I talked to you that cities were built on magnetic points of the Earth? There is much truth in that statement. It has been said to me that when a society reaches a certain level of development all the inhabitants go to different dimension and the city is abandoned except for some unworthy citizens that stay”. After this dinner with Eve and Carlos, I left to Europe the next day to come back to Los Angeles eighteen years later. During all these years, I had no communication with my friends in that city. It was in 1978 when I called some of them to tell them my return. At the airport of Oriel, Carlos and Don were waiting for me. They greeted me with great warmth and Carlos told me, “Now, we can continue yesterday’s conversation”. I stayed there for two weeks and I saw Carlos every day. We went to visit many of our old friends and we had a hell of good time. Mima Muñoz Obando, one of our older beautiful girl friends invited us and some other friends to dinner. This was the climax of my stay in Los Angeles in 1978. By then, Carlos was famous, and has seven bestsellers; this had not changed him in the very least. Carlos continued his friendship with his old friends. He didn’t like very much to meet new people, and he always avoided to be photographed. I don’t remember how it was that he appeared and talked in Portuguese in a picture I made in 1964. Milan also appeared in this film that lasts about forty-five minutes. As a matter of fact, they appeared together in a scene. The name of the film is ‘Beatnik Ulysses’, a rarity! Carlos always had a very particular sense of humor; sometimes, he even liked to
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joke. He told me once he had gone to a reception in San Francisco, California, where one of his new books was being presented. Of course he went as incognito there. As he did so often he used a different name. At the reception arrived a young, blond, tall, man who passed himself for Carlos and began to sign books. Carlos got into the cue so that the young man who was passing himself, as Carlos Castaneda would sign his book. Usually, when he traveled, he went along wit three girls, Jeanne, Beverly and, Mary. He arrived with them to visit Costa Rica. While he was in Costa Rica, he made friend with persons from the artistic and intellectual community of this country. He was rather impressed by Christina Zeledón and Andrés Sáenz, a critic of music and theatre. He was fascinated by the impetuosity of Marcia Pinto’s almost violent painted flowers. He liked so well the ambience of this country that he was willing to give a conference at the National Theatre. He also visited several groups that were interested in his work ad spoke to them quite friendly. He also gave a talk at Daniel Gallego’s house a Costa Rican playwright. Twice he visited the country. And practically all the time I was with him. He spoke a lot about what he said was a very special country with a particularly gentle people. A group of us went with him to see an Annoulle’s play ‘Orquesta de señoritos’. He was amused by it and he said that San José, the capital city of Costa Rica was very French. After his visits to this country he went on talking to me for a long time by phone. It was during one of these calls that Juliette Moreno, my cousin, answered him and established a very sound friendship by phone. Juliette had been clubfooted and doctors said that she wouldn’t walk and walked very well, until she was ninety when she passed away. Juliette told Carlos that there was no reason for anyone to allow becoming old. She really went on practicing her gifts as a wonderful seer and having wonderful time until she left this dimension. She was still a very handsome ninety years old lady. In the eighties, we met without planning at all in Mexico D.F. a mutual friend of ours, Carlos Ortiz de la Huerta, called me at my hotel to tell me that Carlos was giving a conference in the Chapel of All Souls in the National Cathedral. It was quite an interesting evening. It was his opinion that the great Indian monuments were under the colonial structures. He said that these buildings should be torn down so that the pre-
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Columbian monuments would see the light again. He eve included the Cathedral where he was giving his speech. We, after the conference, went to have coffee with Carlos, whom I never saw either smoking or having alcohol. The place was rather agreeable and we were taken there by Rosendo, a young man who worked for Diana Publishing House. It was there that Carlos spoke of his desire that by the way, he had already achieved to go to a different dimension and come back. Among the group was Ronald Steinhart, a good friend of mine, that when he heard Carlos to talk about making reality ones desires. Ronald told Carlos that he always wanted to be a priest, but that for different reasons was never able to make it, and now that he was 44 he had no chance of becoming what he had always wanted to be. Carlos the explained to him that one’s intend had to be accompanied by a desire that came out of every atom of one’s physical body which was microscopic in comparison to the invisible where thoughts, desires, emotions, feelings, and the rest were, then, Carlos said, “Most of ourselves belong to the invisible and we have to put it to work to made the visible our own”. It so happened that a few years later, Ronald was ordained a priest. When Carlos heard this from Ronald by phone, he excitedly said, “Ronald you made your intend a reality”. Of late, Carlos became interested in my going into the future. The group that I channeled for lost interest in going to the past, and we launched into going into the future. It was at a gathering at Dr. Alvarenga’s home, a fine doctor that almost miraculously cured people that I continued my conversation with Carlos. It was through a young man, Marito Gamboa that channeled Carlos. In this session through Marito, Carlos materialized a watch that a professor of the Universidad de Costa Rica, Hilda Arguedas, had lost long ago. She too has esoteric gifts. So it goes that my conversation with Carlos has never ceased. We always find ways to communicate with each other.
