“Help my neighbors!” I said, and the fear vanished.
“How does your heart feel?”
“Like an enemy, an unrelenting muscle, an indifferent clock marking the running out of my time, an executioner threatening at every moment to stop and end my life,” I answered.
“You’re wrong. Enter it. There you will find the Oth.”
In the state I was in, thinking of something meant doing it immediately. Right away, I found myself immersed in my heart! The beats rumbled like thunder, the sound of rain determined to penetrate everything, to demolish any illusion of personal existence. I remembered an afternoon when, alone on the terrace of my hotel in Bangalore, India, I had watched the cloudy sky agitated by a strong storm. Every rumble seemed to speak the sacred syllable Ram. In the same way, those beats shaking my heart and then agitating my body, the room, the city, the world, the entire cosmos, seemed to be the voice of God the creator. It was the repeated echo of the first word: Ram, Ram, Ram. There I was, innocent as a newborn, in the middle of a gigantic golden temple that throbbed with devotion, repeating the divine name. And that thunderous rhythm, once my fear and mistrust had disappeared, became a constant explosion of love, organized in waves spreading out from the center to the infinite edges and from the infinite edges back to the center. That nucleus was my consciousness, transparent as a diamond, protected by the golden temple, a metaphor for the universe. I began to feel the immeasurable love that the heart felt for me. I finally knew what it was to be loved. There was no longer an executioner residing in my chest, but a wonderful friend, mother, and father at the same time, a bridge between this material world into which the spirit is born and the spiritual world that produces matter. In that immense golden cradle, floating in an ocean of infinite joy, lulled by the waves of love, like a happy child who had found his family and his rightful home, I began to fall asleep. I woke to Ichazo’s fierce order, “Don’t be self-indulgent. Happiness is a beautiful trick. Go further away. Sail the sea of crazy ideas. Submerge yourself in the mental energy. Find the Path.”
We returned to the terrace. There was a large neon Coca-Cola advertisement with a luminous circle revolving around a vertical axis.
“We do not need Tibetan mandalas or esoteric symbols. This sign, if you concentrate your attention by removing the words from your mind and not taking your eyes off it, will become the portal.”
I watched as the rotating sign transformed into an oval, into a line, back into an oval, into a circle, and so on. It was swallowing my rational borders, my will to exist, and. suddenly, without intending to, as if I had taken an immeasurable leap, I felt myself outside the world of sensations. How to explain this? The strength of the Kath and the happiness of the Oth were thrown into an immutable transparency, the Path. I had lived in a world of compact gray clouds, and now I rose up to float in a translucent sky. Without desires, without definitions, in pure continuation, free from any beginning or end, exempt from time and space, I immersed myself in bliss. How many hours did I lie there motionless? When I recovered my body, my name, my rational island, I was alone in front of the flashing Coca-Cola circle. I felt ridiculous, but also euphoric. I had not imagined what I remembered; I had experienced it. That experience became my guide. I had been shown the goal, now it was up to my perseverance to actually reach it. Ejo Takata, when I asked what the Buddha was, had replied, “The mind is the Buddha.”
The following morning I received a phone call from Óscar’s lofty partner, who told me it was urgent that I find someone to inject the Master with a dose of morphine for he was suffering excruciating pain. I was speechless and considered refusing. She shouted, “Idiot, do what I ask!” I needed to continue my experience, and Ichazo had promised me two sessions: I swallowed my anger and ran to the house of Dr. Toledano, a friend who had acted in Fando y Lis, extracting a vial of blood from the actress’s arm and drinking it greedily in front of the camera.
We arrived at the hotel. The ogress, fearing that the doctor would leave with me if she expelled me from the room, accepted my presence with a smoldering glare. Ichazo lay in bed, writhing, curled up. His muscles, bones, guts, everything hurt. Toledano quickly injected him with a dose of morphine, and the affliction died down. Rising from the bed in full possession of his faculties, he explained, “I am intimately attached to my school. We form a collective body and spirit. Because of my absence, serious disputes and problems have erupted back in New York. The students are not yet ready to manage themselves alone. For this reason, I felt the catastrophe in my body. I’m very sorry, I have to return immediately to New York!” The woman had already packed their bags. They coldly took their leave and, without more ado, took a taxi to the airport.
The end of the encounter with Ichazo resembles the end of my meeting with Carlos Castaneda. The writer, surrounded by an aura of sulfur, was impossible to track down. During the time that he was most famous, hundreds of North Americans went to Mexico in search of him, greedily desiring that he introduce them to Don Juan, the mythological peyote master. I did not have to look for him. He came over to my table at El Rincón Gaucho, the restaurant that the former wrestler Wolf Rubinsky had opened on Avenida Insurgentes in the capital, where I was eating an Argentinean beefsteak in the company of a television actress who, after taking a training course at a church of Scientology,*6 had decided to change her Mexican name to Troika. “In the Russian valleys, covered by a blanket of snow which is a symbol of purity, a troika glides without effort or obstacle: as my mind does now.” I was not interested in her mind, but in her lush curves. At first, when Castaneda approached, I thought he was a waiter. In Mexico, it is easy to determine the social class to which an individual belongs merely by seeing his or her physique. He was short and solidly built, with curly hair, a flat nose, and slightly pockmarked skin — in short, a humble native. But when he spoke, I knew from the relaxed tone of his voice, his delicate pronunciation, and the luminous vibration of his intellect that he was a man of high culture. His personal charm made me instantly consider him a friend.
“Excuse me, Alejandro, for interrupting. I have seen your film El Topo several times, so I am happy to greet you. I am Carlos Castaneda.”
He could have been a con man — nobody knew the face of the writer — but I believed him. Later I found through a drawing in a book and a photo published by his ex-wife that it was indeed he. Troika also believed him. Although she had never read his works, she seemed intoxicated by his fame. With an offhand gesture, as if the heat was bothering her, she opened her neckline, showing the tip of one of her two magnificent promontories, and inflated her lips as if kissing an invisible phallus to whisper, “How interesting!” Castaneda, after casting a falcon’s eye on the living flesh that was being displayed above a bloody beefsteak, smiled: “If we have met, it must be for some reason. I would like to talk to you in a quieter place.” I suggested to Castaneda that we go to his hotel, but he insisted on coming to mine. I, being a successful producer, was staying at the luxurious Camino Real. What better place to meet with Castaneda than a Camino Real (Royal Path)! We agreed that he would come the next day at noon.