Books
of Interest: by and about Carlos Castaneda
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COVER IMAGE |
TITLE |
SYNOPIS OR REVIEW |
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Active
Side of Infinity by Carlos Castaneda |
In
his last book before he died, Castaneda offers this "collection of the
memorable events in my life", at the suggestion, he says, of the
shamanic teacher who started it all. This is no random memoir, says
Castaneda, but itself a shamanic ritual--the "putting together [of] the
sum total of one's emotions and realizations, without sparing anything",
in preparation for "the definitive journey" into life after death,
or what shamans call "the active side of infinity". What we get is
a kind of Castaneda reader or primer, a posthumous overview of the episodes
that first brought him to our attention. As always both riveting and
bewildering, Castaneda offers a behind-the-scenes gloss on the extraordinary
events that inform his best-known books. |
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Carlos Castaneda:
Academic Opportunism and the Psychedelic Sixties |
As
an undergraduate I was heavily influenced by the books of Carlos Castaneda.
After I began learning first-hand from Huichol healers and singers, the
problems with Castaneda's version of American Indian spirituality became
evident. I was amazed at the amount of indifference and hostility I
encountered among academic anthropologists as I did my investigative
research. Some professors threatened me with lawsuits. My first publisher,
Madison Books, abandoned publication of this book because of threats of litigation.
When I and two other Huichol scholars sent complaints about the professor who
made those threats, the Ethics Committee of the American Anthropological
Association did nothing. Although I did more than 20 radio interviews
nationwide, Carlos Castaneda, Academic Opportunism and the Psychedelic
Sixties has been curiously neglected by the mainstream print journalists. I
deduce from this that debunking sensational and misleading accounts of
American Indian shamans and ceremonies is less "sexy" than
publishing them was almost 30 years ago. I am convinced that eventually the
truth about authentic Indian shamans will be more widely disseminated. |
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The
Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda |
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. |
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A
Separate Reality by Carlos Castaneda |
This is the second in
the "Don Juan" series, in which the author is able to enter and
"see" the sorcerer's world with the aid of hallucinogenic drugs, a
strong will and courage. He continues his dialogue with don
Juan, intuitive, wise, demanding, and fierce in his struggle to see and know
beyond the vision of ordinary men; and himself, a man of courage and
intelligence who submits himself to don Juan's teaching, to enter into
another world as a participant rather than an observer. A Separate Reality is
a work that is at once the discovery of a hitherto unrecorded body of wisdom
and knowledge and the story of a remarkable and shattering personal
experience. |
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The
Witch's Dream: A Healer's Way of Knowledge by Florinda Donner-Grau
(foreword by Carlos Castaneda) |
This is an autobiographical
account of the author's experiences in a remote Venezuelan town renowned for
its sorcerers and mediums. Here Florinda worked as the assistant of Dona
Mercedes, an old healer, witnessing the power of true healing, and leading to
their mutual self-discovery. |
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The
Art of Dreaming by Carlos Castaneda |
After six years of
Study and Meditation Carlos Casteneda returns with a breakthrough book which
will take the reader on an amazing journey of the soul via the teachings of
the great sorcerer, don Juan. Like the layers of an onion, the author reveals
that there are world's existing within our own that can be visited through
dreams. |
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Journey
to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda |
The third book in a series recording Castaneda's
initiation into the mysteries of sorcery under the guidance of the Yaqui
Indian, don Juan. It reveals how Castaneda learns the wisdom of the hunter -
he who is "without routines, free, fluid, unpredictable". |
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The
Sorcerer's Crossing: A Woman's journey By Taisha Abelar (foreword by
Carlos Castaneda) |
An intriguing if
incredible-sounding account of anthropologist Abelar's training by the same
mysterious family of sorcerers that allegedly spawned Carlos Castaneda. In
the late 60's, while she was sketching the mountains around Tucson, Abelar
met Clara Grau, a charismatic Mexican woman. Somehow, Grau persuaded young
Abelar to abandon her solitary and rudderless life and to visit her house in
Sonora, Mexico. What followed was an extraordinary induction into a family of
16 sorcerers. In a self-consciously academic preface, Abelar describes her
