The Life & Teachings of Carlos Castaneda

I found the cover image extremely intriguing, almost as if William is placing a dissonant element before persons that have eyes to see and ears to hear. In eurythmy, 'as visible speech' the X denotes RESISTANCE. i.e. when a male or female crosses their legs in an encounter the denotation is resistance and/or body language as indicated.The book had a more active stance and it keeps both my feet on the ground. Even though their are many treatises on the path of direct validation of CC's teachings, william's stance keeps me grounded. I get into an either/or stance, as if carlos wants us to reach the Limit Experience or Working in a French tradition of abjection reaching back to Baudelaire and his paradoxes – "O filthy grandeur! O sublime disgrace!" – Bataille was early struck by what he saw as "the fact that these two complete contrasts were identical – divine ecstasy and extreme horror. He went on to challenge surrealism with a kind of anti-idealism searching for what he called the impossible by breaking rules until something beyond all rules was reached.In this way, he strove for what Foucault would call "the point of life which lies as close as possible to the impossibility of living, which lies at the limit or the extreme".Bataille sought to live at the edge of limits where the ability to comprehend experience breaks down.i'm not sure i want to take the impossible jump into the abyss but the fatal attraction is definitely there!!!

Who was Carlos Castaneda? Who was the man that wrote a famed work entitled "The Teaching of Don Juan," and where did the ideas and sources in this work came from? Who was Don Juan Matus, and was he real or fictional? The research into these questions and a look into Castaneda's life has been brought to light by the author, William Patrick Patterson, in his latest book."The Life & Teachings of Carlos Castaneda" is simply a new profound perspective of the life of Castaneda and his work. It is a book that cannot be put down, and it was read with such enthrall. It consisted of nine chapters in addition of a chronology of Castaneda's life. This book also included an essay of Daniel Brinton's "Nagualism: A Study in Native American Folklore and History," which is an interesting read.There was the one thing that stood out, to me, was Patterson's discovery of such a remarkable connection between G.I. Gurdjieff's teachings and that of Castaneda's. From this book, there is a chapter entitled "Ideas And Sources," which shortly revealed that mentioned connection, and the author has showed a list of the similarities in ideas between the two profound teachings. While there is such difference between the two men's works, both of them "aim to awaken one from the dream of ordinary life" (p. 91). It was a possibly before having read this book that Castaneda may have derived from Gurdjieff's teachings and reformulated it to some extent from a "sorcery" perspective in his books. It was rather interesting to see that there are very strong connections between the two teachings.This is a book about a man who journeyed on a perilous road and who shared with the world about his experiences and his interactions with varies of unique individuals. It is a book about Carlos Castaneda, a man of mystery whose famous sorceric stories has enthralled the mind of the modern people for forty years.Personally, I have found this book to be quite intriguing and an eye-opening read as the author's writing style was very enjoyable. It is certainly to be recommended.

In the 1980's I read in succession The books of Carlos Castenada from The Teachings of Don Juan up to and including what I thought at the time would be his last book, The Fire Within. While they were all unusually entertaining, as a meditator and long time student (I still am) of the perennial philosophy, there was, at least for me, no real practical help for me to in any way incorporate the way of the sorceric warrior into my life. So, I finally decided that I had read enough, actually more than my fill, of him. But, I never forgot the books. I did have a lingering sense that I must have some how missed something not readily disclosed or apparent to me. Now after reading William Patrick Patterson's book, this very book that I am now reviewing, I at last have a more powerful and meaningful sense of this most enigmatic and, for me, elusive means of spiritual development. In the book Patterson does, I think, a good job in revealing the essence of these teachings as a way of life and provides, seamlessly, a look into the "hidden" life of the reclusive Carlos Castenada not found, at least as far as I have looked, anywhere else. If you have read Carlos Castenada or not or, are just curious about him and his path then this book will help or may actually fully satisfy your curiosity. It is well written. Patterson also does a terrific job in comparing the teachings of Gurdjieff, with which he is obviously very familiar, and the writings and teachings expounded upon by Carlos Castenada in his extremly popular books on the path or the sorceric warrior. If you like this book, I also recommend Patterson's book on Adi Da Samraj which I have also reviewed here on the Amazon web site.

For the die hard Castaneda fan there was some interesting history and some good tid bits on Castaneda's entourage but for the most part most people would be better served by just re-reading Carlos Castaneda's body of original works. This is not the book to start with if you have never read any of Carlos Castaneda's books. The author's inclusion of Daniel Brinton's 1894 essay on Nagualism was VERY DRY and seemed to be added as filler just to plump up the book. I felt the added essay was unnecessary and had very little to do with the spirit of Castaneda's work. Overall the book seemed a bit overpriced for it's actual content and came across as a bit of a rip off.

This book is sort of a patched-together collection. The first 160 pages or so is a biography of Castenada based on the research and publications of other authors, including a certain amount of assessment of just how much of Castenada's writings were based on objective facts. There was a short section analyzing Castenada's core teachings, and a comparison of Castenada to the teachings of Gurdjieff (which is Patterson's real area of expertise). The last 200 pages are Daniel Brinton's 1894 paper on Nagualism (from which Castenada's teachings were presumably adapted). Not as interesting or instructive as I'd hoped.

makes me feel like im in a different universe