Translation:To read Carlos Castaneda/1
INTRODUCTION
Each of the autonomous origin cultures (Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, Mesoamerica, Andean culture) have had men of knowledge that forged the basic philosophical infrastructure, over which developed a multitude of values, symbols, feelings, and activities that provided their personality and characteristic traits.
In ancient times, thousands of years ago, an amazing mother culture emerged, in what is now Mexico, it has maintained its philosophical matrix in time and space. From the Olmec epochs, through Toltec times and up to the period just before the conquest, with the Mexica, there was a thread that immaculately knitted every process, every "new cultural facet" of the same matrix, whose validity reached, hidden, the current time.
The cultural matrix can be appreciated in the archaeological remains and the Olmec iconography, and how it remained through time, space and cultures that followed. Each of them took the matrix and enhanced it; hence the old Mexico is seen today as a multicultural mosaic, with a common essence or matrix. This matrix, fundamental element which allowed continuity of the Anahuac cultural process[1], developing through thousands of years, during which it gradually developed until reaching its splendor in the late classical.
This profound cultural essence has not been recognized by the West: at the time of the conquest, because the Spaniards could not perceive the advanced cultural development of the people they brutally razed, and today, because of the Western overwhelming supremacy in the fields of philosophy, science and culture. The vestiges of the cultural greatness of ancient Mexico almost succumbed in the darkness of time and in the minds of those that were dominated by force.
Currently, far from acknowledging the existence of a Cem Anahuac[2] profound philosophy, references are made of a transfigured polytheistic religion, still judged by heavy Eurocentric opinions. The ancient past of Mexico represents, for the vast majority of those who hold the political and cultural power, a source of populist nationalism; a disjointed cultural heritage of stones and objects of great aesthetic value whose tourism "attraction" is important only from an economic point of view.
But where are the basis in which the true wealth of our cultural heritage can sustain? Only the existence of an anahuaca[3] philosophy can give sense and explanation to thousands of years of evolution and development.
How can we understand the Greco-Roman cultural heritage without the study of knowledge by its philosophers and thinkers? Without that fundamental basis, all the vestiges of its past would not have a clear explanation. Likewise, without the knowledge of the anahuaca philosophy it is rather difficult to understand the cultural processes of ancient Mexico.
Five hundred years have passed without the dominant cultures wanting or being able to recognize, much less understand, the Anahuac philosophy. In the 16th century, eminent Western theologians debated whether Indians had or didn't have spirit. Today, several centuries later, there are those who think that there was not a Cem Anahuac philosophy, simply because there are no "scientific" basis to verify it. Dr. Rubén Bonifaz Nuño, in his book "Image of Tlaloc", questioned the belittling attitude of maintained by researchers about the cultures of the ancient Mexico.
“...Hence perhaps it will be admitted that those men were not "primitive rain worshipers, worried about the abundance or the loss of their crops, from the land possible fertility, but men who had a metaphysical knowledge of what exists.
A world concept that could explain their qualities as great mathematicians, astronomers, engineers, architects, sculptors that paradoxically, are universally recognized. Because everyone agrees; the ancient Mesoamerica inhabitants were remarkable engineers and architects; their works are there, the remarkable works of temples and plazas built, as if by miracle, in the midst of forests or on summits turned into plains, in marshes converted into land; with the amazing use of spaces and masses, as in a cosmic musical composition that alternate sound blocks with harmonious silence openings.
They also were incomparable mathematicians; as proved by their calculations, capable of understanding the notion of zero, the measurability of movement, according to before and after positions.
Also they were, as it is indisputably supported, powerful astronomers; the progress of the celestial bodies, laws that determine advancement and reverse movement of the planets, the cyclical progression of stars, deaths and resurrections of the Moon; were all known by reason and experience; so their time measurement techniques allowed them to calculate, within an accurate and thorough calendar, dates in unlimited spaces.
No one denies them the ability to create, in works later deemed considered art, symbolic or realistic images of supreme deities; clay, wood, metal, stone and colors managed by them, have come down to us in a multitude of objects whose plastic values transmitted very effectively the testimony of their willingness to be; they were therefore, as it is universally recognized, great architects, dominators of techniques that to date cannot yet be fully explained.
It is adequately assumed that they possessed a wise social organization well hierarchized, based on sound moral principles, in agreement with which they lived a common life in an orderly and safe fashion.
It is known that they spoke full languages with which they could express maximum abstraction concepts; enough languages to contain, directly and metaphorically, the finesse and strength of a language of science, of philosophy and poetic expressions.
All this and more, that it would not be easy to list here is supported by all as something obvious and likely.
And all that can be synthesized by saying that it is undoubtedly admitted that the ancient inhabitants of Mesoamerica were wise men, intellectually and morally able, connoisseurs of themselves and the world that hosted them. However, when it comes to consider the vision they had of this world and of themselves, the authors, almost unanimously, label them as rudimentary savages, busy only in considering the possibilities of fertile land by rain rendering fruits to sustain them.
Under the pretext that were farming communities, all their spiritual forces are reduced, and all their religious and metaphysical conceptions to a primitive desire for material feed that would be for them the core and the periphery of their existence.
