Quotes from Carlos Castaneda. Carlos Castaneda: wise quotes about life from the most mysterious writer Carlos Castaneda quotes

Carlos Cesar Salvador Aranha Castaneda (pseudonym - Jose Luis Sanchez Ladron de Guevara) - born December 25, 1925, Cajamarca, Peru. American writer, anthropologist, ethnographer, esoteric thinker, and mystic, author of best-selling books devoted to shamanism and the presentation of a worldview unusual for Western man. Author of the books - The Teachings of Don Juan: The Path of Knowledge of the Yaqui Indians, A Separate Reality, Journey to Ixtlan, Tales of Power, The Second Ring of Power, The Gift of the Eagle, Fire from Within, The Wheel of Time, Magical Passes: The Practical Wisdom of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico, etc. Died - 27 April 1998, Los Angeles, USA.

Quotes, aphorisms, sayings, phrases - Carlos Castaneda

• Without a path we are nothing.
• Twilight is a gap between worlds.
• It is not understanding that is important, but awareness.
• Pride helps a person learn.
• The thirst for knowledge is our human lot.
• We live in a "bankrupt" society.
• To start everything again, we need to part with the past.
• To be angry with people is to regard their actions as something important.
• When we lose our sense of self-importance, we become invulnerable.
• The world is immeasurable. Like us, like every creature that exists in this world.
• Fear is the first inevitable enemy that a person must defeat on the path to knowledge.
• Learning through talking is not only a waste of time, but also a rare stupidity.
• The everyday world exists only because we know how to hold onto its images.
• A person is defeated only when he gives up all attempts and abandons himself.
• Will is what makes you win when your mind tells you that you are defeated.
• It is useless to spend your whole life on one single path, especially if this path has no heart.
• The art of the warrior is to maintain a balance between the horror of being human and the wonder of being human.
• Relax, give up on yourself, don’t be afraid of anything. Only then will the forces leading us open the way for us and help us.
• Your actions, as well as the actions of your neighbors, matter only insofar as you have learned to think that they matter.
• Life is a little walk that we take now, life in itself is sufficient, explains itself and fills itself.
• The more others know who you are and what to expect from you, the more it limits your freedom.
• Man goes to knowledge the same way he goes to war - fully awakened, full of fear, reverence and absolute determination.
• Use all the power of your concentration and decide whether or not to join the battle, because any battle is a fight for your own life.
• A man becomes courageous when he has nothing to lose. We are only cowardly when there is something else we can cling to.
• All personal history must be erased in order to free ourselves from the restrictions that other people impose on us with their thoughts.
• People, as a rule, do not realize that at any moment they can throw anything out of their lives. Anytime. Instantly.
• We only choose once, we choose either to be warriors or to be ordinary people. There is no other choice. Not on this earth.
• Warriors win their battles not because they bang their heads against walls, but because they take them on. Warriors jump over walls; they don't destroy them.
• The unshakable desire of a rational person to firmly adhere to the image of himself is a way to reliably insure his dense ignorance.
• Faced with the unexpected and incomprehensible and not knowing what to do with it, the warrior retreats for a while, allowing his thoughts to wander aimlessly. The warrior is doing something else.
• The core of our being is the act of perception, and the magical secret of our being is the act of awareness. Perception and awareness is a separate indivisible functional unit.
• People tell us from the moment we are born that the world is such and such and that everything is this way and that. We have no choice. We are forced to accept that the world is exactly as it is described to us.
• What determines our path is called personal power. A person’s personality is the total volume of his personal power. And only this total volume determines how he lives and how he dies.
• We perceive. This is a well established fact. But what exactly we perceive is not one of the facts that is so unambiguously established. For we learn what and how to perceive.
• The things that people do can under no circumstances be more important than peace. And thus, the warrior treats the world as an endless mystery, and what people do as endless stupidity.
• A warrior compresses time, even moments count. In the battle for your own life, a second is an eternity that can decide the outcome of the battle. A warrior is focused on success, so he saves time without wasting a moment.
• One of the most dramatic features of human nature is the terrible connection between stupidity and self-reflection. It is stupidity that makes the average person reject everything that does not agree with his reflective expectations.
• Human beings like to be told what to do, but they like even more to resist and not do what they are told. That is why they first of all become entangled in hatred towards the one who advises them to do something.

We present 15 very deep lessons from Carlos Castaneda that will allow you to look at the world from a different angle.

- It is useless to spend your whole life on one single path, especially if this path has no heart.

- Don't explain too much. Every explanation hides an apology. So when you explain why you can't do this or that, what you're really doing is apologizing for your shortcomings, hoping that those listening to you will be kind and forgive them.

- To get the most out of life, a person must be able to change. Unfortunately, a person changes with great difficulty, and these changes occur very slowly. Many people spend years on this. The hardest thing is to truly want to change.

- I'm never angry with anyone. There is nothing anyone can do that deserves such a reaction from me. You get angry with people when you feel that their actions are important. I haven't felt anything like this for a long time.

- You must always remember that the path is just a path. If you feel that you should not walk on it, then you should not stay on it under any circumstances.

- In order to realize the reality familiar to another, you first need to free yourself from your own reality; but it is not at all easy for a person to get rid of his usual picture of the world; this habit must be broken by force.

