Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Wheel Of Time: The Shamans Of Mexico Their Thoughts About Life De
    The Wheel Of Time: The Shamans Of Mexico Their Thoughts About Life De
    The Wheel Of Time: The Shamans Of Mexico Their Thoughts About Life De
    Ebook268 pages1 hour

    The Wheel Of Time: The Shamans Of Mexico Their Thoughts About Life De

    By Carlos Castaneda

    4.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    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 all along—that these plants are merely a means to understanding the alternative realities that one cannot fully embrace on one’s own. In Journey to Ixtlan, Carlos Castaneda introduces readers to this new approach for the first time and explores, as he comes to experience it himself, his own final voyage into the teachings of don Juan, sharing with us what it is like to truly “stop the world” and perceive reality on his own terms.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWashington Square Press
    Release dateNov 24, 2009
    ISBN9781439186732
    The Wheel Of Time: The Shamans Of Mexico Their Thoughts About Life De
    Author

    Carlos Castaneda

    Born in 1925 in Peru, anthropologist Carlos Castaneda wrote a total of fifteen books, which sold eight million copies worldwide and were published in seventeen different languages. In his writing, Castaneda describes the teaching of don Juan, a Yaqui sorcerer and shaman. His works helped define the 1960's and usher in the New Age movement. Even after his death in 1998, his books continue to inspire and influence his many devoted fans.

    Read more from Carlos Castaneda

    Related to The Wheel Of Time

    Related ebooks

    New Age & Spirituality For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      CONSCIOUSNESS v CATASTROPHE

      May 31, 2018

      CONSCIOUSNESS v CATASTROPHE
      5 min read

    • Article

      Mind Or Brain?

      Jan 23, 2024

      THAT LITTLE VOICE that’s narrating your experience as you read this—is it in your mind or in your brain? At first glance, this might seem like a stupid semantic question. But it cuts to the heart of a weighty dilemma for modern science that also has

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Spiritual Materialist

      Mar 30, 2023

      The Spiritual Materialist
      11 min read

    • Article

      “Magic Is A Really Important Strand Of What It Means To Be Human”

      Jul 9, 2020

      Ellie Cawthorne: Your new book surveys a vast array of magical beliefs throughout human history. How do you define magic? Chris Gosden: My definition of magic is a human openness to the universe. And a universe’s openness to people. Let me give you

      9 min read

    • Article

      Seeing And Believing

      Oct 7, 2021

      In her previous column (FT410:31) Jenny Randles discussed the importance of dreams in relation to our perception of reality, and how we all live in a bubble universe of our own making. Such thoughts are reinforced in an article by Robert Lanza MD on

      3 min read

    • Article

      What Is Time?

      May 12, 2022

      What Is Time?
      5 min read

    • Article

      Nature

      Jun 19, 2023

      In an article published last year in the Scientific American, contemplating developments in our search for extraterrestrial life, Andrea Gawrylewski writes, “Given the math, it seems impossible that we humans would be the only living things in the co

      3 min read

    • Article

      Psychology Lost a Great Mind

      Nov 14, 2023

      On November 10, 2023, my dear friend John Tooby died—or as he would have put it, finally lost his struggle with entropy.  John was a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who together with his wife, L

      3 min read

    • Article

      Trying Not to Try: Modern science and Chinese philosophy tell us similar stories about how we think.

