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Reviewed by Mary DeKok Blowers for Readers' Favorite
The Eye of the Dragon by Rio Guzman is an interesting look at a Native American style spiritual journey. Guzman states that he attended a workshop on the teachings of Carlos Castaneda, the author of several books on his experiences with a Mexican sorcerer, Don Juan Matus. I read some of those books in the 1970s, and so was drawn to this book as well. Castaneda, however, was found to have professed several fraudulent teachings about his own life and experiences. While this was disappointing and disillusioning to Guzman, he went on to perform his own explorations in various parts of the U.S. and Mexico, attempting to follow Castaneda’s teachings and duplicate his experiences, such as they were written. This involved a special form of dreaming, tenets of personal integrity, and the like. Some seemed to be matters of conduct where others were quite supernatural. Most fascinating to me is the concept of becoming aware in your dreams and controlling them from the point of awareness.
While Castaneda frequently spoke of hallucinogenic drugs, such as peyote, that he used as part of the spiritual path, it is not clear to me whether or not that was part of the fraud. Rio Guzman does not emphasize drugs in The Eye of the Dragon. He does tend to ramble a bit and jump around from place to place, mentioning many people that he met and his positive and negative interactions with them. He also writes from a first person perspective, where it seems that Castaneda was much more focused on his teacher in his writing. This would be an interesting book for those on this type of spiritual path, as an adjunct to spiritual teachings.
