Was it the combined Ng sound, or a spiritual intuition? I never know for sure what triggers my Cosmic leaps, but here’s another one: Tibertan Bon teachers were the progenitors of the Yaqui Naguals of Mexico…

Urgyen Nam Chuk was well known as a Bon Ngagpa, a married man of high spiritual caliber. The Ngagpa tradition is found in most of the Tibetan spiritual legacies from the four Buddhist schools of thought and all the Bon traditions. They were instantly identifiable by their hair, which is worn long and uncut, either in a ponytail or in dreadlocks.

Ngagpas have always been regarded as the spiritual geniuses of Tibet, wild, unpredictable, and incredible. My teacher was like this. Thus, as I grew older I had to be observant and aware in order to avoid practical jokes, booby traps, and the general mayhem that was subtly intertwined with the long hours of discipline, study, and hard work.

Christopher Hansard – The Tibetan Art of Living (page xvi-xvii)

Now doesn’t that sound a lot like Carlos Castaneda‘s description of Don Juan Matus and other teachers? You might say that Castaneda became one himself, before his death.

The book is divided into two sections. The first section, The Teachings, is a first-person narrative that documents Castaneda’s initial interactions with don Juan. He speaks of his encounters with Mescalito (a teaching spirit inhabiting all peyote plants), divination with lizards and flying using the “yerba del diablo” (lit. “Devil’s Weed”; Jimson weed), and turning into a blackbird using “humito” (lit. “little smoke”; a smoked powder containing Psilocybe mexicana). The second, A Structural Analysis, is an attempt, Castaneda says, at “disclos[ing] the internal cohesion and the cogency of don Juan’s Teachings.”

Wikipedia (The Teachings of Don Juan)

Not everything is black and white, is it? I rest my case.