Blog Six

BLoG Six

I picked up on a theme early on in the book that in order to succeed in the apprenticeship don Juan was teaching Carlos Castaneda, Castaneda had to overcome his fears. There are several instances throughout the text in chapters 1-3 of this resounding theme… one such example, “fear is the first natural enemy a man must overcome on his path to knowledge (34).” So I was not surprised when I reached the end of chapter 3 to find fear is the first natural enemy Castaneda must overcome… followed by clarity, power, and old age. This makes me wonder, as we journey along with Castaneda, if we will see him defeat more of the enemies don Juan has clearly defined.

I think it was very important to read the author’s commentaries, forward, and introduction, to the book because there isn’t a lot of reflection throughout the text. It is mainly dialogue, which I think reads quickly, but I sometimes want to hear more of what the author is thinking. For example, when don Juan slices Castaneda’s left hand on page 56, and “placed it over the pot, and squeezed it to force more blood out..” I was wondering what words flew between them! Castaneda said when he recovered from the shock he was really angry with don Juan and it took awhile for him to regain his composure. I think adding dialogue at these critical points, where a reader may want to hear reflection, with words like “I shouted **** at don Juan for grabbing and slicing my hand!” would definitely detract from the methodic presentation of the text. By restraining a lot of reflection he is really staying true to the depiction of the path and journey don Juan is leading him, he has a clear purpose to his text, it is very coherent. I am also impressed with the recording of the dialogue. I understand why it was important for don Juan to allow sound recordings.

I also found it extremely interesting how Castaneda’s first encounter with peyote differed so much from the bystanders account of what happened to him. Some of the accounts were similar—the wrestling with the dog, and the frolicking. But Castaneda didn’t give a firsthand account of running around the house barking, or (shocker) peeing on the dog. I was also surprised he didn’t seem to remember vomiting close to a dozen times. I thought that was a lot of times to be sick and never realize.. though that is a good thing I guess. I am not interested in taking hallucinogens after reading all of that, I am perfectly fine with reading another person’s accounts!! But it is certainly an interesting read.

I also found the whole “corn witchcraft” interesting… after I read it I had to re-read it because I was like “corn?.... as in a kernel?!” I still don’t totally understand how the kernel enters the body, don Juan just says it “immerses itself in the body”. Wasn’t totally sure what that meant. I tried to do research and I did not have much luck. I didn’t dig into it deeply, but my google and ask.com searches were not productive, that was disappointing. But I did find a good area of research that I will present in my group’s presentation tomorrow :)

Lastly, I was totally taked aback on the detail and the strenuous methods of preparing and consuming the hallucinogens. Everything has to be perfect (and I wondered how relevant every precise step actually was, furthermore, I wondered how long the rituals took to perfect… thousands of years? hundreds of years?). I just thought they would go out and get mushrooms from a garden or something similar, but I was wrong. Totally wrong. And I think it will be interesting to learn more as the book continues.