Journey To Ixtlan - Introduction.

Journey To Ixtlan. ©1972 by Carlos Castaneda.

Introduction.

On Saturday, 1971 May 22, I went to Sonora, Mexico, to see don Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian sorcerer with whom I had been associated since 1960. I thought that my visit on that day was going to be in no way different from the scores of times I had gone to see him in the ten years I had been his apprentice. The events that took place on that day and on the following days, however, were momentous to me. On that occasion my apprenticeship came to an end. This was not an arbitrary withdrawal on my part but a bona fide termination.

I have already presented the case of my apprenticeship in two previous works: "The Teachings of Don Juan" and "A Separate Reality".

My basic assumption in both books has been that the articulation points in learning to be a sorcerer were the states of non-ordinary reality produced by the ingestion of psychotropic plants.

In this respect don Juan was an expert in the use of three such plants: Datura inoxia, commonly known as jimsonweed; Lophorphora williamsii, known as peyote; and a hallucinogenic mushroom of the genus Psilocybe.

My perception of the world through the effects of those psychotropics had been so bizarre and impressive that I was forced to assume that such states were the only avenue for his communicating and my learning what don Juan was attempting to teach me.

That assumption was erroneous.

For the purpose of avoiding any misunderstandings about my work with don Juan, I would like to clarify the following issues at this point.

So far I have made no attempt whatsoever to place don Juan in a cultural milieu. The fact that he considers himself to be a Yaqui Indian does not mean that his knowledge of sorcery is known to, much less practiced by, the Yaqui Indians in general.

All the conversations that don Juan and I have had throughout the apprenticeship were conducted in Spanish, and because of his thorough command of that language I was capable of obtaining complex explanations of his system of beliefs.

I have maintained the practice of referring to that system as sorcery, and I have maintained the practice of referring to don Juan as a sorcerer because those were categories he himself used.

Since I was capable of writing down most of what was said in the beginning of my apprenticeship, and everything that was said in the later phases of it, I gathered voluminous field notes. In order to render those notes readable and still preserve the dramatic unity of don Juan's teachings, I have had to edit them. But what I have deleted is, I believe, immaterial to the points I want to raise.

In the case of my work with don Juan, I have limited my efforts solely to viewing him as a sorcerer, and to acquiring membership in his knowledge.

For the purpose of presenting my argument, I must first explain the basic premise of sorcery as don Juan presented it to me. He said that for a sorcerer, the world of everyday life is not as real, or as out there, as we believe it is. For a sorcerer, reality, or the world we all know, is only a description.

For the sake of validating this premise, don Juan concentrated the best of his efforts into leading me to a genuine conviction that what I held in mind as 'the world at hand' was merely a description of the world; a description that had been pounded into me from the moment I was born.

He pointed out that everyone who comes into contact with a new-born child is a teacher who incessantly describes the world to that child until the moment when the child is capable of perceiving the world as it is described.

According to don Juan, we have no memory of that portentous moment simply because none of us could possibly have had any earlier points of reference for comparing that moment to anything else.

From that moment on, however, the child is a member. He or she knows the description of the world.

Their membership becomes full-fledged, I suppose, when they are capable of making all of the proper perceptual interpretations that conform to that description- which in turn seems to validate that description.

For don Juan, then, the reality of our day-to-day life consists of an endless flow of perceptual interpretations which we, the individuals who share a specific membership, have learned to make in common.

The idea that the perceptual interpretations that make up our world have a flow is congruous with the fact that they run uninterruptedly; and they are rarely, if ever, open to question.

The reality of the world we know is so taken for granted that the basic premise of sorcery- that our reality is merely one of many possible descriptions- can hardly be taken as a serious proposition.

Fortunately for me, in the case of my apprenticeship, don Juan was not concerned at all with whether or not I could take his proposition seriously.

He proceeded to elucidate his points in spite of my opposition, my disbelief, and my inability to understand what he was saying.

