The Teachings of Don Juan/A Separate Reality/Tales of Power

by Carlos Castaneda

The Teachings Of Don a Separate Reality, Tales of Power by Carlos Castaneda.

Genres: Spirituality, Metaphysics

795 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Carlos Castaneda was an Latin-American author.
Starting with The Teachings of Don Juan in 1968, Castaneda wrote a series of books that describe his training in shamanism, particularly with a group whose lineage descended from the Toltecs.
The books, narrated in the first person, relate his experiences under the tutelage of a man that Castaneda claimed was a Yaqui "Man of Knowledge" named don Juan Matus. His 12 books have sold more than 28 million copies in 17 languages.
Critics have suggested that they are works of fiction; supporters claim the books are either true or at least valuable works of philosophy.

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't think that it was going to be, but this actually turned out to be a really good book. At first I was thrown about the reality (or unreality) of it all. The fact that it was probably all just drug hallucinations. Then after a while, none of that mattered. And by the end of the book I caught myself actually for the first time really getting the power of myth. How, whether something is true or not doesn't matter. It can still have great wisdom and something very real to teach. And this book did that. I'm really looking forward to the rest of the books.

[Kev Bickerdike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is it fiction or anthropological reportage? Is it proto new age whimsy or a biting work of philosophy? It is almost certainly a mixture of all of these elements, and I personally feel it's probably not grounded in actual fact.
However, all of Castaneda's 'classic' books are highly enjoyable and even a cynical reader may well find themselves suspending their judgement on what is real, and for the time they are absorbed in the world of the Brujo they may well just start to reconsider their world view

[Alex]

This is really interesting even if it is for hippies

[Maggie Eisenberger · Rating 3 out of 5]

So far I only read the first of these three books. I was curious because having gotten married in 1970 I just missed the arrival of Carlos Castaneda on campus (Was he ever read anywhere else?). It reads like someone's PhD dissertation. The most fascinating part to me was the realization that what he was describing was amazingly analogous to any Christian organized church. The ally is the church, because it has a rule, rituals, and requires a certain strength of character to belong. You must be introduced by a benefactor, analogous to a priest. You cannot ask for things for yourself but should only approach meetings with the ally to learn more about it and become closer to it. Mescalito is like Jesus, in that you don't need an ally but can go straight to him. Your quest in knowing/using either of these is to become a man of knowledge, analogous to a righteous man, as the quest never really ends until you die. The benefactor typically looked over the writer's experiences and picked out one or two things as significant and said the rest didn't mean anything. I think we also do this in our lives - pick out fortunate events and credit God's intervention but things that don't go our way remain our own fault or not important in the long run. When I finished, I looked up the author on Wikipedia and was really disappointed in how his life turned out, as well as blown away by the fact that no one knows where he came from, other than that he "came from South America" to go to college in California.
Well, now I have finished the second book, A Separate Reality. The one idea that struck a chord with me was that we erect shields around ourselves to protect us from seeing what is real. I wonder to what extent what we think is our social, political, and ethical environment is really a creation of our own minds to "shield" us from a reality we would not like as much as the one we have imagined. I have recently become aware that some others have a completely different idea of how our nation is doing and what the problems are than I and my usual circle do, so obviously our individual mindsets and biases lead us to interpret what we experience in vastly different ways. So where does reality lie? I'm not sure I want to read the third, since I am not getting much out of it.

[James LaNoue · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book opened my eyes in ways I never thought possible. If you have any interest in philosophy then this is a must read.

[María Greene F · Rating 1 out of 5]

Meh. Le tenía fe, pero lo encontré rebuscado y poco creíble y... no sé, malvado con los que "no se han iluminado todavía". Y personajes endiosados, etcétera, pff.

Una pena porque me gusta el misticismo, pero... no me gustó Castaneda, y tanto que me habían hablado de él.