The dark legacy of Carlos Castaneda

[coffin_dodger]

Thanks Searcher08, I love it when things that are intended to be destructive ( this OP) become constructive

Seconded. The attempts to keep our minds stuck in the past have become so transparent, it's a satisfied feeling to witness. The spell is waning.

[guruilla]

For the record, CC's books were a bigger influence on me than just about any other literature. I am still parsing through that influence and separating the good from the bad from the ugly. Too soon to say what the percentage is, but the good is definitely not negligible. I don't consider the books fiction and I don't consider CC to have been a charlatan in any shape or form.

I am not even positive he succumbed to the temptations of power. I leave a small window of doubt that he staged the whole thing in order to embed the teachings with a warning, drastically reduce their mass appeal, and ensure that only the very discerning would be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. Certainly that's been one effect, anyway. On the other hand, there are still plenty of people that swallow them whole and without any leavening awareness of the larger context (that of Castaneda' apparent end, and his possibly secret life as an operative, see below). I've no doubt that the books have messed up people's lives and even driven people to madness and death. But even the books themselves describe in very clear terms sorcery as a dead-end. So then . . .

One of my dilemmas around this is that, during about twenty years of "following" the books (literally, in the case of moving to Oaxaca in 1989), I confirmed a significant amount of the info in them. But, if what we think of as reality is an interpretation, then how much were those confirmations shaped by the beliefs which the books instilled in me? In other words, were my experiences (much of which was in dreams) confirmation not so much of the truth of CC's work but of the power of his sorcery? And is there a frikkin difference?!

Here's a few hopefully relevant passages from a long piece I wrote a while back that ended up at Reality Sandwich (full PDF here):

I don’t think Castaneda invented anything in his books: I think he dreamed many of the events he recounts, maybe even most of them, and then did what he could to reformulate them, or reconceive them, as if they had happened in this reality. In the process of that reformulation, it may be that something else happened. Since there was a larger than average amount of interpretation in transcribing his experiences in the second attention (his dreams), Castaneda’s own personal bias colored his accounts. Little by little, and unbeknownst to Carlos himself, they became the means to his own ends. The obvious end for Castaneda was that he became a titled academic (he got a master’s degree for Journey to Ixtlan), a best-selling author and leading figure in the counterculture, a guru, and finally a cult leader. In his own mind, he got to be a warrior and a sorcerer. Since everything in a warrior-sorcerers’ life comes down to hunting energy and turning it into personal power, Carlos was on a “power trip” in the most dramatic and profound sense of the phrase. While Castaneda accessed some extremely powerful and profound truths about existence, he then used those truths for his own empowerment, thereby turning them into something less than truth—something closer to an extremely glamorous kind of information. If so, then the accuracy and authenticity of his writings is a far subtler and more mysterious question than investigators such as De Mille could ever hope to answer, and even than a supposed “Master” such as Osho was able to comprehend (or willing to speak about).

Osho’s comment was that Castaneda projected truth into imaginary worlds. I think this is accurate, and that the books themselves are acts of sorcery, and the separate reality which Castaneda led millions of people into was one which he co-created using the reader’s attention to do so. Castaneda’s books (there are ten in all, not counting Magical Passes and Wheel of Time) not only describe a perception of a separate reality—to a degree they also induce it. All good writing creates a trance state in the reader, provided they are willing to be entranced, and Castaneda’s books excel at creating such states. My guess is that this is because they were written—or at least conceived—while their author was in an unusually deep trance state. Castaneda even admits in one of the volumes that he dreamed his books before writing them. For the remainder of this article, then, I will assume that, however unreliable his accounts might be, and despite any evidence of “tampering,” Castaneda was reporting experiences that genuinely happened, and not merely inventing them or suffering from hallucinations. However, and somewhat ironically, this argument is predicated on a belief (mine) that such a thing as the second attention exists, and that dreams are indeed gateways into another reality, one that exists on a parallel track to this one. It then becomes possible that some, maybe even most, of Castaneda’s encounters with “sorcerers” occurred in another realm to the one we are accustomed to calling reality.

....

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Too much of it can kill. It was too much knowledge, and too much power, that drove Castaneda insane. Yet the problem of that knowledge may have been less the quantity, or even its quality, than the way in which he interpreted it. Judging by his books, Carlos’ downfall came about because he insisted on clinging to a personal perspective in which it was up to him to do something with the knowledge he had been given (something besides communicate it, that is). “Reality is a doing and a doing is measured by its fruits,” Castaneda told Torres. It’s a statement that speaks volumes about the bent of Carlos’ character. Although Castaneda wrote about “not-doing,” about becoming a nothing, erasing personal history and all the rest, his books are imbued with the energy of doing. They are romances—gripping mystery novels in which the author, as much as don Juan, is the protagonist. His decision to present his experiences as a dramatized narrative was probably based on a desire to convey the sorcerers’ knowledge in a way that was both arresting and absorbing to the public. His books, like all good novels, allow the reader to identify with Carlos’ narrative and to enter into it and experience it viscerally, as if it were happening to them. It was, I think, a calculated decision, and one that ensured the success of the books, as well as creating controversy and confusion around them, and a general consensus that they were largely fictional accounts. In a way, then, Castaneda chose popularity over credibility. I think it was the right decision for the books and for the readers; but it may have been the wrong one for Carlos.