Thus, as a teacher of sorcery, don Juan endeavored to describe his world to me from the very first time we talked.

My difficulty in grasping his concepts and methods stemmed from the fact that the units of his description were alien and incompatible with those of my own.

His contention was that he was teaching me how to 'see' as opposed to merely 'looking', and that 'stopping the world' was the first step to 'seeing'.

For years I had treated the idea of 'stopping the world' as a cryptic metaphor that really did not mean anything.

It was only during an informal conversation about a friend of mine's son that took place towards the end of my apprenticeship that I came fully to realize the scope of 'stopping the world', and its importance as one of the main propositions of don Juan's knowledge.

Don Juan and I had been talking about different things in a relaxed and unstructured manner. I told him about a friend of mine, and my friend's dilemma with his nine year old son. The child, who had been living with the mother for the previous four years, was then living with my friend; and the problem was what to do with his son.

According to my friend, the child was a misfit in school. The boy lacked concentration and was not interested in anything. He was given to tantrums, disruptive behavior, and to running away from home.

Don Juan, laughing, said, "Your friend certainly does have a problem."

I wanted to keep on telling don Juan all the 'terrible' things the child had done, but he interrupted me, saying, "There is no need to say any more about that poor little boy. There is no need for you or for me to regard his actions in our thoughts one way or another."

Don Juan's manner was abrupt, and his tone was firm, but then, he smiled.

I asked, "What can my friend do?"

Don Juan said, "The worst thing your friend can do is to force that child to agree with him."

I asked, "What do you mean?"

Don Juan replied, "I mean that that child should not be spanked or scared by his father when the boy does not behave the way your friend wants the boy to behave."

I asked, "How can my friend teach his son anything if my friend is not firm with him?"

Don Juan answered, "Your friend should let someone else spank the child."

I was surprised at his suggestion, and said, "He can not let anyone else touch his little boy!"

Don Juan seemed to enjoy my reaction, and giggled.

He said, "Your friend is not a warrior. If he were, he would know that the worst thing one can do is to confront human beings bluntly."

I asked, "What does a warrior do, don Juan?"

He said, "A warrior proceeds strategically."

I responded, saying, "I still do not understand what you mean."

Don Juan replied, "I mean that, if your friend were a warrior, he would help his child to 'stop the world'."

I asked, "How can my friend do that?"

Don Juan said, "He would use the personal power that comes from being a warrior."

I responded by saying, "But my friend is not a warrior."

Don Juan then replied, saying, "In that case your friend must use ordinary means to help his son to change his idea of the world. It is not 'stopping the world', but it will work just the same."

I asked don Juan to explain his statements.

He said, "If I were your friend, I would start by hiring someone to spank the little guy.

"I would go to skid row and hire the worst-looking man I could find."

I asked, "To scare a little boy?"

Don Juan replied, "Not just to scare a little boy, you fool. That little fellow must be stopped, and being beaten by his father will not do it.

"If you want to stop your fellow men, you must always be outside the circle that presses them. That way you can always direct the pressure."

I thought don Juan's idea was preposterous, but somehow it was appealing to me.

Don Juan was resting his chin on his left palm. His left arm was propped against his chest on a wooden box that served as a low table. His eyes were closed but his eyeballs moved. I felt he was looking at me through his closed eyelids, and that idea scared me.

I said, "Tell me more about what my friend should do with his little boy."

Don Juan said, "Tell your friend to go to skid row and very carefully select an ugly-looking derelict. Tell him to get a young one; one who still has some strength left in him."

Don Juan then delineated a strange strategy. I was to instruct my friend to have the hired man follow my friend and his son; or wait for them at a place where my friend would go with his son.

Then after any objectionable behavior on the part of the child, my friend was to give a pre-arranged cue to the hired man who would leap from a hiding place, pick the child up, and spank the living daylights out of him.

