III. JOURNEY TO IXTLAN
(THE DON JUAN LESSONS)
First edition, 1972
C 1972, Carlos Castaneda
Published by Simon & Schuster, Nueva York
368 pages
As with somebody returning to see a movie film full of symbolism and a code understandable only to its director, for the third time Castaneda recaps of what happened during his first ten learning years with Don Juan, going back to the first time they met, driven by a portentous event that which happened towards the end of his second learning phase: he learns how to "stop the world". This event makes him realize that his stubbornness to achieve his initial goal —learn the mysteries of hallucinogenic plants—prevented him from understanding that "stopping the world" was not just a metaphor, but one of the most important basis of Don Juan knowledge and everything he tried to teach up to that point were techniques to achieve "stopping the world", as the first step to be able to "see".
Castaneda then understands that plants of power are not the key to enter to the Don Juan knowledge, but only an aid a help the teacher when the apprentice lacks the required sensitivity or flexibility to perceive the "other reality" of the world. This discovery leads Castaneda to review all his field notes and finds that he had discarded from the don Juan teachings the "techniques to stop the world" simply because they had no relation to his psychotropic plants study.
The stories contained in "Journey to Ixtlán" include up to chapter 17, the first two Castaneda learning years, only that his understanding of what has happened has turned 180 degrees. The last three chapters discuss the events that led Castaneda to the feat of "stopping the world", an event that takes him from darkness into the path to Toltequity knowledge.
Castaneda finishes writing this book in 1972, the same year of its first English edition, and unlike the first two, this begins to have consistency and congruence with the Toltequity knowledge system.
In "Journey to Ixtlán" the author presents 15 specific techniques for working the right knowledge side or tonal (sweeping the tonal island), four reference knowledge points and a beautiful and poetic allegory of the warriors journey to reach the ultimate teaching aim that is "reaching oneself totality".
We will try to rescue the essence of each technique to stop the world, from the stories and dialogues used by Don Juan so his apprentice feel and "understand" the lesson.
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