A Separate Reality Carlos Castaneda

Carlos Castaneda’s first book, The Teachings of Don Juan, was hailed as a “classic” (Publishers’ Weekly) and as “an extraordinary spiritual and psychological document” (The New York Times).

In A Separate Reality, Castaneda resumes his apprenticeship with his teacher, determined to go deeper still into Don Juan’s world of mystical sensation and perception, to learn to see beyond the surface realities of life. His initiation into the process of “seeing” in the arid hills of northwestern Mexico provides a terrifying and intense account of a spiritual adventure, a work of literature that is at once the discovery of a hitherto unrecorded body of wisdom and knowledge and the story of a remarkable and shattering personal experience.

A Separate Reality has already been recognized as a new classic by reviewers across the country: A Separate Reality is extraordinary in every sense of the word, and much more than a sequel. While it has the same intelligent modesty, graceful modulation and narrative skill as the first book, Castaneda here abandons his frustrating reticence. As he comes closer to Don Juan in his struggle through his mystical obstacle course, their relationship takes on another dimension. The book ceases to be simply phenomenological reportage. The anthropologist’s rescue of an alien language from oblivion becomes a moving personal quest, an autobiography.

Don Juan slowly walked around me. He seemed to be deliberating whether or not to say something to me. Twice he stopped and seemed to change his mind.

"Whether or not you return is thoroughly unimportant," he finally said. "However, you now have the need to live like a warrior. You have always known that, now you're simply in the position of having to make use of something you disregarded before. But you had to struggle for this knowledge; it wasn't just given to you; it wasn't just handed down to you. You had to beat it out of yourself. Yet you're still a luminous being. You're still going to die like everyone else.

I once told you that there's nothing to change in a luminous egg-"

He was quiet for a moment. I knew he was looking at me, but I avoided his eyes.

"Nothing has really changed in you," he said.

"Born in 1925 in Peru, anthropologist Carlos Castaneda wrote a total of fifteen books, which sold eight million copies worldwide and were published in seventeen different languages. In his writing, Castaneda describes the teaching of don Juan, a Yaqui sorcerer and shaman. His works helped define the 1960's and usher in the New Age movement. Even after his death in 1998, his books continue to inspire and influence his many devoted fans."