A Story That Gives Severe Curiousity...

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	• The Second Ring of Power Carlos Castaneda Washington Square Press, 1991 - 328 pages average customer review:based on 17 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Now I get it! Wait...

This used to be my least favorite of Castaneda's books. Now I'm re-reading it, and can honestly say that it's far more complex than it seems at first.

In all of his earlier books, Castaneda focused on Don Juan. Now his teacher is gone, and Carlos has to live life, and write bestselling books, without him.

Long ago, I stopped pondering whether or not the books were made up, and started thinking of them as wonderful stories with allegorical meaning. And this is the point: The Second Ring of Power is all about what happens when Mommy and Daddy are gone. Or maybe it's about Carlos opportunizing on his fame to justify the creation of a harem for himself (the Nagual's women). Or maybe it's even more subtle, and about what we all have to face: the fear of not being able to blame anyone else for your lot in life.

Castaneda ends his previous novel, Tales of Power, with these words: "And then I was alone." Now, he has to deal with the second generation of Sorcerers after Don Juan and Genaro, the Second Ring of Power. In effect he is rounding up his new cast of characters.

Does he get away with it? Does it come off as being convincing? I don't know, because I'm not finished with the re-read. I do know that the rest of the books' some with and without Don Juan and Genaro, are very well done.

There is a final allegory in Castaneda that came home to me in dealing with several individuals in my own life. And that is that some of the craziest people we know, personally, have a power about them. Are we all, in a way, sorcerers, and don't know it?

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To Carlos, with gratitude

Carlos Castaneda was one of the most controversial writers of the twentieth century. Some in academia branded him a fraud for claiming his stories were biographical rather than fiction, while lauding him as a great novelist for exposing a mass audience to otherwise inaccessible philosophical abstractions they claimed were largely plagiarized. Each of his works is a piece of a larger puzzle, which makes it impossible to critique any one book without addressing the larger context into which it fits.

His first two books, "Teachings of Don Juan" and "A Separate Reality" describe experiences induced by ingesting psychotropic hallucinogenics prepared by a Yaqui Indian shaman from Sonora, Mexico he called don Juan Matus, and accounted for his becoming a guru to a generation seeking short cuts to spiritual enlightenment, as well as his lifelong interest in the relationship between perception and reality, a theme now explored in many popular books on consciousness and quantum physics. Unfortunately, these books remain his best selling works, in spite of Castaneda refuting their importance in his later works. Readers would be best served to skip these and avoid the risk of being turned off to Castaneda and missing the more stimulating works that followed.

His third and fourth works were "Journey to Ixtlan" and "Tales of Power." In Ixtlan he admits to over-estimating the value of his drug experiences, which caused him to overlook the more profound teachings of don Juan which became the focus of future writings. What emerges is a spiritual discipline dating back to the Pre-Colombian Toltec sorcerers of Latin America, culminating with don Juan's departure from our world, effectively ending Castaneda's direct affiliation.

In his fifth and sixth works "Second Ring of Power" and "Eagles Gift" Castaneda suffers strange flashbacks of what seem to be memory fragments of events he is unable to fit into any logical time sequence. In his seventh and eighth works, "Fire From Within" and "Power of Silence," Castaneda succeeds in reconstructing his lost memories, which derive from teachings previously administered by don Juan while Castaneda was in a "heightened" state of awareness.

In books nine and ten, "Art of Dreaming" and "Active Side of Infinity," Castaneda focuses on what he describes as inorganic predators from another dimension, some having the power to imprison humanity in "ordinary reality" so they can feed on the dark emotional energies we produce when succumbing to the negative thoughts they insert into our minds.

In later years several seemingly substantiating works appeared by two of Castaneda's female apprentices, Taisha Abelar and Florinda Donner-Grau. In addition, two scathing exposés were also published by two of his ex-wives. The first, "Magical Journey with Carlos Castaneda" by first wife, Margaret Runyon, offers little corroboration, since her marriage pre-dates the time when the bulk of Castaneda's adventures were claimed to have occurred. While steadfast that Castaneda was a sorcerer, she doubts the existence of don Juan, even claiming authorship of many of the concepts Castaneda ascribed to him.

The second, and more credible work, is "Sorcerer's Apprentice," by well-known writer Amy Wallace, daughter of the late best selling novelist Irving Wallace. Here again, we find little corroboration since the time of the events she describes is well after the period when Castaneda's relationship with don Juan is alleged to occur. What the book does provide is a troubling look inside Castaneda's final years, a picture of descent into what seems sexual addiction and possibly madness, leaving one to wonder if Castaneda was just one cup of cool-aid short of a Jonestown.

