Carlos Castaneda

Carlos Castaneda
Carlos Castaneda 1962
Occupation	Anthropologist, Author
Nationality	American
Period	20th-century
Subject	Shamanism

Carlos Castaneda (25 December 1925 – 27 April 1998) was a Peruvian-born American author. Starting with The Teachings of Don Juan in 1968, Castaneda wrote a series of books that describe his purported training in traditional Mesoamerican shamanism. His 12 books have sold more than 8 million copies in 17 languages. The books and Castaneda, who rarely spoke in public about his work, have been controversial for many years. Supporters claim the books are either true or at least valuable works of philosophy and descriptions of practices which enable an increased awareness. Critics have tended to claim that the books are works of fiction, citing what they see as their internal contradictions and Castaneda's description of a peyote culture that, to them, did not exist.

In his books, Castaneda narrated in first person what he claimed were his experiences under the tutelage of a Yaqui shaman named Don Juan Matus whom he met in 1960. Castenada wrote that he was identified by Don Juan Matus as having the energetic configuration of a "nagual", who, if the spirit chose, could become a leader of a party of seers. He also used the term "nagual" to signify that part of perception which is in the realm of the unknown yet still reachable by man, implying that, for his party of seers, Don Juan was in some way a connection to that unknown. Castenada often referred to this unknown realm as nonordinary reality, which indicated that this realm was indeed a reality, but radically different from the ordinary reality experienced by human beings who are well engaged in everyday activities as part of their social conditioning.

Biography

Immigration records for Carlos Cesar Arana Castenada indicate that he was born on 25 December 1931 in Juqueri, Mairiporã, Brazil. Records show that his surname was given by his mother Susana Castenada Navoa. His father was Cesar Arana Burungaray. His surname appears with the ñ in many Hispanic dictionaries, even though his famous published works display an anglicised version. He moved to the United States in the early 1950s and became a naturalized citizen in 1957. In 1960 he was married to Margaret Runyan in Tijuana, Mexico. They lived together for only six months, but their divorce was not finalized until 1973. He was educated at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) (B.A. 1962; Ph.D. 1973).

Castenada’s first three books, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, A Separate Reality and Journey to Ixtlan, were written while Castenada was an anthropology student at UCLA. He wrote these books as if they were his research log describing his apprenticeship with a traditional "Man of Knowledge" identified as Don Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian from northern Mexico. Castenada was awarded his bachelor's and doctoral degrees based on the work described in these books.

In March 1973 Castenada was the subject of a cover article in Time cover article 5 March 1973 (Vol. 101 No. 10). The article described him as "an enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a tortilla." Following that interview until the 1990s Castenada disappeared from public view.

In 1974 his fourth book, "Tales of Power", was published. This book ended with Castenada leaping from a cliff into an abyss, and signaled the end of his apprenticeship under the tutelage of Don Juan. In all, twelve books by Castenada were published, two of them posthumously.

In the 1990s Castenada once again began appearing in public to promote Tensegrity, a group of movements that he said had been passed down by 25 generations of Toltec shamans.

Castenada died on April 27, 1998 in Los Angeles due to complications from liver cancer. There was no public service, Castenada was cremated and the ashes were sent to Mexico. It wasn't until nearly two months later, on June 19, 1998, that an obituary entitled A Hushed Death for Mystic Author Carlos Castenada by staff writer J.R. Moehringer appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

Controversy

Legal actions

Commercial challenges

On November 22, 1995 Castenada, through his attorney Deborah Drooz, filed a complaint against Victor Sanchez and Bear & Company. The complaint charged violation of trademarks, false or misleading advertising, unfair competition, and fraud.

Challenge to will

Four months after Castenada's death C. J. Castenada, also known as Adrian Vashon, whose birth certificate claims Carlos Castenada as his father, challenged Castenada's will in probate court. For many years Castenada had referred to Vashon as his son. The will was signed four days before Castenada's death and Vashon challenged its authenticity. The challenge was ultimately unsuccessful.

Criticism

Allegations of Cultism and death of Patricia Partin

At the heart of Castenada's movement was a group of intensely devoted women, all of whom were or had been his lovers. Two of his lovers vanished the day after Castenada's death, A few weeks later, Patricia Partin, Castenada's adopted daughter as well as his lover, also disappeared. In February 2006, a skeleton found in Death Valley, Calif., was identified through DNA analysis as Partin's.

It has been alleged that Carlos taught his close devotees that when he perished, he would disappear into a flash of light rather than die a human physical death, and would join every point in the universe. Also that if they were with him holding hands at the time of his death, they would also vanish into a flash of light rather than die physically (he later died of pancreatic cancer). It is alleged that Carlos had told Partin to meet him in Death Valley, where they would join the stars together. Her car was found a few miles from her body, in the middle of Death Valley, where average daytime temperatures exceed 35°C(95 degrees F).

