Page:Para leer a Carlos Castaneda.djvu/6

 Juan would say, through a complex process that the Toltecs called "the way of the Warrior".

When a common man accepts the possibility that there can be other realities in addition to what perceives, he can become an apprentice. When the apprentice can save energy through specific techniques that require a great effort and involving a dramatic change in the way of living, then becomes a warrior. A warrior is an individual capable of exercising maximum discipline and an absolute self-control. A warrior seeks, through the impeccability of all his deeds, to reach self-totality.

As all knowledge system, the Toltequity, the nagualism or witchcraft, has principles and techniques, and perceives a final objective. This knowledge proposes path different to others, proposed for the future of humanity. Which path has more validity? It is not the objective of this work. What makes the Toltequity path our times really important and different, is that in an era in which predatory modernity has reduced spiritual values to nothing, this wisdom that has remained intact, offers not only a "new but ancient" opportunity to understand the world and life, but a way to reach totality or spiritual transcendence.

The challenge of accepting the existence of this knowledge path, and even more, trying to follow it, seems almost impossible. Because to do it we not only need to overcome the natural resistance of the unknown, but we must also fight against a year ideological and cultural colonialism, which fortunately has not been able to erase the essence of our autonomous cultural background.

Since we are not knowledgeable humans, nor warriors, we will have to begin by trying to "understand" what our limited reason cannot understand, but as we have no other resources but reason to enter the Toltequity world, we will use it for approaching this millenary knowledge, so ours and, at the same time, so alien to us. On the understanding that "reading the Toltec lessons of Don Juan", by no means makes us apprentices and much less warriors. Commonly a false door in which many imaginative readers end up injured.

After avidly reading all of his work and getting in direct contact with the world that served as the Castaneda learning framework, we will try, with an open mind, to do an analysis of the valuable content of his books trying to save their honest confusion and, of course, our major limitations. We hope that our reason does not prevent us from understanding the silent knowledge of our Toltec grandparents, in which reason becomes secondary.

For that purpose, the work of Castaneda can be divided into "what Don Juan says", "what Castaneda thinks" and "what Castaneda does". We believe that the last two are only circumstantial references of the "Tales of power" or of the "abstract centers of witchcraft histories". If you take the time to underline what Don Juan says in the works of Castaneda, it will provide a splendid, coherent and interesting "Toltec philosophy" text.

And how is it that knowledge, hidden for thousands of years, suddenly unveils and provides secrets so jealously and impeccably kept by true men of wisdom and monumental discretion? We believe that Carlos Castaneda wrote these books by design of the "power" and does it as of "The gift of the Eagle", with