      Feb 6, 2014

      In a famous story from ancient Chinese philosophy, Butcher Ding has been called upon to play his part in a traditional religious ceremony. The ritual, to consecrate a newly cast bronze bell, requires the butcher to sacrifice an ox in a public space,

      13 min read

    • Article

      Under The Influence

      Nov 7, 2020

      Under The Influence
      5 min read

    • Article

      Deep Dives Into The Unknown

      Apr 20, 2023

      Jack Hunter, ed. August Night Press 2023 Pb, 409pp, £17.99, ISBN 9781786772244 August Night Press is an imprint of White Crow Books, the publisher of a substantial catalogue of titles arguing, generally, that we are more than “animated meat”. These i

      3 min read

    • Article

      Cosmologist Laura Mersini-Houghton: ‘Our Universe Is One Tiny Grain Of Dust In A Beautiful Cosmos’

      Aug 27, 2022

      Laura Mersini-Houghton was born in Albania and grew up under a totalitarian communist regime which, until its collapse in 1991, cut the country off from the rest of the world. Influenced by her father, Nexhat Mersini, a mathematician, she developed a

      5 min read

    • Article

      Joseph R. Lee Analyses Dreams

      Feb 27, 2020

      Joseph R. Lee Analyses Dreams
      22 min read

    • Article

      We Have to Talk About Doubt: How to tell the difference between scientific and conspiratorial skepticism.

      Sep 1, 2021

      What is the role of reasonable doubt in advancing science? And how should we contrast scientific doubt with the cavilling doubt of conspiracy theories which play little part in advancing understanding? Over the last year we have seen the scientific m

      5 min read

    • Article

      Abhidhamma Dissects the Mind

      Mar 2, 2021

      Abhidhamma Dissects the Mind
      9 min read

    • Article

      Consciousness Isn’t Self-Centered

      Feb 27, 2020

      The great mystery of consciousness is why matter lights up with felt experience. After all, we are composed of particles indistinguishable from those swirling around in the sun; the atoms that compose your body were once the ingredients of countless

      10 min read

    • Article

      The Charmed Life of Frank Wilczek

      Mar 17, 2021

      Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek’s new book, Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality, is both a way of thinking about the abundance that characterizes our exterior and interior worlds, and a kind of alternative to traditional religion, a way of being “born aga

      13 min read

    • Article

      Claim To fame?

      Oct 6, 2023

      Claim To fame?
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Forest Spirits of Today Are Computers

      Feb 27, 2020

      Years before smart homes became a thing, I replaced all the switches in our house with computerized switches. At first, it was just a way to add wall switches without pulling new wire. Over time, I got more ambitious. The system runs a timer routine

      9 min read

    • Article

      Thomas Kuhn Threw an Ashtray at Me

      Aug 23, 2018

      Errol Morris feels that Thomas Kuhn saved him from a career he was not suited for—by having him thrown out of Princeton. In 1972, Kuhn was a professor of philosophy and the history of science at Princeton, and author of The Structure of Scientific Re

      11 min read

    • Article

      The Myth of Rationality

      Mar 17, 2021

      Many years ago, I worked as a counsellor on a program that provided support to the families of sex offenders. In practice, that usually meant working with the wives of men convicted of child sexual offences. You might expect that my job would have co

      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Wheel Of Time

    4.5/5

    7 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      I think this was a maginficiant body of work. Bravo!
    • 4/5
      If you are not already familiar with Castaneda’s writings, this book will probably prove unsatisfying. If you are familiar with his writings, this book is like a Far Side desk calendar. It lets you wander through your memories of his earlier books and ponder.Castaneda is not the most original writer of twentieth century magical explorations, but he is one of the most enjoyable. His mix of situational humor, grim reality, and apparent humility make it easy to read and enjoy his books.

    Book preview

    The Wheel Of Time - Carlos Castaneda

    Introduction

    This series of specially selected quotations was gathered from the first eight books that I wrote about the world of the shamans of ancient Mexico. The quotations were taken directly from the explanations given to me as an anthropologist by my teacher and mentor don Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian shaman from Mexico. He belonged to a lineage of shamans that traced its origins all the way back to the shamans who lived in Mexico in ancient times.

    In the most effective manner he could afford, don Juan Matus ushered me into his world, which was, naturally, the world of those shamans of antiquity. Don Juan was, therefore, in a key position. He knew about the existence of another realm of reality, a realm which was neither illusory, nor the product of outbursts of fantasy. For don Juan and the rest of his shaman-companions—there were fifteen of them—the world of the shamans of antiquity was as real and as pragmatic as anything could be.