- Act as if it were a dream. Act boldly and don't look for excuses.

- The main hindrance of most people is internal dialogue, this is the key to everything. When a person learns to stop it, everything becomes possible. The most incredible projects become feasible.

- People, as a rule, do not realize that at any moment they can throw anything out of their lives. Anytime. Instantly.

- The only truly wise adviser we have is death. Every time you feel, as often happens to you, that everything is going very badly and you are on the verge of complete collapse, turn to the left and ask your death if this is so. And your death will answer that you are mistaken, and that apart from its touch there is nothing that really matters. Your death will say: “But I haven’t touched you yet!”

- Everyone goes their own way. But all roads still go nowhere. This means that the whole point is in the road itself, how you walk along it... If you walk with pleasure, then this is your road. If you feel bad, you can leave it at any time, no matter how far you go. And it will be right.

- We need all our time and all our energy to defeat the idiocy in ourselves. This is what matters. The rest is of no importance...

- The whole trick is what to focus on... Each of us makes himself either unhappy or strong. The amount of work required in both the first and second cases is the same.

- The art of a warrior is to maintain a balance between the horror of being human and the miracle of being human.

- To become a man of knowledge, you need to be a warrior, not a whining child. Fight without giving up, without complaining, without retreating, fight until you see. And all this only to understand that there is nothing in the world that matters.

About Castaneda's biography: "The true biography of Carlos Castaneda was known only to himself; it is the lot of everyone else to try to reconstruct it."

Carlos Castaneda can easily be considered one of the greatest mysteries of the twentieth century. All that is known for certain about him is that he is the author of ten best-selling books and the founder of the Cleargreen company, which now owns the rights to Castaneda’s creative heritage. Everything else is nothing more than assumptions, if not speculation.

Castaneda carefully maintained his “secret identity”, practically did not give interviews and categorically refused to be photographed (however, by coincidence, several photographs of Castaneda still exist). He even denied that he had ever been married, although Margaret Runyan, the author of a book of memoirs about this man, claims that Castaneda was her husband. Castaneda loved hoaxes. His acquaintance, Jose Bracamonte, described Carlos as follows: “A big liar and a loyal friend.”

Each time Carlos enthusiastically invented a new homeland, new parents, etc. He, apparently, simply enjoyed it, just as a child enjoys telling him that his dad is an astronaut.

Most often, Carlos told everyone that he was born in Brazil, in Sao Paulo, on Christmas Day 1935, into a very respectable family, and his father was an academician. He liked to vaguely hint that Osvaldo Arana, diplomat, revolutionary, well-known figure of the time, was his uncle. He told someone else that he was born in 1931, someone else that it happened in Brazil, but not in Sao Paulo, but in the city of Juyuery, etc.

In other words, the true biography of Carlos Castaneda was known only to himself; the lot of everyone else is to try to reconstruct it.

One such attempt was made in 1973 by Time magazine.

So, Carlos Cesar Arana Castaneda (that is his full name) was born on December 25, 1925 in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

His father was a watchmaker and goldsmith, and his father's name was Cesar Arana Castaneda Burungari. When Castaneda was born, his father was 17 years old and his mother was only 15-16. Mother, Susanna Castaneda Navoa, at that time was a fragile, pretty girl and, apparently, was not in great health. She died when Carlos was 24 years old.

The stories that Castaneda told about himself combine fictional and true facts. In some interviews, Castaneda mentions his grandparents, with whom he lived for some time when he was a child.

The grandmother was of foreign origin, perhaps Turkish, and was a very large and not beautiful, but kind woman, and Carlos loved her. But Carlos’s grandfather, apparently, was a truly extraordinary figure. He was a small reddish man with blue eyes, a native of Italy, who told little Carlos all kinds of stories and was always inventing something. Once, in order to demonstrate a new invention, he convened the entire Arana-Castaneda clan. When the old man finally showed the fruits of his labors, the whole family experienced a slight shock: “This is a home toilet,” the grandfather boasted, beaming with joy, “well, who wants to try it first?”

Later, during spiritual training in Mexico, don Juan demanded that Carlos say goodbye to his grandfather. The fact that his grandfather died did not matter - he continued to influence Carlos, his views and life - the man who raised Castaneda was too powerful. Carlos recalls that saying goodbye to his grandfather was one of the most difficult shocks in his life. He introduced his grandfather in great detail and said goodbye to him...

In 1951, Carlos Castaneda emigrated to the USA, and in 1960 an event occurred that radically changed the life of Carlos Castaneda himself and thousands of his followers - Castaneda, then a student at the University of California, who came to Mexico for “field materials” for his thesis, met Don Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian. Don Juan became Castaneda's spiritual teacher and for twelve years passed on the secret knowledge of his tribe to his ward.

Don Juan's main task was to destroy all the frameworks already formed in Castaneda's brain and make him see not a narrow strip of reality, but the entire huge and infinitely diverse world. At first, to remove blockages in the brain of young Carlos, it was necessary to resort to very harsh measures and use herbal psychotropic drugs, which gave Castaneda’s opponents a reason to accuse him of promoting drugs. The prosecutors were provided with counterarguments:

a) psychedelics are not drugs, they are not addictive;

b) experiences experienced under the influence of mescaline, etc. Castaneda describes only in the very first books, and these descriptions are more likely to push the reader away from such experiments than to attract them - in any case, the author himself, recognizing that he needed this experience, never voluntarily agreed to repeat it;

c) in subsequent books, Castaneda repeatedly emphasizes that psychotropic drugs can only serve as an initial impetus and nothing more, while sustainable results in managing states of consciousness should be achieved using completely different methods, which he talks about.

