Izvrstan interview sa Soledad Ruiz koji otkriva štošta toga u vezi Castanede:
Stories are not important, what’s important is Spirit
Soledad Ruiz
Interview with the shamana (woman shaman), curandera (healer), teacher and movie actress: Soledad Ruiz. She tells us how she knew Don Juan years before she knew Carlos Castaneda, of whom she was an intimate friend from the seventies.
At first she seemed reticent, but when she heard that is was a work for preserving the memory of Carlos, she agreed, but made a strange comment: “The stories are not important, what’s important is Spirit.”
Her testimony begins when on a certain occasion she went, along with other students, to visit her maestra, Magdalena Ortega, who was herself a spectacular bruja; she had great powers and accomplished true feats, but that is another story.
“At that time” she said, “I had read the first book of Carlos which had just appeared in English and talked about it with my maestra and she told me that she was a close friend of Don Juan Matus. At first I didn’t want to believe her and she who was a tremendous clairvoyant must have noticed, so she replied: “Some day I will introduce you to him.”
On one occasion we went to visit her, two of her students. She told us that Don Juan was about to arrive with other people who I supposed were his apprentices. While we waited for them, she said to us: “I am going to give you some homework: that you recognize among all those who arrive which of them is Don Juan. Then write down and justify your conclusion and return tomorrow.”
She ordered us not to talk among ourselves of our impressions until we met the following day with her.
The visitors arrived late and justified themselves by saying that they had gotten lost. From the next room we listened as the maestra gave them a friendly scolding. When they entered the room, observing that there were five or six people of advanced age, we got up to withdraw and she introduced us by our names: “She is Soledad, he is Milosh – but she didn’t mention the names of the visitors.”
Just seeing them, I thought: “Don Juan must me the one who is seated in the chair.” We greeted them with movements of the head and remained standing, while they commented on the drollness of the situation, for they had been walking a long time from one side to the other without finding her house. That happened because the maestra lived on Amsterdam, a circular street which in other times had been the Jockey Club of Mexico City.
We observed them for a brief moment, then said goodbye and left. The following day we returned to the maestra’s house to discuss with her our deduction.
I found Don Juan out for one reason: his gaze. His left eye was diverted, and she affirmed that that is a characteristic of shamans, but obviously not having it does not signify that one is not a shaman. It is a convention, that’s all. I said to myself: what am I going to write? So I didn’t finish my assignment. On the other hand, Milosh filled three complete pages with his reasons, reaching the same conclusion as I.
On hearing our deductions, the maestra said to me: “Yes, you are on target, that was Don Juan. You also were on target, Milosh.”
Then she asked us how we saw him dressed. I replied: “He had a peasant style, with gabardine pants, an ordinary shirt and a jacket.”
In that moment Milosh and I became aware of something extraordinary: he had seen him in another way: in an elegant suit. We were astonished, asking ourselves how that could be.
She affirmed that one of the powers that a shaman may have, is to be seen as they wish to be seen.
It was only years later that I had the opportunity to know personally Castaneda.
Carlos was very interested in the indigenous traditions of Mexico. I met him for that reason. The first time that I found myself with him was in 1974, in a dance studio in The Valley colony shared by a modern dance ballet and a leader of the traditional conchera dance named Andres Segura.
Andres had a traditional group called Atochas’ Holy Nine. He invited me one day to a song session, and we were playing the concha and singing songs of praise as is usual in the dance ceremonies. Carlos Castaneda came to it, integrated into the activities and was listening very attentively to the songs. Afterward we were talking with him and he asked many questions about aspects of the tradition, and finally invited us to eat at a Chinese restaurant in the Zona Rosa.
At one moment during the meal, I told Carlos that I had met Don Juan a couple years before, thanks to the maestra Magdalena. Hearing this, he was all attention, looked at me with extreme interest, and said: “Listen, can I visit you in your home?” I who was captivated by his book which had just come out in Spanish responded: “That would be delightful!” Seeing my enthusiasm, he added: “Well, if you wish, I will come this evening!”
I asked him: “Would it be alright if I invited three friends who are very interested in traditional ways?”
He agreed with the idea. So I rapidly called my friends and notified them. To the wife of one of them I said: “Fulano, in exchange for the invitation, your task is to make tortas, because I think that we are going to stay awake a while and will get hungry. I have soft drinks.” And that’s what we did.
Carlos arrived at nine o’clock and left at two in the morning. He was fascinated with the tortas and ate as many as he could.
