I read much of his stuff many years ago and loved his style and the subject matter. The desert backdrop was cool and surreal … and the characters wonderfully developed … making me think that the guy wasn’t BSing about it all being true.
But then when I got to around his 6th or 7th book, “The Eagle’s Gift,” I began to have doubts and lose interest, as it seemed like a rehash of what he’d already written. And, too, it ultimately seemed to not go anywhere, as there was some mention about people “getting caught between the worlds …” but never any profound conclusion (even though it seemed like everyone of his books always had on their covers, “Now the exciting conclusion …”).
Anyone else care to comment on Castaneda and his books; he did have a very loyal following, after all.
I read a couple of his books back when I had hopes that there were some other realities that we could tap into, but ultimately Casteneda was just another bulkshitter.
Hmmm… How odd. “Bulkshitter” was an accidental typo, but I actually like it better than what I intended. Wow! Maybe there is something to this New Age crap after all.
I read the first three books when they first came out, and was mightily confused. I could see the virtue in an anthropologist getting intyo the mindset of the people he was studying, so I viewed the books that way. I didn’t pay close attention to the dates, or I’d have realized how inconsistent the books were (It wasn’t until years later that I read de Mille’s book Castaneda’s Journey that details exactly this.)
But , despite what some people have said, Castaneda wasn’t exactly being original here. I’d already read pieces by legit anthropologist Michael Harner in the magazine Natural History in which he did exactly that – described mystical and drug experiences from within the relevant cultural point of view. But Harner didn’t trail off into weird metaphysics. I always found the mysticism of Castaneda the hardest to take. I’m not into mysticism at all, and , although there are those who claim that there is a well-defined body of mysticism, it’s always seemed to me to be a lot of very sloppy thinking.
De Mille,. by the way, undertook to show that Castaneda’s mysticism was stolen, too, in his second volume, The Don Juan Papers.
I stumbled on a book once that was very thick and all about discrediting Castaneda. I thought it very strange that someone would go through that kind of effort … and it made me wonder if his whole intent was to keep certain stuff from being seriously considered by the general public, stuff that Castaneda was making known.
I know what you mean when you say you have doubts about mystisism … but I can tell you from personal experience that there really is some very serious stuff to some of it (though I am not at liberty to go into specifics).
Speaking as someone who has subscribed to The Skeptical Inquirer for years (and read that kind of stuff even longer), I think you don’t understand the mindset. Such folk have as competitive an edge on finding and debunking a new phenomenon, and on being the first to do so, as any scientist does in his field – be it finding a new element, naming a new subspecies of butterfly, describing a new fossil…
de Mille himself answers questions of this sort in the second book of his, in fact, replying to the many objections of this sort people have raised since he started doing it. “But so what if his anthropology is uncorroborated and his description of the Sonoran desert is at odds with reality? Isn’t his introduction of more people to this mysticism the real point?” He replies: “Mysticism isn’t the only game in town…” And it is worthwhile to point out that science does not, in fact, corroborate his findings, at least as far as verifying the cultural and environmental background. De Mille and others have every right to cry “Foul!” if they think that Castaneda was not doing real science, but pulling the wool over Garfinkle and his advisors.
As for “keeping certain stuff from the public”, there’s no way they could do that – Castaneda’s books easily outsold those of his detractors, probably by orders of magnitude. I don’t think they ever intended that, but they did want to spell out that they thought Castaneda was not being honest with his readers. It’s not just a bunch of whiny scientist types, either. Joyce Carol Oates was convinced Castaneda was a novelist practically from the get-go.
Having not encountered anything to make me believe so, I can say that nothing from my personal experience would lead me to believe that mysticism had a sound basis. It’s good that you think so, I suppose, but why so mysterious? The rationalist in me thinks that legitimate experiences and phenomena ought to be describable and shareable.
(And, yes, I know there are folks out there who say that some things are truly ineffable. But I’ve never understood how they could be certain that other people having what they thought were having the same ineffable experience really were. It seems to be the same problem as verifying that the color you call green is the same as my green.)
I read a wonderful article once in The Whole Earth Review called “A Yanqui Way of Knowledge,” basically tearing Casteneda to shreds. Apparently he used names for the Yaqui that were Hopi, not Yaqui, names; he described plants growing in the desrt taht grew nowhere near Yaqui lands; and the Yaqui themselves have repudiated just about everything that Casteneda said.
Now, there’s a fair question. Who are you going to believe, a bunch of Indians, or a professional antrhopologist? obviously, the anthropologist knows more than the Indians, right?
Well, of course not. Nonetheless, several Yaqui reported the extreme frustration of encountering this attitude over and over: when they denied the reality of Casteneda’s description of Yaqui life, people would insist it was real, despite knowing nothing about the Yaqui way of life.
It’s a pernicious fraud, if you ask me, that’s just half a step removed from identity theft.
Except that Castaneda wasn’t a professional anthrolpologist when he started writing this – he was a student of anthropology. Moreover, his findings weren’t corroborated by other anthropologists working in the same field. Castaneda tried to weasel out of it by saying that Don Juan’s background wasn’t really Yaqui, but then why even call the book “A Yaqui way of knowledge”?
de Mille, in his second book, had a startled moment when it appeared that one bit of anthropological work actually seemed to corroborate one bit of Castaneda’s, but it evaporated upon further research.
