Letters to the Editor
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i think you write really well, Mike Jackson
no, i don't know what you should do, except, maybe pursue it.
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Mike,
I know this is going to sound unkind, and I don't mean for it to, but did occur to you that if it hadn't have been Castaneda, it would have been someone else? I'm sorry for what happened to this girl you loved, but I suspect she would have given herself to another charleton in his absence.
I keep noticing no one was coerced, subjected to mind controlling drugs, deprived of sleep or food, in an effort to brainwash them. The girls (and a few guys) were willing. They wanted to give their power away. They kept making a choice.
Makes it very hard to hold Castaneda responsible, or put him in the same camp with the Moonies, Jim Jones, etc. He doesn't seem to have deprived anyone of their freedom. They did that themselves. He's comes across as a dick, but if people want to follow, they'll follow.
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A Yankee Way of Knowledge
Just thought I'd draw everyone's attention to Donald Barthelme's very funny send-up of this whole "don Juan" business that dates, if I'm not mistaken, from the late sixties: "The Teachings of Don B: A Yankee Way of Knowledge".
But, laughs aside: The point made above by kenkapkk, about the negligible difference between Castaneda's bullshit and Joseph Smith's prophecy, is well taken. Also his point about whether the historical Jesus ever existed being largely irrelevant, from the perspective of a particular kind of Christianity (my own, for instance). Still, none of this is to say that Castaneda's hoaxterism is somehow the equivalent of the more established religions. What sets the Judeo-Christian-Islamic triumvirate (and of course Hinduism, Buddhism, and other eastern religious traditions) apart from minor cults is precisely the fact that they managed to establish themselves historically, and by doing so, to build up a lively and diverse tradition in which entire societies are able to understand themselves and the world. The difference can be put down to an accident of history, of course, but that doesn't make it any less relevant.
To go back to J. Smith for a moment: If Mormonism looks kooky to a lot people right now, that's partly because it's relatively young and still in a very dogmatic and doctrinaire stage of its development. It's basically fundamentalist and literalist, in other words. If it survives for another few hundred years, there's at least a chance that it will enter the phase of self-questioning and self-reinterpretation that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (yes, Islam, too) all entered into long ago.
For the record, I'll say Castaneda's books are pretty laughable (although they certainly had me going, when I was fifteen or sixteen), but I also don't think the division between cult and religion can be drawn in sharp lines. As I said a moment ago, it generally takes a long time to say about these things. (But God help our great-grandchildren's great-grandchildren if this Scientology business starts getting taken seriously by people other than desperately self-obsessed Hollywood types....)
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On Fiction vs. Non-Fiction
I don't have much tolerance for the JT Leroys of the world. And thought James Frey did in fact state at the front of his book that some things had been altered from what actually occurred, he seems to be a sham, too.
But Castaneda's use of Don Juan reminds me more of another writer in history: Plato. We don't have a clue if, and many people strongly suspect that, Socrates never said the things attributed to him. It is possible that Plato put his own philosophy into Socrates's mouth because it was safer than owning the ideas himself (and risking imprisonment and hemlock).
And, really, we can't prove there was no Don Juan, or if perhaps Don Juan is an amalgamation of people spouting various philosoophies. To use a less auspicious example than Plato, Shirley MacLaine made her various teachers into one reappearing character in Out on a Limb. In her various books, she describes out of body experiences, spiritual beings guiding and even physically aiding her, and a face-to-face encounter with her androgynous "Higher Self."
No one's calling for Plato or MacLaine to be repackaged as fiction. I really don't get why Castaneda's works should be treated differently. Exactly how seriously do people take the New Age selections that fill the "Mataphysics" shelves of their bookstores?
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Was/Is Bob Dylan a hippie?
For all of you who have figured it All out, were here when time began so should know, and are now the knowers of who the fools may or may not be:
"Everyones got to serve some one" - Bob Dylan
Who's your master?
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Who's responsible?
It is a good point and one well taken Christopher1988 that the people that join cults do so 'willingly', but really it's groups that prey upon weak and lost people that use tried and true tricks to cull them from the herd, bring them under their power and keep them there. Caren needed help in ways no one, not me or her family and friends realized. We let her down, but Carlos and company preyed upon her when they knew what she was I think. A lost person.
The main difference between religion in general and cults in particular is the intent of the particular leaders. By and large religions don't have that much specific ill intent, they just screw the world up in big brush strokes of irrationality.
Caren and many like her in any cult found traditional religion wanting, but then for whatever reason still wanted to be 'special'. I'm not certain anymore but I think Caren's parents were Catholic. I grew up surrounded by the Southern Baptist revenge fantasy of Christianity that essentially is the same crap in a different wrapper that Jews and Muslims ascribe to whereby this world may be a world of shit but there is some sort of god that will make all my enemies suffer eternal damnation forever and ever and ever, Amen, Hosanna and Allahu Akbar!
That covers Hell so what's the difference between here and Heaven? Here the streets are paved with asphalt and they fill your teeth with gold, in Heaven it's the opposite. Truthfully it was probably this sort of attitude that Caren couldn't stand about me.
Another essential part of the susceptibility to cults I would think is that most anyone, religious or not, if you ask them “Are you a spiritual person?” they will say yes and go on to blather about what being “spiritual” means to them because after all who doesn't want to be spiritual?
That's the thing though be it cult or religion. Everyone wants to be special. Spiritual is really just a nonsensical idea of being caring and worthy and special but it really doesn't mean very much.
To what absurd ends will you take being spiritual? Is ALL life so sacred you don't spray for cockroaches? What about bugs on your windshield? Is it okay if the coyote eats your cat?
Are you really in touch with the mystic meaning of the Universe or is that just mercury vapors from your fillings nattering away?
Carlos still snookers people because he repackaged a lot of the spiritual and mystical claptrap that others before him had ginned out. He was a really as best I can gleam as close as one can get to a real demon of sorts. He didn't kill millions but he helped people derail their whole lives for his own petty personal gain.
If only there were really a Hell so guys like him could burn in it. As it is he made a clean getaway.