There is actually a great story behind this too. When I started college, I had no idea what I wanted to study. After my freshman year, I decided to major in Environmental Studies (which was a pretty obscure major back then). I liked the subject matter and figured that I might become a park ranger or something but I hated going to the science labs.
The labs were three hours each and always in the afternoon which played havoc on my primary interest...athletics. I had also been taking some history and religion courses as part of the general education requirements. These were more interesting to me than even science and they had no labs so by the second semester of my sophomore year, I had declared a double-major in History and Religion.
I imagined the two fields to be complimentary. And they were to a degree. However, my primary historical interest was American History and the American History professor at the college was the wayward son of a Lutheran pastor. He not only despised Christianity, he fully imagined himself as some kind of Indian sorcerer. I trust that he got the idea from the the real or fictitious character of Don Juan--the desert mystic upon which Castenada's writings are centered.
So anyway, that was my college education. Half the time, I spent learning Christianity's relevance to the world and, half the time, I spent listening to my American History professor insist that it was the bane of human existence--though I think this was more my professor's baggage than a reflection of Don Juan's own sentiments..
There are many quotable statements in Journey to Ixtlan. In fact, I might have simply listed the chapter titles (Erasing Personal History, Losing Self-Importance are two of the first three!). Here is one of the statements from the book that has got me thinking:
On Erasing Personal History:
"You see," he went on, "we only have two alternatives; we either take everything for sure and real, or we don't. If we follow the first, we end up bored to death with ourselves and the world. If we follow the second and erase personal history, we create a fog around us, a very exciting and mysterious state in which nobody knows where the rabbit will pop out, not even ourselves." (p. 17)
I think that a great challenge in our time is freshness. Is it because we have a hard time imaging that something could really be new? Or is it simply that nothing really is? I like Don Juan's comment because I do not know how to feel about it. But I cannot argue with his logic. If we do not take everything as for sure and real, it certainly makes the the world more interesting--though it also makes it a bit less stable as well.
This will be an interesting year. There are simply too many omens and uncertainties to ignore them all. Here's wishing you a very NOT BORING New Year!
1 comment:
"If we follow the second and erase personal history, we create a fog around us, a very exciting and mysterious state in which nobody knows where the rabbit will pop out, not even ourselves."
The book "Botany of Desire" by Michael Pollan examines this issue from a different perspective. In "BoD," Pollan discusses how apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes have interacted with humans and how each has effected the evolution of the others. With maijuana, Pollan argues that marijuana impacts the cannabinoid receptors in the brain which in turn impact short term memory. As in when under the influence of marijuana, you can forget what ice cream tastes like so when you eat it, its like a first time experience. Pollan further speculates that this "first time experience" phenomenon is a componant of creativity and that part of creativity is when people to see things anew without all the preconditions that come with memory. And that seems to what Carlo Castenada was talking about.
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