training as a sorceress as ``breaking the perceptual dispositions and biases
that imprison us within the boundaries of the normal everyday world and
prevent us from entering other perceivable worlds.'' In the telling, however,
the movements and exercises that led up to the perceptual leap called ``the
sorcerers' crossing'' is pure, well, Castaneda, full of walloping energies
and wise teachers dispensing dramatic insights. Castaneda himself explains in
a supplemental preface that Abelar was trained as a ``stalker''--as opposed
to a ``dreamer'': no drugs, but an exercise called the ``recapitulation,'' in
which Abelar had to liberate herself from every imprisoning memory and
attachment. Why was Abelar chosen? While searching for a men's room at a
California drive-in, the patriarch of the sorcerer family stumbled onto
Abelar as she was seducing a pimply young kid. Then and there, he vowed to
save her for a better fate. An absorbing riddle of a book. Much is made of
the Abelars and the Graus, the stalkers and the dreamers, the two sides of
the sorcerer family that live on right and left sides of their magical
Mexican house like right and left hemispheres of the brain. |
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The Teachings of Don
Carlos: Practical Applications of the Works of Carlos Castaneda
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In this ambitious
work, Victor Sanchez distills many of the teachings and practical
applications contained in Carlos Castaneda's first eight books. THE TEACHINGS
assumes a listener's familiarity with the lexicon of Castaneda's world, and
the vocabulary can be initially overwhelming. The exercises though are
infinitely practical and are explained clearly. Some of the techniques
presented include: "not doing," experiencing the body as an energy
field, the magic of attention and intention, the power of silence, and
working with dreams. |
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No image available |
Untitled
Sequel to "The Sorcerer's Crossing" By Taisha Abelar |
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Tales
of Power by Carlos Castaneda |
The main focus of this
book, the fourth in Castaneda's Don Juan series, is the distinction between
the sorcerer's world and the everyday world |
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A Magical Journey
With Carlos Castaneda |
The
former wife of mystical warrior Carlos Castaneda tells the story of their
life and its many amazing discoveries. Carlos Castaneda burst onto the academic and cultural scene in 1968
when he published the first of four books detailing his supposed
apprenticeship with a Yaqui Indian sorcerer named Don Juan. While academic
critics contend Castaneda invented Don Juan, believers say the fog
surrounding his existence express the very ideals that Castaneda attributed
to his apprenticeship. Little
is known of the Peruvian claiming to be Don Juan's apprentice, but in
addition to leading a generation into a mystical otherworld, Carlos Castaneda
was also a man. Married to him for 13 years was Margaret Runyan Castaneda. A
Magical Journey with Carlos Castaneda reads partly like a love story, partly
like a tell-all account of a celebrity writer. Margaret Castaneda concentrates
on the years leading up to her marriage in 1960. It was then Margaret and
Carlos explored many of the ideas--from controlling dreams to using
hallucinogenic mushrooms--that he claims to have learned from Don Juan.
Nevertheless, Margaret Castaneda believes her husband was indeed a sorcerer,
and she still loves him. She insists Castaneda's academic critics miss the
point. "I'm willing to accept Don Juan as a spiritual teacher, and it
really doesn't matter if he's not real." |
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The
Second Ring of Power by Carlos Castaneda |
At
the center of the book is a new and formidable figure, dona Soledad, a woman
whose powers are turned against Castaneda in a struggle that almost consumes
him. Dona Soledad has been taught by don Juan, transformed by his teachings
from a bent and gray-haired old woman into a sensual, lithe, deeply sexual
figure of awesome and mysterious power, a sorceress whose mission is to test
Castaneda by a series of terrifying tricks. Castaneda's combat with her, his
gradual realization that she not only derives her power from don Juan but is
fulfilling his plans, is all a prelude to an astonishing discovery. Castaneda
unfolds a sorcerer's party, a small closed society in which the teachings of
don Juan have become a way of life. |
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A Toltec Path: A
User's Guide to the Teachings of Don Juan Matus, Carlos Castaneda, and Other
Toltec Seers |
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The Sorcerer's
Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda |
Little
did Amy Wallace know that her first meeting with Carlos Castaneda would begin
a 20-year friendship, eventually leading to a life-changing love affair. The
elusive Castaneda told Amy that her late father had appeared to him in a
dream, extracting from Castaneda a promise to take care of her. Wallace came
to accept this, falling deeply in love with Castaneda. Eventually, she also