    This work started as a very simple attempt to collect a series of vignettes, sayings, and ideas from the lore of those shamans that would be interesting to read and think about. But once the work was in progress, an unforeseeable twist of direction took place: I realized that the quotations by themselves were imbued with an extraordinary impetus. They revealed a covert train of thought that had never been evident to me before. They were pointing out the direction that don Juan’s explanations had taken over the thirteen years in which he guided me as an apprentice.

    Better than any type of conceptualization, the quotations revealed an unsuspected and unwavering line of action that don Juan had followed in order to promote and facilitate my entrance into his world. It became something beyond a speculation to me that if don Juan had followed that line, this must have also been the way in which his own teacher had propelled him into the world of shamans.

    Don Juan Matus’s line of action was his intentional attempt to pull me into what he said was another cognitive system. By cognitive system, he meant the standard definition of cognition: the processes responsible for the awareness of everyday life, processes which include memory, experience, perception, and the expert use of any given syntax. Don Juan’s claim was that the shamans of ancient Mexico had indeed a different cognitive system than the average man’s.

    Following all the logic and reasoning available to me as a student of the social sciences, I had to reject his statement. I pointed out to don Juan time and time again that whatever he was claiming was preposterous. It was, to me, an intellectual aberration at best.

    It took thirteen years of hard labor on his part and on mine to discombobulate my trust in the normal system of cognition that makes the world around us comprehensible to us. This maneuver pushed me into a very strange state: a state of quasi-distrust in the otherwise implicit acceptance of the cognitive processes of our daily world.

    After thirteen years of heavy onslaughts, I realized, against my very will, that don Juan Matus was indeed proceeding from another point of view. Therefore, the shamans of ancient Mexico must have had another system of cognition. To admit this burned my very being. I felt like a traitor. I felt as if I were voicing the most horrendous heresy.

    When he felt that he had overcome my worst resistance, don Juan drove his point as far and as deep as he could into me, and I had to admit, without reservations, that in the world of shamans, shaman practitioners judged the world from points of view which were indescribable to our conceptualization devices. For instance, they perceived energy as it flowed freely in the universe, energy free from the bindings of socialization and syntax, pure vibratory energy. They called this act seeing.

    Don Juan’s prime objective was to help me to perceive energy as it flows in the universe. In the world of shamans, to perceive energy in such a manner is the first mandatory step toward a more engulfing, freer view of a different cognitive system. In order to elicit a seeing response in me, don Juan utilized other foreign units of cognition. One of the most important units, he called the recapitulation, which consisted of a systematic scrutiny of one’s life, segment by segment, an examination made not in the light of criticism or finding flaw, but in the light of an effort to understand one’s life, and to change its course. Don Juan’s claim was that once any practitioner has viewed his life in the detached manner that the recapitulation requires, there’s no way to go back to the same life.

    To see energy as it flows in the universe meant, to don Juan, the capacity to see a human being as a luminous egg or luminous ball of energy, and to be able to distinguish, in that luminous ball of energy, certain features shared by men in common, such as a point of brilliance in the already brilliant luminous ball of energy. The claim of shamans was that it was on that point of brilliance, which those shamans called the assemblage point, that perception was assembled. They could extend this thought logically to mean that it was on that point of brilliance that our cognition of the world was manufactured. Odd as it may seem, don Juan Matus was right, in the sense that this is exactly what happens.

    The perception of shamans, therefore, was subject to a different process than the perception of average men. Shamans claimed that perceiving energy directly led them to what they called energetic facts. By energetic fact, they meant a view obtained by seeing energy directly that led to conclusions that were final and irreducible; they couldn’t be tampered with by speculation, or by trying to fit them into our standard system of interpretation.

    Don Juan said that for the shamans of his lineage, it was an energetic fact

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1