Kad gospodin zatvori temu

http://www.azquotes.com/author/23541-Michael_Ventura

Ko je Majkl Ventura, čime se on bavi i šta je napisao, možete pogledati ukratko ovde: Michael Ventura Detaljnije na njegovom sajtu. Official website 



The Talent of the Room -pdf 

Ovde će biti postavljen novinarski, poslednji  pozdrav Karlosu Kastanedi sa kojim se Majkl Ventura sreo dva puta u životu. Drugi put u vreme kada je Kastaneda već bio bolestan i na zalasku života. 

Magazine Articles

https://www.federaljack.com/ebooks/Castenada/sites/nagual_ixtlan/www.nagual.net/ixtlan/interviews/austin.html

Austin Chronicle - Jul 1998 Homage to a Sorcerer by Michael Ventura A sorcerer died two or three months ago. Liver cancer, they said, but the details are vague. Also vague is why it took so long for word to get out. There are strange rumors. No matter. All this is as it should be for a sorcerer. Strangest of all, in a way, were the obituaries of the media heavies, a blurry photo in The New York Times, tributes that were respectful in a distant and baffled sort of way. It's doubtful The New York Times ever before felt compelled to pay homage to a sorcerer. But that was Carlos Castaneda's mojo. Many who professed not to take him seriously nevertheless read him, remembered, and were haunted. Let them wonder whether he was born in 1931, as he said, or in 1925, as some immigration records said. Let them wonder whether he was Peruvian or Mexican. Wonder, even in such minor matters, will be good for them. Carlos Castaneda has died. There aren't many to bear witness to or for him, because he didn't allow many witnesses. One met him by invitation, usually, and even that was more fluke than not. Those invited were of all sorts. I happened to be one, for reasons that weren't clear (to me) and probably aren't important. Perhaps I was called to be a witness? About 12 years ago a friend who worked in a bookstore in Santa Monica called: Carlos Castaneda was giving a talk in the cellar of the store (it would be in the cellar!), by invitation only, would I like to come? Who knew it was really him, I said? My caller, whom I had reason to trust, said, "It's Carlos, alright." He was a small man. Impossible to tell his age. Didn't look much over 40, but his eyes were older, smiling eyes but deepened by a vague sense of grief. He laughed readily, didn't insist that we take him seriously, stood before us in an attitude of welcome. He wanted us to ask him questions. He said there was something he'd forgotten, and that sometimes he came out of his seclusion and talked to strangers hoping that a question would spark the memory of this forgotten thing. He didn't say this sadly. He was frank and matter-of-fact. That night nobody asked the question he was seeking, but every question brought forth a story of Don Juan, and every story had laughter in it. As in his books, when Castaneda spoke of Don Juan the old Yaqui wizard was near and dangerous, inviting us to adventure. It was Castaneda's laughter, more than his skills as a storyteller, that convinced me of his sincerity and authenticity. He talked for free, had nothing to gain from us, spoke without artifice. People rarely laugh when they lie. At least, in my experience, they don't laugh sweetly. And there was an irresistible sweetness to this man. He described the most fantastic experiences as though they were almost jokes, but the joke was on him. I had the impression of a desperate man, but a man who knew how to live with desperation in ways that made it something else. He'd transformed his desperation, as a sorcerer must, into a search. (Was I seeing in him the man I would like to be, who, though fated to desperation, could be desperate in a wise and engaging and gentle way? Perhaps.) He was, at the same time, vulnerable and invulnerable: vulnerable in that he seemed a little lost; invulnerable in that he was on his path, a path of heart. If he was lost it was because that path had led him to unknown and unexpected territory. It would have been easier for him to face physical danger than to face that there was something important about Don Juan he'd forgotten. But he was facing it, and in public. More than magic tricks and the Sorcerer's Way, Don Juan had taught him to be brave. When he finished speaking, and the 20 or so people in that cellar milled around, he greeted a couple of old friends. I didn't want to intrude, didn't introduce myself, wouldn't have known what to say anyway. So, in effect, I met him but he didn't meet me. Then, about three years ago, another friend called. Would I like to go to lunch with Carlos Castaneda? Why I received this invitation I was never told. It turned out that there were four of us and Carlos. We met at the Pacific Dining Car, one of the best (and most expensive) steakhouses on the West Coast. (Carlos picked up