Carlos Castaneda

Carlos Castaneda, born Carlos César Salvador Arana Castañeda (Cajamarca, Peru, December 25, 1925 - Los Angeles, California, April 27, 1998), was a naturalized American Peruvian writer, author of a series of books that would describe his training in a particular type of traditional Mesoamerican Nahualism, which he referred to as a very ancient and forgotten form. These books and Castaneda himself, who rarely spoke publicly about his work or himself, are the subject of much controversy.

His supporters claim that his books are truthful in their content, or at least constitute works of anthropological value. His critics point out instead that his books are farce, works of fiction, and that they are not verifiable as works of anthropology, contrary to what the author claimed. Marvin Harris, De Mille, and others substantiate errors regarding Yaqui traditions, and De Mille shows several occasions in which the dates of Castaneda's books state that he was with Don Juan in Mexico, when in fact he was at the University of California. in Los Angeles.

This anthropologist and writer claimed to have become a Toltec nagual shaman after intense training to modify consciousness and perception, which included the ritual use of entheogens in a first stage; Subsequently, these types of substances were unnecessary, and even harmful, especially for his stomach, according to his own words.

His books, which have a syncretic character since they are a mixture of autobiography, hallucinogens, Toltec rituals, mysticism and religion, have had tremendous sales success, so much so that today they are translated into the most varied languages of the world.

His first books are linked to psychedelia and the counterculture of the late 60s and 70s.

Biography

In large part because he wanted it that way for the purpose of "erasing his personal history," there is no uniform data about the dates and places of the events of his life. It is possible that "delete his personal history" be it a literary resource, or a mechanism to defend oneself against the supposed inconsistencies in his statements, shown by De Mille.

Your version

As stated by himself^{[citation required]}, he was born on December 25, 1935 in Juqueri, São Paulo, Brazil. His father, César Miguel Torres, would have been a goldsmith-watchmaker. In 1948, the family moved to Lima, where Carlos graduated from the Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe National College. He maintained that he was sent to a boarding school in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and later to San Francisco, United States, at the age of 15. He would live there with his adoptive family until he graduated from Hollywood High School . In 1951 he would emigrate to Los Angeles, California, where he would study anthropology at the University of California (UCLA) in Los Angeles. Between 1955 and 1959 he attended various courses at the City College of Los Angeles: literature, journalism and psychology, the latter activity in which he would develop as an assistant, transcribing tapes of therapeutic sessions.

In 1959, he became a US citizen and legally adopted his maternal surname 'Castañeda' changing the "ñ" by "n" for language reasons (although it is also said that his typewriter did not have the letter & # 34; ñ & # 34;, which made him sign without said letter, changing it to & # 34; n & # 34;). That same year he entered the University of California (UCLA) in Los Angeles, where he graduated in anthropology in 1962. In 1968 he published his first book The Teachings of Don Juan, with which he obtained the & #34;master" and in 1973 he was awarded a doctorate for his third book Journey to Ixtlán. Successive books by him recount his experiences with Juan Matus, a man of Yaqui origin who is the custodian of this ancient knowledge of whom Castaneda supposedly became the spokesperson, a close contact that apparently lasted from 1960 to 1973.

Other sources

Others^[who?] cite different information about places, years and dates:.^{[citation required]}

• According to U.S. immigration records, he was born in Cajamarca, Peru, on December 25, but in 1925.^{[chuckles]required]}
• He was the son of a literature professor and nephew of Osvaldo Aranha who was president of the UN General Assembly and ambassador to the United States.^{[chuckles]required]}
• He studied sculpture in Milan, Italy.^{[chuckles]required]}
• He was the son of a goldsmith who owned a jewellery.^{[chuckles]required]}
• He grew up in the Andean city of Cajamarca, where he carried out his first studies, then moved to Lima, where he completed them. I would later study painting and sculpture at the National School of Fine Arts.^{[chuckles]required]}
• That she had a daughter named Marilyn Castañeda, who currently lives and who, still following the path of knowledge, remains totally disconnected from the whole movement created around her parent.^{[chuckles]required]}

