Letters to the Editor
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Semtex
To take a simple example: Would you agree with the idea that it might be fruitful to recognize our own mortality so as to inform the necessity to act as opposed to behaving as though we had all the time in the world? Let me try to relate it to something you may have seen on a T-shirt or in a movie: Carpe Diem - Seize the Day. It's not a big idea or novel idea, but perhaps one you are familiar with and would agree is good advice - a useful concept - perhaps you'd even go so far as to say it's "true."
Castanada's early books contain a similar concept: using death as an advisor. But let us suppose that the chapter on death as an advisor is pure fiction - Don Juan never uttered words about this subject to Carlos. And let's further imagine that Carlos instead got the idea from a book in the library or seeing an early draft of the screenplay for Dead Poets Society. Does any of that effect the usefulness of the concept of seizing the day? Does any of it make the concept "untrue?"