page nine/the journal/October 23,1972
BOOK REVIEW
A
separate
reality
back. One of the interesting things one views around the country is the
interest in Eastern religions. If I may talk on the level of anthropology,
and sociaology; perhaps, what we are seeing due to technology and
particularly media, is an invasion of a dying Western value system by
the Eastern perspective. My guest is that the Eastern perspective is
dying too; it is trying to relate to Western values because the East has
been deprived of the Western technology and rationality. Whereas, the
Western values are dying for lack of feeling, affection, and sensuality.
If you hold this view, how do you define sin?
I believe sin is running away or rejecting your own fundamental
humanity, coping out rejecting your own deepest self by letting others
define you rather than defining yourself to some degree. You are kind
of floating along on what everybody else expects of you. And you
cannot do that and remain human. This is what I've learned from Black
history. You must not let anybody else define who you are. You have
to enter into your own self definition. You have to interact with others.
It has been put forth that some of the once rebellious youth are
claiming an acceptance of Christ and using Him as a way to re-embrace
their parent's safe middle class values without loosing face. Its part of
the one-upmanship game. So ingrained in our prestige bound society.
What is your response to that view?
Are you saying that we need each other?
That's exactly what's happening. Right, we need each other. The
East has to incorporate the Western Experience into its psyche and the
West has to integrate the Eastern experience into its psyche. Someone
said " The East is the unconscious of the West." And you can turn it
around and say the West is the unconscious of the East. And to be fully
human is to be aware of our conscious and our unconscious behavior.
What I am learning in Black Studies is that I think we Whites have
got to submit to the discipline of learning from the Black experience as
a way of helping to get ourselves together. I am willing to say, after my
reading of Black history, American history and the history of Blacks in
America, that the Black community is the unconscious of the White
community and the White community is the unconscious of the Black
community.
I guess all I am saying is that my whole vocation and all my training
is theology are coming to fruition because the dimensions of the crisis
upon us are spiritual.
"Maybe it is only us."
Simon from Lord of the Flies-
by ken dye
By the time a student reaches college he is able to contruct abstract
theories of reality which transcend his everyday experience. He will for
instance be prefectly content with atoms and electrons and the fact
that the chair on the other side of the room is constructed mostly of
space. When he sits down however the notion looses meaning.
Each of us, no matter how great our intellect or understanding,
operates on the basis of empirical observations and in our heart of
hearts these observations are what we believe. In The Teachings of Don
Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge Carlos Castaneda reconstructs reality
along abstract lines from his converstations with a Yaqui Indian named
Don Juan. In His Second book, A Separate Reality: Further
Conversations With Don Juan, he goes much further. He attacks not our
intellect but the very substance of our existence.
One's first inclination is to describe Castneda as a fool who has been
culled by a very clever man. Next you want to launch an investigation
of Castaneda to discover what his angle is. Finally the question of truth
becomes meaningless because truth has lost its meaning. This alteration
of truth does not mean that we cannot judge whether Castaneda is
sincere or not. The book is written from a position of absolute honestly
that befits a good social scientist. What is true, does no matter very
much as Don Juan points out.
Whatever one says about the book is basically a futile exercise. Even
to say that it defies rationality or that there are no objective criterion
which can be applied to the work. It is so far removed from any sort of
aniysis that it is beyond judgement. For judgement is, after all, just
another rational tool. The only way to approach the book is as if it
were a novel. To so lose oneself in Castanedas experiences that it
becomes your process to the limits of his ability to relate it. While
reading it never forget that it cannot be understood. If you should
understand it you should never have read it.
The only parallel is to find something esquisitely beautiful when
stoned, and then to attempt to discover why it is beautiful. Anyone
who has every seen how beautiful a symphony can be or heard a
painting can begin to feel what Don Juan teaches These things are to
easily explainable once you come down. Try to explain them when
your really stoned sometime and you will see what Carlos Castaneda is
up against, or perhaps what w® are all up against.
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