Within the confused and hidden life of Carlos Castaneda, the appearance of Marilyn Castañeda is one more piece of information in the intricate puzzle of his existence. According to the statements of the investigator Coll. F. Bechtell appeared in Anthropos magazine, the appearance of a correspondence from Castaneda himself to his then wife Margaret Runyan clarifies some details of her existence. In several letters, the writer confesses his reunion with a natural daughter who until then had remained hidden, her name is Marilyn Castañeda. Carlos recognizes this daughter as his own in letters addressed to her ex-wife and her sister Lucy Chávez Arana, but he does not even name her in her will. Marilyn Castañeda, according to Castaneda's own correspondence, was born in 1966.

She could not be Carlos's biological daughter, since he had been vasectomized since before 1961 and Carlton Jeremy was not his biological son either. Manuel Carballal does not even name her in her documented book that appeared in 2018.

• He married Margaret Runyan in 1960 in Tlaquiltenango, Mexico. In August of the same year, she was abandoned by Mary Joan Barker, and in that summer she allegedly finds the person who would change her life forever: Juan Matus.
• Castaneda and Margaret Runyan, although they no longer lived together, would then be separated in 1973; however, they will continue to frequent until Margaret left Los Angeles in 1966.
• In 1961 Carlton Jeremy Castaneda was born, which even though he is not his son is legally accepted by Carlos. Given the alleged evidence of non-biological paternity, Carlton currently holds lawsuits with the official Cleargreen association, created by his father, for the ultra-millionaire inheritance that would belong to him.
• Writer Amy Wallace, daughter of writer Irving Wallace, publishes a book in which she talks about her close relationship with Carlos Castaneda. In the book, he describes it as a voluble person who throws away his acolytes, all women, simply whimsical, and who also has sex with all of them. Carlos was vasectomized, and he was also a consummate fetishist of feet and sandals. His innermost circle, according to Amy Wallace, was formed by Venezuelan Florinda Donner Grau (Thal Region), Taisha Abelar (formerly Anna Marie Carter and originally Maryann Simko) and Nury Alexander (Patricia Partin), among others. In subsequent statements, Amy Wallace said he was convinced that these three women, together with Talia Bey and Kilie Lundhal of Cleargreen, committed a collective suicide after Carlos' death. Nothing has been known since 1998. In 2003, DNA testing was done to human remains found in the Death Valley. According to the police, they belonged to Patricia Partin.^{[chuckles]required]}

Generation of Warlocks

Carlos Castaneda states in his books that he inherits a tradition of witchcraft. This tradition is based on a specific group of sorcerers, whose purpose is to obtain freedom. The group is made up of a nagual -who acts as the leader-, a group of sorcerers classified as dreamers and others classified as stalkers. Such an organization perpetuates in the generations, following the mandates of the spirit, the previous group selects the members of the subsequent group, so that each generation looks for a new nagual and the respective dreamers and stalkers of that generation. Castaneda's generation is an exception since the latter did not possess the necessary amount of energy given his energetic configuration -three-pointed nagual- to form a new group of sorcerers. The sorcerer tradition goes back to a lineage of naguals with origins in the Toltecs, the last nagual is Castaneda, before him is Don Juan, the next is the nagual Julián and before him is the nagual Elías. These naguals are the most mentioned in the books.

Works

It is clear that the published books are his greatest contribution, his work, since the exercises called magical passes or tensegrity resemble martial arts exercises and not exercises of shamans or ancient dancers. It is claimed that Florinda Donner-Grau introduced Castaneda to Howard Lee, thus Castaneda had access to two martial arts practitioners, who were the likely source of the magical passes.

Don Juan Matus

In the early 1960s, close to finishing his studies in anthropology at the University of California, he traveled to the Sonoran desert, Mexico, to gather information on the medicinal uses of certain psychotropic or hallucinogenic plants among indigenous ethnic groups.

