Page:Para leer a Carlos Castaneda.djvu/79

 but also in urban groups constantly that permanently resort to its practices, either by healing needs or conflicts stemming from personal and/or economic aspects. Even in higher circles of economy and politics, it is very common to see "powerful" people visiting those who handle some kind of magical knowledge.

Mexicans from any economic or cultural level saves a space, sometimes reduced, sometimes larger, to the supernatural. The magical and spiritual nature of the collective subconscious in Mexico, has many expression means through beliefs, traditions and customs of contemporary Mexico.

Paradoxically, Mexican intellectuals have been silent on Castaneda books, except for the Octavio Paz prologue in the first book to reach Mexico as a "best seller". Silence has been, the response to the work in general. Mexico is a country culturally colonized and its major challenges include overcoming this problem. But if on the one hand there has been the silence of the intelligentsia, on the other hand there are regular readers who have followed one by one the author’s books. When I first finished this work in 1991, I asked my teacher and friend, Dr. Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, to write the prologue for the book and his refusal was emphatic.

While reading the teachings of Don Juan, from the perspective of the Anahuac civilization, becomes another option offered by this extensive and profound work. It is not intended to deny the "individual" meaning masterfully conveyed by Castaneda. Moreover, in the same work, Don Juan says that the power assigned Castaneda to write his experience. That was the task assigned to Castaneda.

But we must not forget that the "teachings" were not invented by Don Juan nor much less by Castaneda. It is a fraction of the Toltec cultural heritage to the Anahuac. This legacy allowed development for a thousand years of splendor (200 BCE - 850 CE) and prompted the construction of more than 2,000 buildings that today are called "archaeological sites", the invention of corn, chocolate, vanilla, chewing gum, the perfect time measure and its various calendars, the mathematical zero, the chinampas, the charges system, the public education system free and compulsory during at least 1,500 years, among many other achievements, could not flourish without a thought structure in which to fully develop, consistent with one of the six oldest world civilizations.

The Toltecáyotl or Toltequity, comprises not only the knowledge to receive "The Eagle’s Gift", as Don Juan Matus lineage called it, or achieve existential transcendence as is called by civilization researchers. The Toltecáyotl is the sum of knowledge which allow human beings to develop in the material and spiritual planes.

Not all human beings, from Toltecs time and of today, can become warriors. The consciousness mastery, stalking, reverie and the intent, are only meant for a tiny minority. The Don Juan teachings, especially those that allow "energy saving", are an excellent methodology that allows, in the tonal world, improve as human beings. This is the great value of the work. ____________________