Phenomenology is a philosophical method proposed by Edmund Gustav Husserl (1859-1938). He postulated Phenomenology as a philosophical method for the study of essences. He thought of it as a transcendental philosophy dealing only with the residue left after a reduction is performed, which he called epoché, the bracketing of meaning or the suspension of judgment. He intended Phenomenology to be a method for approaching living experience as it occurs, without pausing to consider its causal explanations.
From my association with don Juan Matus, I came to the conclusion that the suspension of judgment that Husserl postulated is impossible to accomplish when it is a mere exercise of the intellect. I was told that when Husserl was asked for a pragmatic indication of how to accomplish this reduction, he said: “How in the hell should I know? I’m a philosopher”.
In the sorcerers’ world, suspending judgment is a necessity of every shamanistic practice. Sorcerers expand their perception to the point that they systematically perceive the unknown, and to do this, they have to suspend their normal interpretation system. This act is accomplished as a matter of survival rather than choice. In this sense, the practitioners of don Juan’s knowledge go a step beyond the intellectual exercises of philosophers. The proposition in this journal is to correlate the statements made by philosophers with the practical accomplishments of sorcerers.
(Carlos Castaneda, The Warrior’s Way – A Journal of Applied Hermeneutics)
