The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge

Decades ago the University of California Press published a remarkable manuscript by an anthropology student named Carlos Castaneda. The Teachings of Don Juan initiated a generation of seekers dissatisfied with the limitations of the Western worldview. Castaneda's now classic book remains controversial for the alternative way of seeing that it presents & the revolution in cognition it demands. In a series of fascinating dialogs, Castaneda sets forth his partial initiation with don Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian shaman from the state of Sonora, Mexico. He describes Don Juan's perception & mastery of the "non-ordinary reality" & how peyote & other plants sacred to the Mexican Indians were used as gateways to the mysteries of "dread," "clarity" & "power".