Problematic Carlos Castaneda
He was an influence, but what kind?
Carlos Castaneda has been called the most controversial figure in the history of anthropology. In some circles, he is regarded as an academic who stepped over an arbitrary line drawn in the sand and “went native,” which is considered to be a bad thing. Others regard him neutrally. One of Castaneda’s most quoted sayings is:
We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.
Castaneda has also been called the Godfather of the New Age. Undoubtedly, his books inspired millions of people to claim the spiritual dimension that had been missing from their lives. Perhaps his most important accomplishment was to simply open people’s minds to the potential for transformation and the idea of seeking out a teacher. His works did shape the culture to a very great extent.
The factor that alienated people, in the latter part of his career, was his inner circle of devotees. Much of the evidence for this comes from a memoir written by Amy Wallace, who spent many years as a member of the select group. In Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Wallace says,
Although Carlos had begun as a genuine seeker, a true philosopher, he had ended as a tyrant watching over a cult of terrified followers… I do not believe that Carlos was a con man who callously sought money and women. He made terrible mistakes as the years went by, due to poor judgment, narcissism, and illness; and in his last decade he did create an abusive cult… Carlos was not a shifty huckster but a misguided philosopher whose experience of power was corrupting.+ —
Wallace describes the nerve-wracking techniques by which Castaneda kept his followers tightly reined. He played them off against each other by creating jealousy; encouraged them to rat on each other for minor behavioral infractions; alternated love-bombs with rejection and banishment to create an atmosphere of psychological and emotional terrorism; and demanded that they detach themselves from their families. These alarming machinations were laced with the hypocrisy of pretending in public to adhere to standards that he flouted in private.
The weight of opinion seems to be that he got off to a good start. Even Wallace says that nothing can diminish the beauty of his early works. But something went wrong, and Castaneda jumped the track. It happens.
In Awakening to the Spirit World, Sandra Ingerman, Hank Wesselman, and several others explore various aspects of shamanism. The book is subtitled, “the Shamanic path of direct revelation.” And that’s the crux of the matter. In other words, first we need teachers, then we graduate. There is always more to learn, but a point comes where we rely on our own spiritual resources. These authors say,
There is a pervasive tendency for people to give their power away to others. Such seekers often desire to find a teacher who will act as an intermediary between themselves and the helping spirits —
Which is where the trouble starts. Amy Wallace, reflecting on the reasons why she wrote Sorcerer’s Apprentice, said,
If some reader, somewhere, takes a moment’s pause and halts before handing over his or her free will to another, it will all have counted for something.
Strangely, what bothered many people about Castaneda is the very thing he disavowed. People tend to associate his name with hallucinogens, but during the time when Amy Wallace knew him, he “despised” being associated with drug use, and said that don Juan had only introduced him to psychedelics because his thought patterns were so rigid they needed to be “blasted with dynamite.”
In his Los Angeles workshops, Castaneda taught a method of energy redistribution he called Tensegrity, a modified version of the magical passes he had been taught as an apprentice. As reported by Castaneda, his teacher don Juan said this practice “starts with an initial act, which by the fact of being sustained breeds unbending intent.” His writings about it are available in a PDF file.
As instructors, he trained a team of three women called the Chacmools, and there are plenty of videos on YouTube where they demonstrate Tensegrity moves. Also worth checking out is the three-part interview with the Chacmools.
Speaking of online resources, there is a rock opera about Castaneda, described as “music from the past for the future.” Apparently, Diablero
was made with the participation of rock impresario Bill Graham and counterculture figure Ken Kesey.
This quotation comes from Michael Ventura’s Letters at 3 A.M. After a personal encounter with the sorcerer’s apprentice, Ventura wrote a sentence that could have served as Castaneda’s epitaph:
His presence was an admission that every truth is fragile, that every knowledge must be learned over and over again, every night, that we grow not in a straight line but in ascending and descending and tilting circles, and that what gives us power one year robs us of power the next, for nothing is settled, ever, for anyone.