"With a few exceptions, all authors have the same inexplicable judgment darkness."
Octavio Paz[4] mentions, the fact that there are no Mexican names among the hidden face of Mexico researchers is revealing. This indifference, Paz attributes it to professional deformation due to scientific bias of the anthropologists of our country. In this regard, he said that Mexican anthropologists are heirs of missionaries, the witches and the prehispanic priests. He said that, as the missionaries of the 16th century, anthropologists approach indigenous communities, not to understand them but to try to transform them and integrate them into the Mexican society. Affirms that unlike the missionaries who saw beliefs and religious practices of the Indians as something really serious, for Mexican anthropologists these are only aberrations and mistakes, classified and catalogued "at the Museum of curiosities and monstrosities called Ethnography".
The fundamental problem for approaching a comprehensive understanding of the Anahuac civilization philosophy, is that paths must be taken different from the traditional. With the exclusive use of reason, the deep knowledge of the cultures of the Anahuac cannot be reached. The heart of this knowledge must be acquired voluntarily avoiding the use of reason or detaching from the "modern" view of the world. The path at first, may seem inaccessible to all those who submit all who we are and what we do to the dictates of “Western” reasoning. But the truth is that anahuaca cultures possessed a deep and different knowledge, and that it was not founded on the reality that we can perceive and accept, according to logical reasoning with our traditional conception of the Western world as a frame of reference.
The purpose of this paper is not to prove that a philosophy and a deep knowledge in the Anahuac existed, which is clearly evident. Our purpose is to demonstrate that that philosophy or deep knowledge of the world has survived to the subjugation and the passage of the centuries, transmitted from generation to generation secretively, and that, "by a power design", comes to light in this Westernized world, through a series of books that will allows us to deal with the principles of a brutal and powerful knowledge, which shakes our reason over and over again to show the splendor of a separate reality underlying the ancient anahuaca "philosophy". We refer to the works of Carlos Castaneda, which summarizes the teachings of a man of knowledge which Castaneda called "Don Juan Matus", indigenous Yaqui, holder of ancient Toltec knowledge.[5]
Could we through the knowledge of Don Juan find the foundations of the cultures of the ancient Mexico? We believe that we have never before been so clear about our cultural origins from a philosophical point of view. Our proposal is to invite the reader to change any fantastic perspective about the Castaneda stories, by a deep philosophical perspective, with which we will find the "reasons" of the great Anahuac civilization. Eurocentric archaeology has widely shown, that by itself is very limited to "explain" the superior knowledge of the Anahuac civilization.
The Toltecáyotl[6], as noted by Miguel León Portilla, or the Toltequity as called by Don Juan, is the sum of knowledge, uses and customs, that the peoples of the Anahuac used to develop based on experimentation with various ways to gather the knowledge. Don Juan, who calls himself a "Toltec", says that the knowledge he possesses was not invented by him, that it was the product of many men that over thousands of years have been forming and polishing, preserving it from internal and external dangers. José Luis Martínez, in his work "Netzahualcoyotl life and work", in page 80 notes: "No wonder then, that in his religious ideas Netzahualcoyotl returned to the ancient Toltec doctrines. What we know of this people is legendary and often uncertain. To ancient indigenous peoples in the mid-15th century, the Toltec —or the Toltequity or Toltecáyotl— was a synonym of perfection, art and wisdom, and the people or the Toltec period were considered to be ancient golden past of Nahua peoples as a whole."
According to Don Juan, this knowledge has two great eras. The first begins many centuries before the conquest. At that time the men who developed and explored this knowledge failed. They were obsessed with the deviations and complex worlds they witnessed and, when conquerors indigenous peoples arrived, they destroyed them and seized some "superficial" knowledge. Many of the wizards of Mexico, are people who empirically manage limited Toltequity knowledge and who generally profit amid the evils and passions of the people, are descendants of these conquerors, hence their knowledge is incomplete. The men of knowledge that survived the crisis recounted their millenary practices and analyzed their mistakes. They started a new "cycle". Shortly thereafter the Spanish conquerors arrived and many of the men and women of knowledge that developed the "new" Toltequity were exterminated; others took refuge in an impeccable discretion that continued since then to the present day.
When Castaneda encounters Don Juan, he had a group of apprentices with whom he had been working in Toltequity "practices", since as part of the traditions, usages and customs of the men of knowledge called "Toltec" or "Naguales", before "culminating" their work they had to prepare other groups and deposit in them their knowledge, in order to continue the centuries-old tradition.
The candidates selection to become apprentices is question of "power". And it is "the power" that selects Carlos Castaneda, an anthropology South American student of the University of California, who was working on his doctoral thesis on medicinal and hallucinogenic plants used by indigenous people. A Castaneda teacher introduced him to Don Juan, who could "see" in Castaneda special characteristics which signaled him and from that point he became his apprentice.
