On one level, this book is part of Carlos Castaneda’s (1925-1998) twelve book series about his adventures as a sorcerer, beginning with his long apprenticeship to don Juan Matus (circa 1892-1972 – although Matus’ very existence has been called into question by critics). On another level, this book is a sort of manual on writing memoirs, a perennial genre that is currently in vogue.

It begins with don Juan telling Carlos that to become a sorcerer he must put together an “album” consisting of significant memories. Initially, Carlos comes back with the story of being jilted at the altar many years before. Don Juan points out that the story is self-centered, and Carlos neither loved this fiancée nor did she make a lasting impact on him; so this story is rejected. Don Juan explains that the kind of story he wants is about something beyond Carlos himself, even though Carlos should be in the middle of it as a participant. The stories that don Juan accepts are about other people, and some are also about journeys. In cases where the other person in the memoir is still alive, don Juan urges Carlos to go find that person and thank them, sometimes by making them a gift.

At least one of the stories is about women that Carlos had cared about but had hurt. Once, he had two girlfriends simultaneously, and a male friend advised him to play with the affections of both women. This turned out disastrously. Carlos had to go away. Years later, he visits the women and, per don Juan’s instructions, offers each woman any gift that she wants. Don Juan advises that the gifts should leave Carlos penniless, and they do. (The first woman asks for a fur coat and the second requests a station wagon.) The important thing is that they both agree to forgive him. According to don Juan, the gifts abolish Castaneda’s obligations to these women.

Most of the memoirs deal with people from Carlos’ boyhood who are no longer alive: among them, a brave boy who went with Carlos through caves under a mountain, Carlos’ father, a grandfather, a grandmother, his grandfather’s worst enemy who became Carlos’ friend, his grandmother’s adopted son who might be described as a magnificent failure, and the man who introduced Carlos to don Juan but whom Carlos ignored when he most needed Carlos’ friendship. Not only does Carlos tell their stories, but he posthumously thanks them, especially at the end of his apprenticeship when he is about to say goodbye to don Juan and become a sorcerer in his own right.

Woven together with these stories is Carlos’ exposure to don Juan’s most advanced teachings. Once, don Juan revealed that the shack in the desert where Carlos always met him was not don Juan’s main residence but a place chosen because it was suited to Carlos’ spiritual poverty. In this book, don Juan finally allows Carlos to visit his real house surrounded by trees and in a mountainous region. Carlos receives revelations about procedures and events in earlier books in the series. For example, oftentimes when don Juan or don Genaro slap Carlos on the back, they are not kidding around but are manipulating the energy field around Carlos so that his consciousness will shift, allowing him to perceive the lesson at hand. Carlos also explores the special art of “dreaming” and learns to manipulate his own perception. In one chapter, he and don Juan have agreed to rendezvous in a particular Mexican town, but Carlos falls asleep. The next thing he knows, he is meeting with don Juan in that very town. He also is introduced to the most paranoid-sounding part of don Juan’s worldview: the flyers. The flyers are what don Juan has referred to on other occasions as “an alien installation” in the human mind. These are shadow entities that feed off of the aura of every human. They do much of our thinking for us, convincing us to ignore everything that casts doubt on consensual reality. It is like “The Matrix” without the technology and the humanoid enforcers. Carlos must battle the flyers by reclaiming his autonomy. (It is like taking the red pill, to keep up the “Matrix” analogy.)

Readers of Castaneda’s earlier book, “Tales of Power,” will be familiar with this book’s penultimate chapter in which Carlos and two fellow apprentices say good bye to don Juan and don Genaro and then leap from a precipice as their final initiation. I am struck by the utterly anti-Christian (non-Christian or counter-Christian?) messages here. For example, like Jesus at the Last Supper, don Juan says he is leaving this earth, but whereas Jesus urges his disciples to remember him and avows that he will remember them, don Juan tells Carlos not to think of him anymore, and don Juan declares that he will no longer think of Carlos. This seems to be because they are both about to change in profound ways and will no longer be the same beings.

In books subsequent to “Tales of Power,” Carlos and the other two apprentices reappear as sorcerers, none the worse for their plunge over the cliff, but without any explanation of how they survived. In this book, the final chapter offers an explanation of sorts, but it is a strangely inconclusive “sorcerer’s explanation,” explaining so little that it becomes clear why Castaneda has not discussed it before. He himself does not understand what happened. It is only possible for him to accept that it must have happened and that he is still alive, although much changed. This leap of faith – rather than the leap off the cliff itself – seems to be the more important step in becoming a full-fledged sorcerer. ( )

'Carlos Castenada is one of the most prpofoud andinfuential thinkers of this centyry. Hisinsights are paving the way for the futue evolutionof hman consciousness. We should all be deepy indebted to him.'-Deepak Chopra

'Ordinarily, events that change our path are impersonal affairs, and yet extremely personal. My teacher, don Juan Matus, said this in guiding me as his apprentice to collect what I considered to be the memorable events of my life....Don Juan described the total goal of the shamanistic knowledge that he handled as the preparation for facing the definitive journey: the journey that every human being has to take at the end of his life. He said that what modern man referred to vaguely as life after death was, for those shamans, a concrete region filled to capacity wih practical affairs of a different order than the practical affairs of daily life, yet bearing a similar functional practicality. Don Juan considered that to collect the memorable events in their lives was, for shamans, the preparataion for their entrance into that concrete region, which they called the active side of infinity.'

In this book, written immediately before his death, anthropologist and shaman Carlos Castaneda gives us his most autobiographical and intimately revealing work ever, the fruit of a lifetime of experience and perhaps the most moving volume in his oeuvre.