the check.) He had changed, and so had I. We had both lived a lot further into our very different desperations, and carried them with more assurance. He was much thinner, older - obviously ill. Whereas in the bookstore's cellar he had dressed casually, this day he was decked out in an elegant suit. But for all his fragility he seemed much livelier, happier, and even funnier. The food was very fine, but really we lunched on laughter. Even his saddest stories of Don Juan were, again, like jokes; but this time the joke wasn't on Carlos, wasn't on us - the joke was between the wizard and God, and a splendid joke it was. I won't repeat those stories. I wasn't there to record them. They were his to tell or not. Best that anything he chose not to write should die with him. But two moments caused not laughter but silence. A woman at the table said she loved her job, her husband, and her child, but still she felt a lack - it was that she had no spiritual life. How could she achieve a spiritual life? Answering this woman, Carlos didn't change the lightness or generosity of his manner; yet a steely thing came into his voice, a tone that made his words pierce all of us. He said that when she got home at night she should sit in her chair and remember that her child, her husband, everyone she loved, and she herself, were going to die - and they would die in no particular order, unpredictably. "Remember this every night, and you'll soon have a spiritual life." Notice that he didn't tell her what sort of spiritual life to have, much less whether it should agree with his. He didn't suggest she read his books more carefully, or attend the movement classes he'd begun to teach. He gave her a practical instruction, something she could accomplish within the parameters of her life as it was, and then assured her that this would set her on her own spiritual path, whatever that might turn out to be. This is the mark of a true Teacher. Later in the conversation this woman asked how she could discipline herself to follow his advice, deeply follow it, so that it wouldn't be just an exercise. Carlos said: "You give yourself a command." On the page there's no duplicating how he said it. He spoke quietly, but it was as though he'd suddenly jammed a knife into the tabletop. "What's that mean?" one of us asked. "It means you give yourself a command." And that was that. A command is not a promise. A command is not "trying." A command is something that must be obeyed. His tone invoked something deeper than the idea of mere will. His was a call to action. He wasn't talking about mulling or meditating or analyzing or wishing. To step on the path you step on the path. There is no substitute for that. After a nine-months-pregnant pause, the conversation took flight again. He told of a party at which a very tall and handsome Native American was saying, with great solemnity, that he was Carlos Castaneda, and revealing all sorts of Don Juan's "secrets." Did Carlos disabuse him of that fantasy? "No!" he laughed. "He looked the way people expect Carlos Castaneda to look! Not some little round-faced brown man. And he was having such a good time! Why ruin it? Let him be Carlos for an evening!" About a year later the woman who'd asked those questions at our lunch sent me a pamphlet that Carlos had printed privately. He'd requested she send it on to me. One passage goes: "Sorcerers understand discipline as the capacity to face with serenity odds that are not included in our expectations. For them, discipline is a volitional act that enables them to intake anything that comes their way without regrets or expectations. For sorcerers, discipline is an art: the art of facing infinity without flinching, not because they are filled with toughness, but because they are filled with awe. ... Discipline is the art of feeling awe." Any manifestation of the universe, any way in which it behaves toward us, isn't merely about us, isn't merely psychological, but is a movement of the universe, and as such what happens to us, no matter what it is, connects us to everything, and in that connection what can be felt but awe? "A live world," he wrote, "is in constant flux. It moves; it changes; it reverses itself." We try to defend ourselves against that, but we cannot. The only freeing response is awe. When I saw him years ago in that cellar, an unhappier man than the dying man at lunch, I wrote: His presence was an admission that every truth is fragile, that every knowledge must be learned over and over again, every night, that we grow not in a straight line but in ascending and descending and tilting circles, and that what gives us power one year robs us of power the next, for nothing is settled, ever, for anyone. Now I would add: What makes this bearable is awe. Go well, Don Carlos. Copyright Austin Chronicle, July 1998

