The
Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge
was first published in 1968. On the occasion of its thirtieth year
of publication, I would like to make a few clarifications about the
work itself, and to state some general conclusions about the subject
of the book at which I have arrived, after years of serious and
consistent effort. The book came as a result of anthropological
field work which I did in the state of Arizona and in the state of
Sonora, Mexico. While doing graduate work in the Anthropology
Department at the University of California at Los Angeles, I happened
to meet an old shaman, a Yaqui Indian from the state of Sonora,
Mexico. His name was Juan Matus.
…
The irreducible description of what I did in the field would be to say
that the Yaqui Indian sorcerer, don Juan Matus, introduced me to the
cognition of the
shamans of ancient Mexico. By cognition,
it is meant the processes responsible for the awareness of everyday
life, processes which include memory, experience, perception, and the
expert use of any given syntax. The idea of cognition
was, at that time, my most powerful stumbling block. It was
inconceivable for me, as an educated Western man, that cognition,
as it is defined in the philosophical discourse of our day, could be
anything besides a homogeneous, all-engulfing affair for the totality
of mankind. Western man is willing to consider cultural differences
that would account for quaint ways of describing phenomena, but
cultural differences could not possibly account for processes of
memory, experience, perception and the expert use of language to be
anything other than the processes known to us. In other words, for
Western man, there is only cognition
as a group of general processes.
For
the sorcerers of don Juan's lineage, however, there is the cognition
of modern man, and there is the cognition
of the shamans of ancient Mexico. Don Juan considered these two to
be entire worlds of everyday life which were intrinsically different
from one another. At a given moment, unbeknownst to me, my task
mysteriously shifted from the mere gathering of anthropological data
to the internalisation of the new cognitive processes of the shamans'
world.
A
genuine internalisation of such rationales entails a transformation,
a different response to the world of everyday life. Shamans found
out that the initial thrust of this transformation always occurs as
an intellectual allegiance to something that appears to be merely a
concept, but which has unsuspectedly powerful undercurrents. This
was best described by don Juan when he said, “The world of everyday
life cannot ever be taken as something personal that has power over
us, something that could make us, or destroy us, because man's
battlefield is not in his strife with the world around him. His
battlefield is over the horizon, in an area which is unthinkable for
an average man, the area where man ceases to be a man.”
He
explained those statements, saying that it was energetically
imperative for human beings to realise that the only thing that
matters is their encounter with infinity.
Don Juan could not reduce the term infinity
to a more manageable description. He said that it was energetically irreducible. It was something that could not be personified or even
alluded to, except in such vague terms as infinity,
“lo infinito”.
Little
did I know at that time that don Juan was not giving me just an
appealing intellectual description; he was describing something he
called an energetic fact.
Energetic facts, for
him, were the conclusions that he and the other shamans of his
lineage arrived at when they engaged in a function which they called
seeing: the act of
perceiving energy directly as it flows in the universe. The capacity
to perceive energy in this manner is one of the culminating points of
shamanism.
According
to don Juan Matus, the task of ushering me into the cognition
of the shamans of ancient Mexico was carried out in a traditional
way, meaning that whatever he did to me was what was done to every
shaman initiate throughout the ages. The internalisation of the
processes of a different cognitive system
always began by drawing the shaman initiates' total attention to the
realisation that we are beings on our way to dying. Don Juan and the
other shamans of his lineage believed that the full realisation of
this energetic fact,
this irreducible truth, would lead to the acceptance of the new
cognition.
The
end result which shamans like don Juan Matus sought for their
disciples was a realisation which, by its simplicity, is so difficult
to attain: that we are indeed beings that are going to die.
Therefore, the real struggle of man is not the strife with his
fellowmen, but with infinity,
and this is not even a struggle; it is, in essence, an acquiescence.
We must voluntarily acquiesce to infinity.
In the description of sorcerers, our lives originate in infinity,
and they end up where they originated: infinity.
Most
of the processes which I have described in my published work had to
do with the natural give and take of my persona as a socialised being
under the impact of new rationales. In my field situation, what was
taking place was something more urgent than a mere invitation to internalise the processes of that new shamanistic
cognition; it was a demand.
After years of struggle to maintain the boundaries of my persona
intact, those boundaries gave in. Struggling to keep them was a
meaningless act if it is seen in the light of what don Juan and the
shamans of his lineage wanted to do. It was, however, a very
important act in light of my need, which was the need of every civilised person: to maintain the boundaries of the known world.
Don
Juan said that the energetic fact
which was the cornerstone of the cognition
of the shamans of ancient Mexico was that every nuance of the cosmos
is an expression of energy. From their plateau of seeing
energy directly, those shamans arrived at the energetic
fact that the entire cosmos is
composed of twin forces which are opposite and complimentary to each
other at the same time. They called these two forces animate
energy and inanimate
energy.
They
saw that inanimate
energy has no awareness.
