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195 of 216 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Beginning of a Journey You Will Never, Ever Forget..., October 22, 2000
"The Teachings of Don Juan" is the first in a series of about 15 books by Carlos Casaneda describing the author's experiences with Yaqui Indian shamanism in Northern Mexico. As a studier of religion for many years (although not as knowledgeable as some scholars) I find these books to be utterly unique in their scope and subject matter. They are not like other New Age books. The journey that Castaneda takes his readers is mind-boggling, and his experiences are simply beyond what most people have even remotely encountered. Castaneda first met Don Juan in the early 60's, before the hippy movement, before psychodelic drugs became popular. He was studying anthropology in Los Angeles, and Don Juan served as a field source for some fading knowledge of tribal and shamanistic rituals in Northern Mexico. Castaneda was specifically interested in peyote, a plant that gives its users hallicinations and mixes the senses in strange ways, and which LSD was meant to be a chemical reproduction of. Castaneda's first book presents a very detailed scholastic interpretation of his experiences. All books after the first simply focus on Castaneda's experiences with Don Juan. Castaneda's drug experiences are different from other accounts I have read, because they are intimately tied with the Yaqui philosophy and mythology. The drugs only serve as a means to an end, not as the end in themselves. The first 2 books in the series describe Castaneda's drugs experiences with Don Juan, but from the 3rd book on, the drugs disappear forever and Carlos' experiences are actually more fantastic, more amazing, more unbelieveable as he slowly becomes a practicing sorceror, traveling to alternate dimensions and battling other sorcerors. Many of the books seem to reach a definitive conclusion, only to have Castaneda's perceived understanding of Don Juan's teachings completely destroyed in the next volume. Again these experiences do not in any way compare to magic and sorcery you might find in pagan, christian, or celtic mythology, nor does the "world-philosophy" of Don Juan resemble in any way the wholistic ideals of Eastern religions like Hinduism or Buddhism. How can you describe things most people have never seen before? Castaneda does a good job, considering the fantastic nature of some of his journeys. However, while the visions and magical feats are mesmerizing to read, I often found that Don Juan gave his most profound knowledge while simply talking to Castaneda. Do to its subject matter, most Christians will find these books offensive, but I promise you that nothing in any of these volumes will turn you onto the path of Satan :) There is a certain participation required from the reader - Castaneda repeatedly affirms that everything he has ever written is absolutely true, but intelligent readers will be constantly wondering if such fantastic things could possibly exist. By turning off this little nagging "naysayer" in my own head and allowing myself to simply sink into the mood of the work and believe, I found that I was better able to intuitively understand the very abstract concepts that overwhelm you. However, because these accounts are SO unbelieveable, SO fantastic, SO unlike our everyday life here in the US, I found that I never confused my world with Castaneda's. It's like reading a book about walking on the Moon - you can understand and appreciate what it must have been like, but you don't start wearing a spacesuit to work!
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26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Excellent and Entertaining Book, April 4, 2002
I enjoy Carlos Castaneda's books because they always offer an escape from reality -- in this case, I mean that quite literally. Castaneda's books involve an age-old technique of storytelling, the teaching of a body of knowledge from a master to a pupil. In this case, the master, a Yaqui Indian known as Don Juan, teaches the ancient Toltec art of sorcery to a young, first-person narrator, Carlos Castaneda. This narrator is dubious and incredulous as Don Juan shows him things about the nature of reality and our perceptions of it, but increasingly he has to conclude that the world of Don Juan is an accurate description of the may facets of reality, and our modern world is merely one narrow view. There is controversy over whether Castaneda's books are "real" --Castaneda was granted a PhD for his "field" work; but other scholars have found a lot of Castaneda's research to have no anthropological authenticity. Supporters of Castaneda dispute this. That there is even an argument over whether the books are "real" or not indicates how good the stories are -- like the world of J.R.R. Tolkien, people really, desperately want to visit Castaneda's world. His books are riveting, fascinating, beautiful, and also very scary. Although later books in the series (Tales of Power, for instance) are better than this introductory work; I think it is important to read the books in their order of writing, in order to get the "lessons" that Castaneda learns in the correct order. I am a great fan of the books, even if they are 100% fiction. But one is really just never sure if they are. . .