With don Juan's permission, Castaneda began to write down his words; This is how the first of Carlos Castaneda’s world-famous books was born - “The Teachings of Don Juan. The Way of the Yaqui Indians,” published in 1968. This book instantly became a bestseller, as did the nine that followed. All of them are recordings of don Juan's conversations with Castaneda, and the chain of events in them ends in 1973, when don Juan mysteriously disappeared - “melted like fog.”

To this day people argue whether Don Juan was a real person or was he invented by Castaneda? M. Runyan writes that the name Juan Matus is as common in Mexico as the name, say, Petya Ivanov is in Russia. In his coursework, Castaneda first simply mentioned an elderly Indian who agreed to teach him. The name Don Juan Matus came up later.

According to Castaneda, the modest old Indian was a real magician-shaman, the last representative of a line of Toltec magicians going back centuries. Moreover, Don Juan discovered the corresponding inclinations in Castaneda and taught him the incomprehensible art of ancient magic for 13 years.

Castaneda's desire to elude any certainty and fixation directly follows from the basic requirement for the Toltec magicians of the school of Don Juan Matus - his spiritual teacher: to be fluid, flexible, elusive, not to allow anyone to push themselves into the tight framework of patterned behavior and stereotypical reactions. In the terminology of the Toltec magicians or warriors, as they prefer to call themselves, the warrior magician must “erase his personal history.”

So we can be sure that we will never know whether Don Juan was a real person. If his student was so successful in erasing personal history, then the teacher certainly tried not to leave any traces of his presence on this planet.

Castaneda stated that Don Juan did not die, but was “burnt from the inside,” but he had no doubt about his own mortality. "Because I'm an idiot, I'm sure I'll die," he told the Times. “I would like to find the integrity to leave this world in the same way he did, but there is no guarantee.” Legend has it that Castaneda himself left our world in a similar way - as if he had disappeared into thin air. A less poetic version of the obituary reports that he died on April 27, 1998 from liver cancer and that after cremation, Castaneda's ashes were sent to Mexico, according to his will.

Carlos Castaneda is an American writer and anthropologist, ethnographer, esoteric thinker and mystic, author of 11 volumes of best-selling books dedicated to the presentation of the shamanic teachings of the Indian Don Juan Matus. Carlos Castaneda's books have maintained a reputation for anthropological research since their publication, but are now considered fiction by the academic community.

First we learn to think about everything, and then we learn to look at things the way we think about them.

Seek and see miracles all around you. You get tired of looking at yourself, and this fatigue makes you deaf and blind everywhere to everything else.

Sometimes it makes sense to persist even when you realize it is futile. But first you need to understand that your actions are useless, and then act as if you don’t know this.

Self-restraint is the worst and most malicious type of self-indulgence.

The best thing is to erase all personal history, because this will make us free from the enveloping thoughts of other people.

To be at your best, you always need to choose the path suggested by your heart. Maybe for some it will mean always laughing.

Every time you feel obligated to explain your actions, as if you are the only one in the whole world who lives wrong.

Beauty is a demon that multiplies and thrives in the presence of worship.

Desire is what makes us suffer, but once we learn to destroy our desires, every little thing we receive will turn into a priceless gift.

As long as you feel that the most important and significant phenomenon in the world is your person, you will never be able to truly experience the world around you.

A sense of self-importance makes a person hopeless: heavy, clumsy and empty.

Freedom is an adventure that never ends, in which we risk life and more than life for a few moments of something beyond words, thoughts and feelings.

The average person is too concerned with loving people and being loved.

Lose everything and you will achieve everything.

Will is what makes you win when your mind tells you that you are defeated.

I'm never angry with anyone. There is nothing anyone can do that deserves such a reaction from me. You get angry with people when you feel that their actions are important. I haven't felt anything like this for a long time.

It doesn't matter what anyone says or does. You yourself must be an impeccable person.

A person can do much more and act much better.He makes only one mistake- He thinks that he has a lot of time at his disposal.

Don't explain too much. Every explanation hides an apology. So when you explain why you can't do this or that, what you're really doing is apologizing for your shortcomings, hoping that those listening to you will be kind and forgive them.

Be ruthless but charming,” he repeated. - Be cunning, but delicate. Be patient but proactive. Be gentle but deadly. Only a woman is capable of this. If a man could act like this, he would be perfect.

The only truly wise adviser we have is death. Every time you feel, as often happens to you, that everything is going very badly and you are on the verge of complete collapse, turn to the left and ask your death if this is so. And your death will answer that you are wrong, and that apart from its touch there is nothing that really matters. Your death will say: “But I haven’t touched you yet!”

When we lose our sense of self-importance, we become invulnerable.

All paths are the same: they lead to nowhere. But some have hearts, while others don't. One path gives you strength, the other destroys you.

Each of us makes himself either unhappy or strong. The amount of work required in both the first and second cases is the same.

It is useless to spend your whole life on one single path, especially if this path has no heart.