fell under the spell of this brilliant, domineering man, becoming a member of
his devoted following. Sorcerer's Apprentice examines Wallace's life within
the group and her dependence on its leader, with his dangerous combination of
charisma and cruelty. The story tracks two people approaching an affair with
opposite agendas: Castaneda wanted to make Wallace a "sorcerer";
she wanted to make him a lover. Along with numerous photographs, this is an
intimate, riveting, and controversial story that serves as a cautionary tale,
providing a rare inside glimpse into Castaneda's inner circle and life. |
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Magical
Passes by Carlos Castaneda |
A practical guide to
Castaneda's techniques as taught to him by the shamans of Ancient Mexico. For
the first time he brings us the profound and practical applications of the
wisdom of Don Juan Matus. Castaneda has called these teachings
"Tensegrity". They are a modernized version of thousands of
movements that were passed down from 27 generations of sorcerers through Don
Juan. The Shamans of ancient Mexico discovered these movements in dreaming
and called them magical passes, because of their positive affect on the
psyche and physical body. This book provides a foundation for learning and
practising these movements. It also features complete descriptions,
photographs, and explanations of each movement, as well as explaining the
philosophical framework in which the passes were discovered, and taught and
practised today. |
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The
Eagle's Gift by Carlos Castaneda |
Carlos
Castaneda takes the reader into the very heart of sorcery, challenging both
imagination and reason, shaking the very foundations of our belief in what is
"natural" and "logical." His landscape is full of terrors
and mysterious forces, as sharply etched as a flash of lightning on the
deserts and mountains where don Juan takes him to pursue the sorcerer's
knowledge--the knowledge that it is the Eagle that gives us, at our births, a
spark of awareness, that it expects to reclaim at the end of our lives and
which the sorcerer, through his discipline, fights to retain. Castaneda
describes how don Juan and his party, left this world--"the warriors of
don Juan's party had caught me for an eternal instant, before they vanished
into the total light, before the Eagle let them go through"--and how he,
himself, upon witnessing such a sight, jumped into the abyss. |
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The
Power of Silence: Further Lessons of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda |
In Power of Silence,
Castaneda outlines the abstract cores of sorcery: The Manifestations of the
Spirit--the energetic fact that everyone is a conduit for the spirit but that
we are too busy with the affairs of everyday life to notice; The Knock of the
Spirit--the attempts the spirit takes to get each of us to notice it; The
Trickery of the Spirit--the gyrations through which the spirit moves to hold
our interest; and The Descent of the Spirit--when the spirit cuts the chains
of our self-reflection. Through don Juan's masterful stories, Castaneda
realizes the importance of inner silence: the position of the assemblage
point away from self-reflection, the point where the universe makes itself
known to man. |
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Shabono:
A Visit to a Remote Magical World in the South American rainforest By Florinda Donner |
This book follows the adventures of
anthropoligst Florinda Donner as she experiences, firsthand, the wild mystery
and slow destruction of an indigenous tribe in the endangered rainforest. Her
rich images of daily life as she lives with the Yanomama in their shabonos,
or palm-thatched dwellings, and the magic of ritual in this native village
portray a world threatened by extinction. Florinda Donner is the author of
"Being in Dreaming" and "The Witch's Dream". |
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Don
Juan and the Art of Sexual Energy:... By Merilyn
Tunneshende |
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Don
Juan and the Power of Medicine Dreaming By Merilyn Tunneshende |
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Medicine
Dream: A Nagual Woman's Energetic Healing By Merilyn Tunneshende |
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Border Crossings: A
Psychological Perspective on Carlos Castaneda's Path of Knowledge (Studies in
Jungian Psychology, No 8) |
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The
Wheel of Time: The Shamans of Mexico by Carlos Castaneda |
Near the end of his life, Carlos
Castaneda gathered together and reviewed his seminal works on his training as
a shaman initiate, recorded in a literary career that spans over thirty
years. The result is this groundbreaking collection of quotations -- the
essence of Carlos Castaneda, drawn from his landmark volumes including The
Teachings of Don Juan, Journey to Ixtlan, A Separate Reality, and Tales
of Power. Enhanced with an introduction and original commentary by the
author, this powerful work illuminates the shaman's life as never before.