He returned the following night, I don’t know whether to talk or for the delicious tortas. For the following three days he came each night and told us of incredible things. When he had to return to Los Angeles, we agreed to see each other again when he returned.
Thus began our relationship. He came to Mexico, gave his lectures and finally, whatever hour it was, headed for my house. He was a great talker, his stories were infinite, for a whole night. At two or three in the morning we ate bread with yogurt, changed the theme for an instant and talked of trivial things. Then we entered again into substantial things. When it dawned, he looked at his watch and exclaimed: “Hey, I’ve got to go!”
At times he called me from Los Angeles. “Soledad, I’m going to Mexico, I will look for you so that we can see each other at a certain hour.”
There developed a very fraternal relationship: he even wrote a dedication in one of his books – I think it is The Gift of the Eagle – saying: ‘To the only woman who has given me power.’
He told me of his ancestors, he said he was Brazilian. For some reason which I can not say, his parents did not raise him; his grandfather came for him when he was yet a child and took him to Argentina. From there he went to Los Angeles.
He told me anecdotes about his grandfather, how at twelve years old he encouraged him to know women, saying now was the age, although he was a child. One day, returning from an adventure with a woman, he complained: “Hey, grandfather, the women there smell very bad!” His grandfather yelled at him: “Idiot, that is the smell of life!”
He confessed that at first the women disgusted him, but later he turned into a womanizer. He told me an enormous number of adventures that he had had with women. Also one day he began to flirt with me. I told him: “Careful, Carlos, among us it would be incest!” That was because we treated each other like brother and sister. In truth I liked him a lot, with a fraternal love.
One of our places of meeting were the lovely restaurants to which he invited me. He was a very good eater. We ordered who knows how many things, and we ate everything! After eating, we tried to guess what message the things on the table were telling us.
Something which has to be emphasized is that never, in any of the many conversations that we had, did he adopt an attitude of superiority. Nothing felt unusual, despite who he was. Never did he become the wise man, audacious. Rather, on the contrary, he always exclaimed: “Wow! But what have I got myself into?”
He told me how at the beginning of his apprenticeship, he was constantly making a fool of himself, due to his personal importance, and the way that Don Juan put down his conceit. One of the stories that he always repeated with joy, dying of laughter at his own stupidity, is when he dared to compare himself with Don Juan:
“I had the audacity to tell him that yes we were equal, but deep down I felt superior. Imagine: a horrifying shorty pretending that I was not equal with don Juan because I had an academic title! How could I have said that? He replied: “No, not at all, we are not equal, I am a man of knowledge, and you are an idiot.” You can not know how embarrassed I felt!
As a resource for controlling his importance, Carlos laughed at himself, about his height and appearance. We laughed for hours with him, watching the comical ways he portrayed himself.
Another thing that I noticed in him, is that he felt an enormous responsibility for being the transmitter of a whole system of ideas, that he was very concerned about that.
The teaching of Carlos that most impacted me is not his description of the Universe, because each one of us has his own, according to his own faculties of perception. That which I found of great social and religious effect, is the theme of fears, of how man imposes limits because of his fear of failure, of death, of loneliness or poverty. Those are our true enemies: to clean one’s life of fear is an extraordinary advance.
Carlos constantly talked with me about his worries, of the huge challenge that it was for him to accept fully the system of thought that don Juan proposed to him. One time he told me that social fears, above all of not being recognized and loved like the rest, are something truly devastating, because they impede our recognizing ourselves as infinite. “When you let go of having those fears, you will be able to throw yourself into an abyss, if it is necessary, because now nothing matters to you.”
At that time he had just suffered an experience in which he was pushed by his maestro into an abyss. He talked a lot about this theme, of losing fear and throwing yourself into infinity; he was really noticeably affected.
He told me that he only remembered the moment in which they pushed him, but nothing about what happened afterwards. Suddenly finding himself in his apartment, he begins to look around everywhere and said to himself: “I know that I got here, but … how did I get here?”
Noticing that he has a piece of paper in his jacket pocket, he looks at it and it is an unused airplane ticket! At the time that he told me that story, he assured me that he didn’t remember anything of what had happened during the entire trip between Oaxaca and Los Angeles.
Another of the things that moved me about him was his enormous feeling of having been orphaned. In his personal talks he let that matter come out a lot, and he told me how very much he suffered not having don Juan alive. In reality he was never able to overcome his parting, he was talking about that until the end.
I can testify to his fascination for prehispanic tradition. We had several points of affinity, but the main one was that I was a Conchera. He knew that I had sources of ancient knowledge different than those of anthropologists. I believe that he found inspiration in my occupation as a dancer, or perhaps he sought corroborations in the tradition about the knowledge that don Juan transmitted to him.