According to his books, at the Greyhound bus station in an American town on the border with Mexico, through an anthropologist known to Carlos, he met a Yaqui man, whom he refers to in his books by the pseudonym Don Juan Matus, who in less than a year, and after frequent visits by Carlos, took him as an apprentice. Don Juan, according to Castaneda, was the leader of a group of sorcerers, the latest in a long tradition that was described by Don Juan as "A Yaqui form of knowledge," and that according to new age groups, in reality they were based on Toltecs, although the content of Castaneda's books does not coincide with research on the Yaquis, and it is not possible to compare them with Toltecs because they are an extinct people, presenting contradictory information about supposed Toltecs whose interests and activities are present. which Don Juan de Castaneda is the only source, and has not been validated according to scientific or anthropological parameters. Don Juan teaches him the uses of peyote (in which he recognizes an entity he reverentially calls "Mescalito") as a psychotropic, and also of two other entheogens, which according to comments on Castanedas books, contain two allies: the "devil weed" (Datura inoxia, which because it is from the Sonoran desert could be Datura discolor instead) and the "humito" (Psilocybe mexicana), thus having a succession of experiences that include columns of singing light, animals and other beings that would be manifestations of powers that a wise man could learn to use. These are, among others, knowledge of a cultural legacy, but despite the fact that Don Juan is a Yaqui man, both his "benefactor" Like his teacher, they are Oaxacan, as is his classmate Don Genaro, who even claims to be originally from Ixtlán.

In 1968 he began to publish his books on the teachings of Don Juan, which are an instant success, although the field notes are not kept, being one of the factors that make us think that Don Juan is a literary resource of Castaneda and not a real person, since anthropological criteria or documentary research frameworks are not followed, except for the annex to the first book.

Tensegrity or Magic Passes

Castaneda was extremely elusive and elusive (he did not allow himself to be photographed or recorded), and many have posed as his disciples or even himself.

In 1993, Castaneda announced the magical passes, the culmination of the Toltec sorcerous arts, which would have been transmitted from master to apprentice for generations. He called this Tensegrity (contraction of "tension" and "integrity") borrowing the term from a structural design concept by American architect and engineer Richard Buckminster Fuller, and founded the organization Cleargreen to spread the word, making numerous appearances at their events. This was a break from his previous stage of isolation, and it surprised many, for not having mentioned the "magic passes" in his life. in his previous books. More surprising is the fact that no evidence of this type of movement has been found among the Mesoamerican Indians.

Tensegrity consists of a series of movements and breaths that for some have a lot to do with Kung Fu styles, which Castaneda could have learned from two sources, from a martial arts master named Howard Lee, or thanks to one of his classmates Florinda Donner, who according to the aforementioned site came to appear in specialized karate magazines as it appears in the photo.

Within the disciplines of Martial Arts it is common to find two types of movement, form and combat. The forms focus on demonstrations of technique and mental aspects, and combat, on the application of said techniques for confrontations. In this sense, Tensegrity, which emerged in the early 1980s, is focused on forms of a discipline that could be Kung Fu, although without the fundamentals of this martial art.

Posts

Castaneda's works, all written in English despite the fact that he spoke Spanish perfectly (in fact, he personally corrected the translations into Spanish), are an account of the cosmology that Don Juan Matus instilled in him. Written in the first person, they have become classics of spiritual and New Age literature.

First stage: teachings on the right side

• The Teachings of Don Juan (The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge1968, which was also his thesis.
• A reality apart (A Separate Reality1971).
• Travel to Ixtlán (Journey to Ixtlan1973): with him he got his doctorate.
• Power stories (Tales Of Power1975).

