I read " yaqui way of knowledge"( I believe that was title) by Carlos castenada when I was 14 back in 87. At the time I read and interpreted it as a work of fiction. My question is is the information necessary to begin the journey contained within books and if so can you recommend the proper books. My apologies if this is common knowledge and I'm wasting your time. I am a true seeker I've studied many ancient philosophies/religions( on my own not by taking classes as I seen a comment on a different post) I am willing to put my attention focus and work into the practices discussed within this forum I just need to be pointed in the proper direction. Thank you for your time and( hopefully) cooperation
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If you’ve only read the first book, I suppose you could work at finding your spot as depicted in the film produced just 2 years (?) ago:
Project Ixtlan - The Spot
But since you’re a studier, why haven’t you read the rest of the books on your own? It can’t be an access issue.
Best way to train your attention and recall some of your energy for progress and silence would be Recapitulation, or finding yourself some Silence Stones/Rocks and see how difficult it is for you to shut your inner monologue down.
(note, various Reddit smartphone apps are currently having Wiki access issues, try a web browser instead until things are fixed by Reddit)
I read the first book like 35 years ago and at the time I assumed it was fictional. I came across this sub-reddit and after reading some posts I realized this may be what I've been searching for. Not remembering much of the book other than don Juan teaching Carlos about reality and magic I decided to pose my question to find out where to gain the information that I seek. Thank you for taking the time to point me in correct direction
It all works, EXACTLY as described. Even the craziest thing can be learned by you, and you'll get to do it.
But the first 4 books were a history lesson on "The Men of Knowledge".
Those are the bad guys, not the good guys.
You DO NOT want to be one of those.
Don Juan just taught Carlos about them, because Carlos asked. He was looking for an "shamanism informant", and he got a seer. Not the same thing.
But for his PhD thesis, he HAD to have shamanism.
So he could write about a very popular UC system topic of the 1960s, Indian customs and religious practices which use power plants.
It is NOT what we do.
We don't need them at all, and go 3 times further than the men of knowledge were capable of going.
But Carlos did leave us the Devil's Weed Ally, and Little Smoke two.
We have those spirits helping us!
To understand the situation with Men of KNowledge versus "seers", you have to read the rest of the books.
And maybe study this J curve diagram to see what we're doing.
The men of knowledge never made it through that tunnel at the bottom right.
We go to the purple station at the end.
Here's the link, but reddit is broken today. You won't be able to find it yet.
https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/comments/mtfwhb/even_better_j_curve_diagram/
This might work though.
Thank you very much for this information
I've read all of the Castaneda works, out of order. You can read all of them yourself as there is a wealth of information to find. You can also search Amazon Books for "naugalism," "toltec" or even "Castaneda" and you will find even more books to read. The trick is to start trying things and verify it all for yourself (maybe not the drug encounters, tho. Ha.)
Good luck.