Translation:To read Carlos Castaneda/2
COMMENTARY TO THE SECOND EDITION
How was the wisdom and knowledge of ancient Mexico? Did it completely disappeared with the conquest and the colony? Does contemporary Mexico still holds some elements of this philosophy?
Mexicans are heirs to one of the six oldest independent origin cultures of the world. Other than cultures that developed in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, India, Mesoamerica and Andean zone, there was no other culture in the world without external cultures influences in their development.
These six "mother" cultures produced through thousands of years an immeasurable and wonderful world of knowledge, that sought from within raising the quality of life (spiritual development) and improving standards of living (material development). With creativity, sensitivity and intelligence these peoples produced foodstuff, clothing, medicine, architecture, engineering, science, religion, philosophy, art, etc., wisdom and human experience that through millennia was enriched, to awaken men from their animal state and raise him to consciousness levels that allowed them to respond to the ontological problem that every culture has sought to solve. —WHO AM I, WHERE DO I COME FROM and WHERE AM I GOING. The world in which we live today was founded in the ancient knowledge provided by these old and wise cultures.
What was the philosophy that encouraged and guided the cultural development of ancient Mexico throughout thousands of years? Why, if the cultures of India, China, Egypt, etc., which are as ancient as ours are still philosophically alive, the anahuaca is presumed extinct?
In ancient Mexico existed the Toltecáyotl, as a higher knowledge complex that through thousands of years and generations produced the splendor of the so-called "classical period" in the Anahuac. This knowledge was transmitted through institutions such as the "Calmécatl" and the so-called "White Brotherhood". When the Spaniards arrived they destroyed "everything they saw and touched" of the culture, but there were "certain things" they never saw or touched, that were jealously guarded by the "men of knowledge", and remained intact; furthermore, on the contrary, these were developed and even perfected. This deep life and world knowledge is still alive and present in Mexicans daily life. Some knowledge remain hidden underground and selectively; other in the "skin" of "Mexico and Mexicans", others in the consciousness, but all are still alive and shaping us individually or our communities.
The knowledge contained in the work of anthropologist Carlos Castaneda is a minimal expression of this vast and immeasurable knowledge. His nine books discover a world of knowledge, forbidden for centuries to western understanding. The work introduces us to the intricate and exciting paths of the ancient knowledge that for thousands of years developed our Toltec grandparents. Though reading, we learn the technology to receive "THE EAGLE'S GIFT" or, as they said poetically, "flourish the heart".
Don Juan Matus (the shaman teacher) uses Carlos Castaneda as a vehicle to massively disseminate this Toltequity knowledge. Reading of "THE DON JUAN TEACHINGS" provides an extraordinary and revealing approach to our philosophical origins and provides a full sense to all our anahuaca legacy (solves our solitude labyrinth). We dare say that the work of Castaneda is a code that allows us to reinterpret our past, our cultural heritage (tangible and intangible). In short, it provides us with a language that allows us to understand the essence, the depth of our culture; it is a bridge between the past and our present.
To understand the work as a whole allows us, through this code or language, to stop seeing our past as something foreign, incomprehensible, disjointed, dead! It ceases to be just "aesthetic, archaeological, museum"; to become something live, existing, vibrant complementary, vital, transcendental, totally ours!
Castaneda presents in his work an impressive biography of how he "hooked" onto Toltequity. He brilliantly recounts with a high literary quality his path to knowledge, his "JOURNEY TO IXTLÁN". Presents for the first time an Indian as a man full of knowledge of a completely unknown reality, "A SEPARATE REALITY"; through "TALES OF POWER" we can dimly glimpse "THE SECOND RING OF POWER", and try to "see" another conception of the human being and life as energy.
describes Don Juan as a wise teacher (nahual), generous but demanding, impeccable and responsible of his knowledge. Don Juan Matus is revealed in Castaneda work as what might have been these men that "learned to be gods" in Teotihuacán, those who reached the "INTERNAL FIRE". While "understanding" his philosophy, a veil of the obvious and evident magically disappears of everything that has been our cultural process and that, even though we live in it, we have failed to make it conscious.
When reading the Don Juan teachings, in all the Castaneda work, we get the feeling that we knew it all, that somehow nothing is new in the wonderful and prodigious knowledge, that it always existed in our depths or that it coexisted in our skin fragmented and disjointed in our everyday life, as a "SILENT KNOWLEDGE".
The Don Juan teachings in some way help order and make what we feel and know of the world and life coherent. It reveals what we have been, what we are and what we will be. The teachings of the old indigenous Yaqui, the shaman Juan Matus, is an encounter with our unknown millenary face, an approximation to our past. Is a reconciliation with the "other side of ourselves", which we have learned to deny for 500 years; it is an avenue to reach the necessary cultural fusion.
Toltequity proposes a path to "total consciousness" similar to Buddhism, Islam or Christianity, but different insofar as it is our own, born and developed in our land, with our people. Toltequity, nagualism or witchcraft (as Don Juan called it), requires humans to change their ideas about themselves and the world; to become: "warriors", individuals capable of maximum discipline and control over themselves, to live an impeccable life, of internal strength, of equanimity and detachment. Acting eh act responsibly; with consciousness, sobriety and aplomb, maintaining a sense of "unyielding intent" in its objectives, without haste, without win or lose concern, without expecting rewards... to reach the SILENT KNOWLEDGE.
Don Juan and his teachings propose an old formula created by our wise ancestors thousands of years ago and that today, before the failure of the Western civilization project, is vitally presented to us at the dawn of the third millennium.