It is in the first two books where Castaneda focuses his attention on presenting the peculiarities of peyote, whom he called Mescalito, considered by Don Juan as a protector, as well as the presence of allies in the devil's weed (plant of the genus Datura) and in the humito (mushroom of the genus Psilocybe), plants that Don Juan used as a resource to obtain what Carlos Castaneda called "states of heightened consciousness" 3. 4;. Starting from the third book, & # 34; Journey to Ixtlán & # 34;, he rethinks the content of them to focus on reaching & # 34; other realities & # 34; without the use of any kind of entheogen. In the fourth book, "Tales of Power", it is narrated how don Juan urged Carlos to "leap into the unknown", from which their paths diverge, which would leave Castaneda as the heir to their lineage. As the new Nagual, Castaneda had the freedom to find his own disciples. At the same time that Carlos jumps into the abyss, don Genaro and don Juan embark on the 'definitive journey'.

These first books have a precise chronological order, in the style of an anthropological report or account. Most of the events are dated with date and even time. Only the last book is located in the autumn of 1971, without much more precision, and it is the chronological end of the teachings received from 1960. In Journey to Ixtlán he returns to the first years of learning. It was in this work that Richard de Mille discovered deep chronological inconsistencies with the previous books.

Second stage: the teachings of the left side and the lineage of sorcerers

• The second ring of power (The Second Ring of Power, 1977)
• The gift of the eagle (The Eagle's Gift'1981)
• The inner fire (The Fire From Within1984)
• The silent knowledge (The Power of Silence1987)
• The art of dreaming (The Art of Dreaming1993)

In The Second Ring of Power the conflictive relationship of Carlos with the group of don Juan's apprentices is narrated, once he disappeared. In any case, the narrative structure contains many dialogues about the teachings of the teacher, who is thus present. In The Gift of the Eagle a transcendental event occurs: Carlos and the other apprentices are remembering words of don Juan that they had totally forgotten; They are the teachings of the 'left side', given in a state of heightened awareness (heightened awareness), which confers particular lucidity, but which are erased from memory when returning to the state of ordinary consciousness. In this way, Don Juan reappears and the teacher-disciple dialogical structure is maintained in the following works, although there is a change: in the first stage Carlos was compelled to act and face inconceivable situations, often very dangerous and terrifying, with instructions previous summaries (or almost non-existent) by don Juan and later asked numerous questions, however in this new stage there are long and sometimes lengthy theoretical explanations prior to experimentation. It is a change that was already outlined in Relatos de poder with the detailed explanation of the 'tonal' and the 'nagual'.

There are also changes of environment; the “indigenous” environment and the Sonoran desert are abandoned. Don Juan instructs his apprentices in a comfortable and spacious house in central Mexico. This displacement also begins in Tales of Power, when an elegantly dressed Don Juan moves naturally through Mexico City.

The teachings on the left side focus on 'the rule of the nagual', the 'stalking', the 'dreaming' and the 'intent'. The origin of this teaching is the tradition of the Toltecs, who are not understood as an ethnic group, but as possessors of ancient knowledge. Within the practitioners of this knowledge, it is necessary to distinguish the "old seers", extinct long before the Spanish Conquest, and the "new seers", who take up this tradition and among those who the 'lineage of sorcerers' of Don Juan. In this lineage you can count 27 generations, each one with its corresponding 'nagual' or guide, characterized by a particular energetic conformation. Carlos will be the last nagual of the lineage.

Third stage: recap and practice

• The internal silence (Silent Knowlegde, 1996): also known as "The Purple Book"and it was only sold in the workshops 'Tensegrity'.
• The active side of infinity (The Active Side of Infinity1998)
• Magic passes (Magical Passes1999)
• The wheel of time (The Wheel of Time2000)

After the great conceptual complexity that is reached in the second stage, with knowledge that seems exclusive to the members of the lineage and still very difficult to achieve, an important change occurs: now a knowledge is disseminated more accessible and practical, based on the 'magic passes', kept strictly secret until then. These movements are an important part of the teaching and their origin goes back to the ancient seers; until then there was no explicit reference to them in published books, but Castaneda justifies their diffusion in El silencio interno.