'It's impossible to view the world in quite the same way after reading him....If Castenada is correct, there is another world, a sometimes beautiful and sometimes frightening world,right before our eyes at this moment-if only we could see.'-Chicago Tribune

'Castenada's sanity lends to even the ost lurid experiences the force of data. It compels us to believe that don Juan is one of the most extraordinary figures in anthhropological literature, a neolithic sage. It helps us to accept, from the continent we stole, a mysterious gift of wisdom.'-Life

Contents

'Syntax'
'The other syntax'
Introduction
A tremor in the air
A journey of power
The intent of infinity
Who was Juan Matus, really?
the end of an era
The deep concerns of everyday life
The view I could not stand
The unvoidable appointment
The breaking point
The measurements of congnition
Saying thank you
Beyond syntax
The usher
The interplay of energy on the horizon
Journays through the dark sea of awareness
Inorganic awareness
The clear view
Mud shadows
Starting on the definitive journey
The jump into the abyss
The return trip

I found this to be an exciting book, though much of it was incomprehensible to me.

We learn much of Carlos’ early life, his life before meeting Don Juan. The latter had told him to collect the memorable events in his life and he did so. Doing this would prepare him to enter “the active side of infinity”.

Even though I’ve read the complete book, I still haven’t a clue about what this means

Don Juan is a Yaqui, a leader, in a generation of shamans, or sorcerers, and has to find a new man or woman who, like himself, “shows a double energetic structure”. Carlos has this double energetic structure.

Don Juan tells him “When I see your energy, I see two balls of luminosity superimposed, one on top of the other, and that feature binds us together”.

Don Juan wants to start Carlos off on something shamans called the warrior’s way, “backed by the strength of the area where he lived, which was the center of very strong emotions and reactions”.

“To be a sorcerer means to reach a level of awareness that makes inconceivable things available.”

The task of sorcerers is to face infinity.

What makes human beings into sorcerers is their capacity to perceive energy directly as it flows into the universe.

All human beings possess awareness which permits them to see energy directly, but sorcerers are “the only human beings who were deliberately conscious of seeing energy directly”.

Infinity is everything that surrounds us.

“Infinity, the spirit, the dark sea of awareness --- is something that exists out there and rules our lives.”

Carlos informs us: “I was truly capable of comprehending everything he was saying, and yet I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about”.

Don Juan was an extraordinary blend of both his teachers – on the other hand, extremely quiet and introspective, on the other, extremely open and funny. A nagual is empty, “and that emptiness doesn’t reflect the world, but reflects infinity”.

Carlos goes to Sonora to see Don Juan. He, Carlos, is in turmoil. Don Juan tells him that is because he is aware that “his time is up”. He gives Don Juan a full account of his life in order to “abandon the fortress of the self”.

Carlos recounts two episodes involving a psychiatrist and a professor of archaeology which put him into an “unknown emotional state”. Don Juan tells him his world is coming to an end.

The old sorcerers worked from a state of inner silence, suspension of the internal dialogue. (I have previously been on an “enlightenment” course and got help from Jo Dunning to attain this state which she informs us is a prerequisite to obtaining “enlightenment”.) These sorcerers “shook themselves” in order to reach that coveted state of awareness by jumping into waterfalls or hanging upside-down from the top branch of a tree. (Luckily, in Jo Dunning’s course we were not required to do either of these extreme things!)

Inner silence was accrued, accumulated. The desired result is what the old sorcerers called stopping the world, “the moment when everything around us ceases to be what it’s always been”.

This is also called “total freedom”, “Sorcerers need a breaking point for the workings of inner silence to set in.”

This means that at a given moment the continuity of their lives has to break in order for inner silence to set in.

“Your breaking point is to discontinue your life and you know it.”

Don Juan tells Carlos he must leave his friends, for good, since he can’t continue on the warrior’s path carrying his personal history with him.

Carlos’ friends are his points of reference and thus have to go. Sorcerers have only one point of reference – infinity.

He should rent a drab hotel room and stay there until he dies – not his body but his person – “Your person has very little to do with your body. Your person is your mind and --- your mind is not yours.”

Don Juan insists that Carlos write a list of all the people he has met, from the present back to the very beginning of his life. He must start with the first person on the list and recollect everything he can about that person; he must end with Mummy and Daddy and remember everything about them.

Carlos discovers that he is extremely “heavy-handed, obsessive and domineering”, Don Juan tells him that the power of the recapitulation is that it “stirs up all the garbage of our lives and brings it to the surface”.

As we recapitulate our lives, we realize our inconsistencies, our repetitions, but something in us puts up a tremendous resistance to recapitulating.

Only after a gigantic upheaval, called the “usher”, is the road free for us. Walking is always something that precipitates memories. The backs of the legs are the warehouse of man’s personal history. So the two go for a long walk in the hills.

He then remembers a series of events from his childhood where he becomes extremely proficient at playing billiards, is exploited by his grandfather and placed in an untenable position that cannot be resolved, whether to accept or reject a crooked deal.

Don Juan tells him that this event summed up the whole of his life – “You are always faced with a situation that is the same as the one you never resolved.”

The book ends with Carlos jumping into an abyss.

To sum up, I found the book absorbing and fascinating, but difficult. I would highly recommend it to all those interested in the teachings of Don Juan. I found it to be one of Carlos’ best books. ( )

All books of Carlos Castaneda are very important to me. He (and his Don Juan), Vadim Zeland - writer from Russia, quantum physicist and Alexey Bachev - an unusual psychologist from Bulgaria, protagonist of my book Life Can Be a Miracle have shaped my way of thinking, perceiving, experiencing the reality. Very grateful for showing me the miraculous way of living!!!! ( )