Castaneda's words explore how the ancient shamans could literally touch and
direct the wheel of time |
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Castaneda's journey :
the power and the allegory |
Carlos Castaneda was
a brilliant scholar but legitimacy bored him. At UCLA he got a Ph.D. in anthropology
by turning the latest social science theories into controversies with a
mushroom-smoking hermit and feeding them back to his professors as an ancient
Indian wisdom |
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The Don Juan Papers:
Further Castaneda Controversies |
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The
Fire from Within by Carlos Castaneda |
First published in the 1960s,
this is one of a series of books in which an anthropologist describes how a
Yaqui Indian taught him to see the world through spiritual rather than
materialistic eyes. Castaneda here learns how to achieve the heightened
awareness that will allow him to be a guide. Back
from the abyss and without don Juan, Carlos Castaneda is faced with the
staggering effort of recovering, on his own, don Juan's teachings. In doing
so, he understands what don Juan and his cohorts were really doing to him:
"They were not teaching me sorcery, but how to master three aspects of
an ancient knowledge they possessed: awareness, stalking, and intent. And
they were not sorcerers; they were seers." This work deals with the
mastery of awareness and with the realization of a new cycle of seers,
"warriors of total freedom, ... such masters of awareness, stalking, and
intent that they are not caught by death, like the rest of mortal men, but
choose the moment and the way of their departure from this world. At that
moment they are consumed by a fire from within and vanish from the face of
the earth, free, as if they had never existed." |
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I
Was Carlos Castaneda: The Afterlife Dialogues by Martin Goodman |
FICTIONALISED - This
very unusual book gives a clear and accurate record of one person's ayahuasca
experience. I learn things from it, as I always do when I meet this great
teaching plant, this 'vine of the dead' |
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Creative Victory:
Reflections on the Process of Power from the Collected Works of Carlos
Castaneda |
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Rejuvenation and
Unveiled Hidden Phenix: Carlos Castaneda Shamanism Plus a After His Death |
Carlos
Castaneda accomplished the feat to introduce the ancient Inca-Shamanism (how
to beckon the spirit, how to bring up supernatural power or our immaterial
fibers or third attention--called a phenix in Egypt--within our bodies, how
to become healthy-happy-efficient, and how to fuse with the universe without
losing consciousness and live there for 2 billion years) through his 12 best
selling books. He sent another new bible to the world. As I discuss in
Rejuvenation and Unveiled Hidden Phenix, I think the following points are
essential for us to attain the goal of Inca-Shamanism. They are: stopping
your breath automatically, sleeping without losing consciousness, circulating
your energy in your physical body, cleaning up your central energy pipe,
making the beautiful, strong, energetic core of abdomen flexible and firm,
good spine, the secret of physiognomy, good complexion, rejuvenation,
fasting, influence of other people and of devils, cutting the pipe of
floating devil above your head, good relationship with opposite sex,
dependable self-importance, good repentance, imagining powerful men such as
Christ and absorbing the power of various voices and of various flights. |
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Audio: |
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Castaneda: The
Wisdom of Don Juan [ABRIDGED] AUDIO CASSETTE |
As
the years have passed, Dr. Castaneda has come to be seen as an anthropologist
of the soul, showing us that the inner world has its own inaccessible
mountains, forbidding deserts and awesomely beautiful dangers which we are
all called to confront. This audio program presents the first two and the
best-known titles in the Don Juan series, the Teachings of Don Juan and A
Separate Reality. Listen -- and marvel -- as you are drawn into a
breathtaking world of magical reality and ultimate truth from one of the most
influential writers of our time. |
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Carlos
Castaneda's Magical Passes -unbending intent... By Carlos Castaneda |
Castaneda's
teacher Don Juan Matus learned these martial art-like motions in dreams and
passed them on to his apprentices as a means to achieving mastery over one's
will, or "unbending intent." Now these instructions are made
available on two videotapes showing clearly the precise movements and the
theoretical benefits of each one. In time, you can perform each series with
the same fluid grace Castaneda's disciples display, though to get the best
results you may have to consult with an instructor. Simply watching the men
and women slip, crouch, slide, and bounce is energizing, but following along
can be a spiritual workout. |
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Carlos
Castaneda's Tensegrity - Vol. 1 By Carlos Castaneda |
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Carlos
Castaneda's Tensegrity - Vol. 2 By Carlos Castaneda |
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Carlos
Castaneda's Tensegrity - Vol. 3 By Carlos Castaneda |
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Tensegrity Box Set |
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