“Before nothing we ask ourselves the crucial question of what to do with magical passes: the most pragmatic and functional facet of the knowledge of Don Juan. We decided to use the magic passes and show them to whoever would like to learn them. Our decision to end the sigile surrounding them for an undetermined period of time was, of course, the corollary of our total conviction that, in fact, we are the end of the lineage of Don Juan. It became inconceivable for us to carry secrets that are not even ours. Covering magical passes with secrets was not our decision. However, it is our decision to end that condition. ”

This dissemination of the passes, adapted to the current situation under the name 'Tensegrity', coincides with the last stage of Castaneda and his group, stage of public projection with numerous workshops and seminars. No There was no criticism accusing him of opportunism and of inventing an element that did not exist simply because of material interests. Likewise, he and his group have been accused of making a reworking of various martial arts and exercises of Eastern tradition, without anything that can be called "Toltec" or properly Mesoamerican.

Internal silence is a first foray into the subject, followed by Magic Passes, already published posthumously. The Wheel of Time, also a posthumous work, is a compilation of Don Juan's commented phrases. The book that most closely follows the line of the previous ones is The Active Side of Infinity, which recapitulates and rewrites the teaching process of the first four volumes.

Controversy

Castaneda's work has aroused great controversy since its publication. Among other things, he has been accused, especially from anthropological academic circles, of having included intentional falsehoods in his books, passing off totally improbable experiences as real events, although the consideration of reality that Castaneda uses in his works is of such a nature that it could well avoid all these questions. With everything and especially, the lack of agreement between the studies carried out by anthropologists among the Yaquis and the doctrine that he attributes to don Juan in his "autobiographical" stories has been pointed out.

There is no evidence that Don Juan even existed. Castaneda did not allow anthropologists (not even his former colleagues at the University of California) access to his field notes, and there are no photos or recordings. All this would be strange in a true anthropological investigation, something that on the other hand is not -nor has it claimed to be- the work of Castaneda, but has made many suspect that it could be a mere invention.

Another consideration distinguishes the profound differences that exist between the first four books (up to and including Stories of Power) and the rest. While in the first ones a certain evolution is perceived both in the approach and in the contents, the rest of the books have been considered by some as mere commercial products without any sign of authenticity. Both for the fact that they barely delve into the content of the previous ones and for the recreation of supposed experiences of heightened awareness that at times can be implausible.

The same can be said for tensegrity. While in the first books Don Juan barely makes a few isolated references to the position of the hands, a special way of squinting and a peculiar way of moving called the power march, he presents, almost at the end of his work, a supposed series of bodily movements and respirations taught by don Juan to him and three women of his own party.

Many people who knew Castaneda personally, such as Alejandro Jodorowsky and Timothy Leary, have not revealed a positive image of him, basically portraying him as an upstart. Both Carlos himself and his followers claim that such confusion is part of the game of the sorcerer

This confusion doesn't end here. Sometimes he told a large audience of followers about experiences that had taken place with Don Juan in a certain place and on a certain date. As Castaneda's anecdotes are usually dated with great precision in his books and his followers generally know his work almost perfectly, it was common for them to ask then how this was possible, since according to a certain book, at that time he was in another place doing something else. Castaneda invariably responded that at that moment, as a sorcerer, he was in two or more places simultaneously. This type of contradiction did not stop permeating among his followers, who called these explanations "cognitive dissonances", not so much critically as denotatively.

It seems that in this type of meetings it was also very common for Castaneda to use his talents both to make his followers laugh to tears and to talk about the resources of the self to establish a point of view and make freedom of perception impossible -ultimate goal of those who, like him, belonged to the lineage of Don Juan-. Castaneda used to present the different forms of the ego that the adept assistants used to refer to the proposal for freedom that Don Juan presented to him. Depending on the subject he was dealing with, he could ridicule the ways of acting of the ego of some assistant, he even imitated the way of speaking of someone else, but he could also recognize the actions of those who in his eyes had taken Don Juan's proposal seriously.

