Carlos Castaneda

[moralist]

My wife's book, "Filming Castaneda", has more current pictures of Carlos and the gang.

Greg,

Is this your wife writing? Gaby Geuter, by name.

Yes. She writes under Gaby Geuter a shortened version of her maiden name, Gabi Geuther, but that is not her with Carlos in those pictures. That woman was called the Orange Scout. In reference to the bolding, we've been married for 16 years.

Greg

[Ellen Stuttle]

http://www.filmingcastaneda.com/5.html

Castaneda held a special place in my heart, the door to the wilderness of my soul, where the rules of the ordinary world do not apply.

[....]

Clearing the hill, we are suddenly confronted by the dunes [...]. A dramatic death, alone, at the foot of a grandiose pyramid was just like Nuri, the spoiled child. Did you think you could join Carlos?

[....]

[...] the few women that took care of him. Florinda, the blond ebullient author of three books, Taisha, the subdued but brilliant orator, Kylie, the steely-minded movement instructor, and Talia, the devoted director of his latest business venture. Within days of Castanedas inglorious death the women closed their bank accounts, gave their jewelry away, destroyed their credit cards and disappeared. Nobody has seen them since. The estate lawyer portents she has not been dispersing any shares to the missing women. In the official statements the witches are overseeing the workshops that are still held by the remaining disciples. From beyond the dunes?

I'm reminded of "Picnic at Hanging Rock" - imdb link.

Jonathan, did you ever see that movie?

It's a stupendous bit of creating mystery with camera glimpses (needs a big screen, I think, for the effect).

The disappearance of Castaneda's "witches" sounds just as if they went off into a desert area and died, feeling that their lives held nothing for them with him gone. Not the mysterious quality of the "Picnic" tale, but it brought the movie to mind.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

I'm also reminded of Rand's developing the cold that led to her death through hastily going out in inclement weather without a coat in order to Zerox a photo that reminded her of Frank. See Eloise Huggin's story in 100 Voices.

Ellen

[moralist]

The disappearance of Castaneda's "witches" sounds just as if they went off into a desert area and died, feeling that their lives held nothing for them with him gone.

That's the most likely because Patti did the same, alone. The other four missing women, Florinda and Taisha,and Kylie and Talia,.were paired off. I believe Patti was alone because she was favored by Carlos, and so was not generally well liked by the other four.

And odd coincidence... I just heard on the news that the bones of four bodies were discovered out in the desert near Victorville. Although it's highly unlikely it's them because they were in shallow graves. Kylie was heard publicly to say that if Carlos didn't take her with him, she would die.

Sort of a female version of Dolph Lundgren, and the most fiercely loyal to Carlos. He had poor vision so she was his driver/bodyguard.

Our encounters with Carlos and the gang were not without some strangeness. I suppose one of the more odd experiences was when I was working in the San Fernando Valley and happened to drive by a book store. What caught my attention was that the red neon "Bookstar" sign was not only on in broad daylight, but was also erratically blinking. Taking it as an an omen, I followed it. And when I went into the book store, there was Kylie crouched down low in the back corner looking at a book on drug addiction. We already knew each other from the classes, and talked briefly. She asked me how I found her, and I explained about the sign. The weird part is that Kylie did not live anywhere near the San Fernando Valley. She lived many miles away in Westwood near Carlos' house. The odds on this occurrence were very long to say the least.

Greg

[Jonathan]

Same here. Regardless of his personal life, he was a good writer. Tens of millions of readers enjoyed his books, and we saw the six figure royalty check stubs to prove it.

That's not proof. That's not the way that proof works.

Royalty checks and numbers of readers don't prove that the readers enjoyed an author's books, thought of him as a good writer, or believed that he was entertaining and talented enough to have been a successful television talk show host. After all, I'm one of the "tens of millions" of readers that you're citing, and I've already said that I wasn't impressed by him or his writing.

I and tens of millions of people have also read other authors who we discovered, via buying and reading their books, that we didn't value their ideas, writing abilities or personalities. For example, millions of people have purchase and read Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto, but that doesn't mean that they "enjoyed" the books.

