Carlos Castaneda's The Teachings of Don Juan

The Raven - Alan Parsons


(Tr. Spa-Eng. from a review in Shvoong)

 Carlos Castaneda is a so-called student of anthropology at a University in Los Angeles, California looking for information for a thesis. He wants to focus the content of the work on the information obtained first-hand from the primordial source, through field work. He looks for information about hallucinogenic plants and their ritual use among the native cultures, particularly among Mexico yaqui Indians. He meets with Don Juan, a shaman that induces him progressively, firstly breaking his structures through the use of hallucinogenic plants and then through a series of premises that settle him step by step in a different reality in which Don Juan calls the person a ''man of knowledge''.

 To become a man of knowledge it is necessary to master the four basic enemies which prevent man to reach that status. The first of them is FEAR, because it freezes so you cannot follow the path with heart, or lead the life of a warrior. Once fear has been controlled, then it comes CLARITY: everything becomes clear and the excess of light is equal to the excess of darkness, both are blinding, you need intelligence and sobriety not to get lost against that second enemy of knowledge. Once it is conquered then it appears the third, POWER: most are lost in it, whatever it is, but if by chance the man controlls power then it appears the fourth and most formidable enemy, OLD AGE.

 The interesting thing is that the subject connoisseur becomes himself the subject-object to be known and the reason that gives origin to the adventure becomes a mere trigger that wakes up a paradigm and confronts the reader with a form of knowledge which has little - or nothing - to do with the Western worldview. Highly recommended for extreme readers.