POSLEDNJA POŠTA ČAROBNJAKU

              Majkl Ventura

 Austin Hronikl, jul 1998.godine

Čarobnjak je umro pre tri meseca. Rak jetre, kažu, ali detalji su neodređeni. Takođe je nejasno zašto je

toliko vremena trebalo da se objavi ta vest. Kruže čudne glasine. Nema veze. Sve je to onako kako

treba da bude kada je u pitanju čarobnjak. Najčudnije od svega su, na neki način, objave smrti u velikim

časopisima, mutna fotografija u "Njujork Tajmsu", odavanje pošte sa distanciranom i  suzdržanom

dozom poštovanja. Sumnjam da je "Njujork Tajms" ikada ranije imao potrebu da odaje poštu

čarobnjaku.

Ali to je magija Karlosa Kastanede. Mnogi koji su izjavljivali da ga ne uzimaju za ozbiljno ipak su ga

čitali, sećali se i bili pogođeni. Neka se pitaju da li je rođen 1931, kao što je on rekao, ili 1925, kao što

govore imigracioni podaci. Neka se pitaju da li je bio Peruanac ili Meksikanac. Pitanja, čak i tako malog

opsega, činiće im dobro. 
                 

Karlos Kastaneda je umro. Nema mnogo svedoka koji su bili u kontaktu sa njim, zato što nije

 dozvoljeno prisustvo svedoka. Čovek se mogao sresti sa njim uglavnom putem poziva, a i to je 

najčešće bila varka.

Oni koji su pozvani bili su veoma različiti. Meni se desilo da budem jedan od njih, iz razloga koji (meni)

nisu bili jasni, i verovatno nisu ni važni. Možda sam bio pozvan kao svedok?

Pre otprilike dvanaest godina pozvao me je prijatelj koji je radio u knjižari u Santa Moniki: Karlos

Kastaneda drži predavanje u podrumu knjižare (to je zaista bilo u podrumu!), ulazi se samo na

pozivnicu, da li bih želeo da dođem? – "Ko zna da li je to zaista on?", upitao sam. Moj prijatelj, kome

imam razloga da verujem, rekao je: "To je Karlos, budi siguran."

On je mali čovek. Nemoguće je bilo odrediti mu godine. Nije izgledao kao da ima mnogo više od

četrdeset, ali njegove oči su bile starije, smešeće oči produbljene neodređenim osećanjem tuge.

Često se smejao, nije insistirao da ga uzimamo za ozbiljno, stajao je pred nama u stavu dobrodošlice.

Želeo je da mu postavljamo pitanja. Rekao je da postoji nešto što je zaboravio, i da ponekad izlazi iz

izolacije i razgovara sa neznancima nadajući se da će pitanje aktivirirati sećanje na zaboravljenu stvar.

Nije to rekao tužno. Bio je otvoren i direktan. To veče niko nije postavio pitanje koje je on tražio, ali

 svako pitanje je aktiviralo priču o don Huanu, a svaka priča je sadržavala smeh. Kao i u svojim

knjigama, kada je Kastaneda pričao o don Huanu, starom Jaki čarobnjaku, pozivao nas je da mu se

 pridružimo u avanturi. Taj Kastanedin smeh, više nego njegove pripovedačke sposobnosti, ubedio me 

je u njegovu iskrenost i autentičnost. Govorio je besplatno, nije imao ništa da dobije od nas, nije koristio

pomoćna sredstva. Ljudi se retko smeju kada lažu. U najmanju ruku, koliko ja imam iskustva u tome,

 ne smeju se slatko. A ovaj čovek se neodoljivo slatko smejao.