Don Juan said, "After the man scares the boy, your friend must help his son to regain self-confidence and confidence in his father in any way your friend can. If your friend follows this procedure three or four times, I assure you that the child will feel differently towards everything. The boy will change his idea of the world."

I asked don Juan, "What if the fright injures him?"

Don Juan replied, "Fright never injures anyone. What injures the spirit is having someone always on your back; beating you; telling you what to do and what not to do.

"You must tell your friend to do one last thing for his son after the boy is more contained.

"Your friend must find some way to get to a dead child; perhaps in a hospital, or at the office of a doctor. He must take his son there and show the dead child to him. Your friend must let his son touch the corpse once with his left hand on any place except the corpse's belly. After the boy does that he will be renewed. The world will never be the same for him."

I realized then that throughout the years of our association don Juan had been employing with me, although on a different scale, the same tactics he was suggesting my friend should use with his son. I asked don Juan about it.

Don Juan said that he had indeed been trying all along to teach me how to 'stop the world'.

Don Juan smiled and said, "You have not yet 'stopped the world'. Nothing seems to work, because you are very stubborn. If you were less stubborn, however, by now you would probably have stopped the world with any of the techniques I have taught you."

I asked, "What techniques, don Juan?"

Don Juan told me, "Everything I have told you to do was a technique for stopping the world."

A few months after that conversation don Juan accomplished what he had set out to do. I stopped the world.

That monumental event in my life compelled me to re-examine in detail my work of ten years.

It became evident to me that my original assumption about the role of psychotropic plants was erroneous. They were not the essential feature of the sorcerers' description of the world, but were only an aid 'to cement', so to speak, parts of the description which I had been incapable of perceiving otherwise.

My insistence on holding on to my standard version of reality rendered me almost deaf and blind to don Juan's aims. Therefore, it was simply my lack of sensitivity which had fostered the power plant use.

In reviewing the totality of my field notes I became aware that don Juan had given me the bulk of the new description at the very beginning of our association in what he called 'techniques for stopping the world'.

I had not included those parts of my field notes in my earlier works because they did not pertain to the use of psychotropic plants.

I have now rightfully reinstated those techniques into the total scope of don Juan's teachings, and they comprise the first seventeen chapters of this work. The last three chapters are my field notes covering the events that culminated in my 'stopping the world'.

In summing up, I can say that when I began the apprenticeship, there was another reality- the sorcery description of the world- which I did not know.

Don Juan, as a sorcerer and a teacher, taught me that description. The ten year apprenticeship I have undergone consisted of don Juan's setting up that unknown reality by unfolding its description first, and then his adding increasingly more complex parts as I went along.

The termination of the apprenticeship meant that I had learned a new description of the world in a convincing and authentic manner; and thus I had become capable of eliciting a new perception of the world, which matched its new description.

In other words, I have gained membership.

Don Juan had stated that in order to arrive at seeing, one first had to stop the world. Stopping the world was indeed an appropriate rendition of a certain state of awareness in which the reality of everyday life is altered because the flow of interpretations, which ordinarily run uninterruptedly, has been stopped by a set of circumstances alien to that flow.

In my case, the set of circumstances alien to my normal flow of interpretations was the sorcery description of the world.

Don Juan's precondition for stopping the world was that a person had to be convinced.

In other words, the apprentice had to learn the new description of the world in a total sense for the purpose of pitting it against their old learned description. This breaks our shared dogmatic certainty that the validity of our perceptions, and our certainty of the 'reality of the world', is not to be questioned.

After stopping the world, the next step was seeing.

Seeing, according to don Juan, meant what I would like to categorize as responding to the perceptual solicitations of the world outside of the description we have learned to call reality.

My contention is that all these steps can only be understood in terms of the description to which they belong. And since it was a description that don Juan endeavored to give me from the beginning, I must then let his teachings be your proper source of entrance into it. Thus, I have left don Juan's words to speak for themselves.