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EPILOGUE
In those university days, when we used to meet to chat about different topics, I remember that one day someone said that men died because they had been programmed to do so, but in reality man didn’t have to give up his spirit. Furthermore, I remember one day, Neneca Maduro said, “That old age was also programmed into man. Look at all the animals, they all age only when they are going to die, but progressive ageing is only due to human beings”. I don’t remember what Carlos had to say about these two themes, but what I remember is that old age and death were his two great challenges. I am almost certain that these two objectives were what he wanted to overcome. Somehow, I think he did it. Carlos used to say that to keep young for good brought upon a person a great number of problems. “Imagine, Carlos would say, a person that stays young for years and years all the surround him becomes old to the point that the one that keeps young has to leave the surroundings for good. He has to abandon all his loved ones and the world he’s known. He must then begin life in a totally different world, where he has a very basic thing: a legal identity, and this is no easy to do. The person that wants to preserve his youth must prepare for it. First, he must have the means to begin a completely new life in an unknown place. His heart must be training you to give up his dears ones. It’s quite demanding to a person to remain young for decades and decades. He must have the means, the cunningness, and the emotional strength to give up what he has loved so much. The only thing that he can take along with him is the knowledge and if this is represented by a diploma, he must see how he can keep it up to date. How would a twenty nine year old man have a diploma given to him in 1950 that now it is the 2005? This is only one of the problems to be solved, if one want to remain young forever”. To remain with one family and society would be absolutely impossible. One has only to imagine what would happen if one’s grandmother looks twenty-six when her daughter looks fifty and her grandmother thirty. Society would consider her a monster, someone that belongs to a circus or to an asylum where scientists could study her.
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Now, through the intent, one may achieve this perpetual youth. Those who have achieved this objective have to live a great part of their life incognito; they must assume every few years a different personality. How to make this intent is no so difficult, as it is well explained in Carlos’ books? Carlos death goes far beyond the ordinary. Even that he ordered his lawyers not to announce his deceased, but two months later from his departure, made me think that his going away was far from being a simple matter. It was not that many years later when I could again contact him through Marito’s mediumship that Carlos clarified things for me. Carlos explained to me that by sheer volition one could change from plane to plane disintegrating the material body. He said that he orgasm takes a person to a point that is out of time. The moment of ecstasy that sex offers is a supreme moment and it is because at that particular moment of the orgasm one change planes. The force that exists at that moment is of an unimaginable power. It breaks the barriers of time and at that moment Kronos, the god of time, loses all power. Carlos took that moment of ecstasy and its infinite possibilities to disintegrate his body. The enormous energy produced at that moment when one crosses the boundary between time and no time neutralizes the force that puts together millions and millions of atoms to shape up the body, in this case the human one. The atoms cells and the rest separate by ones volition. And this way, one’s real self liberates from the temporal to go in to the atemporal where one finds one’s real self. It is not that Carlos parting was unique, but it was the one that chose to leave this media. It was a supreme act of volition which left at one side death, because an instantaneous disintegration of the corporeal body. This volition has potentiality to put again together the atoms that constituted the body, so that once again one might occupy it at will; what shape it may take depends on the convenience of the endeavor that one desires to make in the absolute.
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