Opisivao je najfantastičnija iskustva kao da su šale, s tim što je on bio predmet tih šala. Stekao sam

utisak o njemu kao o očajnom čoveku, ali čoveku koji zna kako da živi sa očajanjem pretvarajući ga u

nešto drugo. On je transformisao svoje očajanje, što čarobnjak može da učini, u traganje. (Da li sam u

njemu video čoveka kakav bih ja voleo da budem, koji, iako predodređen da bude očajan, može da

 bude očajan na mudar i  zanimljiv i nežan način? Možda.) Bio je, u isto vreme, ranjiv i neranjiv: ranjiv u 

smislu da je izgledao malo izgubljen; neranjiv zato što je bio na svom putu, putu srca. Ako se izgubio, 

bilo je to zato što ga je put odveo na nepoznatu i neočekivanu  teritoriju. Njemu bi bilo lakše da se

 suoči sa fizičkom opasnošću nego da se suoči sa nečim značajnim o don Huanu, što je zaboravio. Ali 

on se sa tim suočavao, i to javno. Osim magičnih trikova i čarobnjakovog Puta, don Huan ga je naučio

 da bude hrabar.

Kada je završio govor, dok se dvadesetak ljudi  u tom podrumu muvalo unaokolo, pozdravio se sa

nekoliko starih prijatelja. Nisam želeo da se mešam, nisam se predstavio, i inače nisam znao šta bih

rekao. Tako sam, u stvari, ja sreo njega, ali on nije sreo mene.  

Onda, pre otprilike tri godine, pozvao me je drugi prijatelj. Da li bih želeo da odem na ručak sa

Karlosom Kastanedom? Nikada mi nije rečeno zašto sam dobio tu pozivnicu. Ispostavilo se da je bilo

 nas četvoro i Karlos. Sreli smo se u restoranu „Pacific Dajning Kar“, jednom od najboljih (i najskupljih) 

na Zapadnoj obali. (Karlos je platio račun.) On se promenio, kao i ja. Obojica smo živeli dalje i ušli

dublje u naša vrlo različita očajanja, i nosili smo ih sa mnogo više samouverenja. On je bio mnogo

mršaviji, stariji – očigledno bolestan. Dok je u podrumu knjižare bio neobavezno obučen, ovog puta je

nosio elegantno odelo. Ali uprkos svoj krhkosti, izgledao je mnogo živahniji, srećniji i čak smešniji. 

Hrana je bila veoma ukusana, ali mi smo se zapravo hranili smehom. Čak i najtužnije priče o don 

Huanu su bile, opet, kao šale; ali ovog puta predmet šale nije bio Karlos, bili smo to mi – šala je bila

između čarobnjaka i Boga, i bila je to divna šala.

Neću da ponavljam te priče. Nisam bio tamo da bih ih beležio. One su bile njegove da ih ispriča ili ne.

Najbolje od onoga što je on izabrao da ne napiše treba da umre zajedno sa njim. 
        

Ali dva momenta su izazvala ne smeh nego tišinu. Žena za stolom je rekla da voli svoj posao, svog

muža i svoje dete, ali da ipak oseća da joj nešto nedostaje – nedostajao joj je duhovni život. Kako da 

postigne duhovni život?

Odgovarajući toj ženi, Karlos nije promenio lakoću ili  velikodušnost svog pristupa; ipak čelična nijansa

se pojavila u njegovom glasu, ton koji je učinio da nas njegove reči probodu. Rekao joj je da kada 

uveče dođe kući, treba da sedne u svoju stolicu i da se priseti, da će njeno dete, njen muž, svako koga 

je volela, kao ona sama, jednoga dana da umru – i da će umreti bez nekog reda, nepredvidivo.

"Prisetite se toga svake večeri, i uskoro ćete imati duhovni život". 

Treba obratiti pažnju da on nije rekao kakvu vrstu duhovnog života, niti da će se to slagati sa njegovim

 životom. Nije predložio da ona pažljivije pročita njegove knjige, ili da počne da pohađa časove pokreta

 koje on predaje. Dao joj je praktičnu instrukciju, nešto što je mogla da postigne unutar parametara 

svog života, i onda ju je ubedio da će to omogućiti postavljanje njenog ličnog duhovnog puta, ma kakav 

on mogao da bude. To je odlika pravog učitelja.

