that was created and bequeathed by hundreds of successive generations that worked, thought and dreamed here for a millennia."
And on page 73 of same book notes: "Although the dominant colonial ideology restricts the mesoamerican legacy alive, to the population sector recognized as Indian, national reality contains a different truth."
The indian presence and validity is found in almost the country entire social and cultural spectrum through cultural traits of highly diverse nature which, with no doubt, have their origin in the Mesoamerican civilization and are distributed to different extent in different groups and levels of Mexican society. The indian culture presence is in some respects, so every day and omnipotent that rarely notices its deep meaning and in the long historical process which made its persistence possible in social sectors that today assume a non-Indian identity."
The presence of the philosophical-cultural matrix of ancient Mexico is irrefutable in contemporary Mexico. The Castaneda work, from this perspective, provide one more angle to understand and appreciate this cultural heritage. We do not mean that it is the "only" and "authentic". In the same knowledge, Don Juan said that there were "other lineages".
In a multicultural, multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic Mexico, this old knowledge legacy is expressed in multiple ways. Don Juan himself recognizes that in recent centuries knowledge men have sought new paths, and that after the conquest they had to take refuge in the nagual world to ensure this intricate knowledge survival.
Thus, one this ancient knowledge forms, by some inexplicable design comes to light through "witchcraft". Impeccably the oral culture becomes written culture. It has to come from abroad of this colonized country, with the "best seller" label and the prologue must be written by one of the most renowned intellectuals, Octavio Paz, so that it can be read by an audience that keeps an ongoing self-devaluation.
In this way, Castaneda is not an anthropologist nor a writer; Castaneda is a nagual who impeccably is fulfilling the mission which the power appointed him, after jumping to the void in the mountains of the Sierra Juarez of Oaxaca.
Knowledge will then be exposed to public light, without teachers, "gurus", rituals or temples. One of the Toltequity lines will be available to anyone with enough personal power to extract knowledge from the work.
In Toltequity there are two basic areas: the tonal and the nagual. The first belongs to the known world, the reason, the one techniques to "sweep the tonal island" with discipline, and an inflexible intent, remove all the garbage accumulated over our life, strengthening the body, polishing the spirit and making our reason flexible; in short, a technology to be a "human being" in our immediate reality.
The second is the mysterious, unknown and frightening world of the nagual, to which cannot get to until the tonal world is efficiently worked. There is no progress in the nagual that is not supported in the tonal. Taking the Castaneda work by the magical, mysterious and unknown side, from our point of view, is taking a false door, an easy path and "disaster".
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