Letters to the Editor
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What a Drag
I ate this allo up when I was 20, 21, 22, 23. Read them all. Felt deep. Anthropology was my favorite subject by far in college. I thought that this guy was brilliant. It's been years since I have thought About Carlos but after multiple "Groovy/Crazy/Melty" experiences in my youth I really did think that the guy may have found a vein...a path - even if it was somewhat stretched in the telling. Scary really. I guess that this is actually an example of strength in numbers....By the way - who owns the royalties now?
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A minor cult leader but an interesting story of fraud
What I find interesting about this story is the complicity of the UC system in publishing and profiting from this work. What does this say about the "integrity" of our academia? I read the Don Juan books when I was in Junior High. I eventually abandoned them as the internal login fell apart due to inconsistencies. I had read a lot of Science Fiction and Comic books and the one thing you learn is the internal rules, however ludicrious, have to remain consistent.
As a cult leader Catandeda seems to have had a very devestating impact on his inner circle but that his influence is a joke compared to more accomplished practitioners like L. Ron Hubbard. Scientology claims more than 8 million members. And their back story is not nearly as well written as Castaneda's.
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it's not in human nature to be emotionally satisfied with a purely materialistic worldview
if insistence upon this approach is the only response to the problem of religion then things will continue as they are and always have been. I don't know what the answer is and I know that the irrationality of all religions and religious types of belief systems presents huge problems, but prudery in this area, like in others, won't address the underlying issues.
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I read Carlos Castaneda in college too
And I thought it was complete horseshit back then. But it was kind of cool to read while stoned. So I remember those days too. And there were hippies in every small town in America for a long time after 1971. It wasn't just some San Francisco thing--it went all across the country and in some ways it never really went away.
For all the talk of love and magic, there was a decidedly selfish streak to the hippies, as very well seen in this story. And they were quite brainless as well, so many were fully primed to be exploited--also as well seen in this story. This is a story of exploiting people in name of spirituality, and that's a pretty gross thing.
The problem with the hippies is that they were thoughtless. They did what they felt like doing and they thought things would just turn out OK. They thought with their hearts, not with their brains. And Bush is just the same way today. He's running the Iraq war on no other basis than what makes him feel good. He thinks with his heart, not his brain. And the country is also like that; we think with our hearts, not with our brains. Unfortunately, our hearts are stupid, as hearts always are. Hearts can never be smart because hearts are always selfish.
The hippies were just a little more advanced in their selfishness and thoughtlessness than the rest of society at the time. Now we've caught up and we're a perfectly stupid, selfish country splashing in a hot tub, oblivous to the house falling down around us. We're not thinking of the future, we're not taking care of our kids. We're just consuming things, getting wasted, and jumping fences and invading other people's countries. When other people don't like how we behave, we whine about it. That's hippie behavior all the way through.
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So like you're the only true individual on the planet nerdnam?
So I get it -- you're one of those people who only know how to say I, we and they.
Of course, how else can you communicate other than through broad generalizations about entire groups of people at a time?
But Castenada had nothing to do with hippies. New Age does not equal hippie.
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filling a mythos void
When I was in high school, and me and my friends began experimenting with various drugs (largely pot and beer when it came down to it, with some acid and mushrooms sprinkled in) most of the information we had was either mindlessly hysterical propaganda condemning all recreational drug use (while hypocritically not condemning alcohol), or mildly helpful in a clinically informational manner.
Then Castaneda shows up with this brilliant mythology. The unpredictable Promethian coyote trickster. No wonder he was popular! And even though I gave up all the drugs years ago, I can't give up the idea that the Castaneda books filled a gap in the mythos of our culture, giving us a more satisfying rationale for psychedelic exploration than just wanting to party. (Ram Das did the same thing in "Be Here Now," only with more integrity).
No doubt, the Castaneda books were centered around a fascination with power, ultimately a dark obsession. They never broke through to the profundity of compassionate giving.
On the other hand, our culture could stand a bit more in the way of exploring irrational, dreamlike states, the creative non-conformist consciousness. (though perhaps ironically, I think the West is ahead of the East in this regard)...
There is so much focus on the materialistic, and a need for an intimate experience of something greater than the world we see and hear.
I no longer believe drugs are necessary to reach that place, but it's easy to see why people try to get there that way, and never really reach it because they know they're looking for something, only they're not sure what.
We know that part of the story is missing, but what is it?
Coelho looks similar on the surface (e.g. "The Alchemist") but just not the same.
That's void we could really use a mythos to fill -- which I think is why people hesitate to condemn Castaneda. Whatever else you can say about him, he took a step in the right direction.
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As a black man who knew nothing about this stuff,...
...as I came out of the ghetto, I find all this fascinating. Anybody who thinks this nonsense is "gone" is dreaming - it's almost the only "white" culture I know, besides the Christian goody-goody stuff. Nobody seems willing to call it what it is: a cult.
Everyone's been trying to convince me that there's "no reality" since I first encountered white people - and rejecting me because I never believed it. (You can't get stabbed in a gang fight and believe there's no reality.) Now I see new age everywhere - in "Head-On" commercials, on "Oprah", in the homeopathic treatments sold in health stores, accupuncture, reiki, and all the rest.
It's like the "path" I'm on - for knowledge - is wasted in this culture. When PBS tries to convince us of "energy" and "qi" - without anyone saying it's bullshit - well, life is cheapened. Someone, earlier, wrote something like life isn't worth it without "More!" but, in truth, your desire for this kind of "More!" just makes life seem worth less to me.
The worst part is trying to relate how the world looks to me with so many believers around. With a whole culture steeped in this nonsense. I've seen it kill people. Destroy lives. How anybody can say there's a positive side to it, without considering the depths of it's darkness, is beyond my understanding. Lives are destroyed by this madman.
I have a blog about how it looks to me - feel free to check it out. I should warn you, though:
There's some anger there.