Tales of Power by Carlos Castaneda

 Continuing my self-imposed tasks to read all the books Castaneda wrote, I moved on to the fourth volume in the series.  This book is the last one in the "real" Don Juan timeline, i.e. where the apprenticeship of Castaneda was described in a linear manner.  At the end of this book Don Juan and Don Genaro and their "band" of sorcerers leave this plane of existence and can never be encountered in what we call the physical world.  Other books, later in the series, feature Don Juan however it is in a form of memories or more detailed dive into the meaning of the teaching, not a linear explanation of their camaraderie.

This volume concentrates further on the ability to "see" that Don Genaro is trying to develop in Carlos.  Don Juan tells Carlos that Don Genaro is Castaneda's "benefactor" while he, himself is his teacher.  He says that every apprentice needs to have a teacher and a benefactor.  Here both of his instructors are explaining to him the world of the "Tonal" that is the everyday physical world we live in, and the world of the "Nagual" which is everything else, the unexpressed, formless or otherness that exists in the infinity.  These terms, although Spanish and used for other functions in Latin America, are used by Castaneda to mean something completely different.

At the end, the final test is for Castaneda to jump into an abyss (and survive).  Don Juan and Don Genaro say goodbye before that and "fold into the darkness".  The book ends with Castaneda jumping into the abyss.