From the author: Unfortunately, I read C. Castaneda quite a long time ago, I forgot a lot, I didn’t understand a lot. This reflection is a spontaneous association on the topic of the commonality of two approaches of seemingly different personalities, and an attempt to draw attention to the study of both directions of self-knowledge. By some strange coincidence, Jung and Castaneda have a lot of common parallels. I recently read Jung’s Tavistock lectures and the fact that he writes about freedom. According to Jung, it turns out that will is the energy of the ego, with the help of which it can control mental functions - feeling, thinking, sensation, intuition. By directing the will to one function, the ego can abstract from others. But these functions are ectopsychic and work with objects in the external world or reactions to external stimuli. And here I remember the first attention from the books of K. Castaneda. It seems that the first few books of Castaneda, the teaching on the Path of the Warrior and the accompanying techniques are nothing more than training this energy of the will of the Ego and working with 4 Jungian functions. Castaneda also has the development of the second attention. If the first attention was directed to conscious phenomena, which Don Juan called the Tonal, then the second attention was directed to the unconscious sphere, the world of dreams, and this sphere was called the Nagual. It seems to me that the first attention is limited by the threshold of consciousness, and beyond its borders is the second attention. Jung's unconscious with all its archetypes is already emerging. Castaneda, however, mentioned the third attention, but this sphere is very unknown and little was said about it. According to Jung, the level of the collective unconscious can be adjusted to it. So, what can Jung say about the second attention? The same Tavistock lectures mention endopsychic processes, namely memory, its subconscious structure, like shadows of the ego, its influence on conscious processes. And therefore, there are ways to work with these shadow structures, for example, through dreams. It turns out that Casteneda and Jung have points of intersection in both conscious and unconscious aspects. If Castenada worked on awareness in dreams, then Jung worked in the direction of analysis and awareness of what the dreamer had already dreamed. Apparently, these are different levels of work in depth. Jung believed that the connection between the consciousness of the ego and the unconscious can be established through 2 channels - dreams and imagination. He developed a special method of consciously working with the unconscious - Active imagination. Using this method, consciousness can communicate with the forces of the unconscious through the images that come to it. You can communicate with these images, go through different situations, and receive information from them. There are many descriptions in Castaneda's books that are very similar to the process of active imagination (those who have practiced will understand). For example, Castaneda saw a coyote in his imagination, with whom he had a dialogue. True, Castaneda used hallucinogens for such communication, but the very fact of communication between consciousness and the unconscious, personified in a coyote, took place. Jung's Active Imagination allows the same processes to take place, only without the use of drugs - and this is great. Another thing that Jung and Castaneda's system have in common is the process of individuation. Both systems have a clear focus on developing the unique qualities of individuality. And in both approaches there is a need to listen to “signs” - messages from the Spirit or from the Self - these are different languages ​​that describe similar phenomena. It is also interesting to read Jung’s letters, his attitude towards fears, and the need to pay attention to them (which is not Castaneda’s “ death-advisor"?). In the Red Book, Jung appears in a completely different light - in it he is both a mystic and a magician, practicing communication with the forces of the unconscious, superior to the forces of his own Ego. Source: Good Psychology!