Long time ago, when I was just entering my teen years, my uncle, once removed, who later died of Multiple Sclerosis, gave me the book "The Teachings of Don Juan" with the task to read everything else by the author. I was mesmerized by the story inside, and also by the addendum describing the hierarchy of the spiritual beings encountered. I wolfed down the book, and then got the next one "Separate Reality" and wolfed down that one too. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the rest of the books, although these were the early 90s already, so Castaneda has already published 8 of the total 10 books. My English was not that great at the time, so I had to read the first two books in Serbian/Croatian translations, where they were published in small batches, and were difficult to find. Of course, there were none in a Macedonian translation, the domestic publishing industry being pretty much a joke.
Soon after, life took over and I forgot about my promise and Castaneda. Some years later, when I was a sophomore in university, I remembered Castaneda again and read the third and fourth books, "Journey to Ixtlan" and "Tales of Power", however at the same time I got access (through the nascent internet) to the writings of Richard de Mille and other Castaneda critics, which resonated with me as initially I truly believed these to be works of scientific anthropology. Also, when I found out that the last two books have to do with "Tensegrity" which critics say Castaneda lifted from some traveling Chinese teacher - I got even more disappointed, as most of the moves in "Tensegrity" seemed to be modifications of Tai Chi moves, which I was practicing at the time. So, I decided to forget about Castaneda and considered my time spent reading his books (and practicing the exercises!) to be a complete waste. For many years.
Then, one day in the far future, after I got several degrees and moved to half a dozen different countries, older and fatter and balder, walking through a nearby neighborhood I saw "The Teachings of Don Juan" lying by the sidewalk. It was like meeting a long-forgotten friend. No, I didn't immediately go back to believing in everything Castaneda wrote, but it was more like nostalgia trip into my long gone past. I did make a note to get my Castaneda books when I go back to my parents house in Europe. And so I did last summer, but did not start reading them until this summer. This summer I decided to actually read all ten books, but since I've already read the first one several times, and the second twice, I decided to start with the third one. This time I was not under the belief that these books are anthropological fact, but saw them as a mixture of mysticism, biography and instruction, alike the books of Swedenborg and Gurdjieff. When you look at them through that prism, they become much more valuable, especially if you find a way to apply some techniques to your everyday life.
The third book "Journey to Ixtlan" deals with "Stopping the World", a major step in a sorcerer's life when they become separated from the delusional and unreal world around us, but make a breakthrough to the "other world" which is the only real one. Hallucinogenic plants and drugs are completely de-emphasized, and emphasis is put on sorcerer's (Carlos') training in a different perception using his default five senses, but in a different way than normal. Don Juan also explains the further path of the sorcerer, when one chooses whether they will be a hunter or a warrior, which is the root of the much more fine distinctions built upon in the later books. Acquiring an Ally from the Other World and being constantly conscious of one's own impending, unavoidable death, which should serve as an advisor, not a threat, are also some of the main points discussed in this volume. The books ends with Don Juan (Matus) and Don Genaro (Flores) leaving young Carlito to meet his ally face to face, after he succeeded in stopping the world, as they think he is ready. But Carlito decides to leave the assigned place and go back to LA, feeling himself not ready for face to face meeting with the Ally. The journey to Ixtlan, Don Genaro's home, is a metaphor on how when the sorcerer succeeds in "Stopping the World" (which might have parallels in Gurdjieff's teachings), then the person is never the same anymore, and cannot really go back to what he thought as home before, as that place doesn't really exists for him, and all the people in his life, except sorcerers, become like phantoms, with ephemeral, unimportant existence. The journey to Ixtlan is a journey that can never be completed, Don Juan says, and what is Ixtlan for Don Genaro, is LA for Carlos.
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