As long as a person feels that the most important and significant phenomenon in the world is his person, he will never be able to truly experience the world around him. Like a blinkered horse, he sees nothing in him but himself.

Anxiety inevitably makes a person accessible; he involuntarily opens up. Anxiety makes him desperately cling to anything, and having clinged, he is already obliged to exhaust either himself or what he is clinging to.

A journey without a heart is never a joyful one.

The world is vast. We will never unravel its secret. Therefore, we must accept him for what he is - a wonderful mystery.

Few people know when to break up with someone, and even fewer know how to use their knowledge.

The whole point is what exactly a person pays attention to. We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong - the amount of effort expended remains the same.

For a person to understand that he has something to live for, he must have something worth dying for.

There are important things in your life that mean a lot to you. This applies to most of your actions. For me, everything is different. There is nothing important for me anymore - no things, no events, no people, no phenomena, no actions - nothing. But still I continue to live because I have the will. This will has been tempered throughout my life and as a result has become holistic and perfect. And now it doesn’t matter to me whether something matters or not. The stupidity of my life is controlled by will.

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1. Entertainment invented by people, no matter how they are distorted, are just pathetic attempts to forget themselves without going beyond the vicious circle of eating to live and living to eat. There's nothing worse

2. Our purpose in this world is to learn for the sake of discovering new incomprehensible worlds. There is no number of unknown worlds and they are all here, in front of us. We're just at the very beginning of our journey

3. Everything around us is an incomprehensible mystery. We must try to solve this mystery without even hoping to achieve it

4. The world is vast. We will never unravel its secret. Therefore we must accept him for what he is - a wonderful mystery

5. Instead of devoting himself to the world, a person wastes himself on business

6. Everyone goes their own way. But all roads still go nowhere. This means that the whole point is in the road itself, how you walk along it... If you walk with pleasure, then this is your road. If you feel bad, you can leave it at any time, no matter how far you go. And it will be right

7. Nothing is given for free in this world, and the acquisition of knowledge is the most difficult of all tasks that a person can face. Man goes to knowledge the same way he goes to war - fully awakened, full of fear, reverence and absolute determination. Any deviation from this rule is a fatal mistake.

8. The things people do cannot be more important than the world. Therefore, a warrior treats the world as an endless mystery, and what people do as endless stupidity

9. A greater degree of detachment and self-control in different situations - this state is called the warrior state. Every action should be performed in the mood of a warrior. A life that lacks a warrior's spirit lacks strength

10. A warrior is one who seeks freedom. Sadness and other emotions are not freedom

11. Only a warrior survives on the path of knowledge. There is strength in the warrior lifestyle. She is the one who allows him to live his best life.

12. A warrior must be flexible, feel at ease in any situation, no matter what he finds himself in

13. A warrior does not complain about anything and does not regret anything.

14. There is no self-pity in the life of a warrior. Self-pity is incompatible with strength

15. A warrior differs from an ordinary person in that he accepts everything as a challenge, while an ordinary person accepts everything as a blessing or a curse. The life of a warrior is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot be good or bad. Challenges are just challenges

16. A warrior can be neither helpless nor afraid under any circumstances. A warrior has time only for perfection. Anything else drains his power. Perfection makes up for it

17. Excellence is doing the best in everything you are involved in. The key to perfection is timing. When you feel and act like an immortal being, you are not flawless

18. In the world of a warrior, everything depends on personal strength, and personal strength depends on perfection.

19. What determines our path is called personal power. A person’s personality is the total volume of his personal power. And only this total volume determines how he lives and how he dies.

20. A warrior has no sympathy for anyone. Feeling empathy means wanting the other person to be like you, to be in your shoes. The hardest thing for a warrior is to leave others to their own devices. The impeccable warrior leaves others to their own devices and supports them in what matters most to them. Only a magician who sees and is formless can afford to help someone. Every effort we make to help is in fact an arbitrary act, guided solely by our self-interest

21. The humility of a warrior and the humility of a beggar are two different things. A warrior does not lower his head to anyone, but at the same time he will not allow anyone to lower their head to him. The beggar, on the contrary, falls to his knees and sweeps the floor with his hat in front of the one he considers superior to himself. But he immediately demands that those below him sweep the floor in front of him

22. A warrior doubts and reflects before making a decision. But when it is accepted, he acts without being distracted by doubts, fears and reflections. There are millions more decisions ahead, each of which is still waiting in the wings. This is the way of the warrior

23. When a warrior begins to be overcome by doubts and fears, he thinks about his death. The idea of ​​death is the only thing that can strengthen the spirit

24. To laugh, you need to look. Everything that is funny in the world can only be grasped when you look. When a person sees, everything is so equivalent that nothing funny can happen

25. Having learned to see, a person discovers that he is alone in the world. There is no one and nothing else but controlled stupidity

26. Our eyes see, so we can laugh, cry, have fun, be sad or be happy. Personally, I don't like being sad. So when I encounter something that makes me sad, I shift my eyes and start seeing instead of looking. But if I come across something funny, I prefer to watch and laugh

27. Vision is available only to an impeccable warrior

28. Having become a warrior, a person can go further. A person can learn to see; he no longer needs to be either a warrior or a magician. Having become a seer, a person becomes everything by becoming nothing. He can get whatever he wants and achieve whatever he sets his mind to. But he does not want anything and instead of amusing himself with people like mindless toys, he dissolves among them, sharing their stupidity. The only difference is that he controls his stupidity, and an ordinary person does not.

