Letters to the Editor
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Castaneda was a hack
Which is the best evidence that Don Juan, in some form or another, actually existed. As another commenter noted, it's possible Carlos met the man he calls Don Juan, invented enough bogus material about him to comply with his requests for anonymity, and then proceeded to muck up perfectly good wisdom with his own creepy New Age nostrums.
The Jefferson Bible is the product of Thomas Jefferson's belief that the NT contains pearls of wisdom "as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill." This is the case with Castaneda's first 3 books. After that Castaneda went out of his way to force what he'd been taught to match his own desires for fame and a way out of dying. In fact, all you have to do is read what Don Juan says about death, and compare it to the contortions Carlos goes through in the later books to convince himself that Don Juan secretly meant you can avoid it, to know Carlos misses entirely the primary lesson of his friend "Don Juan." By the time tensegrity came around Carlos was completely immersed in a world of complete bullshit.
But that's pretty much what Don Juan told him would happen to him.