Философская книга.

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assert   that  ordinary   and  nonordinary   reality  aren't
separate, but instead are encompassed  in a larger circle --
and then to  reverse himself the next day  by insisting that
the line  between different realities  must be respected  at
all costs.  I asked him  why this must  be so. He  answered,
"Because nothing is more important  to you than keeping your
personal world intact."

He was right. That was my  top priority in the early days of
the apprenticeship.  Eventually I saw  -- I saw  -- that the
path  of the  heart requires   a full  gesture, a  degree of
abandon that can be terrifying.  Only then is it possible to
achieve a sparkling metamorphosis.

I also  realized the  extent to  which the  teachings of don
Juan  could and  would be  dismissed as  "mere allegory"  by
certain   specialists  whose   sacramental  mission   is  to
reinforce  the limits  that  culture  and language  place on
perception.

This approaches the question of who gets to define "correct"
cultural  description.  Nowadays  some  of  Margaret  Mead's
critics  declare she  was "wrong"  about Samoa.  But why not
say, less dogmatically, that  her writings present a partial
picture based on a unique  encounter with an exotic culture?
Obviously her discoveries mirrored the concerns of her time,
including her  own biases. Who  has the authority  to cordon
off art from science?

The assumption  that art, magic, and  science can't exist in
the same  space at the same  time is an obsolete  remnant of
Aristotelian  philosophical  categories.  We've  got  to get
beyond this kind  of nostalgia in the social  science of the
twenty-first  century.  Even  the  term  ethnography  is too
monolithic,  because  it  implies  that  writing about other
cultures is an activity specific to anthropology, whereas in

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