Birds & The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui way of Knowledge
For followers of this blog, I recommend to you this book, Carlos Castaneda's The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. It is an anthropological record written in the 1960s of one Yaqui shaman and his path toward knowledge. Perhaps one of the last of his kind, don Juan shares his teachings with the author, a young anthropology student attending UCLA, Carlos Castaneda.
The Yaquis are an indigenous people of what is now the American Southwest/Northern Mexico. Not only interesting for lovers of anthropology, shamanism, modern Native American culture, and intelligent discussion and examination of hallucinogenic plants, this book is an account of the experience of BIRDS.
Carlos Castaneda undergoes various psychedelic experiences during his years as apprentice to don Juan which he terms "special states of nonordinary reality," including one wherein he becomes a crow. No matter your personal view on psychedelics, let us remember that these shamanistic practices are ancient, earth-revering by nature, and far precede our modern attitude toward mind-altering substances. His account is moreover corroborated by ornithology, the scientific study of birds.
Here are a few excerpts from the book, as don Juan guides Castaneda through his transformation into a crow:
"I felt a tail coming out of the back of my neck and wings out of my cheekbones. The wings were folded deeply. I felt them coming out by degrees. The process was hard but not painful. Then I winked my head down to the size of a crow. But the most astonishing effect was accomplished with my eyes. My bird's sight!
...As soon as don Juan mentioned that he had 'tossed me into the air' I had a faint recollection of an absolutely clear scene in which I was looking straight at him from some distance away. I was looking at his face only. It was monumental in size. It was flat and had an intense glow. His hair was yellowish, and it moved. Each part of his face moved by itself, projecting a sort of amber light.
... the last scene I remembered was three silvery birds. They radiated a shiny, metallic light, almost like stainless steel, but intense and moving and alive. I liked them. We flew together."
They later discuss, Castaneda full of questions, the transformation.
"'Why did their feathers look silvery?'" he asks don Juan.
"'Because you were seeing as a crow sees. A bird that looks dark to us looks white to a crow. The white pigeons, for instance, are pink or bluish to a crow; sea gulls are yellow. Now, try to remember how you joined them.'
...Every image had an irritating flatness, and yet, disconcertingly, a profound depth. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the images were a conglomerate of unbelievably sharp details set inside fields of different light; the light in the fields moved, creating an effect of rotation.
...I asked don Juan what were the things that I had seen. He said that because this was the first time I was seeing as a crow the images were not clear or important and that later on with practice I would be able to recognize everything.
I brought up the issue of the difference I had detected in the movement of light. 'Things that are alive,' he said, 'move inside, and a crow can easily see when something is dead, or about to die, because the movement has stopped or is slowing down to a stop. A crow can also tell when something is moving too fast, and by the same token a crow can tell when something is moving just right.'
'What does it mean when something is moving too fast, or just right?'
'It means a crow can actually tell what to avoid and what to seek. When something is moving too fast inside, it means it is about to explode violently, or to leap forward, and a crow will avoid it. When it moves inside just right, it is a pleasing sight and a crow will seek it.'
'Do rocks move inside?'
'No, not rocks or dead animals or dead trees. But they are beautiful to look at. That is why crows hang around dead bodies. They like to look at them. No light moves inside them.'
'But when the flesh rots, doesn't it change or move?'
'Yes, but that is a different movement. What a crow sees then is millions of things moving inside the flesh with a light of their own, and that is what a crow likes to see. It is truly an unforgettable sight.'
'Have you seen it yourself, don Juan?'
'Anybody who learns to become a crow can see it. You will see it yourself.'
At this point I asked don Juan the unavoidable question.
'Did I really become a crow?'"
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Indeed, ornithologist found out through scientific means in the 1970s that many birds, including crows, have the ability to see in the Ultraviolet spectrum of light. This is due to the fact that birds possess four types of cones, or photoreceptor cells, in the retina of their eyes. (Humans possess three, allowing us to see in visible light. Animals like dogs and rodents have only two, affording them the ability to make out differences in shades but not necessarily all colors.)
With an extra cone, bird vision is highly acute, and allows birds to react much faster in changes in their environment. This adaptation is the reason small passerines fly easily among cars and the like. What is more, bird plumage, upon close inspection, is often more vibrant than it first appears. Take the male European Starling, which appears black at first glance, but is actually rainbow colored. The Starling, with its incredible vision, sees other birds much more vividly, as if glowing and iridescent. Hummingbirds and crows are two other good examples of this phenomenon, as corroborated by Castaneda, who saw his crow companions not as black, but as shimmering silver.
The vision of the crow is so acute as to see the individual moving parts in other organisms, as Castaneda also affirms. They can even distinguish individuals of other species, including human beings.
Castaneda's account is truly moving in its almost eery closeness to what we now know to be reality. Again, highly recommended to bird lovers!