Castaneda allegedly kept framed copies of his book covers on the walls of his “compound” in Los Angeles. It’s a strange decision for someone dedicated to erasing their personal history, and it suggests that Carlos’ identity was heavily invested in his books and in the role of best-selling author. His books consolidated his identity as a writer-sorcerer, not only by turning him into a literary celebrity but also, in a less obvious way, by creating the character of “Carlos Castaneda.” The books cemented that character, the sorcerer’s apprentice and three-pronged nagual, in the collective consciousness by (optimistically) charting his addled and arduous path to freedom. Eventually, however, Carlos’ path with a heart became a road to ruin, as described by his “wife” Amy Wallace, in her book, A Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Over the course of his ten books, Castaneda reinvented himself by weaving a sorcerer’s narrative. The primary function of that narrative, apparently, was to convey the sorcery knowledge which he had accessed, via encounters with shape-shifting naguals either in ordinary reality or via dreaming (the first or second attentions). The secondary function of his sorcerer’s narrative was to turn its author into a somebody—a rock and roll nagual with millions of readers and hundreds of adoring (and sexually available) disciples. This secondary function—that of inflating his personal history instead of erasing it—appears to have become primary to Carlos, and that would be precisely why it brought about his personal downfall. The narrative then had to be completed, not by Castaneda but by Wallace (the feminine perspective), whose book put Carlos’ sorcery romance into a far more mundane (and sordid) perspective, and revealed that Castaneda had stacked the deck of his literary-sorcerer’s enterprise so as to come out a winner, and, as a consequence, been kicked out of the game.

He who lives by the pen, dies by the pen. Castaneda’s decision to romanticize the sorcerers’ knowledge, to turn it into a dramatic narrative to draw readers in, inevitably meant that the knowledge was also personalized. It then became his story. And like all mythic narratives, Castaneda’s journey was a heroic quest in which the possibility of failure, defeat, and ignominy was always present. Since it was up to Castaneda, the writer, to do something with the sorcerers’ knowledge, it was up to Carlos, the character, to live up to the teachings of don Juan, or not. And failure in that mighty endeavor would mean much more than simply losing face. What was at stake was not merely his worldly reputation, but the continuance of his individual consciousness. Playing for such stakes, the sorcerers’ knowledge became a burden that would overwhelm the very best of men. I wonder if, when he saw that he could never beat the odds, and like the old seers, Castaneda chose to try and cheat death instead of surrender to it? When it became obvious to him that he was going to fail, did he decide to settle for the next best thing to immortality and focus his intent instead on “creat[ing] bonds with masses of people” so as to “retain [his] awareness during entire millennia”? If so, then he wrote himself into a corner from which no amount of sorcery can ever free him.

More recently, while digging up the bodies in Whitley Strieber's garden for Prisoner of Infinity, I put together this material:

In Amy Wallace’s account of being married to Carlos Castaneda, A Sorcerer’s Apprentice, she recounts how Castaneda confessed to having worked as an assassin for an unnamed government agency (though on other occasions he mentioned the CIA and US military intelligence). A friend who roomed with Castaneda in 1957 said he had heard similar stories from Carlos. Castaneda’s first wife, Margaret Runyan, recounted a story he told of being seriously wounded while serving in “an intelligence division” in Spain or Korea. According to Wallace, Castaneda had even confessed his secret to his “nagual” (sorcerer master) don Juan. Wallace quoting Carlos:

Later, when I had met don Juan, I told him I had a terrible secret. Terrible, the worst, and I had never confessed it. I had been don Juan’s apprentice for years before I found the courage to speak of this horror. “Tell me, estupido,” said don Juan, “what can be so bad, eh? Is this why you’re always so heavy, so pesado? Why do I have to stand on my head to move you an inch? What is it, this terrible thing you did?” “I killed people, don Juan. Lots of people.” “That’s it?? You killed people? Carajo, Carlos, you killed apes. That’s what you’re so ashamed of? Killing a few apes? Believe me, there are always plenty more to take their place. And you’re making yourself sick with this Great Big Secret?”

Wallace reported that Castaneda was trying to turn his experiences with the CIA (or whoever) into a novel in his final months of life. He called it Assassin.

I mention this in passing as a parallel example to that of Strieber, once again involving one of my foremost literary influences. How, or why, have I chosen such dubious role models? On the other hand, if we are drawing our models out of the mold of popular culture, are there any other kind? Is this perhaps the unavoidable dark side of both the mystical path and the individuation journey? My early heroes, whether Elvis or Bowie, Eastwood, Polanski, or Peckinpah, were all associated with one form of self-destructive excess or another. Apparently I was drawn to the dark to see what was in my unconscious, what was controlling me and leading me into aberrational or self-destructive behaviors. So perhaps not to follow such dubious “leads” might be as fatal as to follow them blindly?