Many have asked why I put any stock whatsoever in Castaneda. A story from my autobiography, "The Vortex" may shed some light. A year before Castaneda published his first book I had an experience that would remain a mystery until Castaneda published "Power of Silence" twenty years later.

For a brief time, in my youth, I became a practicing Muslim, meticulously performing the complex prayer ritual five times a day. Then one night, sitting in my car, frustrated and complaining at not being able to find the address of my next sales appointment, something inside me snapped. It was as if some part of me had disconnected from my body and assumed control, lecturing me about my lack of discipline. A profound calm settled over me, rendering me simultaneously detached and engaged. For two days my sales figures soared. It was as if no one could say no to me. On the evening of the second day I decided to put my new state of being to the acid test by visiting my parents. Their behavior was so uncharacteristically supportive I hardly recognized them. It was enough to convince me that I was now living in an altered reality. But by the following morning I had returned to "normal." So distracting had this event been that I completely forgot to perform my Muslim prayers, and in fact, never did so again.

Twenty years later, in a chapter of "Power of Silence" entitled "Place of No Pity" Castaneda describes a very similar experience. In the aftermath of the event don Juan explains that humans are like televisions stuck on a channel called "self-preoccupation," lacking the energy to tune into any of the vast array of other channels available to us. To change channels, he explains, we first need to accumulate energy, by practicing rituals that are deliberate, precise and repetitious. Do this long enough and eventually our stored energy precipitates a shift to a channel where self-importance and self pity become impossible. Once this happens we connect with the force that controls the entire universe, a force don Juan called "intent," and everything can be bent to our will and even more channels can be opened, assuming we remember to keep practicing the rituals that save our energy.

This one realization alone was enough to inspire me to dedicate my autobiography "To Carlos, with gratitude."

Maxwell Austin van Lack, Author of The Vortex: A True Story of Passion and Karma

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A Story That Gives Severe Curiousity...

My dad recommended this to me; he told me he read them as a young adult when Carlos' books were just being published. My library only had this one, so I had to begin on a seemingly already well-traveled joruney. All I can say is this is one book I'll never forget. It was amazing, and yet indeed troubling for me because I've never heard anyone talk about life quite the way he explains it in a Sorcerer's eyes. I love, as a woman myself, that there are females Sorcerers that helped him, because indeed wherever men have been, women have as well. But other than that, I found them to be weird characters, people that don't sound like they live in our world whatsoever. The men, Nestor, Beningo, and Pablito and the women Gorda, Lidia, Rosa, and Josefina are just souls that could confuse any of us average kind, and I truly felt like Carlos- confused and severely curious throughout the entire novel. That's why I don't appreciate them all calling him stupid constantly, I mean, cut him slack. He's learning as they learned. And what things he learned, as well as myself.
Dad asked me if I believe it, or cast it aside as a really well- written story. I say...maybe. Look at it in my perspective. I'm young, confused, and just starting to get my own 'form'. I believe there is much more out there than can be proven under a microscope, but I need to be level- headed and realistic and understand how pessimistic viewers see it as well. There's no proof what this man wrote is true, but there's absolutely no proof he's lying either. It is eerie how good he is at writing such a story, making it sound so true, but there have been stories that have fooled us before. So I'm not sure. This man has really put me in a bind, and I don't regret it. The more you think, the more broader your mind and soul get. (That's my philosophy at least.)
I'll tell you this much, this is truly an author I would love to meet, but since that's probably never going to happen, I'm going to read more of him when I have time. I have still many questions, and regardless of if this is a story or not, I want them answered.
Just a note, try to get his very first book if can, and if you want a book on enjoyment instead of study, don't even pick this up. It's no fantasy novel. It's a whole other world of study that derives basically on shamanism in the vast and mysterious lands of Mexico.

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Beware castaneda

The knowledge of Juan Matus is powerful and these books can be used as something of a manual if you're interested in doing such a thing.

Warning; Castaneda is a fool. An unbelievably annoying fool. All of his books about his apprenticeship with Juan Matus are full of his idiocy, which seems to increase, oddly enough.
He just cannot accept that there are some things you can't explain with reason, because they are out of the bounds of reason. His academic prowess hinders him greatly, as he thinks there's nothing his mind can't wrap itself around.
This can be useful tho. Dealing with Castaneda's almost vengeful stupidity the reader is forced to be impeccable in order to finish the books.
Yeh, he's that f***in dumb.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

ENTER THE SORCERESS!

Back from the abyss, Castaneda encounter his greatest test on the journey towards impeccability and freedom: to outwit and overpower the sorcery of Doña Soledad, herself transformed from a defeated and meaningless life to a warrior, a hunter and a "stalker of power."

Now the combat will begin. Now the journey will continue. Till the last danger is faced...the final paradox embraced.

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