He frequently asked me what the concheros knew of the Toltec tradition. I told him what had been told to me: that the Toltecs were the original civilizing influence, and that they were not a race, but rather a group of wise men who reached certain discoveries about man, his destiny and the nature of perception.
Carlos scrutinized me about the tradition, drawing out details like a magnifying glass, not asking me just anything, rather only the fine details. One time he asked me how it is that the dancers of today know of the Toltecs. I replied to him that we had received all that information from oral tradition.
One day he arrived at my home and told me a truly fantastic story: that he was going to Guatemala with some companions, and that they were would make the trip by foot and would take with them no money.
I was worried a little, and asked him if they had equipped themselves adequately for that expedition.
He replied that they didn’t need to carry anything with them, because the Earth would protect them and would feed them.
When he returned from that adventure, he told me that they were three months walking to Guatemala and that it had gone very well, something that was very exciting. The Earth had in fact taken care of them.
I do not know why they went, but I believe that what they sought was contact with the Mayan culture, because the relation between the northern traditions of Mexico and the Mayans is very deep. I was not surprised that he and his companions had gone to make an offering to the Earth in the Mayan world.
Carlos did not have a direct relationship with the maestra Magdalena, rather through don Juan and the old ones. I had the opportunity to be close to her for eleven years. She told me that brujos have their hierarchies, that some are in charge of others, and that each shaman has his protector. Generally, those protectors do not belong to this reality, but there is always a living benefactor.
She had so much to do with shamans that at times she asked them for money with which they then helped many poor people.
Something interesting is that don Juan as well as the maestra declared that they were conventional Catholics. Don Juan was among those who went to mass every Sunday.
Carlos told me that one time don Juan took him to church and he remained waiting in the atrium, because he had a certain prejudice against religion. When they met again, he asked him:
“Listen, don Juan, did you confess?”
“Yes” he replied, “I confess, take communion and do everything.”
The maestra explained to me one day this relationship with the church. She told me: “As a social person, I am a Catholic, but as a bruja I am free, I have no religion.”
She told me that religion has a great energy, so there’s no reason to reject it. When a brujo adjusts to the customs of his surroundings – as long as those customs are not contrary to saving energy – then he doesn’t wear himself out fighting against the tide, he has no remorse, he is even free to go and take communion.
She also explained to me that brujos see God as energy, not as an anthromorphic being who is watching you every day to see when you screw up. Energy does not punish. The saying that “god is punishing me” is a false idea of the Creator.
In the Mexican tradition it is said that Ometeotl dispersed itself and thereby generated duality, that is, the masculine and feminine principle of creation, and from that came man. The ancient ones knew of a divinity that we do not know today. There you have the concept of Moyocoyani, “that which invents itself”; how could you have a better definition of God? That is knowing how the Universe is organized!
The maestra took me to mass very often and told me:
“I comply with the highest mission of the church, which is doing charity. I do not charge for healing, therefore I earn the right to take communion without confessing.”
“One day when I was walking towards Merida, I saw a church which had an open door and I entered to see who was there. At that moment a priest was leaving. We were alone, there was no one in the nave. The priest approached me and asked: “Do you wish to confess?”
I replied: “Frankly, father, I want to tell you the truth. I am a healer, I do not believe in sin.”
The father continued looking at me for a while and then said to me: “Its okay, daughter, its not necessary that you confess.”
In the path of healing one needs to begin by healing one’s self.
One ought to begin with the premise of being sick and that it is possible to be cured, first of all the physical illnesses, then the mental illnesses.
It must begin with cleaning the guts of all its filth, and that is done by using seven magical plants with which a tea is prepared, washing the intestines and vomiting.
Then come the sweat lodges where the body is purified by sweating and bathing with herbs and flowers.
Together with a whole range of physical exercises there are massages and stretching which serve to keep the body agile and in good form.
The maestra must have seen that Carlos needed help because she once said to me: “Tell Carlos that he ought to learn to cure. Healing is a door into the occult world. And in the path of the healer one ought to begin by curing one’s self.
I went to Carlos and gave him the message. I added: “I think it would be very good that you meet with her so that she can instruct you in your way of healing.”
But I noticed that that possibility was frightening to him, because he was obsessed with the way that people suck out our energy, and in healing there is a great transference of energy from the healer to the patient. He was always careful about that, he did not like mass meetings and avoided photos, he said that they suck out his energy.
I replied to him: “Yes, its true that they sap us, but we recover through sleeping and eating, and you don’t need to have any fear of that.”
