Letters to the Editor
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A successful life?
Well Aquaman2 if that is your real name, I can tell you last I knew of she left all her old friends who also loved her behind with no explanation and was estranged from her family still the last I knew of. All this to be the inheritor of a serial mindfucker's fortune?
I guess we have a different idea of successful life. I guess it could be worse though. She could have been a Republican on top of it.
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Mike,
I do get that the guy was a slime, and believe me, I don’t think he was right to do what he did. I am sorry that Caren was hurting, and rather than finding help she found a group of users. Personally, I don’t think you let her down, because it sounds to me that everyone who knew and loved her did what they could, but the situation was beyond everyone’s ability. You couldn't know how some books on your shelf might influence her. A very sad story.
And I realize others have gone through this, too. One of the reasons my first post compared him to Salinger is that in many ways Salinger has practiced the same sort of emotional abuse on the people in his life. He just didn’t use religious terms or re-name his female companions to initiate them as “witches.” Some men, to put it simply, are abusive assholes.
It’s just interesting to me that Castaneda didn’t seem to take money or coerce these people. There was money made through the seminars, but that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the inner cult. I’m not even sure “cult” is the right term. It sounds more like emotional abuse or, to use a tired clichéd phrase, co-dependant relationships. Taken to the extreme.
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Sad Searchers...
Well, the result of witnessing the LaRouches and Rajneeshees and even simple New Agers or Christians through my life is that I have a strong distaste for searchers.
All we need is right infront of us. We are born. We Die. We are material, temporary. The world is a gorgeous place all on its own. You just have to open your eyes to the small everyday details. Humming birds, sandwiches, trees, books, whatever. That's it. Isn't that enough?
...Oh my god I've gone soft here, hey I could start my own cult!
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thanks everyone, i thought the who thing was a hoax (too much like the manson girls etc)
but it wasn't. it really happened again. in my whole life i only met one person who was in a cult. she was really pretty. they all were celibate in that cult. i asked her if she didn't want to get married and have children. she looked really sad but it didn't work(i was going to take her away from all that). ahh too bad. here's something especially for ivanveen, Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens; Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens; Brown paper packages tied up with strings.
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Successful Life?
Great to hear from you Amy Wallace! I read "Sorcerers' Apprentice" twice. From the sound of your book, Carlos made life exciting for the inner group, including you, and Nyei. You all were not mindless followers looking for someone to exploit you. You (and they) were intelligent people who found a rare genius in Carlos. He eventually went overboard, but that was the price you all had to pay for the excitement.
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An Allegory for Reality
Recently, while I was laid up with knee surgery, I reread Castenada's first book, "The Teachings of Don Juan" and happened to read the "Forward" to the book. Unfortunately, after looking around for awhile, I can't find my copy of it now, so if anyone wants to look this up to confirm or deny, that would be a help. Anyway, I believe it's written by the then head of the anthropology department at UCLA and says something about the book being written in the tradition of "ethnographic allegory" in anthropology. The basic concept is a presentation of ideas by stories, myths, or parables. I always thought it odd no one says too much about this. No one reads “forwards” perhaps? Although, I believe that Castenada was asked about this as allegory and never denied it. Now one could question if the idea was Don Juan was teaching him in allegory or is the Castenada's story an allegory, or both? A book that I found that actually discusses some of Castenada's work, including ethnographic allegory in anthropology, is "Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography". Ethnography is all about seeing through another culture's experience and meanings and not fitted into western culture's notions.
During the early 1990s, I studied traditional shamanism of different cultures and had the good luck to work a little bit with a traditional indian healer (a Cuendero) from Panama (I believe). I was fascinated with it because of some extremely lucid dreaming that I used to do. At one point, working with her and some other in some energy work involving sound and energy vortices, I closed my eyes and saw rainbow colors emanating from my chakras. Actually, I saw them "blow" out because of the sounds and my body actually raised up off of the pad I was lying on when they "blew". It's funny, because up until that time, I didn't really believe in chakras and the cuendero wasn't interested in them. That night, after I got into bed and turned off the lights, I noticed pale pastel streamers of light emanating out from my body in all directions. They were maybe a foot long and an inch or two apart. You couldn't see them in the light, but you could see them in the dark. And I was sober as a nun. It was eerie. I stayed up until they faded away. And I never saw them again. I told the healer about it and she was nonchalant about it.
Now, weirdly enough, I would take anyone relating that story to me with a grain of salt and maybe at an unconscious level I bought into some hype (at the time I was shocked at my experience), whatever, because I can tell you the experiences were as real to me as writing this. If they were an illusion, they were a hell of an illusion. So, personally, I think Castenada's first couple of books are factual in that he was relating his experience as a western culture man being forced to deal with this switch to seeing reality through another culture's "eyes". I think that just because of the clueless way that he stumbles through them. The books after that get more "glossy" and I think take on a life of their own (or the publisher's) although I think they are absolutely fascinating. I tend to think of them as dream realities, which makes much more sense. But I never really thought too much about them being real and I never really cared. They were a good game.
I'm sure Castenada got really stupid crazy later on along in his life with his followers, but even followers must take responsibility for following. They were adults and they made a choice. Leaders notoriously seduce followers but the followers MAKE the leader (remember that next election). And as far as this article goes, my philosophy has always been that you can never really know what went on if you weren't there, so the truth is probably somewhere in the middle of what's being related. I think if anything the message Castanada intended to leave, fiction or nonfiction, is that reality's not exactly what you think it is. And for myself, I think he succeeded. Reading his books opened up my eyes to seeing the world in new ways and looking at how I think about things from many different views. If the price for that is that someone thinks I'm crazy, foolish, “snookered”, etc. Done. Price paid.
P.S. I was a hippy, too. Rocked my world! Wouldn't trade that experience for anything.