Философская книга.

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descriptions of reality -- between my old and new views.

Eventually I saw that all my prior assumptions were based on
viewing the world as something  from which I was essentially
alienated. That day  when I encountered don Juan  in the bus
station, I  was the ideal  academic, triumphantly estranged,
conniving  to  prove  my  nonexistent  expertise  concerning
psychotropic plants.

Ironically,  it was  don Juan  who later  introduced you  to
"Mescalito," the green-skinned spirit of peyote.

Don Juan introduced me to  psychotropic plants in the middle
period of my apprenticeship, because  I was so stupid and so
cocky,   which   of   course   I   considered   evidence  of
sophistication. I held to my conventional description of the
world with  incredible vengeance, convinced it  was the only
truth. Peyote served to exaggerate the subtle contradictions
within  my  interpretative  gloss,  and  this  helped me cut
through  the typical  Western stance  of seeing  a world out
there and  talking to myself about  it. But the psychotropic
approach had its costs -- physical and emotional exhaustion.
It took months for me to come fully around.

If you could do it over again, would you "just say no"?

My path has  been my path. Don Juan always  told me, "Make a
gesture." A  gesture is nothing  more than a  deliberate act
undertaken for the power that  comes from making a decision.
Ultimately, the  value of entering  a nonordinary state,  as
you do with peyote or other psychotropic plants, is to exact
what you  need in order to  embrace the stupendous character
of ordinary reality. You see, the path of the heart is not a
road of  incessant introspection or  mystical flight, but  a
way  of engaging  the joys  and sorrows  of the  world. This
world, where each  one of us is related  at molecular levels

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