Although accepting the essential veracity of Castaneda's story, Marvin Harris dedicated a chapter of his Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches (Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches >, 1974) to criticize what he considered low-quality anthropological work, which uncritically admits the emic point of view of the study subject and does not maintain the necessary objectivity of a researcher worthy of such a name. He also criticizes the ideology of the work, which makes its success among the rebels of the Counterculture paradoxical. Harris points out: "Is there a more devastating example of Technocracy than the Yaqui magician, for whom the social problems of his people do not deserve a minute's attention?" regarding a passage described by Castaneda in which (according to Harris) the Yaqui shaman says that some children they saw begging could never be men of knowledge. This, however, is incorrect: it was Castaneda who suggested that begging children lacked a future, while don Juan asserted that those children and Carlos had the same chance of reaching the totality of themselves.

- Do you think that your rich world could help you become a man of knowledge? - [me] asked Don Juan with mild sarcasm (...)

- In other words - he said, smiling frankly, obviously aware that I was aware of his ardid, - can your freedom and your opportunities help you become a man of knowledge? - I said emphatically.

- So how could you pity those kids? - Any of them could become a man of knowledge. All the men of knowledge I know were boys like those you saw eating leftovers and licking tables.

From 1976 onwards several books have been published that question Castaneda's story, considering it a hoax:

Richard de Mille

• Castaneda's Journey: The Power and the Allegory (1976) (in English, "The journey of Castaneda: power and allegory")
• The Don Juan Papers (1980) (in English, "The Papers of Don Juan"). He claims that Don Juan never existed, among other things.

Jay Courtney Fikes

• Carlos Castaneda, Academic Opportunism and the Psychedelic Sixties (1993) (in English, "Carlos Castaneda, academic opportunism and the Sicodelics 1960s"). He suggests that Don Juan could have been invented by combining two or three authentic shamans.

In the opinion of Albert Hofmann, Castaneda «is an excellent writer and knowledgeable about Indian cultures, but all his books, which I have read and appreciate, are not based on direct experience. I want to say that Castaneda did not personally experience the effects of the drugs to which he refers, but that he is based on what others say. And an expert reader gets it. In short, even though it is sublime, his is a literary experience, not a scientific one."

Castaneda used to counterarguing by saying that he wrote about states of mind and perception outside the conventions of usual consciousness and from a "corpus" of traditional knowledge that he defined as sorcery, although it does not correspond to what we conventionally know as such. Thus, his work is not scientific or rational and therefore cannot be framed in anthropology even though, incidentally, it had that origin. All this does not prevent it from being rigorous, exhaustive and even pragmatic in its preparation.

The authenticity of the character of don Juan and the adventures related in the books becomes a secondary issue if the literary value of Castaneda's work is considered exclusively. It must be remembered that, according to Castaneda, a warrior does not believe in anything and does not take anything for granted, so it is possible that his stories are actually fictitious and have the sole purpose of transmitting these teachings. It is up to the reader to evaluate them and decide whether or not to adopt them.

Manuel Carballal

• The Secret Life of Carlos Castaneda: Anthropologist, witch, spy, prophet. The Critical Eye (2018)

Calligraphic expertise that demonstrates Castaneda's identity.

Manuel Carballal, who got to know Castaneda in his later years, carries out in this work the most complete and documented reconstruction of Carlos Castaneda's biography, from his birth certificate (confirmed in Cajamarca in 1925), to his death from cancer in Los Angeles (hidden by his followers, but revealed to the press after the lawsuit filed by his heirs (including his only biological daughter, abandoned in Peru).

After reconstructing his first years in his native country and his departure to the United States, the researcher critically analyzes how the figure of Don Juan Matus was born: a university fieldwork during his studies at UCLA, which after the insistence of Michael Korda, the publisher of Simon & Schuster, is expanded more and more, amalgamating in a single Yaqui sorcerer the words of at least a dozen shamans from different tribes (attributing, for example, the ritual use of peyote by the Huichols with the Yaquis, who were oblivious to its existence), and other ideas of completely foreign influence. The result is a philosophy that, although based on elements actually taken from the folklore of the Mexican northwest, as a whole is the latest creation of Castaneda and his editors.