Our minds always tend to want to focus on simple moral questions, such as whether the aliens, or government agents, or sorcerers, or teachers (or parents), are acting for good or evil. But if the psyche is beyond good and evil, the real question is a question of fragmentation or wholeness. A fragmented psyche can do no right, a whole psyche can do no wrong. The greatest “evil” of all stems from a fragment that takes itself for the whole. When a shattered psyche looks for symbols of wholeness outside of itself, it finds, inevitably perhaps, only fragments of a shattered mirror.

The guardian protects the wounded child-self. To do so it adopts a dual guise as both angelic, wise, and caring, and demonic, deranged, and destructive (though still protective). An “alter” (as in the case of programmed shooters such as Sirhan, but also many of us who grow up with unbearable trauma) is created to do the “dirty work” which the conscious personality won’t, and can’t, do. Like Norman Bates, the alter “cleans up” all the blood stains, the loose ends, inconsistencies, and awkward or compromising elements (the “leaks”) that threaten the illusion of the benevolence of the guardian. Anything, in short, that interferes with its rule over the divided and conquered kingdom of the psyche. The “progressive” or “benevolent” guardian (like the spiritualized ego) is a politician (or a movie star) whose spotless public persona is dependent on a covert agenda of bribes, blackmails, illegal wiretaps, harassment, and assassination. The “light” side depends on the dark.

This lead us to what seems like an unavoidable question: is programmed murder the necessary flip side of self-engineered spiritualty (killing the ape of the ego), if both are fuelled by the guardian in its unbending “will to power”?
http://crucialfictions.com/wp-content/u ... ity-10.pdf

[BrandonD]

Thanks for that interesting post guruilla. There is no feeling quite like reading a genuinely novel perspective on a subject one has thought about many times.

[BrandonD]

It was 1975-ish, and I can't remember which book. I was out of school and living in Dallas, and he wasn't a big deal here. Anyway, if there's too many people walking to the beat of a certain drum I'm usually found going in the other direction. While I have found some "truthiness" in Castenada's work, what good is it when entwined with lies.

Imagine a very successful plastic surgeon, married with children. It is discovered that he's been sleeping with and robbing his patients for the past 5 years.

This is a pretty abhorrent thing to do, and it could easily be argued that he specifically went into the plastic surgery field in order to have access to wealthy women that he could take advantage of. Yet few would conclude from this that he's been perpetuating fraudulent surgery all these years. His medical skills are judged upon their own merit.

This is an illustration of why IMO Castaneda starting up a cult and doing immoral creepy things has no relation to the information contained in his books.

On the other hand, if a person says, "Hey I read the books and nothing in my experience matches what is described," well then that is a perfectly valid argument.

But the cult argument is simply the lazy man or "debunker" way out.

Very similar to Osho Rajneesh in some ways. He was able to read a dozen books on zen and then give an amazing series of talks for a week, without notes, that teemed with wisdom and insight and coherence on the subject. The next week he did the same with Christianity etc. He also attracted sociopaths to the top of his organisation (like Sheela) who helped turn it into a Jonestown waiting to happen.

I tried the Tensegrity exercises for several weeks and the result? Opening a portal to some very dark place indeed - the atmosphere in the flat was horrible, we started to get poltergeist effects. I ended up with a guy who had a camera capable of photographing energy that clearly showed a frickken skull shape on my bed. We ended up doing a Christian based banishing ritual, which closed whatever had been opened. It sure as hell was not a love-based path the "Witches" were on.

I did have some amazing experiences, such as having my Assemblage Point moved to the Place of No Concern (total inner silence, deep clarity, the consciousness centered in the Solar Plexus area rather than the head, no emotions - a great state to be a surgeon for example)
I also had an years before experience of doing a ceremony that created a bridge to an actual Other Reality
and bringing back an object from that place to this world.

Castaneda talked about how this world was a reality woven by and created by Agreement, a kind of consensual hallucination - one of the theories of conscious that is on the cutting edge right now (similar to Nick Bostrom's life as a digital simulation) is that it comes about as a form of Peer to Peer Networking between human nervous systems...

My favorite of his books is Journey to Ixtlan, which is free of any drug experiences or artifacts; just him and Don Juan and Don Genaro in the desert; as characters they were full of love, which I dont think Carlos was...

That and a love of crows and their magical consciousness...

Deep Dream Crow

deepdreamcrow.jpg

Thanks for this great post. I had this same impression from Ixtlan, and the books in general. The impression of an unexceptional man encountering a man of HUGE love. And Carlos, perhaps not seeing the value of this piece of the story, in these instances simply transcribed what he witnessed for the benefit of others who would see the value.