29. Having become a seer, a person loses interest in his loved ones. The vision allows him to detach himself from everything he knew before. It's not scary. It should be scary because you have nothing ahead of you except the routine repetition of the same actions throughout your life

30. To become a man of knowledge, you need to be a warrior, not a whining child. Fight without giving up, without complaining, without retreating, fight until you see. And all this only to understand that there is nothing in the world that matters

31. A man of knowledge has neither honor, nor dignity, nor family, nor homeland. There is only life to be lived. In such conditions, controlled stupidity is the only thing that can connect him with his loved ones. And looking at him, anyone will see an ordinary person living the same way as everyone else. The only difference is that the stupidity of his life is under control

32. Fear is the first inevitable enemy that a person must defeat on the path to knowledge

33. The trick is in what to focus on. Each of us makes himself either unhappy or strong. The amount of work required in both the first and second cases is the same

34. Fixation on our own image makes us blind to everything else. The greatest revelations might be revealed to us in our perception—we would not see them in our self-blindness, or would mistake them for the product of our own genius. Our narcissism misleads us. Thus we rob ourselves, rob our original capabilities, without even knowing it

35. A sense of self-importance makes a person hopeless: heavy, clumsy and empty. A man of knowledge must be light and fluid

36. Poverty and need are just thoughts. The same goes for hatred, hunger, pain. Understanding this is the only thing that allows us to resist the forces of life. Without him we are trash, dust in the wind

37. To become a warrior, a person must first of all fully understand his own death. But simply worrying about the possibility of dying does not help. Therefore detachment is necessary. Then the idea of ​​the inevitability of death becomes indifferent. Only the thought of death can give a person detachment sufficient to force himself to do anything. But this is not a passionate thirst, but a silent passion that a warrior experiences for life and everything that is in it. He knows that death follows on his heels and will not allow him to cling to anything, so he tries everything without getting attached to anything.

38. Death is our eternal traveling companion. She is always on our left at arm's length, and death is the only wise adviser that a warrior always has. Every time a warrior feels that everything is going very badly and he is on the verge of complete collapse, he turns to his left and asks his death if this is so. And his death answers that he is wrong and that apart from her touch there is nothing that really matters. His death says: “But I haven’t touched you yet!”

39. Death is everywhere. It may take the form of the illuminated headlights of a car driving up the hill behind us. She may remain visible for a while and then disappear into the darkness, as if she had left us for a while, but she appears again on the next hill, only to disappear again. These are the lights on the head of death. She puts them on like a hat before breaking into a gallop. She lit these lights, rushing in pursuit of us. Death is steadily pursuing us, and every second it is getting closer and closer. Death never stops. She just turns out the lights sometimes. But it does not change anything

40. A warrior always lives side by side with death. The warrior knows that death is always near, and from this knowledge he draws courage to face anything. Death is the worst thing that can happen to us. But since death is our destiny and it is inevitable, we are free. He who has lost everything has nothing to fear

41. With the awareness of his death, his detachment and the power of his decisions, the warrior maps out his life in a strategic way

42. A detached warrior knows that it is impossible to avert death and that he has only one support - the power of his decisions. He must be a master of his choice. He must fully understand that he himself is entirely responsible for his choice and that once he has made it, he has no more time for regrets or reproaches against himself. His decisions are final simply because his death gives him no time to become attached to anything

43. A person must realize that death hunts each of us, that it is always nearby. A person must turn to death for advice in order to get rid of the mediocre pettiness characteristic of people. From the point of view of the persistence of death, irritation and all fears become meaningless nonsense

44. Death can tap you on the shoulder at any time, so you don’t really have time for nonsense thoughts and moods. You can't leave room for doubt and regret

45. When you are impatient or irritated, look to your left and ask your death for advice. A mass of petty husks will instantly fly away if death gives you a sign, or if out of the corner of your eye you catch its movement, or simply feel that your traveling companion is always nearby and is carefully watching you all the time

46. ​​When a warrior begins to be overcome by doubts and fears, he thinks about his death. The thought of death is the only thing that can strengthen our spirit

47. Only the thought of death can give a person detachment sufficient to force himself to do anything, as well as not to refuse anything

48. Only an immortal person can afford to cancel his decisions, regret that he made them and doubt them. We only have time to make decisions

49. In a world where death hunts everyone, there can be no small or big decisions. There are only decisions that we make in the face of our inevitable death

50. It’s a waste of time to live to eat and eat to live - and so on until death

51. A warrior should not give in to anything, not even his own death.

52. A warrior treats everything with respect. He doesn't go ahead unless necessary. A warrior does not follow anyone’s lead, he is on his own and is always inaccessible. When involved in something, he is always aware of what he is doing. He has gained control over his weakness and does not indulge it

53. For a warrior, nothing is beyond his control

54. A warrior spends his entire life practicing strategy. It minimizes the possibility of unforeseen situations. What people call accidents can be avoided. This usually happens to fools whose whole life is sheer sloppiness.

55. A warrior is never idle, but he is never in a hurry.

56. A warrior never takes on a load that he is not able to carry.

57. All of our personal history should be erased in order to free ourselves from the restrictions that other people impose on us with their thoughts.

