A wise move, I would have to say, because that way no one would be able to accuse him of promoting drug consumption afterward. By book three, however, Castaneda himself said that hallucinogenic or “sacred” plants were no longer necessary because his own awareness had expanded.

I lost a personal friend to this discourse (and to peyote) when I was a teenager because he became obsessed with these ideas and would not stop trying all types of plants. However, his teachings truly resonated with many. He invented “Tensegrity”, a combination of martial art and magical passes complete with stances that could help you traverse through different realities… and did he have a lot to say about alternate universes and realities! He shied away from interviews and refused to have his photograph taken, and he said that Don Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian, really existed. He ended up studying anthropology at UCLA, where his third book, Journey to Ixtlan, served him as his doctoral thesis. He also unpacks the lies, and, boy, there are lots of them: Castaneda was a Peruvian born in Cajamarca who said was born Brazilian and that had studied art in Italy sponsored by the nobility. One of his first wives (he died married to two additional women known as the Witches), his son, people who followed him for years and ended up rummaging through his trash as a way to keep in touch with his teachings… the array of people portrayed in this book is incredibly interesting.

Mike Sager has done a great journalistic job answering this one not only has he read extensively about Carlos Castaneda-including reading all of Castaneda’s own output-but he also interviewed lots of people from his entourage. It’s the book that made him a voice to follow, a shaman coming straight out of the Sonora Desert. Millions of copies were sold, making Castaneda a millionaire and expanding his teachings into a franchise comprising three associated companies, various seminars and workshops, several derivative books, and eleven additional books penned by Castaneda himself. But here in South America, the impact was enormous: people scoured the land for mushrooms and peyote, seeking the truth. I will surely struggle for words if I try to define who this type of book resonated with and why. As was common with spiritual journeys discovered through the use of hallucinogenics, this book struck a chord in 1960s America.

Let me start by asking if you’ve ever heard of The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda. This is a shamman bearing gifts,Īn ambiguous spellbinder dealing simultaneously in contrary His stories are packed with truth, though they are not true “Castaneda wasn’t a common con man, he lied to bring us the

The teachings of don juan summary