Accusations of academic fraud

Castenada's works were presented as real-life accounts. They have been criticized by a number of academics as being unverifiable and invented, and labelled as suspect in terms of anthropological fieldwork as there were no proofs or witnesses other than himself for the places, people, and events described. Also in relation to the extent to which he expropriates the research of Barbara Myerhoff without attribution fictionalizing on the basis of her field research.

According to Robert J. Wallis, in his 2003 book Shamans/Neo-Shamans: Contested Ecstasies, Alternative Archaeologies, and Contemporary Pagans:

At first, and with the backing of academic qualifications and the UCLA anthropological department, Castenada’s work was critically acclaimed. Notable old-school American anthropologists like Edward Spicer (1969) and Edmund Leach (1969) praised Castenada, alongside more alternative and young anthropologists such as Peter Furst, Barbara Myerhoff and Michael Harner. The authenticity of Don Juan was accepted for six years, until Richard De Mille and Daniel Noel both published their critical exposés of the Don Juan books in 1976 (De Mille produced a further edited volume in 1980). Most anthropologists had been convinced of Castenada’s authenticity until then — indeed, they had had little reason to question it — but De Mille’s meticulous analysis, in particular, disproved the veracity of Castenada’s work.

Beneath the veneer of anthropological fact stood huge discrepancies in the data: the books ‘contradict one another in details of time, location, sequence, and description of events’ (Schultz in Clifton 1989:45). There are possible published sources for almost everything Carlos wrote (see especially Beals 1978), and at least one encounter is ethnographic plagiarism: Ramon Medina, a Huichol shaman-informant to Myerhoff (1974), displayed superhuman acrobatic feats at a waterfall and, according to Myerhoff, in the presence of Castenada (Fikes 1993). Then, in A Separate Reality, Don Juan’s friend Don Genaro makes a similar leap over a waterfall with the aid of supernatural power. In addition to these inconsistencies, various authors suggest aspects of the Sonoran desert Carlos describes are environmentally implausible, and, the ‘Yaqui shamanism’ he divulges is not Yaqui at all but a synthesis of shamanisms from elsewhere (e.g. Beals 1978).

Various critics have tried to reconcile Castenada’s accounts with his own personal history and those of his fellow apprentices, with no success. Some hold that this is proof that the stories are fictitious but others believe that Castenada made a strenuous personal effort to erase his own personal history, in accordance with the precepts he learned from the old nagual, Don Juan Matus, who had embarked on a similar procedure earlier.

As early as 1973 a Time Magazine article had questioned

"... the more worldly claim to importance of Castenada's books: to wit, that they are anthropology, a specific and truthful account of an aspect of Mexican Indian culture as shown by the speech and actions of one person, a shaman named Juan Matus. That proof hinges on the credibility of don Juan as a being and Carlos Castenada as a witness. Yet there is no corroboration beyond Castenada's writings that Don Juan did what he is said to have done, and very little that he exists at all."

Serious analytical criticism of Castenada's books did not emerge until 1976 when Richard de Mille published Castenada's Journey: The Power and the Allegory, in which he argues, "Logical or chronological errors in the narrative constitute the best evidence that Castenada's books are works of fiction. If no one has discovered these errors before, the reason must be that no one has listed the events of the first three books in sequence. Once that has been done, the errors are unmistakable."

An instance of this, according to de Mille, is Castenada's relations with a witch named 'la Catalina.'

In October 1965 Carlos-One went through an ordeal so unexpected and disturbing that he sadly withdrew from his apprenticeship and avoided don Juan for more than two years. The ordeal was a night-long confrontation with a powerful enemy who had assumed Don Juan's bodily form though not his accustomed gait or speech....

Curiously, when Carlos-One begged Don Juan to explain what had happened during the "special" event, 'the conversation began with speculations about the identity of a female person' (Castenada's emphasis) who had snatched Carlos's soul and borrowed Don Juan's form. The lady was not named, and the reader was left to wonder whether the galvanizing impersonatress was in fact a certain 'fiendish witch' called "la Catalina," who had been mentioned briefly on November 23, 1961, four years earlier. At that time Don Juan had said he was harboring certain plans for finishing her off, about which he would tell Carlos-One 'someday.' Poor Carlos-One had to wait ten years to learn about those plans in Tales of Power, but Table 2 reveals that Carlos-Two, traveling a parallel time track, carried out those plans with moderate success in the fall of 1962, when he met the magic lady six times in a row, once as a marauding but indistinct blackbird, once as a sailing silhouette, and four times face to face "in all her magnificent evil splendor" as a beautiful but terrifying young woman. Reacting to those encounters, he felt his ears bursting, his throat choking, his hands frozen, his body chilled, and his arms and legs rigid. The hair on his body literally stood on end. He shrieked and fell down to the ground. He was paralyzed. He began to run. And he lost his power of speech.