Despite my insistence, he did not want to go to the maestra, I believe that he was afraid.
One day he came to Mexico and told me: “I am going to the Scandinavian peninsula.” I don’t remember what reason he gave me. “What gifts would the brujas like?” He was referring to the maestra and me.
I replied: “I don’t know Carlos, whatever occurs to you.”
When he returned, he brought us as a gift the most beautiful perfumes, of a truly unusual quality, and some towels. I brought to the maestra Magdalena those that belonged to her, because he gave me our packages separately. She took the gifts and said: “Give him thanks for the perfume, but I am going to prepare the towels for him.”
Who knows what she did to the towels, but one day she gave them to me and ask me to deliver them to Carlos. But he did not want them returned, I noticed in his eyes that he was frightened. I still have them.
The old Florinda and the maestra Magdalena did not get along well. The reason behind that was that the maestra wanted Carlos to become a healer, and Florinda was angry about that.
In my opinion she felt jealous that the other was messing with her student. Carlos told me that he felt exhausted by the harsh and dominating way in which Florinda controlled everything.
Owing to the fact that I was the one who carried the message from the maestra, Florinda was also angry with me, did not like me at all. Carlos told me that she scolded him a lot and blamed me for trying to change his path.
One night I dreamt of old Florinda and she dealt with me very harshly, she fought with me, reproaching me for becoming an apprentice of Magdalena.
I replied to her: “Look, senora, I do not want to change Carlos in any way; I am only the messenger, I do not even dare to propose anything. Why am I to blame? She who has those ideas is the maestra Magdalena, so on those matters, talk with her.”
The following day I go to the maestra and ask her: “Listen, didn’t Florinda talk with you yesterday?” Because she was attacking me and I sent her to you.”
She calmed me: “Don’t worry” she said, “that old woman will not be returning to talk with you. I put her in her place!”
And that’s what happened, she never bothered me again. But Carlos called me and told me that Florinda had demanded that he stop talking with me, so that for a time we had to remain separate. That matter caused me a lot of grief.
Many years later, the younger Florinda came to Mexico to give a talk in a hall, near Las Lomas. A friend of mine found out and called me. When Florinda finished, she said to me: “Listen, come and visit Carlos, who is at Grinberg’s house.”
I replied to her: “Look, Florinda, there is something very dark between he and I – and I told her the story of my friction with the old Florinda. But she assured me: “Fortunately, Soledad, that problem has passed. Florinda departed and the quarrel is over. Come with me, I will take you to Carlos.
I replied: “Praise God! How wonderful!”
That’s what we did. I went with a little fear, but when we got to the house of Jacobo, Carlos gave me the longest hug that I’ve ever received. It went on for ten minutes. He pressed his face intensely against mine and said to those present. “Look, my little sister, isn’t it true that we are the same?”
The last time that I saw him, was at a talk that he gave at the Casa Tibet. I arrived a little late, he had already began. I sat down at the end of the hall in order to not attract attention, but I could listen and see well.
When he finished, I saw him leave on the arm of Carol Tiggs, taking little short steps, like an old man. She supported him, because he could not now walk alone. His condition made a great impact on me, because I had known him as a young man in all his splendor.
I embraced him with great enthusiasm, and I felt him dissolve in my arms. I wondered how it was possible that in such a short time Carlos had passed from the heights to such a low level of energy.
As if he read my mind, he answered me: “Do you know what? I have a very serious problem: I have one foot here and the other who knows where. Soledad, I went far and have not been able to reunite my parts. That is why I am so bad.”
He explained to me that his illness was in reality an energetic problem, since in one of his dreams he got stuck there and now he can not put together again his totality. In a bitter tone, he complained: “Imagine! I who was always so independent, and I need them to help me - they even have to bathe me!”
Later he added: “If I succeed in assembling my parts again, I will return to Mexico and call you. If not, then, Soledad, we will see one another in the great beyond. Remember that you and I have an appointment in the other world.”
He was right, some years before we had arranged to meet in a world that is not human. We sealed the pact with a little ritual which took place in the living room of my house.
He never came back to Mexico. It is said that he died from cancer of the liver, but I believe that that explanation was to fulfill a formality.
My conclusion about Carlos is that, better than telling private anecdotes, it is worthwhile to emphasize his monumental importance for Mexico. He is the investigator who has divulged more of our traditions than anyone in the entire world, his books were translated into all the important languages and have been studied for their immense cultural and spiritual contributions. Mexico has an imperishable debt of gratitude to him.
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