Foreward from "the Teachings of Don Juan"
Aug. 16th, 2003 12:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cybermuleI wanted to snag this quote because it fitted in with my current studies of mythology and linguistics, and also because it will form the basis of a post to my pet Yahoo group:
"Anthropology has taught us that the world is differently defined in different places. It is not only that people have different customs; it is not only that people believe in different gods and expect different post-mortem fates. It is, rather, that the worlds of different peoples have different shapes. The very metaphysocal presuppositions differ: space does not confomr to the Euclidean geometry, time does not form a continuous universal flow [aside: see linguistics course on news articles], causation does not conform to Aristotlean logic, man is not differentiated from non-man or life from death, as in our world. We know something of the shape of these other worlds from the logic of native languages and from myths and ceremonies, as recorded by anthropologists.
[snip]
Castaneda rightly asserts that this world, for all its differences of perception, has its own inner logic. He has tried to explain it from inside, as it were - from within his own rich and intensely personal experiences while under don Juan's tutelage - rather than to examine it in terms of our logic. That he cannot entirely succeed in this is a limitation that our culture and our own language place on perception, rather than his personal limitation; yet in his efforts he bridges for us the world of a yacqui sorcerer with our own, the worldof non-ordinary reality with the world of ordinary reality."
"Anthropology has taught us that the world is differently defined in different places. It is not only that people have different customs; it is not only that people believe in different gods and expect different post-mortem fates. It is, rather, that the worlds of different peoples have different shapes. The very metaphysocal presuppositions differ: space does not confomr to the Euclidean geometry, time does not form a continuous universal flow [aside: see linguistics course on news articles], causation does not conform to Aristotlean logic, man is not differentiated from non-man or life from death, as in our world. We know something of the shape of these other worlds from the logic of native languages and from myths and ceremonies, as recorded by anthropologists.
[snip]
Castaneda rightly asserts that this world, for all its differences of perception, has its own inner logic. He has tried to explain it from inside, as it were - from within his own rich and intensely personal experiences while under don Juan's tutelage - rather than to examine it in terms of our logic. That he cannot entirely succeed in this is a limitation that our culture and our own language place on perception, rather than his personal limitation; yet in his efforts he bridges for us the world of a yacqui sorcerer with our own, the worldof non-ordinary reality with the world of ordinary reality."