See, the way that reading works is that people don't know if they're going to like an author's work prior to reading it, so the fact that someone has read a book isn't proof that they adored the author and loved the book so much prior to reading it that they decided to show how much they loved it by buying it and reading it.

J

[Jonathan]

I'm reminded of "Picnic at Hanging Rock" - imdb link.

Jonathan, did you ever see that movie?

It's a stupendous bit of creating mystery with camera glimpses (needs a big screen, I think, for the effect).

No, I haven't seen it. I'll put it on my to-watch list.

J

[Selene]

Our encounters with Carlos and the gang were not without some strangeness. I suppose one of the more odd experiences was when I was working in the San Fernando Valley and happened to drive by a book store. What caught my attention was that the red neon "Bookstar" sign was not only on in broad daylight, but was also erratically blinking. Taking it as an an omen, I followed it. And when I went into the book store, there was Kylie crouched down low in the back corner looking at a book on drug addiction. We already knew each other from the classes, and talked briefly. She asked me how I found her, and I explained about the sign. The weird part is that Kylie did not live anywhere near the San Fernando Valley. She lived many miles away in Westwood near Carlos' house. The odds on this occurrence were very long to say the least.

Greg

Coincidence, when traced back far enough, becomes inevitable.

One of the more powerful thought quotes that I have ever embraced...

[Ellen Stuttle]

I'm reminded of "Picnic at Hanging Rock" - imdb link.

Jonathan, did you ever see that movie?

It's a stupendous bit of creating mystery with camera glimpses (needs a big screen, I think, for the effect).

No, I haven't seen it. I'll put it on my to-watch list.

J

Darn. I was hoping you'd seen it. What about "The Last Wave" - imdb link? That's also directed by Peter Weir, and also gets into strange territories of the psyche. "Picnic" affects me more personally, but I think both those movies are brilliant. Also his "Fearless," though that isn't "strange" in the way the other two are (imdb link).

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

I and tens of millions of people have also read other authors who we discovered, via buying and reading their books, that we didn't value their ideas, writing abilities or personalities. For example, millions of people have purchase and read Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto, but that doesn't mean that they "enjoyed" the books.

And Atlas Shrugged, and The Fountainhead, and...

Ellen

[moralist]

Our encounters with Carlos and the gang were not without some strangeness. I suppose one of the more odd experiences was when I was working in the San Fernando Valley and happened to drive by a book store. What caught my attention was that the red neon "Bookstar" sign was not only on in broad daylight, but was also erratically blinking. Taking it as an an omen, I followed it. And when I went into the book store, there was Kylie crouched down low in the back corner looking at a book on drug addiction. We already knew each other from the classes, and talked briefly. She asked me how I found her, and I explained about the sign. The weird part is that Kylie did not live anywhere near the San Fernando Valley. She lived many miles away in Westwood near Carlos' house. The odds on this occurrence were very long to say the least.

Greg

Coincidence, when traced back far enough, becomes inevitable.

One of the more powerful thought quotes that I have ever embraced...

That's a superb quote!

There's such sublime grace and beauty in the choreography of causality.

And just because we don't see the connections doesn't mean they aren't there.

Greg

[moralist]

Carlos' bait was entertainment and a charismatic personality. He easily could of had his own late night television talk show, because he was actually that good.

I doubt that.

It's ok for you to doubt, because I actually knew him personally and you did not.

Greg

[Selene]

Carlos' bait was entertainment and a charismatic personality. He easily could of had his own late night television talk show, because he was actually that good.

I doubt that.

It's ok for you to doubt, because I actually knew him personally and you did not.

Greg

Hmm, just like folks who met, Barbara, Frank, Nathaniel and Ayn, ...

[Mikee]

Carlos' bait was entertainment and a charismatic personality. He easily could of had his own late night television talk show, because he was actually that good.

I doubt that.

It's ok for you to doubt, because I actually knew him personally and you did not.

Greg

I'm inclined to agree with Jonathan, because if I'm right about the psychology of people like Castaneda they only work to a specific audience. The fact that you were there for a long time and knew him personally supports Jonathan's view not the other way around.

