09-16-2005, 12:00 AM
It's funny how common the common man is. His chronology looks like scores of men I've known: they'll say anything to get laid, they fudge on certain details to make certain things happen, or to appear a certain way and they lie outright sometimes when in a pinch. They get women pregnant and then leave them. They boast, brag and puff-up when the situation begs for it. Their egos rule their lives and they expect, without asking, that everyone understand and abide by this premise...
How does this affect my interpretation (assuming DeMille got it right, and assuming Runyan's own inconsistencies and latent jealousy aren't coloring the portrait)? Well, as I've always said: Castaneda is either a gifted descriptive writer who embellished his ordinary contacts with some sorcerer-types to make dry field notes more fluid to read-- more colorful, or he's one of the most gifted fictional writers around.
In any event, by sheer accident or instruction, he got the lucid dreaming and developing the Double right. I've got a dozen people telling me so. So I can't automatically discount the other aspects of sorcery he's written about.
How does this affect my interpretation (assuming DeMille got it right, and assuming Runyan's own inconsistencies and latent jealousy aren't coloring the portrait)? Well, as I've always said: Castaneda is either a gifted descriptive writer who embellished his ordinary contacts with some sorcerer-types to make dry field notes more fluid to read-- more colorful, or he's one of the most gifted fictional writers around.
In any event, by sheer accident or instruction, he got the lucid dreaming and developing the Double right. I've got a dozen people telling me so. So I can't automatically discount the other aspects of sorcery he's written about.