The Fire from Within
by Carlos Castaneda
Paperback
Published by Pocket Books
Publication date: August 1995
ISBN: 0671732501
Synopsis:
Back from the abyss and without don Juan, Carlos Castaneda is faced with
the staggering effort of recovering, on his own, don Juan's teachings. In
doing so, he understands what don Juan and his cohorts were really doing
to him: "They were not teaching me sorcery, but how to master three
aspects of an ancient knowledge they possessed: awareness, stalking, and
intent. And they were not sorcerers; they were seers." This work deals
with the mastery of awareness and with the realization of a new cycle of
seers, "warriors of total freedom, ... such masters of awareness, stalking,
and intent that they are not caught by death, like the rest of mortal men,
but choose the moment and the way of their departure from this world. At
that moment they are consumed by a fire from within and vanish from the
face of the earth, free, as if they had never existed."
Reviews:
A Reader from Newton, MA,
09/06/97, A classic text on awareness
I have read this book at least 15 times, finding it to be a classic of spirituality,
both ancient and modern. Unlike Castaneda's earlier works, FFW is the first
in which the structure of Don Juan's teaching methods becomes clear. Hence
FFW reads like a textbook of stories about advanced spiritual practice.
It is a curious hallmark of Castaneda's work that, as with a sitcom, the
reader often feels he knows more, and might have made better judgements,
than the lead character. But the tasks are transformations of essence, not
of mind or feeling, so Carlos' lack of comprehension is irrelevant. What
counts is his ability to handle the excercises of transcendance. Many important
questions remain unresolved, such as whether the quest for immortality (freedom)
is merely another form of materialism, or just how different Don Juan's
brand of transcendance is from other paths to spiritual development. IMHO,
the scene in which Carlos and Don Juan visit the tomb of the ancient sorcerers,
ghouls who have remained alive for 2000 years, and then laugh it off, is
one of the finest moments in all of Western Literature.