Awareness, for shamans, is a vibratory condition of animate
energy. Don Juan said that the
shamans of ancient Mexico were the first ones to see
that all the organisms on Earth are the possessors of vibratory
energy. They called them organic beings,
and saw that it is the
organism itself which sets up the cohesiveness and the limits of such
energy. They also saw
that there are conglomerates of vibratory, animate energy
which have a cohesion of their own, free from the bindings of an
organism. They called them inorganic beings,
and described them as clumps of cohesive energy that is invisible to
the human eye, energy that is aware of itself, and possesses a unity
determined by an agglutinating force other than the agglutinating
force or an organism.
The
shamans of don Juan's lineage saw
that the essential condition of animate energy, organic or inorganic,
is to turn energy in the universe at large into sensory data. In the
case of organic beings,
this sensory data is then turned into a system of interpretation in
which energy at large is classified and a given response is allotted
to each classification, whatever the classification may be . The
assertion of sorcerers is that in the realm of inorganic
beings, the sensory data into
which energy at large is transformed by the inorganic
beings, must be, by definition,
interpreted by them by them in whatever incomprehensible from they
may do it.
According
to the shamans' logic, in the case of human beings, the system of
interpreting sensorial data is their cognition.
They maintain that human cognition
can be temporarily interrupted, since it is merely a taxonomical
system, in which responses have been classified along with the
interpretation of sensory data. When this interruption occurs,
sorcerers claim that energy can be perceived directly as it flows in
the universe. Sorcerers describe perceiving energy directly as
having the effect of seeing it with the eyes, although the eyes are
only minimally involved.
To
perceive energy directly allowed the sorcerers of don Juan's lineage
to see human beings as
conglomerates of energy fields that have the appearance of luminous
balls. Observing human beings in such a fashion allowed those shamans
to draw extraordinary energetic conclusions. They noticed that each
of those luminous balls is individually connected to an energetic
mass of inconceivable proportions that exists in the universe; a mass
which they called the dark sea of awareness.
They observed that each individual ball is attached to the dark
sea of awareness at a point that
is even more brilliant than the luminous ball itself. Those shamans
called the point of juncture the assemblage point,
because they observed that it is at that spot that perception takes
place. The flux of energy at large is turned, on that point, into
sensory data, and those data are then interpreted as the world that
surrounds us.
When
I asked don Juan to explain to me how this process of turning the
flux of energy into sensory data occurred, he replied that the only
thing shamans know about this is that the immense mass of energy
called the dark sea of awareness
supplies human beings with whatever is necessary to elicit this
transformation of energy into sensory data, and that such a process
could not possibly ever be deciphered because of the vastness of the
original source.
What
the shamans of ancient Mexico found out when they focused their
seeing on the dark
sea of awareness was that the
entire cosmos is made of luminous filamaents that extend themselves
infinitely. Shamans describe them as luminous filaments that go
every which way without ever touching one another. They saw
that they are individual filaments, and yet, they are grouped in
inconceivably enormous masses.
Another
of such masses of filaments, besides the dark sea of
awareness which the shamans
observed and liked because of its vibration, was something they
called intent, and the
act of individual shamans focusing their attention on such a mass,
they called intending.
They saw that the
entire universe was a universe of intent,
and intent, for them,
was the equivalent of intelligence. The universe, therefore, was,
for them, a universe of supreme intelligence. Their conclusion,
which became part of their cognitive world,
was that vibratory energy, aware of itself, was intelligent in the
extreme. They saw that the mass of intent
in the cosmos was responsible for all the possible mutations, all the
possible variations which happened in the universe, not because of
arbitrary, blind circumstances, but because of the intending
done by the vibratory energy, at the level of the flux of energy
itself.
Don
Juan pointed out that in the world of everyday life, human beings
make use of intent and
intending in the
manner in which they interpret the world. Don Juan, for instance,
alerted me to the fact that my daily world was not ruled by my
perception, but by the interpretation of my perception. He gave as
an example the concept of university,
which at that time was a concept of supreme importance to me. He
said that university
was not something that I could perceive with my senses, because
neither my sight nor my hearing, nor my sense of taste, nor my
tactile or olfactory senses, gave me any clue about university.
University happened
only in my intending,
and in order to construct it there, I had to make use of everything I
knew as a civilised person, in a conscious or subliminal way.
The
energetic fact of the
universe being composed of luminous filaments gave rise to the
shamans' conclusion that each of those filaments that extend
themselves infinitely is a field of energy. They observed that
luminous filaments, or rather fields of energy of such a nature
converge on and go through the assemblage point.
Since the size of the assemblage point
was determined to be equivalent to that of a modern tennis ball, only
a finite number of energy fields, numbering, nevertheless, in the
zillions, converge on and go through that spot.
When
the sorcerers of ancient Mexico saw
the assemblage point,
they discovered the energetic fact
that the impact of the energy fields going through the assemblage
point was transformed into
sensory data; data which were then interpreted into the cognition
of the world of everyday life. Those shamans accounted for the
homogeneity of cognition
among human beings by the fact that the assemblage
point
for the entire human race is located at the same place on the
energetic luminous spheres that we are: at the height of the shoulder
blades, an arm's length behind them, against the boundary of the
luminous ball.
