books:

	• A Separate Reality Carlos castaneda Simon & Schuster, 1971 - 317 pages average customer review:based on 28 reviews
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highly recommended

Instead it angered me at first. It's Noble Savage arrogance coupled with its 60s "drugs are so cool" aesthetic just bothers me. A prime example would be the narrator going to visit one of don Juan's friends that "knows how to dance like a NATURAL man". Castenada visits the guy's house, finds out that he's working in the field, and then comes back just as the guy has finished working. Castaneda says that the Indian seems tired, blitzed out of his mind, like he was on drugs. Castaneda apparently was too stupid to realize that a person picking grapes under the hot sun for 10 hours straight isn't going to seem very coherant. Castaneda then wonders why the migrant worker won't show him his magical dance steps and shoos him off the front steps.

Several other scenes like this abound, such as Castaneda getting sad when he sees begger children, but being told that they are more free. Or Castaneda laughing at the "gentle ironic humor" of his subject telling him that he'd probably use his first book as toilet paper (oh ha ha - poverty is so cute.)

But then I realized that Castaneda is telling all these stories second-hand, while don Juan and friends keep pushing peyote and psichlobin mushrooms on him. That's when the book was funny. If you are smart enough to realize that it's the story of a bunch of Indians annoyed with a smug white guy and decided to mess with his head. Sadly it's told from teh white guy's perspective, but it is funny just how clueless he is about the ways in which he's being mocked, ridiculed and played with throughout the book...P>So if you are into the drugs=spirituality kick, read this book because it will open your mind. However, if you have a modicum of intelligence and enough experience and perception to get over the Nobel Savage stereotype, you'll find this to be one of the funniest books ever -- a classic in Indian humor.

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From me

I am quite familiar with the way of Castaneda,and I find pretty funn that the readers in this page doesnt seem to understand a thing about castaneda. Thats good because his books keep the basic secret - i am glad to know that-. Castaneda Describes what is real, he is more than poetry, he is knowledge, and the way of the warrior, a way that seems to be impossible to be reached by other means. Castaneda doesnt introduce a religion, nor new kind of spirituality, he is not spiritual, he talks about reality, and that makes it so confusing for many readers, so self involved in their relative worlds of ignorance`

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Carlos begins to see

Castaneda's books are pure poetry. As with any experience not our own, I would encourage the reader to enter and explore the tale as one would slip slowly into a deep pool. Wonder at the possibilities that it contains, even if you are, like me, confined to the limits of "ordinary reality."

No book on true spirituality is a how-to manual. Only by slipping into the cool silence of Castaneda's story can one hope to touch the wisdom which flows through it. For those out there looking for confirmation, this book is worth reading. For those bent on analyzing and questioning, learn to accept your own perpetual state of disbelief.

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