This event occurred a few days before Christmas of 1968 when I was 21 years old.  My fiancé, Katie, and I were spending a few days over the Christmas holiday with her parents in Palo Alto, California (in “Silicon Valley”).  It had been a hectic year at college so we hadn’t yet finished our Christmas shopping. The two of us went to a nearby shopping mall (the Mayfield Mall) to see what we could find.  The mall was busy, but since it was early in the morning it was not packed or in a “Christmas rush” mode. It was kind of fun to just relax and watch people coming and going. The mall was all decorated in the spirit of the season, with Christmas music playing softly in the background.  Everyone seemed in a good mood that day. Since Katie was the one who was most interested in shopping, we decided that I would hang out in the open part of the mall, watching folks, while she did her shopping. 

I picked a spot near the main entrance that was out of the pedestrian traffic, but close enough to watch the comings and goings of folks.  I was in a covered courtyard that connected the entrance to the shops on either side of a wide hallway going off in an easterly direction.  There was a little roll-around flower cart next to where I was standing, and a bench about 20 feet away, facing me but facing away from most of the foot traffic. 

I was leaning against a railing along the wall when I noticed two men on the bench.  They were Hispanic-looking men, sitting and talking to each other.  One was an older gentleman wearing an old, slightly floppy, wide-brimmed felt hat and neat, clean, “farmer” cloths.  He was dressed like what I would expect an older, rural, Mexican gentleman to wear when he went shopping in town.  The other man was younger, slightly chubby, wearing slacks, white shirt and tie. 

At first I didn’t pay much attention to them because they were just a couple of guys sitting and chatting, probably waiting for their women just like I was.   However, I then noticed that they were watching me very intently, and apparently talking about me. This caught my attention, especially when I realized that I could easily hear what they were saying – in clear English with no apparent accent.  The old man gestured toward me and told the younger one that I was a physicist, and had worked at NASA.  (I was majoring in physics at the time and had spent a summer working for NASA at Moffett Field).  He then went on to describe my summer job at NASA and added other specifics about me that should have been impossible to know.  They were both watching me in a most unusual way, it felt like there were catching me in a “spell” of some sort.  I found myself connected to them, and oddly disconnected from the rest of the environment and people in the mall.  It was like I was floating in suspended animation wrapped in a cocoon with those two men. 

After a few seconds (minutes?) of this, I got a really embarrassed feeling because I felt that I was somehow being stripped naked by these guys.  In my embarrassment I stepped behind the flower cart to get out of the “heat” of the moment, and hide from them.  My action broke my spell and I was immediately overwhelmed with curiosity.  I quickly turned back, determined to go up to them and ask them who they were and how they knew these personal things about me.  I had the very clear impression that the two men were Carlos Castaneda and his teacher Don Juan and I wanted to know for sure.  It couldn’t have been more than two or three seconds before making this decision and turning back.  I spun around to confront them, but they were gone! 

I looked around the mall, but even though the mall floor was 60 or 70 feet wide, and there were only a handful of people on the floor at that moment, I could see clearly that they were not in the halls.  I wondered if maybe they had somehow gotten up and left through the entrance a couple of dozen feet away, which would have been the only possible way for them to have gotten out of sight.    I ran to the entrance and checked it, the attached hall and the parking lot, but they were not there.  My only explanation is that they vanished into thin air; they were just gone (or maybe hadn’t actually been there).

At that moment I realized that I had failed an important test that Carlos Castaneda had discussed in one of his earlier books.  Don Juan had told Carlos about “cracks, or slivers, of opportunity” that open into the other side of reality. He said that we have to stay awake to be able to jump into them at the moment they open.  Somehow those men opened such a crack of opportunity for me, but instead of reacting immediately to the opportunity, I become confused and embarrassed.  I missed the moment, and once I missed it – it had closed and was gone.   It became clear to me that one of the main things that a warrior on the path to enlightenment needs to do is become aware and quick enough to spot opportunities and jump – to jump or step through the opening.  It is like being a cat, watching and watching (stalking) for the moment, but once the moment is right, then putting all of your energy into pouncing to catch the opportunity.

Katie showed up looking for me and found me frantically running up and down the mall looking in vain for those men.  I knew that they weren’t there, but I wanted to make sure that I hadn’t overlooked some obvious and mundane explanation for their disappearance.  She just laughed at me as I babbled on about the weird non-encounter encounter.