Their
seeing-observations
of the assemblage
point
led the sorcerers of ancient Mexico to discover that the assemblage
point
shifted position under conditions of normal sleep, or extreme
fatigue, or disease, or the ingestion of psychotropic plants. Those
sorcerers saw
that when the assemblage
point
was at a new position, a different bundle of energy fields went
through it, forcing the assemblage
point
to turn those energy fields into sensory data, and interpret them,
giving as a result a veritable new world to perceive. Those shamans
maintained that each new world that comes about in such a fashion is
an all-inclusive world, different from the world of everyday life,
but utterly similar to it in the fact that one could live and die in
it.
For
shamans like don Juan Matus, the most important exercise of intending
entails the volitional movement of the assemblage
point
to reach predetermined spots in the total conglomerate of fields of
energy that make up a human being, meaning that through thousands of
years of probing, the sorcerers of don Juan's lineage found out that
there are key positions within the total luminous ball that a human
being is where the assemblage
point
can be located and where the resulting bombardment of energy fields
on it can produce a totally veritable new world. Don Juan assured me
that it was an energetic
fact
that the possibility of journeying to any of those worlds, or to all
of them, is the heritage of every human being. He said that those
worlds were there for the asking, as questions are sometimes begging
to be asked, and that all that a sorcerer or a human being needed to
reach them was to intend
the movement of the assemblage
point.
Another
issue related to intent,
but transposed to the level of universal intending,
was, for the shamans of ancient Mexico, the energetic
fact
that we are continually pushed and pulled and tested by the universe
itself. It was for them an energetic
fact
that the universe in general is predatorial to the maximum, but not
predatorial in the sense in which we understand the term: the act of
plundering or stealing, or injuring or exploiting others for one's
own gain. For the shamans of ancient Mexico, the predatory condition
of the universe meant that the intending
of the universe is to be continually testing awareness. They saw
that the universe creates zillions of organic
beings
and zillions of inorganic
beings.
By exerting pressure on all of them, the universe attempts to become
aware of itself. In the cognitive
world
of shamans, therefore, awareness is the final issue.
Don
Juan Matus and the shamans of his lineage regarded awareness
as the act of being deliberately conscious of all the perceptual
possibilities of man, not merely the perceptual possibilities
dictated by any given culture whose role seems to be that of
restricting the perceptual capacity of its members. Don Juan
maintained that to release, or set free, the total perceiving
capacity of human beings would not in any way interfere with their
functional behaviour. In fact, functional behaviour would become an
extraordinary issue, for it would acquire a new value. Function in
these circumstances becomes a most demanding necessity. Free from
idealities and pseudo-goals, man has only function as his guiding
force. Shamans call this impeccability.
For them, to be impeccable means to do one's utmost best, and a bit
more. They derived function from seeing
energy directly as it flows in the universe. If energy flows in a
certain way, to follow the flow of energy is, for them, being
functional. Function is, therefore, the common denominator by means
of which shamans face the energetic
facts
of their cognitive
world.
The
exercise of all the units of the sorcerers'
cognition
allowed don Juan and all the shamans of his lineage to arrive at odd
energetic conclusions which at first sight appear to be pertinent
only to them and their personal circumstances, but which, if they are
examined with care, may be applicable to any one of us. According to
don Juan, the culmination of the shamans' quest is something to be
considered to be the ultimate energetic
fact,
not only for sorcerers, but for every human being on Earth. He
called it the definitive
journey.
The
definitive
journey
is the possibility that individual awareness, enhanced to the limit
by the individual's adherence to the shamans'
cognition,
could be maintained beyond the point at which the organism is capable
of functioning as a cohesive unit, that is to say, beyond death.
This transcendental awareness was understood by the shamans of
ancient Mexico as the possibility for the awareness of human beings
to go beyond everything that is known, and arrive, in this manner, at
the level of energy that flows in the universe. Shamans like don
Juan Matus defined their quest as the quest of becoming, in the end,
an inorganic
being,
meaning energy aware of itself, acting as a cohesive unit, but
without an organism. They called this aspect of their cognition
total freedom,
a state in which awareness exists, free from the impositions of socialisation and syntax.
These
are the general conclusions that have been drawn from my immersion in
the cognition
of the shamans of ancient Mexico. Years after the publication of The
Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge,
I realised that what don Juan Matus had offered me was a total
cognitive revolution. I have tried, in my subsequent works, to give
an idea of the procedures to effectuate this cognitive revolution.
In view of the fact that don Juan was acquainting me with a live
world, the processes of change in such a live world never cease.
Conclusions, therefore, are only mnemonic devices, or operative
structures, which serve the function of springboards into new
horizons of cognition.
Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (Washington Square Press 1998)