Here we are asked to believe that a flesh-and-blood anthropologist who enjoyed this tumultuous supernatural affair with a glorious witch in 1962 did not recall her name in 1965, did not make the connection between the last meeting and the previous six when sorting through his field notes in the safety of his apartment, did not put it all together when naming her in his first book, but found the memory "as vivid as if it had just happened" on May 22, 1968, a few pages into his second book. Even if we could credit this uncharacteristic amnesia, we would still have to account for don Juan's equal failure to name 'la Catalina' in 1965. The puzzle is easily solved by switching from the factual to the fictive model. The abrupt, unsatisfying ending to The Teachings is not a symptom of ethnographic battle fatigue, for our campaigner has already survived six such battles with colors flying. It is only a serialist's preparation for the next episode, a cliffhanger that makes us hungry for another book.

On these showings, one thing is certain. "The Teachings of Don Juan" and "Journey to Ixtlan" cannot both be factual reports.

In the The Power and the Allegory, De Mille compared The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui way of Knowledge with Castenada's library stack requests at the University of California. The stack requests documented that he was sitting in the library when his journal said he was squatting in don Juan's hut. One of the most memorable discoveries that De Mille made in his examination of the stack requests was that when Castenada said he was participating in the traditional peyote ceremony -- the least fantastic episode of drug use -- he was not only sitting in the library, but he was reading someone else's description of his experience of the peyote ceremony.

Misrepresentation of psychotropic substances

His accounts of hallucinations from psychotropic plants paralleled the "Mind Expansion" hippy ideas of the 60's, and sold in large volumes to the hippies. In contrast, the indigenous Mexican indians that ingest Peyote and Datura do so very rarely, only once a year for peyote, in a deeply sacred communal ceremony, rather than on their own for philosophical insights.

There are further discrepancies in his description of the use of psychotropic plants as a means to induce altered states of awareness. In Castenada's first two books, he describes the "Yaqui way of knowledge" using for assistance the use of powerful indigenous plants, such as peyote and datura. In his third book, Journey to Ixtlan, he makes clear that the use of psychotropic plants ("power plants") or substances was not necessary to achieve heightened awareness, although his teacher advised their use was beneficial in helping to free the stubborn mind of some persons. He says that don Juan used them on him to demonstrate that experiences outside those known in day-to-day life are real and tangible.

In Journey to Ixtlan, the third book in the series, he wrote:

My perception of the world through the effects of those psychotropics had been so bizarre and impressive that I was forced to assume that such states were the only avenue to communicating and learning what don Juan was attempting to teach me. ... That assumption was erroneous.

Bibliography

Further information: [[:Bibliography of Carlos Castaneda]]

Other creative works

• "Winds of Nagual" - A piece for Wind Ensemble by composer Michael Colgrass
• Sorcerer - A concept album of ambient music by Michael Stearns and Ron Sunsinger inspired by the late Castenada

In popular culture

• In Season 5 Episode 10 of the TV show Lost, a young Benjamin Linus can be seen handing Sayid a copy of Castaneda's book "A Separate Reality". Later in the show, Sayid is administered a peyote-like substance by the Dharma Intiative "Shamen" named Oldham.

Related authors

• Two other authors, Taisha Abelar (born Maryann Simko) and Florinda Donner-Grau (born Regine Thal), wrote books in which they claimed to be from don Juan Matus' party of Toltec warriors. Both Abelar and Donner-Grau were endorsed by Castenada as being legitimate students of don Juan Matus, whereas he dismissed all other writers as pretenders. The two women were part of Castenada's inner circle, which he referred to as "The Brujas", and both assumed different names as part of their dedication to their new beliefs. They were originally both graduate students in anthropology at UCLA.
• Donald Barthelme parodied Castenada's books in his The Teachings of Don B.: A Yankee Way of Knowledge, in which he substitutes "brujo" with "brillo."
• Victor Sanchez claims to have received similar teachings from the Wirrarika people in Mexico. Although he says he has met Castenada, and that Castenada's books were an inspiration for him, he emphasizes that Castaneda did not endorse his work.
• Miguel Ángel Ruiz is known for bestselling book The Four Agreements.

See also

• Lucid dream
• Amalia Marquez
• Plastic Shaman
• Cultural appropriation
• Noble savage
• Cultural imperialism
• Neoshamanism
• New Age
• Recapitulation (Castaneda)
• Toltec
• Toltec (Castaneda)
• Xenocentrism

References

Border Crossings: A Psychological Perspective on Carlos Castaneda's Path of Knowledge By Donald Williams. Inner City Books, 1981. Digitized by Google Jan 10, 2008 from the University of Texas. 153 pages.

External links

• Carlos Castenada's Don Juan's Teachings, a 117,500 word book compiled from Carlos Castenada's ten books
• Carlos Castenada's Tensegrity, site maintained by ClearGreen Inc., the direct apprentices of Carlos Castaneda, who also inherited his estate and currently conduct Tensegrity seminars and classes
• Nagualism, collection of information, interviews and forum discussion on Carlos Castenada, Nagualism, and Shamanism
• Sustained Action, a website devoted to analysis and discussion of evidence and controversy about Carlos Castenada
• Don Juan the Sorcerer - Carlos Castenada interviewed by Theodore Roszak, 1969 interview with Carlos Castenada on Pacifica Radio

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