The Wheel of Time: The Shamans of Mexico Their Thoughts about Life Death and the Universe

by Carlos Castaneda

Book Overview

World-renowned bestselling author Carlos Castaneda's selection of his writings on the shamans of ancient Mexico.Originally drawn to Yaqui Indian spiritual leader don Juan Matus for his knowledge of mind-altering plants, bestselling author Carlos Castaneda soon immersed himself in the sorcerer's magical world entirely. Ten years after his first encounter with the shaman, Castaneda examines his field notes and comes to understand what don Juan knew...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 074341280X
• ISBN13: 9780743412803
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Washington Square Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Castaneda's body of work on his teacher Don Jaun

This book is a distillation of all of Castaneda's work providing purported quotes from the Yaqui Sorcerer Don Juan. Much has been spoken about Castaneda's life and his body of work. Many assert that his books are fiction, with no basis in authentic wisdom teachings. Others describe Castaneda in mythological language, and compare him to spiritual teachers in other traditions. My interest in the work follows a life long association working with indigenous peoples, and living among them; Castaneda's propositions comport with the teachings I learned among indigenous people still living in their original ways. Tom Brown the author has taught these same methods for years at his wilderness school. So we have other sources that share a confluence in the wisdom. Perhaps Don Juan is a composite figure, who was used as a symbol to convey the teachings Castaneda wished to impart. Who can say for sure? All I know is the wisdom is congruent with the teachings I've learned over a twenty year period traveling the world and entering deeply into these cultures and native ways, and learning from Tom Brown. The book contains brief quotes about sorcery from a Toltec perspective: meaning the quotes attributed to Don Juan form a relevant body of knowledge on energy. And definitive practices for attaining the life of what Castaneda and Don Juan refer to as the life of a warrior. The goal of working with energy is to manifest certain qualities like living with impeccable character. Stalking awareness; or meditating continuously on the way our minds works to control your dysfunctional thought patterns; along with propositions for using our intent to dream. Don Juan advised this as a necessary precondition for the sake of controlling the thought process, and what he referred to as "stopping the world." What he meant by these propositions is to create a paranormal doorway allowing us to see energy in its full provocative dance, void of any cultural interpretations whatsoever. Along with the recognition that we are dreaming in every moment, we will manifest our vibrational energy into our own experiences with every thought we think, or word we speak; if we consequently desire to change outmoded and dysfunctional character traits, we need to first get a handle on our thinking, which is shaped by cultural glosses, and social conditioning. The aim of living life from a toltec perspective is therefore a full time activity, much like the Buddhist concept of walking-the-razors edge to ascertain total freedom from the thinking mind. In this place, we are no longer engaged with routines of contemporary value. This work takes one to the edge of personal boundaries, with the aim of throwing us off our ego game, stopping the world, and seeing. Seeing with a capital S. In this altered state of awareness we glimpse the unknown or void, without our social safety nets. (A good metaphor for what I speak might be the Michael Douglas film, The Game.) After we cross this

Excellent Compilation

Excellent compilation for introducing you to the writings of Carlos Castaneda.

An Excellent Abstraction of Castaneda's Warrior's Way

Castaneda is one of the most fascinating occultists of the past 100 years. Like Blavatsky, McGregor Mathers and Gurdjieff it is always hard to tell what is fact, what is fiction and what is visionary. I read the first book, Don Juan, while still in college and looked forward to every book thereafter. Every book had the strange ability to "zonk" me - to dump me into a sleepy somnolent state that was a cross between some trance state and a deep sleep. I think Carlos was the closest we have in the West to a mythmaker, a dreamweaver. Starting in 1993 Casteneda and other members of his party became slightly more public - Abelar and Donner gave bookstore lectures, later they and others (and even CC, on a couple of occasions) gave workshops on CC's "Tensegrity" system of body movements. Although CC kept referring to Don Juan, it seemed more and more as though he was speaking for himself as well; the student had become the teacher. In that sense the "Don Juan Mythos" embodied in the various books (Ixtlan, Power of Silence, Art of Dreaming etc.) is finally and elegantly replaced by this final work of Carlos', the Wheel of Time, which is spare and abstract. This book has been criticized for largely being made up of select quotes and paraphrases from the "Mythos" but that is not true; each selection from the books has a lucid, poetical introduction in the best Castaneda tradition of spare but beautiful language, followed by a critical commentary or additional observations at the end of each selection. Carlos wanted to go out with a bang, and in this book he has, by creating, without any effort or intent to do so, a book as compelling for modern westerners as the Tao Teh Ching must have been for Chinese when Lao Tse first recorded his thoughts.