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1 Pablito’s Mother To see what you’re up against if you want to understand Carlos Castaneda, consider this episode. Castaneda said it was a true story, it really happened.
At the end of it he described jumping off a cliff, the act that ended his apprenticeship with the sorcerer, don Juan.
‘You and I are one here! You know what to do!’ Despite his alarm, Castaneda was incapable of looking away and stared at her new, youthful body.
Castaneda recalled don Juan telling him that ‘our great enemy is the fact that we never believe what is happening to us’. He slowly realized dona Soledad had wrapped her hair band around his neck and was choking him ‘with great force and expertise’.
2 Why Read Castaneda?
It was dark and dangerous, borderline crazy, very farfetched yet still somehow compelling. There was no carefree ride to a wonderful future through expanded awareness with Castaneda. It was more like being whooshed away and then hurled into a dangerous place somewhere, alone. You have no idea where you are. You don’t remember where you came from, or how to get back. If you survive, you learn something.
Castaneda actually said the self should be curtailed and erased, not repaired and improved. To him, too much concern with self-pity and self-presentation was the main characteristic of modern man, and the crucial challenge for mankind to face in order to survive and go forward.
Who was Carlos Castaneda, really? According to his books, Carlos Castaneda was an anthropology student at UCLA who made repeated trips to the Southwest USA to “collect information on the medicinal plants used by the Indians of the area”, starting around 1960. He met Juan Matus, known as “don Juan,” a 70-year old Yaqui Indian who not only knew about medicinal herbs like peyote and datura but was also a sorcerer descended from a tradition of shamanism and magic that originated in Central Mexico more than 8,000 years ago.
According to Castaneda’s account, the sixteen sorcerers who trained him to become a new seer used a teaching method they inherited from antiquity. They utilized a form of awareness they called the “second attention.” Learning while in the second attention is similar to having experiences while under hypnosis or certain types of anesthesia. The old teachers could induce this state in Castaneda, like a hypnotist hypnotizing a patient. While Castaneda was in that state, which they also called “heightened awareness,” he would feel incredibly lucid and totally suggestible.
They taught him everything he needed to learn to master their system of knowledge and then made him forget it, and even forget that he had been with them. They left him with the task of remembering them and all the teachings on his own, to claim that knowledge as his own personal power. This type of remembering is similar to recovering lost events from early childhood in psychotherapy. For sorcerers in don Juan’s tradition it is done through special techniques of dreaming.
AI Summary
Getting Castaneda by Peter Luce presents key insights from the contemplative tradition. The 10 passages above capture the essential teachings.
Core Themes:
- [To be expanded]
Key Passages: Highlights 1, 3, and 10 are particularly representative.
This entry was generated from Readwise highlights. Expand with additional context as appropriate.