Wisdom or weird cultish brainwashing?
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PLEASE NOTE I HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK so I've just posted as a 3 star review.
I was interested in reading it but have been reading a little about the author's life on Wikipedia which put me off big time.
It sounds as if he ran something scarily like a cult in which he kept everyone in close confines and asked them to erase their personal history.
The day after his death three of his female associates known as 'witches' disappeared and are thought to have committed suicide. His adopted daughter also vanished and her remains were found in the desert a few years back.
This sounds pretty scary to me and I am no longer so keen to find out what this guy has to say. Once you read the background info the whole thing seems a little dark.
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Complete drivel
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This is, with the exception of Cage Fighter by Ian Freeman the worst book I have ever read. Despite some reviews signing it's praise, I found it utterly ridiculous.
The idea that a bush is a lion or a leaf can take on another form due to ones on perception not only flies in the face of conventional but the laws of physics.
Turing to the premise of a "warrior" and doing vs "not-doing", the only "not-doing" I consider appropriate is not reading this book again.
I readily accept that I may not wholly "see" the point of the book, maybe my "personal power" is restricted in some way, but Carlos Castenada must have been at a low ebb to listen to Don Juan for as long as he did.
Rather than be a font of Yacqui Indian knowledge, I would argue that Don Juan was, to quote Mr T "a crazy fool" who enjoyed the schadedfreude of misleading the author and couldn't believe his luck that Carlos Castenada actually respondeded to the pointless exercises he set.
I could go on, but ultimately, if you obtain any kind of benefit from this book, you would be better off putting the peyote down, looking in the mirror and rather than 'erasing your personal history', revisit it to work out quite how you turned out as such a special person.
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A life changing book
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"dr_dark" says that "This is the one where the author finally admits that he has made the whole series up from start to finish. He explicitly says so, in the book." This is a lie. Nowhere in the book, or in any of his other books does Castaneda state this.
This is the third book in Castaneda's initiation into the ancient Toltec teachings as provided by Don Juan. This is the book where Castaneda explains that the use of drugs in the previous two books was only a tool used by Don Juan to shake him out of his complacencies. This book takes things beyond drug use and into more philosophical/spiritual territory. The later books in the series explain the historical basis of these teachings as they evolved from the ancient Toltec peoples down to the present. This is my personal favourite. It has an emotional and spiritual impact which had a profound, life changing effect.
I highly recommend it.
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What matters...
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The question of Cataneda's voracity is irrelevant. What you bring to his books is reflected in what you take away with you. It will always be easier to criticise than to allow yourself to change. This book, if approached with the right attitude, can easily change your life for the better, as it did for me.
From the flexiblity of Don Genaro, to the pacifying words of Don Juan, there is much to be gained, both in terms of entertainment, and stuff to make you think.
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Dr Dark is a naive fool!
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He clearly believes himself a skeptic, but must be disregarded for being unskeptical about his skepticism. The Carlos Castaneda books may very possibly be untrue fiction, books of the imagination. There is also a chance that the indian was a wise man taking the mickey out of poor old Carlos -it does seem a little that way in some of the earlier texts. Perhaps it is also Carlos taking the mickey a little bit. Personally I think that the reader of the book is meant to be a like Castaneda, and Castaneda is in fact Don Juan.
Like the reader might be Castaneda is asking loads and loads of questions about awareness and trying to get it through intellectual persuit (writing, reading). Many of his readers, like him will have had the problem of being indulged when young and thus having weaker wills - I believe these are true, they are for me; that is apparent from experience not reading, the reading is powerful only because it accentuates some experience. These books have two things:
1. they are really pretty fascinating for a lot of people, just to see what he thought, regardless of whether I take it with me into practise and awareness.
2. in my opinion they do contain a lot of quite interesting ideas about how to act, and how to be. These cannot really be grasped intellectually (this is explored in the second book), that is only the beggining of understanding and if you want to get them must take them further. Like listening to the enviroment, trying to release your senses from your thoughts, etc. This isn't neccessarily the path to being a better person, but it's interesting, worth a look - and if you've gone down some of the paths a little these books can be pretty helpful too. I haven't read the third, but it looks to be good and I'm shortly gonna get it and the fourth
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