Dr. Carlos Castaneda is an anthropologist, and he was an apprentice of don Juan Matus, a Mexican Indian shaman. Carlos Castaneda's new book, The Wheel of Time, is a collection of quotes, drawn from eight of the books that he wrote about the classical training of a shaman initiate, a training he underwent for thirteen years under the guidance of don Juan Matus.Don Juan Matus endeavored to usher Carlos Castaneda into the world of the shamans of ancient Mexico-the founders of his lineage of shamans. His claim was that his shamanistic world was ruled by another system of cognition, different than the cognition that rules our daily world. According to what Carlos Castaneda found out in the course of his apprenticeship, the world of the shamans of ancient Mexico was indeed ruled by a system of cognition vastly different than our own.Upon examining the quotations of The Wheel of Time, Carlos Castaneda realized that there was nothing extemporaneous about the way don Juan Matus had guided him, although at the time, his instruction seemed to have been carried out on the spur of the moment. Rather, his training was carried out following a covert impulse determined by a tradition that was set in motion by the shamans who lived in Mexico thousands of years ago.Parting from one of the cognitive premises of the shamans' world, shamans would say that what shows through in this arrangement of quotations is the wheel of time, a construct that was neither speculative nor theoretical for those men, but as pragmatic as they themselves were. For those shamans, time was a very clear arrangement of energy, an arrangement which man could touch and move, and almost direct. With the tremendousconcentration that those shamans developed in their lifetimes, they were indeed capable of touching the wheel of time, and moving it to the point that the purpose of their movement, whatever it may have been, can be felt even in our day.
Description:
Dr. Carlos Castaneda is an anthropologist, and he was an apprentice of don Juan Matus, a Mexican Indian shaman. Carlos Castaneda's new book, The Wheel of Time, is a collection of quotes, drawn from eight of the books that he wrote about the classical training of a shaman initiate, a training he underwent for thirteen years under the guidance of don Juan Matus.Don Juan Matus endeavored to usher Carlos Castaneda into the world of the shamans of ancient Mexico-the founders of his lineage of shamans. His claim was that his shamanistic world was ruled by another system of cognition, different than the cognition that rules our daily world. According to what Carlos Castaneda found out in the course of his apprenticeship, the world of the shamans of ancient Mexico was indeed ruled by a system of cognition vastly different than our own.Upon examining the quotations of The Wheel of Time, Carlos Castaneda realized that there was nothing extemporaneous about the way don Juan Matus had guided him, although at the time, his instruction seemed to have been carried out on the spur of the moment. Rather, his training was carried out following a covert impulse determined by a tradition that was set in motion by the shamans who lived in Mexico thousands of years ago.Parting from one of the cognitive premises of the shamans' world, shamans would say that what shows through in this arrangement of quotations is the wheel of time, a construct that was neither speculative nor theoretical for those men, but as pragmatic as they themselves were. For those shamans, time was a very clear arrangement of energy, an arrangement which man could touch and move, and almost direct. With the tremendousconcentration that those shamans developed in their lifetimes, they were indeed capable of touching the wheel of time, and moving it to the point that the purpose of their movement, whatever it may have been, can be felt even in our day.