I didn't mean starting this thread for it to be about him being a celebrity. I despise Castaneda, I was never interested in his garbage and I think he harmed a lot of people. Saying he's a good writer and tells a good yarn doesn't take anything away from the fact that he was a liar and a con man. He was aided by a university system perfectly willing to vet his fantasy's as non-fiction, allowing perhaps tens of thousands of weak minded people to go off the rails believing it as fact. Am I correct that academics are the most susceptible to crap like this? Hocus pocus disguised as a scientific study? No wonder Ayn Rand got so frustrated. I knew someone who adored CC, gave me his book, I read a few pages and said "no thanks". This guy was a karate instructor. One day when I dropped by he was in a lotus position meditating wearing a tin foil pyramid on his head. He seriously told me about the "energy" he felt collected and pulled into his body from the "hat". That's the kind of person that falls for this. I swear that's a true story. You don't need to present fantasy to weak minded people passed on as fact, "non-fiction", by a university.

I was interested in the psychology of how the targets are culled from the herd and inculcated into the cult. Something like NLP? What does he see? And how does he get their ego's wrapped around believing his fantasies?

[moralist]

I despise Castaneda,

Thanks for making your view crystal clear. No one could doubt those words.

I didn't hate Carlos because from what I saw, he didn't do anything to anyone who didn't first freely choose to grant him their sanction. And even though I played a minor part in one of the young women getting out, that was because she wanted to get out. The rest were more than willing to stick with him right to the very end...

...and to this day, they are still holding Castaneda seminars all over the world.

Greg

[moralist]

Carlos' bait was entertainment and a charismatic personality. He easily could of had his own late night television talk show, because he was actually that good.

I doubt that.

It's ok for you to doubt, because I actually knew him personally and you did not.

Greg

Hmm, just like folks who met, Barbara, Frank, Nathaniel and Ayn, ...

Never met any of them... although Ayn Rand once lived 10 miles from me.

Greg

[Selene]

It's ok for you to doubt, because I actually knew him personally and you did not.

Greg

Hmm, just like folks who met, Barbara, Frank, Nathaniel and Ayn, ...

Never met any of them... although Ayn Rand once lived 10 miles from me.

Greg

Cannot speak for anyone that was in the "collective."

I interviewed Nathan.

Prior to my interview with Nathan, I had deep reservations about the "movement."

[Ellen Stuttle]

Here's an overview of the early history of the "don Juan" tale, from "Straight Dope."

I found this while trying to find information on whether UCLA rescinded Castaneda's doctorate. I can't remember if they did or didn't.

The reference to anthropology professor Walter Goldschmidt's "enthusiastic foreword" made me curious to see if that foreword is in the copy of Teachings I have. So I went down to the basement and dug out the book. The foreword is there. It's only a couple pages, so I'll copy it in another post.

link

Did Carlos Castaneda hallucinate that stuff in the Don Juan books or make it up?

June 21, 2002

Dear Cecil:

What's the deal with Carlos Castaneda and The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge? I always thought he was just a nut job who ate too many mushrooms. But now I hear that the whole thing is fiction. Did Castaneda ever go to Mexico and eat peyote with an old Indian? Are any of his books true? Or is the whole thing completely made up?

Brian P.

Carlos Castaneda. I've been waiting for this one for a long time.

At least you frame the question properly. Except for a few lost souls, nobody really thinks that Castaneda turned into a crow, flew, fought with a diablera (witch) for his soul, etc. The issue is whether he hallucinated these events or simply invented them. There will always be disagreement, but the smart money is on the latter.

