Castaneda Becoming Accessible to Power

Becoming Accessible to Power
Thursday, 17 August 1961
As soon as I got out of my car I complained to don Juan that I was not feeling well.
"Sit down, sit down," he said softly and almost led me by the hand to his porch. He smiled and
patted me on the back.
Two weeks before, on 4 August, don Juan, as he had said, changed his tactics with me and
allowed me to ingest some peyote buttons. During the height of my hallucinatory experience I
played with a dog that lived in the house where the peyote session took place. Don Juan
interpreted my interaction with the dog as a very special event. He contended that at moments of
power, such as the one I had been living then, the world of ordinary affairs did not exist and
nothing could be taken for granted, that the dog was not really a dog but the incarnation of
Mescalito, the power or deity contained in peyote.
The post-effects of that experience were a general sense of fatigue and melancholy, plus the
incidence of exceptionally vivid dreams and nightmares.
"Where's your writing gear?" don Juan asked as I sat down on the porch.
I had left my notebooks in my car. Don Juan walked back to the car and carefully pulled out
my briefcase and brought it to my side.
He asked if I usually carried my briefcase when I walked. I said I did.
"That's madness," he said. "I've told you never to carry anything in your hands when you
walk. Get a knapsack."
I laughed. The idea of carrying my notes in a knapsack was ludicrous. I told him that
ordinarily I wore a suit and a knapsack over a three-piece suit would be a preposterous sight.
"Put your coat on over the knapsack," he said. "It is better that people think you're a
hunchback than to ruin your body carrying all this around."
He urged me to get out my notebook and write. He seemed to be making a deliberate effort to
put me at ease.
I complained again about the feeling of physical discomfort and the strange sense of
unhappiness I was experiencing.
Don Juan laughed and said, "You're beginning to learn."
We then had a long conversation. He said that Mescalito, by allowing me to play with him,
had pointed me out as a "chosen man" and that, although he was baffled by the omen because I
was not an Indian, he was going to pass on to me some secret knowledge. He said that he had had
a "benefactor" himself, who taught him how to become a "man of knowledge".
I sensed that something dreadful was about to happen. The revelation that I was his chosen
man, plus the unquestionable strangeness of his ways and the devastating effect that peyote had
had on me, created a state of unbearable apprehension and indecision. But don Juan disregarded
my feelings and recommended that I should only think of the wonder of Mescalito playing with
me.
"Think about nothing else," he said. "The rest will come to you of itself."
He stood up and patted me gently on the head and said in a very soft voice, "I am going to
teach you how to become a warrior in the same manner I have taught you how to hunt. I must
warn you, though, learning how to hunt has not made you into a hunter, nor would learning how
to become a warrior make you one."
I experienced a sense of frustration, a physical discomfort that bordered on anguish. I
complained about the vivid dreams and nightmares I was having. He seemed to deliberate for a
moment and sat down again.
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"They're weird dreams," I said.
"You've always had weird dreams," he retorted.