Book Review: Teachings of Don Juan

I want to keep this blog atopical and to be free form in terms of content, style and (if possible) devoid of any structure. Maybe a structure will emerge automatically some day. I also considered making multiple blogs along various lines - politics, philosophy, software etc but I think this is better. Here is a small book review today.

Here is a book I really liked: Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda. Briefly, the book is about the experiences Carlos Casteneda has with Don Juan a Yaqui (an american indian tribe) sorcerer. Carlos is a rational, modern day person and the way he describes things is truly amazing. His analysis and scepticism make his journey all the more enjoyable. The incidents in this book take place during 5 years in the 60s. Don Juan and Carlos share a true guru-shishya relationship. Lot of people say that a Guru is essential for any spiritual undertaking but I had always wondered why. This book clearly demonstrates this fact.

The other thing that I really liked here was the treatment of reality. My previous blog entry wondered about that fact. Hallucigenic substances are used by Don Juan to produce states of non-ordinary reality. Don mentions that these are just aids and he himself doesn't need them any longer. It reminded me of our tantrics, sadhus and their ganja. I do think that most sadhus today are nothing more than drug addicts but there was some actual utility to these techniques.

There are lots of gems in the book but I especially liked this one by Don Juan (not verbatim): "There are many paths and one should realize that a path is just that - a path. Finally it doesn't matter what path you choose as long as it is a path with a heart." Or "The desire to learn is not ambition. It is the desitiny of man to seek knowledge." Or when he describes the four natural enemies of man - here is condensed description - "Fear. On the way of knowledge the first enemy is fear.Once a man has vanquished fear, he becomes very clear, never doubting himself. Thus encountering the second enemy - clarity. One he gets over clarity, he encounters the third enemy - power. And after that old age. The last enemy always gets the man but he can fight it off for as long as possible." Its easy to read something and analyse it as interesting data or fascinating stuff. But a greater challenge is to find meaning in your everyday life. And if you really agree with the kind of stuff written in this book, how does one still justify life as we lead it?

This book is just a beginning of his journey and I am looking forward to reading his next book - A separate reality.

Reality

Reality is an interesting concept. What is real and what is perception has puzzled philosophers for long. Indian philosophy too talks about 'sab maya hai' - an allusion to the fact that nothing is real (that is not my contention here though). I am not offering answers here but there are some arguments that make this subject clearer (at least to me).

First a recap of the standard arguments:
Say, you see a straight line. You show it to me and I see a straight line. Now where is the straight line? In our minds, of course. We share a common physiology so our eyes will do a transformation that is same. Our mental conditioning is also similar so the meaning that we attach to it is similar. Finally what we see is a mind interpreted image through our eyes that we both are able to agree upon.

Now imagine some other animal like say a dog sharing our culture and mental conditioning but having a different physiological system. If I show that dog a rose - both of us will be able to agree that it is a rose but will be seeing different things. Now a question that begs answer is that if we are seeing different things how does it really look like? There are of course many answers to this or many versions of the answers but ignoring them for a moment lets ask another question - does it matter? Won't we be substituting one reference frame for another? In some schools of thought we do have the concept of one underlying unchanging reality - something independent of the reference frame - Absolute (as opposed to relative) truth. Whether this one underlying absolute exists is a subject of debate/discussion and philosophical research.

This concept of observer dependent reality is easier to agree with in a discussion but really difficult to internalise. All our intuition and understanding of the world builds a model in our mind. Keeping ourselves aware that this is just a model at all times takes effort. If we could change the way our mind works and see/hear/feel this world in different ways that would really drill in this concept of relative reality. One way to alter the mind is to use mind altering chemicals. That's euphemism for drugs. Hallucination is usually looked down upon but in this context its a good technique (not to be tried without a guide though). A drug temporarily brings chemical changes in the nervous system. Imagine if you were born with that chemistry - the world will appear different but normal. In fact the world as it appears today will be hallucinatory.

The concept that how we view things is just one way of seeing things is not old but how often we forget that. Even if we don't venture into the very fundamental aspects of reality, it is useful to start with the fact that different people can have different opinions and worldviews.