The above image was made with stable diffusion using the prompt 'red car buried in the desert.'
A friend recently posted on Facebook about the wisdom of Carlos Castaneda. Having read all of Castaneda's books when I was younger, I remember there being plenty of good stuff there. At the same time, I remember being disappointed to learn that the books were not notes from lessons the author had learned under the tutelage of an Indigenous medicine man. They were in fact made up stories likely assembled from the work of other authors.
Here's a quote from a detailed Salon article about Castaneda and the cult that sprung up around him after his books became bestsellers:
Today, Simon and Schuster, Castaneda's main publisher, still classifies his books as nonfiction. It could be argued that this label doesn't matter since everyone now knows don Juan was a fictional creation. But everyone doesn't, and the trust that some readers have invested in these books leads to a darker story that has received almost no coverage in the mainstream press.
The darker story involves a mind control cult, as well as the deaths and disappearances of several of Castaneda's female followers immediately following his death. According to his mythology, he wasn't so much going to die as transform into magical light. When Castaneda did die, slowly of liver cancer, it called all of his teachings into question. At least one follower killed herself, and others are presumed to have done the same.
Although the books frame their contents as a Native worldview, the ideas contained therein are actually pulled from a varietal hodgepodge of traditions, with Eastern mysticism featuring prominently. Here's more on that from the same Salon piece:
De Mille also uncovered numerous instances of plagiarism. "When don Juan opens his mouth," he wrote, "the words of particular writers come out." His 1980 compilation, "The Don Juan Papers," includes a 47-page glossary of quotations from don Juan and their sources, ranging from Wittgenstein and C.S. Lewis to papers in obscure anthropology journals. In one example, de Mille first quotes a passage by a mystic, Yogi Ramacharaka: "The Human Aura is seen by the psychic observer as a luminous cloud, egg-shaped, streaked by fine lines like stiff bristles standing out in all directions." In "A Separate Reality," a "man looks like a human egg of circulating fibers. And his arms and legs are like luminous bristles bursting out in all directions." The accumulation of such instances leads de Mille to conclude that "Carlos's adventures originated not in the Sonoran desert but in the library at UCLA."
Although this criticism is warranted, it's not entirely damning. As a writer, it's easy to unintentionally plagiarize a phrase here and there. Castaneda's plagiarism seems more extensive, but it's still possible that it was accidental. At least in some cases.
Stuff like the Yogi Ramacharaka material was foundational to the magical worldview Castaneda's books described. Esoteric observations. Mystical instructions. These things were a big part of what attracted so many readers. I certainly found them intriguing as a teenager.
Everything that's come out about Castaneda and his cult puts the books in context. They're like the notes of a madman assembled into passable narrative. They might be interesting, but don't take anything literally. It's all fiction.
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