An Excellent Half-book

books:


	• The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, The Original Teachings in a Deluxe 30th Anniversary ... Carlos Castaneda University of California Press, 1998 - 215 pages average customer review:based on 21 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Beginners excellence!

An excellent beginners entry into the world of American Indian sorcery. Relating some pinnacle moments and experiences in the book with my own gave me extra insight into the world of dreams and sorcery. A must read for those that seek more than the boring real world.

An Excellent Half-book

I first discovered Castaneda by reading quoted excerpts of his works in other books, so decided to start at the beginning of his series with "The Teachings of Don Juan". The first half of the book was fascinating and absorbing, until I reached the second half where the analysis begins. Castaneda's capable intellect makes itself apparent in the way he analyses the teachings he received from Don Juan, but frankly, it's extremely tedious. Fortunately this does not detract from his ability to write a good narrative, and first-time readers will be pleased to know this over-analysis does not continue in his subsequent books.

Whether or not Castaneda reported his experiences truthfully in his series of books or whether he "embellished" them, is a matter of some debate. There are books that examine the topic in more detail. My personal opinion is that Don Juan may have been an alias for another person (possibly a Yaqui shaman), and after the success of his first book he began to embellish upon the character as a sort of archetypal spiritual teacher. Anyone with more than a passing familiarity with "Fourth Way" literature (Gurdjieff, Ouspensky etc) may get the impression that Castaneda borrowed quite a few concepts. Don Juan's irreverent sense of humour and severe rebukes certainly made me think of Gurdjieff on more than one occasion.

Apparently this book was/is held in some circles as an "encouragement" for the use of entheogens (drugs taken to produce spiritual experiences). I didn't read that in the book at all. Castaneda seems to describe his altered states fairly matter-of-factly, and nowhere does he explicitly recommend or encourage them, or come off like he's "enjoying" the bizarre experiences he describes, or sensation-seeking. If anything, he seems quite flustered and shocked that he can't explain all his experiences in a rational, reductionist way. This is one of the reasons I think that his first three books are less metaphorical. By the third book, the psychedelic plant component of the narrative fades from the overall picture completely (which is a good thing, in my opinion).

The information given by Don Juan to Castaneda is interesting and thought-provoking. Concepts such as "a path with heart", the warrior and the man of knowledge, the relationship between anger and self-importance, the four natural enemies etc are excellent to reflect upon. I feel it is these parts that make up the bulk of the book's worth. There are also a number of humorous moments that make the journal part of the book quite enjoyable.

Overall, definitely worth a read, but I also think that a person could probably start the series at the second book and not miss much.

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Excellent book

This book is so amazing and fascinating to learn about the fact that different reality exist in our univese. Carlos Castandea was able to accomplish to write vidid and extra-ordinarly thoughts in this book. The Teaching of Don Juan is an excellent books that tells about the art of shamanism and other eastern religion. The book explains on the uses of halluginic drugs to reach a different realm and different reality beyond our understanding. Don Juan teaches Carlos on the fact that to reach a state of reality is to experience with different substances and plants that grow throughout the desert. I recommend this book to anybody whom is curious about the state of reality.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Thirty years ago the University of California Press published an unusual manuscript by an anthropology student named Carlos Castaneda. The Teachings of Don Juan initiated a generation of seekers dissatisfied with the limitations of the Western worldview. Castaneda's now classic book remains controversial for the alternative way of seeing that it presents and the revolution in cognition it demands.
In a series of fascinating dialogues, Castaneda sets forth his partial initiation with don Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian shaman from the state of Sonora, Mexico. He describes don Juan's perception and mastery of the "non-ordinary reality" and how peyote along with other plants sacred to the Mexican Indians were used as gateways to the mysteries of "dread," "clarity," and "power." The Teachings of Don Juan is the story of a remarkable journey that has left an indelible impression on the life of more than a million readers around the world.
"For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length. And there I travel, looking, looking breathlessly."--Don Juan
"Carlos Castaneda, under the tutelage of don Juan, takes us through the moment of twilight, through the crack in the universe between daylight and dark into a world not merely other than our own, but of an entirely different order of reality."--Walter Goldschmidt, from the Foreword

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