After the success of the books, Castaneda finds himself surrounded by unexpected fame, and gathers followers, from gurus, his "witches", to followers who accepted practices of a sectarian nature, becoming the center of an authentic religion, Toltec neonahualism, an unintended consequence of his books and his magnetic figure, but finally accepted by his own leader. In his last two decades Castaneda managed groups of followers all over the world, controlling a true multinational called Cleargreen based on the rights of his books and the courses that were made with his authorization, while trying to erase the traces of his past and the reality after the creation of Don Juan Matus.

Carballal in short approaches the figure of the guru without participating in the enthusiasm of the believer, but without falling into simple denial, not taking assumed certainties for granted or inferring from the lack of data that they do not exist.

Related Authors

A direct consequence of Castaneda's success is the appearance of authors who say they handle information about the Yaquis or Nagualism, but said information suffers from the same verifiability problems as Castaneda.

Many other authors have advocated in favor of the author or have been directly influenced by his approaches, even putting his teachings into practice. This is the case of Víctor Sánchez, who in Las Enseñanzas de Don Carlos (1998) elaborates experiences and conducts experiential workshops with work methodologies supposedly based on the pragmatic references of Castaneda's books.

Some authors, such as Domingo Delgado Solorzáno, write writings that are related to Nahualism but also lack verifiability, a frame of reference and even generally use author editions or ghost publishers, Solórzano being an example with El Nahual de Cinco Puntas, author's edition, Michoacán, Mexico (2004); and another by the Brazilian Luis Carlos de Morais Junior, with the book Carlos Castaneda e a Fresta entre os Mundos Vislumbres da Filosofía Ānahuacah no Século XXI (2012).

His companions Taisha Abelar and Florinda Donner-Grau, also disciples of don Juan Matus, have written several books about his apprenticeship. The other classmate of hers is called Carol Tiggs.

Other authors related to Castaneda are Bernard Dubant and Michel Marguerie, both of French nationality, who in 1988 published a book of essays where they review the points they consider most relevant from the first tetralogy and the first book of the following (the Gift of the Eagle), trying to clarify and support such ideas from the review of other sources and mystical traditions. This book is “Castaneda. A leap into the unknown." In 1990 Bernard Dubant wrote a second book on the same subject entitled "Castaneda. The Return to the Spirit", also covering in his argument some passages from "The Internal Fire and Silent Knowledge".

Possible sources and generality

Part of the problem presented by the material in the books is the variable quality and style between one and the other, although there are facts that suggest that the sources are other. For example, the first book, The Teachings of Don Juan, uses the metaphor "path with heart", but the term and context are almost identical to what was written by the samurai Miyamoto Musashi in The Book of the Five Rings, where he literally speaks of the "path of the warrior" and states that it must be carried out to the end.

There are comments about cases of plagiarism in the book Shabono by Florinda Donner-Grau, about verbatim reproduction of entire passages from third parties, and Taisha Abelar uses unverifiable and biased concepts, such as the advice of breathe through the vagina.

Due to the different quality between the writings, major generalizations and probable plagiarism, precautions should be taken against the possibility that the literary material is a compendium. Defending one or two isolated points can never be defending the whole.

It is interesting to mention a conversation between Carlos Cabral and Sunanda Patwardhan, at the headquarters of the International Headquarters of the Theosophical Society, in Adyar, Chennai (Madras), India, in 1989. Sunanda was recovering from an operation in Adyar, invited by Radha Burnier. Sunanda was a trustee of the Krishnamurti Foundation India. In that conversation, upon learning that Carlos Cabral was Mexican, he asked if he knew Carlos Castaneda, the answer was no, and Sunanda added: & # 34;... Castaneda visited Krishnamurti several times to consult him about his novels... & # 3. 4; To which C Cabral asked: "So, are they novels, fiction?" Sunanda replied, "Yes, of course, I would visit him to discuss his novels." There are several analogies between the novels and J Krishnamurti, to mention an example: The "not doing" de Castaneda has a similarity with the "see without the idea" of Krishnamurti.