58. As long as you feel that the most significant phenomenon in the world is your person, you will never be able to truly experience the world around you. In this case, you will not see anything in him but yourself.

59. It is easy to calculate what a person will do in any situation, because he lives according to a certain routine. Having no routines in anything makes you less vulnerable to enemies.

60. To get the most out of life, a person must be able to change. Unfortunately, a person changes with great difficulty, and these changes occur very slowly. Many people spend years on this. The hardest thing is to truly want to change

61. Human beings like to be told what to do, but they like even more to resist and not do what they are told. That is why they first of all get entangled in hatred of the one who advises them to do something.

62. A person must learn to be aware of every action, to make every action conscious. After all, he came to this world for a short time, and the time allotted to him is too little to touch all the wonders of this strange world

63. It is necessary to change that normal human state in which a person experiences melancholy or is at odds with the world. All things must be done with complete dedication. If a person does not achieve his goals, this does not mean that he is not capable of anything. This means that he did not take responsibility for what is in this incomprehensible world

64. A person can do much more and act much better. He makes only one mistake - he thinks that he has a lot of time at his disposal

65. What you are doing at the moment may very well be your last act on earth, your last battle.

66. Death awaits us, and what we do at this very moment may well be our last battle on this earth. I call it a battle because it is a struggle. The vast majority of people move from action to action without struggle or thought. A warrior-hunter, on the contrary, carefully weighs his every action. And because he is very familiar with his death, he acts judiciously, as if his every action is the last battle

67. If this was your last battle on earth, you would be an idiot, because you commit your last act in a completely stupid state

68. Actions have special power if the one who performs them knows that this is his last battle. There is an irresistible force in the actions of one who knows that he is fighting the final battle. Otherwise, everything you do in life will remain the actions of a timid and indecisive person.

69. A warrior treats his last battle with due respect. And it is quite natural that the last action should be the best. It's fun. And dulls fear

70. The spirit of a warrior is not bound by self-indulgence and complaints, nor is it bound by victories or defeats. The warrior's spirit is associated only with struggle, and every effort is the warrior's last battle on earth

71. A person becomes courageous when he has nothing to lose. We are only cowardly when there is something else we can cling to

72. A warrior takes everything into account. This is called control. But having completed his calculations, he begins to act. He lets go of the reins in a calculated action. This is detachment. A warrior is never like a leaf left to the wind. No one can lead him astray. A warrior's intention is unshakable, his judgment is final, and no one can force him to act contrary to himself. The warrior is determined to survive, and he survives by choosing the most optimal course of action.

73. A warrior can be wounded, but it is impossible to offend him. No action of any person can offend him. A warrior's attitude is necessary to break through empty talk.

74. Treating everything equally - be it a lion, water rats or people - is one of the greatest achievements of the warrior spirit. This requires strength

75. The force commands you and at the same time obeys you. The power hunter catches it and then hoards it as a personal treasure. His personal power thus increases, and the moment may come when the warrior, having accumulated enormous personal power, becomes a man of knowledge

76. If you accumulate strength, your body is capable of incredible actions. And if, on the contrary, you dissipate it, then before your eyes you turn into a fat, weak old man

77. Death always awaits, and as soon as a warrior’s strength comes to an end, death simply touches him. So it is simply stupid to set out on a journey into the unknown without strength. It will only lead to death

78. A warrior always acts as if he knows exactly what he is doing, when in reality he knows nothing. A warrior is flawless if he trusts his personal strength, no matter how small or enormous it is

79. There is one way to learn - real action. Idle talk is useless

80. To consider someone's actions as base, vile, disgusting or vicious is to attach unjustified importance to the personality of the person who committed them, i.e. - indulge his sense of self-importance

81. A warrior does something only if the strategic line of his life requires it. And this by itself implies that he is in a state of absolute self-control and consciously performs all actions that he considers necessary.

82. The average person is too concerned with loving people and being loved. A warrior loves, that's all. He likes everyone he likes and everything he likes, but he uses his controlled stupidity to not care about it. Which is completely the opposite of what the average person does. Loving people or being loved by them is not all that is available to a person

83. When faced with the unexpected and incomprehensible and not knowing what to do with it, the warrior retreats for a while, allowing his thoughts to wander aimlessly. The warrior is doing something else

84. The difference between an ordinary person and a warrior is also that the warrior knows about the existence of luck, and knows that one of the tasks of a warrior is to always be ready. Therefore, when luck appears within his reach, the warrior grabs it, because... waited for this moment and prepared for it, developing the necessary speed and agility

85. Luck is something like a small abstract tail that appears right in front of our nose and begins to wag invitingly, as if inviting us to grab it. But usually we are too busy with things or too immersed in very smart thoughts or too stupid and lazy to realize that this tail is the tail of luck. A warrior is always collected and in a state of complete readiness, inside him there is like a compressed spring, and his mind is always ready to show maximum intelligence in order to grab this tail of luck in an instant throw

86. Only the art of being a warrior is the only way to balance the horror of being human and the admiration of being human

87. The self-confidence of a warrior and the self-confidence of an ordinary person are two different things. An ordinary person seeks recognition in the eyes of others, calling it self-confidence. A warrior seeks perfection in his own eyes and calls it humility. An ordinary person clings to others, but a warrior relies only on himself