Teachings, published in 1968 by the University of California Press, purports to be the first-person account of a UCLA anthropology student who meets an old man named Juan Matus at a bus station on the Mexican border while on a field trip looking for medicinal plants. The student, Carlos Castaneda, strikes up a friendship with the old man, who eventually reveals himself to be a Yaqui Indian sorcerer. Don Juan decides to make Castaneda his apprentice and teach him the ways of a "man of knowledge." This consists mainly of giving cryptic answers to Castaneda's naive questions and instructing him in the use of hallucinogenic plants--peyote, jimsonweed, and a mushroom possibly containing psilocybin. One of these plants will become Castaneda's "ally," Don Juan says, and help him see the world as it is. (This theme, only hinted at in Teachings, is developed in later books.) Under Don Juan's tutelage, Castaneda takes several drug trips, which are alternately exhilarating and terrifying. Although he makes progress, he eventually becomes too frightened to continue his training. The story breaks off in 1965.

Despite its bizarre subject matter, the book is written in a lucid, matter-of-fact style that makes it believable. Each of Castaneda's encounters with Don Juan is precisely dated, and Don Juan's words are recounted in detail. The accounts of drug trips ring true. There's even a turgid "structural analysis" at the end, supporting the idea that this is a legit work of scholarship.

Appearing at the height of the psychedelic 60s, the book struck a chord and became a best-seller. It was followed by A Separate Reality (1971), Journey to Ixtlan (1972), and many others. These books were taken with surprising seriousness by the academic community: Walter Goldschmidt, a senior professor of anthropology at UCLA, wrote an enthusiastic foreword to Teachings, and when Castaneda submitted Journey to Ixtlan under a different title as his doctoral dissertation, UCLA awarded him a PhD.

But doubts soon surfaced. Experts pointed out that Don Juan's "teachings" bore little resemblance to actual Yaqui Indian religious beliefs. Hallucinogenic mushrooms didn't grow in the Sonoran Desert, where Don Juan supposedly lived. Anyone who'd gone walking for hours in the desert at the hottest time of the day, as Castaneda claimed he and Don Juan had done, would surely have died of sunstroke.

The precisely rendered dialogue, which lends credibility at first, has the opposite effect when the books are read in succession--no one could have accurately recorded so much talk without a tape recorder, which Castaneda says he was forbidden to use. Don Juan's manner changes from book to book. In Teachings he is stern, but in later books that cover much of the same time period he makes jokes and uses English colloquialisms, even though Castaneda says he spoke only Spanish. At one point Don Juan makes a pun on "pulling your leg" that would make sense only if he were speaking English. Richard de Mille, who wrote two books debunking Castaneda's work, prepared timelines of the first three books showing that their events couldn't plausibly have occurred in the order stated.

Skeptics demanded proof that Don Juan existed. Apart from 12 pages of "field notes," which apparently were from an early draft of the books, no such proof was forthcoming. Journalists discovered that Castaneda was a habitual teller of tall tales who, among other things, falsified his family background and his place and date of birth. Many early admirers were offended when he turned to the occult in his later work. Before his death from cancer in 1998 he gave $600-a-head seminars on "Tensegrity," full of New Age nonsense about "600 locations in the luminous egg of man."

Castaneda's apologists say it doesn't matter, the books contain deep truths. Fine, they contain deep truths. Nonetheless, after you review the evidence, the only reasonable conclusion is that Castaneda was a con man and his books are a hoax.

--Cecil Adams

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge

Foreword

This book is both ethnography and allegory.

Carlos Castaneda, under the tutelage of don Juan, takes us through that moment of twilight, through that crack in the universe between daylight and dark into a world not merely other than our own, but of an entirely different order of reality. To reach it he had the aid of mescalito, yerba del diablo, and humito - peyote, datura, and mushrooms. But this is no mere recounting of hallucinatory experiences, for don Juan's subtle manipulations have guided the traveler while his interpretations give meaning to the events that we, through the sorcerer's apprentice, have the opportunity to experience.

Anthropology has taught us that the world is differently defined in different places. It is not only that people have different customs; it is not only that people believe in different gods and expect different post-mortem fates. It is, rather, that the worlds of different peoples have different shapes. The very metaphysical presuppositions differ: space does not conform to Euclidian geometry, time does not form a continuous unidirectional flow, causation does not conform to Aristotelean logic, man is not differentiated from non-man or life from death, as in our world.

