Thoughts on “Journey to Ixtlan” by Carlos Castaneda

This has always been my favorite of Castaneda’s books, primarily because the focus is on perception, and how once our perception is shifted, we are able to access other layers of reality that are beyond our “normal” levels of consciousness. This book goes into detail about how Carlos was instructed, under the guidance of the Yaqui sorcerer don Juan, in the methods of shifting perception, which don Juan refers to as “stopping the world.” In the introduction to the text, Castaneda provides a nice summary of the technique.

“Stopping the world” was indeed an appropriate rendition of certain states of awareness in which the reality of everyday life is altered because the flow of interpretation, which ordinarily runs uninterruptedly, has been stopped by a set of circumstances alien to that flow. In my case the set of circumstances alien to my normal flow of interpretations was the sorcery description of the world. Don Juan’s precondition for “stopping the world” was that one had to be convinced; in other words, one had to learn the new description in a total sense, for the purpose of pitting it against the old one, and in that way break the dogmatic certainty, which we all share, that the validity of our perceptions, or our reality of the world, is not to be questioned.

(pp. xiii – xiv)

According to don Juan’s teachings, there are myriad worlds layered upon our perceived reality, and these can be accessed by radical shifts in awareness. After one experience where Carlos experienced an alternate world, he questions don Juan about the “reality” of what he had experienced.

“And what is real?” don Juan asked me very calmly.

“This, what we’re looking at is real,” I said, pointing to the surroundings.

“But so was the bridge you saw last night, and so was the forest and everything else.”

“But if they were real where are they now?”

“They are here. If you had enough power you could call them back. Right now you cannot do that because you think it is very helpful to keep on doubting and nagging. It isn’t, my friend. It isn’t. There are worlds upon worlds, right here in front of us. And they are nothing to laugh at. Last night if I hadn’t grabbed your arm you would have walked on that bridge whether you wanted to or not. And earlier I had to protect you from the wind that was seeking you out.”

(p. 133)

Toward the end of the book, don Genaro, a sorcerer friend of don Juan’s, shares a story with Carlos about a point in his life when he reached a certain stage on his path. In the story, he tells Carlos that after the experience, he tried to return to his home in Ixtlan, but was unable to return to his village.

“Genaro was telling his story for you,” don Juan said, “because yesterday you stopped the world, and he thinks that you also saw, but you are such a fool that you don’t know it yourself. I keep telling him that you are weird, and that sooner or later you will see. At any rate, in your next meeting with the ally, if there is a next time for you, you will have to wrestle with it and tame it. If you survive the shock, which I’m sure you will, since you’re strong and have been living like a warrior, you will find yourself alive in an unknown land. Then, as is natural to all of us, the first thing you will want to do is to start on your way back to Los Angeles. But there is no way to go back to Los Angeles. What you left there is lost forever. By then, of course, you will be a sorcerer, but that’s no help; at a time like that what’s important to all of us is the fact that everything we love or hate or wish for has been left behind. Yet the feelings in a man do not die or change, and the sorcerer starts on his way back home knowing that he will never reach it, knowing that no power on earth, not even his death, will deliver him to the place, the things, the people he loved. That’s what Genaro told you.”

(p. 265)

This is a painful truth for all those who are on a mystical path. At some point, our lives will change in such a way that we can never return to our old life. How can someone who touched the Divine go home and watch Netflix? How can a person who has glimpsed the infinite look at a table the same way again? How can anyone who has visited another realm of reality trust our perceptions of our “normal” world? It is impossible, yet nostalgia drives us to attempt a return to our old reality, but that reality will never exist for us again.

Thanks for taking the time to share in my musings. I hope you found them interesting. Comments are open for two weeks following post date, so feel free to share any thoughts you may have.

Thoughts on “A Separate Reality” by Carlos Castaneda

This is the second book in Castaneda’s account of his apprenticeship with the sorcerer don Juan. Chronologically, the events recounted in this text occur some years after the events recorded in The Teachings of Don Juan. Castaneda needed to take time away from the lessons because it seems he was having difficulty coming to terms with a new way of perceiving reality.

This book essentially deals with what don Juan terms “seeing,” which, in simplified terms, is a way of perceiving levels of reality that are beyond the comprehension of our ordinary states of consciousness.

Don Juan’s particular interest in his second cycle of apprenticeship was to teach me to “see.” Apparently in his system of knowledge there was the possibility of making a semantic difference between “seeing” and “looking” as two distinct manners of perceiving. “Looking” referred to the ordinary way in which we are accustomed to perceive the world, while “seeing” entailed a very complex process by virtue of which a man of knowledge allegedly perceives the “essence” of the things of the world.

(p. 8)

Don Juan asserts that humans know very little about reality, and unlike certain animals, we are fooled by what our limited consciousness perceives.

“We men know very little about the world. A coyote knows much more than we do. A coyote is hardly ever fooled by the world’s appearance.”

(p. 41)

Later, don Juan states that we maintain our limited view of reality through our internal dialog. Essentially, our minds are constantly talking to us, and this internal chatter defines our view of reality. Thus, by silencing our internal dialog, we are able to catch glimpses of how the world truly is.

“I’ll tell you what we talk to ourselves about. We talk about our world. In fact we maintain our world with our internal talk.”

“How do we do that?”

“Whenever we finish talking to ourselves the world is always as it should be. We renew it, we kindle it with life, we uphold it with our internal talk. Not only that, but we also choose our paths as we talk to ourselves. Thus we repeat the same choices over and over until the day we die, because we keep repeating the same internal talk over and over until the day we die.”

(p. 218)

Don Juan continues by asserting that once we stop telling ourselves how the world is, our minds shift and we see the world differently.

“The world is such-and-such or so-and-so only because we tell ourselves that that is the way it is. If we stop telling ourselves that the world is so-and-so, the world will stop being so-and-so. At this moment I don’t think you’re ready for such a momentous blow, therefore you must start slowly to undo the world.”

(p. 219)

Although I have read this book twice before, I got a lot out of it on this reading. This is one of those books that takes on other levels of meaning as we progress along our individual paths.

Thanks for stopping by and sharing in my musings. Have a great day!