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40 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Enthralling book, but only until you realize it was all fantasy, January 24, 2008
That might not come from reading this book alone, as it is the most believable of the series. When I was a student, I like many others I know who will confess to having read a Castaneda book or two when pressed, went through a couple of years of Castanedism, reading the 8 classics 2 - 3 times each, and even the later four, quite different books a couple of times. Being someone who likes to give the benefit of the doubt until conclusive evidence proves otherwise, I must admit to only getting suspicious by Journey To Ixtlan, the third book. The second book, A Separate Reality, picks up on the supernormal happenings, but these are still within the realms of possibility when one considers Spiritualist literature. By Tales of Power, when at the end Carlos throws himself off a cliff and only survives by becoming pure perception, bouncing elastically back and forth 17 times between the two inherent realms of all creation, the tonal and the nagual, the game was up. In Carlos' terms, my assemblage point had just experienced a considerable shift into the realms of disbelief. The cocoon had burst. I read the remaining books still interested, but with the growing realization that I'd been had. Bizarre ideas not found in any other spiritual traditions, such as the necessity for people on the path of knowledge to kill their children to reclaim the power they'd lost to them, plus fill in the holes in their cocoons the children had caused, made me wary. This was surely not a philosophy the whole world should turn to, or else we'd be living in a fearful, lonely world with every man for himself. However, this would be fine if the books weren't made out to be non-fiction. While I have seen these books placed with science fiction books in many libraries, in most European bookshops they're still sold with real, non-fiction 'Mind, Body, Spirit' books. The reason I give this book such a low rating is that an intensive study of his works, the books by his various colleagues, plus Richard De Mille's intelligent criticisms, can only lead to the conclusion that Castaneda, the writer, used Don Juan and Carlos, two fantasy characters, to verbalize his own beliefs, which were culled from his own spiritual and academic experience. That there are some useful nuggets of wisdom, or advice in these books I do not deny. That is their very attraction, plus the belief that it all really happened, and is a new spiritual revelation. But as these are mixed up with increasingly bizarre assertions and beliefs (by the Art of Dreaming it seems all pretence at non-fiction had been given up), it is doubtful whether a lifetime devoted to these practices (as opposed to say, real shamanic practices) would lead to spiritual improvement. If you must have a Castaneda book in your library, rather get The Wheel of Time, a selection of the spiritual highlights of the first eight books, but consider it rather 'The best of the personal philosophy of Carlos Castaneda' than anything to do with Don Juan or Shamanism. This understanding may not have the romantic mix of wild Mexican deserts, ancient wisdom, wise old men and naive westerners which captures the hearts of so many, but it is a lot closer to the truth. The anonymous ghost-writer at Schuster and Schuster who corrected Peruvian immigrant Castaneda's English for at least all of his earlier works (a sample of his writing from 1969 reveals it was still far from perfect, not like what is in books), giving the books their special character, certainly deserves more credit than he or she gets. But they are not written well enough to succeed as fiction, hence their continued classification as non-fiction, besides the intense academic embarrassment it would cause copyright holders UCLA to have to admit such a dramatic change in classification, from fact to fantasy, after having previously given the author a doctorate for his work! I give this book one star on the basis that any book claiming to represent the truth which is later found to be fraudulent deserves no stars by definition, so I must give the minimum rating allowed. The day this book is reclassified as Fiction, I will up my rating to 3 stars though, as it is a quite entertaining and authentic piece of fiction-posing-as-non-fiction. At this point many a true believer will try play the only card they have left - the allegory or metaphor card, with the implication that the critic is not deep enough to have gathered that by now. However, there is a vital difference between a Castaneda book and an allegory - the latter always make it perfectly clear at the start that what follows is not to be taken as fact. A misunderstanding would mean losing the effect of the allegory. The Castaneda books, on the contrary, always start out with the reassurance that what follows is definitely fact. As UCLA Library stack request records prove that Castaneda was sitting in the library on the exact dates when he was supposed to be hanging out with Don Juan, it is thus fair to say that these books are neither factual nor allegorical. If you have bought the book already, I might as well warn you not to waste any time on the Structural Analysis at the end. That was only placed there to make a point for Castaneda. Coming after the gripping narrative of the Teachings, the impossibly dry and intentionally unreadable analysis in pseudo-academic jargon is merely meant to score points for Castaneda's one-time anthropological field of phenomenology, which is basically scientific reporting of the first-hand, direct experience type. Hopefully no true believers have fallen for Castaneda's joke and wasted time actually wading through it - I doubt it'll have done you more spiritual good than throwing yourself off a cliff.
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