88. It looks like you are chasing rainbows instead of striving for the humility of a warrior. The difference between these concepts is huge. Overconfidence means you know something for sure. The humility of a warrior is impeccability in actions and feelings

89. The warrior takes his destiny, whatever it may be, and accepts it in absolute humility. He humbly accepts himself as he is, but not as a reason for regret, but as a living challenge

90. The weakness of words is that they make us feel aware, but when we turn around to look at the world, they always betray us, and we again look at the world as usual, without any enlightenment. Therefore, the magician prefers to act rather than talk. As a result, he receives a new description of the world, in which conversations are not so important, and new actions have new reflections

91. The warrior begins with the certainty that his spirit is unbalanced, and then with full awareness, but without haste or slowness, he does his best to achieve this balance

92. There is nothing in the world that a warrior should not take into account. The warrior views himself as already dead, so he has nothing to lose. The worst has already happened to him, so he is clear and calm. If you judge him by his actions, then you cannot suspect that he notices everything

93. Warriors win their battles not by banging their heads against walls, but by taking them. Warriors jump over walls. They don't downplay them

94. The spirit of a warrior is not bound by self-indulgence and complaints, it is not bound by victories or defeats. The warrior's spirit is associated only with struggle, and every effort is the warrior's last battle on earth

95. Everything around us is an incomprehensible mystery. We must try to solve this mystery without even hoping to achieve it. The warrior, knowing about the incomprehensible mystery of the surrounding world and his duty to try to reveal it, takes his rightful place among the mysteries and considers himself as one of them.

96. A warrior acts as if nothing ever happened. He never feels like he knows. He acts as if he is in complete control, even if his heart is in his hands. If you act in this way, then confusion dissipates

97. By the time a warrior is able to transcend vision and dreaming and is aware of his own luminosity, he no longer has any interest in other people or other such interests.

98. A man of knowledge is able to do anything. But he cannot harm the people around him

99. One of the principles of a warrior is not to let anyone or anything influence him, and therefore a warrior can even see the devil himself, but you can’t tell from him. A warrior's control must be impeccable

100. We are at our best when we are pushed against the wall, when we feel the doom hanging over us. You have little time left and no time left for nonsense. Excellent condition!

101. Our terrible enemy is disbelief that what happens to us is serious. When we finally realize what is happening, it is often too late. It is our mind that makes us fools, because when it first receives a danger signal, it begins to play with it and, instead of immediately acting, wastes precious time

102. The power that rules our destinies is outside of us and does not pay attention to our actions or expressions of will. The force timings all events to a precise moment in time

103. Warriors are advised not to have any material things on which to concentrate their strength, but to focus on the spirit, on the actual flight into the unknown, and not on trivial shields. Shields do not allow a person to live in peace

104. People, as a rule, do not realize that at any moment they can throw anything out of their lives. Anytime. Instantly

105. Anxiety inevitably makes a person accessible; he involuntarily opens up. Anxiety makes him desperately cling to anything, and having clinged, he is already obliged to exhaust either himself or what he is clinging to

106. A warrior is never besieged. To be under siege means that you have some kind of personal property that can be besieged. A warrior has nothing in the world except his impeccability, and impeccability cannot be threatened by anything. However, in the battle for his own life, a warrior must strategically use all available means, including retreat

107. A warrior must strive to meet every imaginable situation, expected or unexpected, with equal effectiveness. To be perfect only in favorable circumstances is to be a paper warrior

108. Warriors of complete freedom choose the time and method of their departure from this world. And when this moment comes, fire comes from within, and they burn in it, disappearing from the face of the earth, free, as if they had never been here

109. The warrior takes a strategic inventory. He makes a list of everything he does. And then he decides which items on this list can be changed to give himself a break in energy expenditure. In a warrior's strategic inventory, self-importance appears as the most energy-consuming factor. One of the warrior's first concerns is to release this energy in order to use it to meet the unknown. Impeccability is the means by which such a redistribution of energy is carried out.

110. A person needs only impeccability and energy. And it all starts with one action, which must be purposeful, precise and carried out with steadfastness. By repeating this action long enough, a person acquires an unbending intention. And unbending intention can be applied to anything. And, once it is achieved, the path is clear. Each step will lead to the next and this will continue until the warrior’s potential is realized.

111. All a warrior does is allow himself to be convinced of the presence of power hidden in his very being and that he can master it. As soon as the warrior takes possession of it, it itself begins to activate energy fields that are available to us, but are not at our disposal. This is magic. In this case we begin to see, i.e. perceive something else, but not as imaginary, but as real. And then we begin to know without any words

Castaneda's literary work was based on the teachings of the Indian shaman Don Juan Matus, but the existence of this man was never proven. However, there are millions of his followers around the world.
Quotes and sayings of Carlos Castaneda from various works.

QUOTES BY CARLOS CASTANEDA ABOUT LIFE AND EXISTENCE

Quote from the book "Journey to Ixtlan", 1972

It is useless to spend your whole life on one single path, especially if this path has no heart (quote from Carlos Castaneda’s book “The Teachings of Don Juan”, 1968).

Everyone goes their own way. But all roads still go nowhere. This means that the whole point is in the road itself, how you walk along it... If you walk with pleasure, then this is your road. If you feel bad, you can leave it at any time, no matter how far you go. And this will be correct (quote from Carlos Castaneda’s book “The Active Side of Infinity”, 1997).