We know something of the shape of these other worlds from the logic of native languages and from myths and ceremonies, as recorded by anthropologists. Don Juan has shown us glimpses of the world of a Yaqui sorcerer, and because we see it under the influence of hallucinogenic substances, we apprehend it with a reality that is utterly different from those other sources. This is the special virtue of this work.

Castaneda rightly asserts that this world, for all its differences of perception, has its own inner logic. He has tried to explain it from inside, as it were - from within his own rich and intensely personal experiences while under don Juan's tutelage - rather than to examine it in terms of our logic. That he cannot entirely succeed in this is a limitation that our culture and our own language place on perception, rather than his personal limitation; yet in his efforts he bridges for us the world of a Yaqui sorcerer with our own, the world of non-ordinary reality with ordinary reality.

The central importance of entering into worlds other than our own - and hence of anthropology itself - lies in the fact that the experience leads us to understand that our own world is also a cultural construct. By experiencing other worlds, then, we see our own for what it is and are thereby enabled also to see fleetingly what the real world, the one between our own cultural construct and those other worlds, must in fact be like.

Hence the allegory, as well as the ethnography. The wisdom and poetry of don Juan, and the skill and poetry of his scribe, give us a vision both of ourselves and of reality. As in all proper allegory, what one sees lies with the beholder, and needs no exegesis here.

Carlos Castaneda's interviews with don Juan were initiated while he was a student of anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. We are indebted to him for his patience, his courage, and his perspicacity in seeking out and facing the challenge of his dual apprenticeship, and in reporting to us the details of his experiences. In this work he demonstrates the essential skill of good ethnography - the capacity to enter into an alien world. I believe he has found a path with heart.

Walter Goldschmidt

Ellen

[moralist]

I found this while trying to find information on whether UCLA rescinded Castaneda's doctorate. I can't remember if they did or didn't.

They didn't... and they never will.

There are no more spinless moral cowards than liberal government funded academics.

To invalidate Carlos' Doctorate, they'd first have to admit to being stupid enough to have granted it in the first place.

Greg

[Ellen Stuttle]

I found this while trying to find information on whether UCLA rescinded Castaneda's doctorate. I can't remember if they did or didn't.

They didn't... and they never will.

Are you sure they didn't? I'd appreciate documentation.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Prior to my interview with Nathan, I had deep reservations about the "movement."

When was your interview? Did the interview counteract your reservations? Confirm them? A mixture?

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

I was interested in the psychology of how the targets are culled from the herd and inculcated into the cult. Something like NLP? What does he see? And how does he get their ego's wrapped around believing his fantasies?

The situation with Castaneda's "witches" sounds to me more like they were choosing him, they wanted to be his "helpmates."

A movie you might find worth watching is "Surviving Picasso" - imdb link.

Ellen

[Selene]

Prior to my interview with Nathan, I had deep reservations about the "movement."

When was your interview? Did the interview counteract your reservations? Confirm them? A mixture?

Ellen

It was 1967-68. The interview confirmed my perceptions. Additionally, he seemed to me to be under a lot of pressure. Looking back now I can fully understand why.

[Mikee]

I was interested in the psychology of how the targets are culled from the herd and inculcated into the cult. Something like NLP? What does he see? And how does he get their ego's wrapped around believing his fantasies?

The situation with Castaneda's "witches" sounds to me more like they were choosing him, they wanted to be his "helpmates."

A movie you might find worth watching is "Surviving Picasso" - imdb link.

Ellen

Ellen,

"Helpmates". Like they knew (or sensed) he was disassociated from reality and wanted to protect him? Sort of a mothers' instinct? Interesting. I'll check out "Surviving Picasso". Thank you very much for your comment and link.

-Mike E.

[moralist]

I found this while trying to find information on whether UCLA rescinded Castaneda's doctorate. I can't remember if they did or didn't.

They didn't... and they never will.

Are you sure they didn't? I'd appreciate documentation.

Ellen

Yes, I'm sure... even though there is no documentation for something that was not done. If his Doctorate was revoked, we would certainly have known because we were privy to their home and office communications.

Greg