Toltequity does not accept volunteers. Those selected possess certain energy configuration, necessary to acquire the knowledge and have to find at the right a nagual or a teacher. Entering Toltequity or witchcraft involves changing the concept we have of ourselves and the world. For the Toltecs the world, in addition to being as we perceived it, it is also a world of energy charges. The "everyday" world is perceived through reason, while the Toltequity world can only be perceived, avoiding the use of reason; in other words, through the direct perception of the energy. The Toltec argue that human beings have other elements with which to perceive knowledge found in the other "reality", as true as what we have learned to perceive from children with the use of reason.
To understand that the world and its reality, in addition to being as we perceive it, are at the same time different, requires a great deal of flexibility, and to have such "flexibility" is necessary to accumulate enough energy or "personal power", as Don Juan would say, through a complex process that the Toltecs called "the way of the Warrior".
When a common man accepts the possibility that there can be other realities in addition to what perceives, he can become an apprentice. When the apprentice can save energy through specific techniques that require a great effort and involving a dramatic change in the way of living, then becomes a warrior. A warrior is an individual capable of exercising maximum discipline and an absolute self-control. A warrior seeks, through the impeccability of all his deeds, to reach self-totality.
As all knowledge system, the Toltequity, the nagualism or witchcraft, has principles and techniques, and perceives a final objective. This knowledge proposes path different to others, proposed for the future of humanity. Which path has more validity? It is not the objective of this work. What makes the Toltequity path our times really important and different, is that in an era in which predatory modernity has reduced spiritual values to nothing, this wisdom that has remained intact, offers not only a "new but ancient" opportunity to understand the world and life, but a way to reach totality or spiritual transcendence.
The challenge of accepting the existence of this knowledge path, and even more, trying to follow it, seems almost impossible. Because to do it we not only need to overcome the natural resistance of the unknown, but we must also fight against a year ideological and cultural colonialism, which fortunately has not been able to erase the essence of our autonomous cultural background.
Since we are not knowledgeable humans, nor warriors, we will have to begin by trying to "understand" what our limited reason cannot understand, but as we have no other resources but reason to enter the Toltequity world, we will use it for approaching this millenary knowledge, so ours and, at the same time, so alien to us. On the understanding that "reading the Toltec lessons of Don Juan", by no means makes us apprentices and much less warriors. Commonly a false door in which many imaginative readers end up injured.
After avidly reading all of his work and getting in direct contact with the world that served as the Castaneda learning framework, we will try, with an open mind, to do an analysis of the valuable content of his books trying to save their honest confusion and, of course, our major limitations. We hope that our reason does not prevent us from understanding the silent knowledge of our Toltec grandparents, in which reason becomes secondary.
For that purpose, the work of Castaneda can be divided into "what Don Juan says", "what Castaneda thinks" and "what Castaneda does". We believe that the last two are only circumstantial references of the "Tales of power" or of the "abstract centers of witchcraft histories". If you take the time to underline what Don Juan says in the works of Castaneda, it will provide a splendid, coherent and interesting "Toltec philosophy" text.
And how is it that knowledge, hidden for thousands of years, suddenly unveils and provides secrets so jealously and impeccably kept by true men of wisdom and monumental discretion? We believe that Carlos Castaneda wrote these books by design of the "power" and does it as of "The gift of the Eagle", with Toltequity techniques, through "reverie", that is with the energy to literally "revive" events.
It is prudent to point out that part of the confusion Castaneda and those who read his books had, as the books appeared in stores, is that the knowledge that he acquired was developing at the same time, in two realities or fields: the tonal and the nagual.
In the first two Castaneda books, the fantastic approach to his "non-ordinary" consciousness state, did not allow him to realize the huge and wonderful wisdom placed right before his eyes. Immersed in the details of his experiences with the plants of power, some of the Toltequity teachings and principles are mixed and scattered, which provokes much confusion to the reader. It is obvious that Castaneda also suffered from this confusion, and it gradually disappeared as he managed to "sort", through remembered knowledge, the Toltequity techniques and procedures. As Castaneda advances on his work, procedures clarity and simplicity is manifested.
Let us then move forward together, through the work that has caused this work.
The works of nagual Carlos Castaneda currently consists of nine books; these are chronologically: The teachings of don Juan, A separate reality, Trip to Ixtlán, Tales of Power trip, the Second Ring of Power, the Eagle's gift, the Internal Fire, The silent knowledge and the reverie art. These books describe realistically and honestly, the successes and failures, sorrows and joys, doubts and certainties of the apprentice before his teacher and the immeasurable, wonderful and frightening world of the knowledge of another reality.
In each of the books are the basic elements which, concatenated, present us with a first Toltequity approximation.
GUILLERMO MARÍN
Oaxaca, January 1991.
- ↑ Original name of the territory that the Creoles in 1821 mistakenly called Mexico.
- ↑ Cem Anahuac, Nahuatl name of the territory that extends from north America, to Nicaragua, which means in the same language, "up to here the Anahuac".
- ↑ Name of the Anahuac people.
- ↑ Prologue of the fourth edition in Spanish of the teachings of don Juan, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1982.
- ↑ Toltec isn't a culture or a people, it is instead "a degree of knowledge" which was given to those men and women who were able to master the art of this ancient wisdom.
- ↑ Body of knowledge developed by the Toltec.