This is the second book, right after the Teachings of Don Juan, and is a continuation of the same story line, with Carlos returning to see Don Juan after he got defeated by the first enemy on the Path to Knowledge, Fear, at the end of the previous volume. The emphasis in this book is on learning "Seeing" which in Don Juan's system is seeing the world and humans as they really are, consisting of energy lines, which form egg-shapes around humans and a cocoon around the planet. Do not confuse these with the "Lay Lines" which are used for dowsing, if you believe in that.
Don Juan uses the "Little Smoke" ally to teach Carlito about "Seeing" and also to let him see "The Guardian" at the gates of the Other World. Don Genaro also tries to teach Carlito to see by displaying feats accomplished by the tentacles of his luminous egg, but it doesn't help. Don Juan says that Don Genaro almost killed Carlito by trying to make him see, because he liked him a lot and wanted to help him.
At the end of the book, Don Juan tells Carlos that he doesn't really change by acquiring all this sorcerer knowledge and that he is still a luminous egg like every other human being and that he will die and disappear forever, just like everyone else. Don Juan also demonstrates to Carlos that his belief that every moment in life is unique and unrepeatable is false. He makes a leaf fall from a tree in the exact same way as a previous one, touching on the exact same branches, which Carlos says was like watching an instant replay on television.
This time around, I started reading the 10 books from the third, but I went back to the second before I got to the fourth because I realized I forgot many things, even though I've read it before. I am still amazed at how Castaneda's critics take unimportant parts of his work and make them the arbiters of success or failure. Like for example Clement Meighan and Stephen C. Thomas are amazed how Catholicism is not an important part of Don Juan's repertoire and call him decisively anti-Catholic, which is not typical of Yaqui Indians, which are fervent Catholics. But these anthropologists are only looking at the outer, the exoteric, of which neither Don Juan nor Castaneda were interested much, but instead they cared about the inner, the esoteric knowledge, which has been passed on for thousands of years, before any of the current Indian tribes existed, and way before the white man came over the sea with his convenient religion that justifies oppression.
At one point Don Juan asks Carlos why does he assume that he is really a Yaqui Indian? Maybe he is a Mezotec Indian, or some other tribe? Don Juan had a very low opinion of the Indians in the Americas, and often regretted that he was born as an Indian. He was absolutely not interested in Yaqui "group life" and similar traditions which he considered primitive superstitions, These are the outer forms that other anthropologists and missionaries would usually see when living among these tribes. The secrets that Don Juan was party to and which he tried to convey and teach to Carlos were infinitely older and more powerful, the true supernatural powers of the sorcerers of the dawn of time.
Don Juan mentions that the teachings came through the Toltecs, which taught pyramid building to the Maya and inspired the space ship designs on the inner pyramid walls, but at another time he mentioned that this Secret Knowledge predates even the Toltecs, going back to the mist of the earliest times of humanity. Basically, trying to learn the Yaqui way of life from Don Juan's and Castaneda's teachings would be like trying to learn outward Tibetan Buddhism from Gurgjieff's writings. Both men were completely uninterested in the current superstitions and empty rituals that the common folk were wasting their time with, but instead wanted to learn the primeval secret knowledge that has been passed only to the rare ones who were chosen by "The Spirit" in an uninterrupted line from teacher to student, without anything being written down until very recently.
Similar critics of Castaneda ask about how come Don Juan is not hostile to the Mexican state, and Mexicans in general, which massacred the Indians. However, Don Juan, in this very volume, tells Carlos that his mother and father were brutally murdered by Mexican soldiers, while he watched, as a little boy, and then he was viciously beaten by the same soldiers, breaking several of his bones. However, while for a long time he plotted revenge, eventually when he started advancing on the Path of Knowledge, he realized that the biggest punishment for those soldiers is that they will die and disappear into nothingness, like phantoms who never really existed, while those chosen by the Spirit, who became true warriors on the Path of Knowledge, never died in this world and moved consciously to another plane of existence.
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