Kasnije, tokom tog razgovora, ta žena je upitala kako da se disciplinuje, da bi mogla da sledi njegov

savet, da ga zaista sledi, tako da to ne bude samo vežba. Karlos je rekao:"Dajte sebi komandu".

Na papiru ne može da se prenese način na koji je on to rekao. Govorio je tiho, ali to je izgledalo kao da

 je iznenada zabio nož u sto.

"Šta to znači", upitao je jedan od nas. 

"To znači da date sebi komandu". I to je bilo to.
   

Komanda nije obećanje. Komanda nije "pokušavanje". Komanda je nešto što mora da se posluša.

Njegov ton je prizvao nešto dublje od ideje o volji. To je bio poziv na akciju. On nije pričao o 

premišljanju ili meditaciji, ili analaziranju ili želji. Da biste stupili na put, treba da stupite na put. Nema

zamene za to.

Posle pauze dugačke kao "devet trudnih meseci", konverzacija je opet krenula. Pričao je o žurki na

kojoj je vrlo visoki i lepi američki Indijanac govorio, vrlo dostojanstveno, da je on Karlos Kastaneda, i

otkriva raznorazne don Huanove "tajne". 

Da li ga je Karlos razotkrio?

                                                                                      

"Ne!", smejao se. "On je izgledao onako kako ljudi očekuju da izgleda Karlos Kastaneda! Ne neki mali 

tamni čovek sa okruglim licem. I tako se dobro provodio! Zašto to pokvariti? Neka bude Karlos za jedno

veče!"

Godinu dana kasnije, žena koja je postavljala ona pitanja za vreme ručka mi je poslala knjižicu koju je

Karlos privatno odštampao. On je zahtevao da mi to pošalje. Jedan deo izgleda ovako: 
                                                                                                             

"Čarobnjaci razumeju disciplinu kao sposobnost da se sa radosnim mirom suoče sa okolnostima koje

nisu unapred uzete u obzir njihovim očekivanjima. Za njih, disciplina je voljni akt koji im omogućuje da

se prema svemu sa čime se susretnu ophode bez žaljenja ili očekivanja. Za čarobnjake, disciplina je 

jedina umetnost:  umetnost suočavanja sa beskonačnošću bez uzmicanja, ne zato što su ispunjeni

čvrstinom, nego zato što su ispunjeni strahopoštovanjem...Disciplina je umetnost osećanja

strahopoštovanja.   

Svaka manifestacija univerzuma, svaki način na koji se on ponaša prema nama, nije samo o nama, 

nije samo psihološki, nego je pokret univerzuma, i kao takav ono što nam se dešava, bez obzira šta je 

to, povezuje nas sa svim drugim, i u takvoj vezi šta može da se oseća osim strahopoštovanja? "Živi 

svet" je, pisao je,"neprekidni tok“. On se kreće; on se menja; on se obrće. Mi pokušavamo da se 

odbranimo od toga, ali ne možemo. Jedini oslobađajući odgovor je strahopoštovanje".

Kada sam ga pre mnogo godina video u tom podrumu, jednog nesrećnijeg čoveka od umirućeg čoveka

za ručkom, napisao sam:    

                       

Njegovo prisustvo je priznanje da je svaka istina lomljiva, da se svako znanje mora učiti uvek iznova, 

svake noći, da se mi razvijamo ne u pravoj liniji nego u uspinjućim i silazećim krugovima i da ono što

nam u jednom trenutku daje moć, u drugom trenutku nam je oduzima, jer ništa nije određeno i 

utvrđeno, nikada, ni za koga od nas.

Sada bih mogao da dodam: Ono što čini to podnošljivim je strahopoštovanje.

                             Zbogom, don Karlose