To be angry with people is to regard their actions as something important. It is urgent to get rid of this feeling. The actions of people cannot be so important as to relegate to the background the only vital alternative: our constant encounters with infinity (quote from Carlos Castaneda's book The Teachings of Don Juan, 1968).

I saw the loneliness of man. It was a giant wave that froze in front of me, as if it had stumbled upon an unknown wall... (quote from Carlos Castaneda’s book “Journey to Ixtlan”, 1972).

The meaning of existence is the growth of consciousness (quote from Carlos Castaneda’s book “Fire from Within,” 1984).

QUOTES BY CARLOS CASTANEDA ABOUT POWER OF SPIRIT

Fear is the first inevitable enemy that a person must defeat on the path to knowledge (quote from Carlos Castaneda’s book “The Teachings of Don Juan”, 1968).

We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong - the amount of effort expended remains the same (quote from Carlos Castaneda's book "Journey to Ixtlan", 1972).

A man becomes courageous when he has nothing to lose. We are cowardly only when there is something else we can cling to (quote from Carlos Castaneda’s book “The Second Ring of Power”, 1977).

What the warrior calls will is the power within ourselves. This is not a thought, not an object, not a desire. Will is what makes a warrior win when his mind tells him that he is defeated (quote from Carlos Castaneda's book A Separate Reality, 1971).

A warrior does not believe, a warrior must believe (quote from Carlos Castaneda’s book “Tales of Power”, 1974).

The ability to strengthen your spirit while being trampled and trampled on is what is called control (quote from Carlos Castaneda’s book “Fire from Within,” 1984).

The average person is too concerned with loving people and being loved (quote from Carlos Castaneda's book "The Wheel of Time", 1998).

QUOTES BY CARLOS CASTANEDA ABOUT MAN AND HIS WAY

Man has four enemies: fear, clarity, strength and old age. Fear, clarity and strength can be overcome, but not old age. This is the most cruel enemy that cannot be defeated, you can only delay your defeat (quote from Carlos Castaneda’s book “The Wheel of Time”, 1998).

It doesn't matter what anyone says or does... You yourself must be an impeccable person... ... We need all our time and all our energy to overcome the idiocy in ourselves. This is what matters. The rest is of no importance... (quote from Carlos Castaneda’s book “The Teachings of Don Juan”, 1968).

To get the most out of life, a person must be able to change. Unfortunately, a person changes with great difficulty, and these changes occur very slowly. Many people spend years on this. The most difficult thing is to truly want to change (quote from Carlos Castaneda’s book “Journey to Ixtlan”, 1972).

Man has a dark side, and it is called stupidity (quote from the book “The Power of Silence” by Carlos Castaneda, 1987).

The entertainments invented by people, no matter how sophisticated they are, are just pathetic attempts to forget themselves, without going beyond the boundaries of a strong circle - eat to live, and live to eat (quote from the book by Carlos Castaneda “A Separate Reality”, 1971 ).

QUOTES BY CARLOS CASTANEDA ABOUT WISDOM AND KNOWLEDGE

Lose everything and you will achieve everything (quote from Carlos Castaneda’s book “The Active Side of Infinity”, 1997).

A person goes to knowledge the same way he goes to war - fully awakened, full of fear, reverence and unconditional determination (quote from Carlos Castaneda's book "The Teachings of Don Juan", 1968).

I laugh a lot because I like to laugh, but everything I say is absolutely serious... (quote from Carlos Castaneda's book "Journey to Ixtlan", 1972).

Dreaming is a process that occurs in the body and awareness that arises in the mind (quote from Carlos Castaneda's book The Art of Dreaming, 1993).

We are afraid of going crazy. But unfortunately for us, we are all already crazy (quote from Carlos Castaneda’s book “The Wheel of Time”, 1998).

You have no time at all, and at the same time you are surrounded by eternity (quote from the book “Tales of Power” by Carlos Castaneda, 1974).

Excellence is doing the best you can in everything you are involved in (quote from Carlos Castaneda's book Tales of Power, 1974).

Don't explain too much. Every explanation hides an apology. So when you explain why you can't do this or that, you are actually apologizing for your shortcomings, hoping that those listening to you will be kind and forgive them (quote from the book "The Active Side of Infinity" by Carlos Castaneda, 1997) .

QUOTES BY CARLOS CASTANEDA ABOUT OUR WORLD

The everyday world exists only because we know how to hold its images (quote from the book “The Second Ring of Power” by Carlos Castaneda, 1977).

Reality has nothing to do with the words you use to describe it (quote from Carlos Castaneda's book The Art of Dreaming, 1993).

It's very simple: the same leaf falls over and over again. But this is not enough for you, you also need to understand: how, why and why. But here there is nothing to understand, and still not to understand (quote from Carlos Castaneda’s book “Separate Reality”, 1971).

The world cannot be measured. Like us, like every creature that exists in this world (quote from Carlos Castaneda’s book “Tales of Power”, 1974).

There is no end to the mystery whose name is man, just like the mystery whose name is the world (quote from the book “Fire from Within” by Carlos Castaneda, 1984).

Time magazine cover dedicated to Carlos Castaneda