GrahamWellington – none of tyhisd is meant to be a putdown of you or your beliefs. As I’ve noted, I have a hard time with much mysticism, and I’m not the guy to go to with questions regarding it. But on those factual points on which Castaneda can be checked, he doesn’t exactly come through with flying colors. If Castaneda is a fabulator who draws people into deeper meaning through his allyuring stories, that’s one thing. But otyhers are equally within their rights to point out the errors in the fable.
I don’t have a problem with anyone endeavoring to shed light on whatever interests them; truth is the name of the game, after all.
With respect to my saying I can’t go into certain things I’m aware of … it has to be that way because certain people in this world would have my neck if I were to spill the beans about the strange and disturbing things they’re up to. It’s all very involved and hard to even scrape the surface via laying things out this way; best to wait until the time is right and lay it all out at once, if I ever do.
I will say that with respect to Castaneda, certain specific things he mentioned caught my attention due to myself having very similar experiences. For example, he relates an incident in which he and Don Juan were out in the night desert walking along when, suddenly, they stop in their tracks and watch as a strange animal lies on the ground and is in its death throws before them.
Castaneda marvels at the mysterious creature … wondering what it is and then, suddenly, he realizes that the “animal” is actually just a branch blowing in the wind!
I’ve had similar stuff like that happen; swearing (to myself)that something is one thing only to discover that it’s not that at all, but something else.
There are many other things that he brings up that gave me a lot to think about, but time is running short for me to get into. Suffice it to say that whether all his writings were based on lies and half-truths isn’t that important as how much I enjoyed how he wrote and how he made me think.
If you respond to this, please don’t kill yourself writing soooo much, as it makes me feel guilty for not doing the same. Actually, I’m off for a nap here in a bit!
Thanks for your great responses … and don’t hate me for not going into specifics on that other stuff …
I’ve never taken any hallucinogens at all, and I’ve had exactly this sort of experience. Heck, I’ve never talked with a Yaqui Shaman, either, and I’m pretty sure that my family’s friendship with a Cherokee medicine man when I was a wee tot had nothing to do with the experience.
The human mind, and its weirdly powerful pattern-making abilities, is fascinating, certainly. What bugs me isn’t that he talks about it; what bugs me is that he appropriates the Yaqui’s good name to talk about it.
Imagine how Christians would feel if someone wrote a nonfiction book about the secret rituals of the Catholic Church and how we could adopt these secret rituals in order to gain wisdom and enlightenment. Imagine that it came out that the author had no knowledge at all of Catholic ritual. Imagine that Catholics found themselves gainsaid by outsiders who’d read the book and who insisted they understood Catholic beliefs based on teh book and taht the real Catholics must not know what they’re talking about.
That’s what Casteneda did. He apropriated someone else’s name to act as a mask for his imaginings. Pernicious, I say.
[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
I’ve never taken any hallucinogens at all, and I’ve had exactly this sort of experience. Heck, I’ve never talked with a Yaqui Shaman, either, and I’m pretty sure that my family’s friendship with a Cherokee medicine man when I was a wee tot had nothing to do with the experience.
The human mind, and its weirdly powerful pattern-making abilities, is fascinating, certainly. What bugs me isn’t that he talks about it; what bugs me is that he appropriates the Yaqui’s good name to talk about it. <---- I don’t recall Castaneda ever suggesting that all Yaquis see the world one way.
Imagine how Christians would feel if someone wrote a nonfiction book about the secret rituals of the Catholic Church and how we could adopt these secret rituals in order to gain wisdom and enlightenment. <---- If I’m not mistaken, Castaneda gave a straight-forward account … and never suggested that others “adopt these secrets to gain wisdom … .”
Imagine that it came out that the author had no knowledge at all of Catholic ritual. <---- How can you be certain that Castaneda "had no knowledge at all … "??
Imagine that Catholics found themselves gainsaid by outsiders who’d read the book and who insisted they understood Catholic beliefs based on teh book and taht the real Catholics must not know what they’re talking about.
That’s what Casteneda did. He apropriated someone else’s name to act as a mask for his imaginings. Pernicious, I say.
Well, you might be right and you might be wrong. I, never-the-less, enjoyed reading his stuff just the same.
I’m not saying he suggested that; I’m saying he subtitled his book “A Yaqui Way of Knowledge,” which was a lie.
I believe you are mistaken: his account was fictional, not straightforward. While he may never have told people to adopt the secrets, that’s pretty clearly how his books have been used, and I recall that a strong theme of the first book (the only one I ever read) was that this was an ancient way of achieving enlightenment. It’s not: it’s a way that he made up himself.
I can’t be certain, but I can be certain that the Yaqui have repudiated and dismissed him as a charlatan, and I’m more inclined to believe what the Yaqui say about the Yaqui than what Castaneda says about the Yaqui.
I might be wrong, but the evidence points toward Castaneda being a fraud. His books are properly classified as fiction, and I think it behooves you to study the truth about him, so that you have a more rounded, complex picture of his books. Also consider whether it’s appropriate for him to tell falsehoods about another culture’s religion, whether that shows respect or contempt for the actual Yaqui people, and how they’re going to feel about the best-known information about their culture being a fraudster’s imaginative account.
Definitely read Cecil’s article above. Here’s a spoiler from it:
In some bookstores, they are. This is correct if the classification refers to the author’s stated intent. If it refers to the content of the books, classifying them as nonfiction demonstrates the (wholly understandable) ignorance of the person doing the classifying.
Again, there is strong evidence to show that he broadly and consistently misrepresented the Yaqui people, in order to turn a profit for himself. This is why his works should be, at best, classified as fiction. I say “at best” because most fiction isn’t written with an intent to deceive the reader.
