[freetree]

Carlos Castaneda was an anthropologist seeking to do field work on the use of medicinal plants when he met don Juan Matus at a bus station in Yuma Arizona. Don Juan was the heir to a lineage of seers or shamans that began in Mexico of ancient times, and whose goal was what he called “freedom of perception.”
Castaneda’s field informant became his teacher, who ushered him into a new way of being, based on the knowledge of the seers of his lineage. Carlos Castaneda wrote twelve books on his apprenticeship. Also, his colleagues and fellow students of don Juan, authors Florinda Donner-Grau, Taisha Abelar, and Carol Tiggs, wrote the books.