The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge

I wish to express profound gratitude to Professor Clement Meig— han, who started and set the course of my anthropological field— work; to Professor Harold Garfinkel, who gave me the model and spirit of exhaustive inquiry; to Professor Robert Edger— ton, who criticized my work from its beginning; to Professors William Bright and Pedro Carrasco for their criticism and encouragement; and to Professor Lawrence Watson for his invaluable help in the clarification of my analysis. Finally, I am grateful to Mrs. Grace Stimson and Mr. F. A. Guilford for their assistance in preparing the manuscript.

Para mi solo recorrer los caminos que tienen corazon, cualquier camino que tenga corazon. Por ahi yo recorro, у la unica praeba que vale es atravesar todo su largo. Y por ahi yo recorro mirando, mirando, sin aliento.

(For me there is only the travelling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worth-while challenge is to traverse its full length. And there I travel looking, looking, breathlessly.)

Don Juan

… nothing more can be attempted than to establish the beginning and the direction of an infinitely long road. The pretension of any systematic and definitive completeness would be, at least, a self-illusion. Perfection can here be obtained by the individual student only in the subjective sense that he communicates everything he has been able to see.

Georg Simmel