Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6761 in Books
• Published on: 1990-02-22
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Synopsis
Castaneda's first book in the Don Juan series. He meets Don Juan and is introduced to his magical world and philosophy by means of hallucinogenic plants and special exercises. The author's other books include "The Fire Within" and "The Quest for Ixtlan".

Customer Reviews

Merely A First Step towards Being a Man of Knowledge
I first read this book a few months ago before reading the rest of the series, and it was a mind-blowing read.

"Teachings of Don Juan" is the first of many books by anthropologist Carlos Castaneda to which he revealed his teacher-student relationship and experiences with Yaqui Sorcerer by the name of Don Juan. The dialogues and experiences lay within this book are rather insightful read.

This book is merely a starting point where readers begin to understand the warrior's way and how one would understand one's perceptions of the world and how they can be deceiving. The plants or substances discussed in this book is not the means nor the ends, but merely just a tool, rarely used, in order to shock the author to see what lies beyond and around himself. Merely a step towards being a "man of knowledge."

Remarkably, as I read through the series, I cannot help but wonder who Don Juan really was and where the sources came from. I recently found the answers to these questions in William Patterson's "The Life & Teachings of Carlos Castaneda," which is a new profound perspective of the life of Castaneda and his work.

The Teachings Of Don Juan
This is the first item i've ever given one star to and I know i'm going to get slated as so many other reviewers here rave about it. I'm sorry to say it has many faults. I feel it is poorly written and has little to keep you engaged. You get no real feel for the main people in the book and the constant questioning of Don Juan that is refused an answer, or that receives some pseudo spiritual response, is extremely tedious. The hallucinogenic visions are uninspiring to read and the interpretations are spurious. The second half that attempts to analyse the 'lessons' from the experiences is jargon laden and tries to be too clever. As a text explaining various Yaqui rituals it has some merit, and it's explanations of drug preparation is fairly clear, but you can get this information online without trawling through such uninspiring dross. I have read many, many books of a spiritual nature, as well as many books on a variety of topics, as my varied and extensive reviews will illustrate, and I'm really sad to have given a book so highly praised by others such a low review, but I really disliked this book and felt it has very little to offer in terms of spiritual message. Easier reads, with clearer messages are out there (The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, or Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman to name two mainstream books and a whole host of more in-depth and meaningful books) and this book only serves to muddy what should be ones clear path to deeper spiritual growth. I can only apologise to those who love and gained some form of enlightenment from it!!!

An Entertaining Fabrication
Carlos Casteneda was a great novelist. I bought and enjoyed almost all of his published works in the full knowledge that they were fiction. It's almost impossible to believe now but there was a time when some gullible people, laymen and academics, were fooled into believing that Don Juan, Don Genaro, Silvio Manuel etc., were real people rather than inventions made by a highly imaginative writer. Much the same thing happened with Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code et al, i.e., credulous people attributing authenticity to a purely fictional fabrication. If you haven't read any of Casteneda's work I would recommend his novels strongly, for purposes of entertainment of course, in the same way I would recommend other works of fantasy by Guy Gavriel Kay or Phillip Pullman for example. Casteneda is a much better writer than J.K.Rowling and Don Juan a much more interesting character than Harry Potter!