The Active Side of Infinity

Written by Carlos Castaneda

Narrated by Luis Moreno

"Ordinarily, events that change our path are impersonal affairs, and yet extremely personal. My teacher, don Juan Matsus, said this is guiding me as his apprentice to collect what I considered to be the memorable events of my life.. Don Juan described the total goal of the shamanistic knowledge that he handled as the preparation for facing the definitive journey: the journey that every human being has to take at the end of his life. He said that what modern man referred to vaguely as life after death was, for those shamans, a concrete region filled to capacity with practical affairs of a different order than the practical affairs of daily life, yet bearing a similar functional practicality. Don Juan considered that to collect the memorable in their lives was, for shamans, the preparation for their entrance into that concrete region, which they called the active side of infinity." In this book written immediately before his death, anthropologist and shaman Carlos Castaneda gives us his most autobiographical and intimately revealing work ever, the fruit of a lifetime of experience and perhaps the most moving volume in his oeuvre.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9781980007968

Carlos Castaneda

Born in 1925 in Peru, anthropologist Carlos Castaneda wrote a total of fifteen books, which sold eight million copies worldwide and were published in seventeen different languages. In his writing, Castaneda describes the teaching of don Juan, a Yaqui sorcerer and shaman. His works helped define the 1960's and usher in the New Age movement. Even after his death in 1998, his books continue to inspire and influence his many devoted fans.

Reviews for The Active Side of Infinity

[ionas_7 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I found this to be an exciting book, though much of it was incomprehensible to me.We learn much of Carlos’ early life, his life before meeting Don Juan. The latter had told him to collect the memorable events in his life and he did so. Doing this would prepare him to enter “the active side of infinity”.Even though I’ve read the complete book, I still haven’t a clue about what this meansDon Juan is a Yaqui, a leader, in a generation of shamans, or sorcerers, and has to find a new man or woman who, like himself, “shows a double energetic structure”. Carlos has this double energetic structure.Don Juan tells him “When I see your energy, I see two balls of luminosity superimposed, one on top of the other, and that feature binds us together”.Don Juan wants to start Carlos off on something shamans called the warrior’s way, “backed by the strength of the area where he lived, which was the center of very strong emotions and reactions”.“To be a sorcerer means to reach a level of awareness that makes inconceivable things available.”The task of sorcerers is to face infinity.What makes human beings into sorcerers is their capacity to perceive energy directly as it flows into the universe.All human beings possess awareness which permits them to see energy directly, but sorcerers are “the only human beings who were deliberately conscious of seeing energy directly”.Infinity is everything that surrounds us.“Infinity, the spirit, the dark sea of awareness --- is something that exists out there and rules our lives.”Carlos informs us: “I was truly capable of comprehending everything he was saying, and yet I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about”.Don Juan was an extraordinary blend of both his teachers – on the other hand, extremely quiet and introspective, on the other, extremely open and funny. A nagual is empty, “and that emptiness doesn’t reflect the world, but reflects infinity”.Carlos goes to Sonora to see Don Juan. He, Carlos, is in turmoil. Don Juan tells him that is because he is aware that “his time is up”. He gives Don Juan a full account of his life in order to “abandon the fortress of the self”.Carlos recounts two episodes involving a psychiatrist and a professor of archaeology which put him into an “unknown emotional state”. Don Juan tells him his world is coming to an end.The old sorcerers worked from a state of inner silence, suspension of the internal dialogue. (I have previously been on an “enlightenment” course and got help from Jo Dunning to attain this state which she informs us is a prerequisite to obtaining “enlightenment”.) These sorcerers “shook themselves” in order to reach that coveted state of awareness by jumping into waterfalls or hanging upside-down from the top branch of a tree. (Luckily, in Jo Dunning’s course we were not required to do either of these extreme things!)Inner silence was accrued, accumulated. The desired result is what the old sorcerers called stopping the world, “the moment when everything around us ceases to be what it’s always been”.This is also called “total freedom”, “Sorcerers need a breaking point for the workings of inner silence to set in.”This means that at a given moment the continuity of their lives has to break in order for inner silence to set in.“Your breaking point is to discontinue your life and you know it.”Don Juan tells Carlos he must leave his friends, for good, since he can’t continue on the warrior’s path carrying his personal history with him.Carlos’ friends are his points of reference and thus have to go. Sorcerers have only one point of reference – infinity.He should rent a drab hotel room and stay there until he dies – not his body but his person – “Your person has very little to do with your body. Your person is your mind and --- your mind is not yours.”Don Juan insists that Carlos write a list of all the people he has met, from the present back to the very beginning of his life. He must start with the first person on the list and recollect everything he can about that person; he must end with Mummy and Daddy and remember everything about them.Carlos discovers that he is extremely “heavy-handed, obsessive and domineering”, Don Juan tells him that the power of the recapitulation is that it “stirs up all the garbage of our lives and brings it to the surface”.As we recapitulate our lives, we realize our inconsistencies, our repetitions, but something in us puts up a tremendous resistance to recapitulating.Only after a gigantic upheaval, called the “usher”, is the road free for us. Walking is always something that precipitates memories. The backs of the legs are the warehouse of man’s personal history. So the two go for a long walk in the hills.He then remembers a series of events from his childhood where he becomes extremely proficient at playing billiards, is exploited by his grandfather and placed in an untenable position that cannot be resolved, whether to accept or reject a crooked deal.Don Juan tells him that this event summed up the whole of his life – “You are always faced with a situation that is the same as the one you never resolved.”The book ends with Carlos jumping into an abyss.To sum up, I found the book absorbing and fascinating, but difficult. I would highly recommend it to all those interested in the teachings of Don Juan. I found it to be one of Carlos’ best books.

[ivinela · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

All books of Carlos Castaneda are very important to me. He (and his Don Juan), Vadim Zeland - writer from Russia, quantum physicist and Alexey Bachev - an unusual psychologist from Bulgaria, protagonist of my book Life Can Be a Miracle have shaped my way of thinking, perceiving, experiencing the reality. Very grateful for showing me the miraculous way of living!!!!