09-26-2008, 12:00 AM
(REPOST) Carlos Castaneda (previously Castañeda) was born in Peru on December 25, 1925 and died in Los Angeles on April 27, 1998. In the US, he wrote a series
of books that described his training in Ancient Toltec Sorcery.
Castaneda met a Yaqui shaman named Don Juan Matus in 1960. Castaneda's experiences with don Juan inspired the works for which he is known. He inherited
from don Juan the position of nagual, or leader of a party of seers. He also used the term "nagual" to signify that which is unknown, neither known
nor knowable; implying that, for his party of seers, don Juan was a connection to that unknown. The term has been used by anthropologists to mean a shaman or
sorcerer who is capable of shapeshifting, or changing to an animal form, and also to mean the form to which such a person might shift.
Castaneda's works contain descriptions of paranormal or magical experiences, several psychological techniques, Toltec magic rituals, shamanism and
experiences with psychoactive drugs (e.g. peyote). Carlos Castaneda's works have sold more than 8 million copies in 17 language.
He wrote that he was born in São Paulo, Brazil on Christmas Day in 1931, but immigration records show that he was born 6 years earlier in Cajamarca, Peru. He
anglicized his name by changing the "ñ" (in Castañeda) into "n". He moved to the United States in the early 1950s and became a naturalized
citizen in 1957. He was educated at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) (B.A. 1962; Ph.D. 1970).
His first three books, The Teachings of don Juan: a Yaqui way of knowledge, A Separate Reality and Journey to Ixtlan were written while Castaneda was an
anthropology student at UCLA. Castaneda wrote these books as if they were his research log describing his studies under a traditional shaman he identified as
don Juan(used the name Juan Matus, but not the man's 'real' name). Castaneda was granted his masters and doctoral degrees for the work described in
these books.
In Castaneda's first two books he describes that the Yaqui way of knowledge also required the heavy use of powerful psychoactive or entheogenic plants,
such as peyote and datura.
In his third book, Journey to Ixtlan, he describes don Juan telling him he only needed to use drugs with Carlos because Carlos was so dumb. In this book the
way of knowledge that don Juan describes was perceived by some as resembling the newly popular New Age movement.
Castaneda was a popular enough phenomenon for Time magazine to do a cover article on Castaneda on March 5, 1973 (Vol. 101 No. 10) that was five or six pages
long.
His fourth book, Tales of Power, ended with Castaneda preparing to leap off a cliff that would mark his graduation from disciple to man of knowledge (actually
a leap from the tonal into the unknown). Some writers thought this must necessarily mark the end of his series. They were very surprised to see he continued to
produce more books. Despite an increasingly critical reception Castaneda continued to be very popular with the reading public. Castaneda went on to write
fourteen books in all, and release 3 videos.
In 1997 Castaneda launched a law suit against his ex-wife, Margaret Runyon Castaneda, over her book, A Magical Journey with Carlos Castaneda; but this was
dropped when Castaneda died.
The official story is that Castaneda died on April 27, 1998 from liver cancer. Little is known about his death. There was no public service, Castaneda was
apparently cremated and the ashes were sent to Mexico.
Castaneda's account of Toltec knowledge
There are three main elements to Casteneda's description of Toltec beliefs:
a. mastery of awareness - nagual (2nd attention) and tonal (1st attention), art of dreaming, description of the seers perception of luminous energy and bubbles
of energy around living things (luminous cocoon) and ultimately the source of these energetic lines which are consciousness itself.
b. art of self-stalking - dealing with the world and actions in it.
c. mastery of intent - dealing with the primary force of the universe or the spirit or the means to move the assemblage point.
Castaneda's books can be read as a philosophical/pragmatical text that express a world view by which a person can live one's life. There is a movement
world-wide of practitioners of this philosophy, applying Castaneda's published ideas either independently or through consultation with Castaneda's
associates.
This school of applied shamanism, sometimes called "nagualismo", purports to be unlike either traditional Western or Eastern culture (what about
Northern or Southern(shamanism, Australia,African?)). Castaneda's ideas, insofar as they can be called a "system", share some similarities with
Eastern mysticism ,Zen, Taoism, or Tibetan Buddhism in terms of the inherent order (or chaos) of the universe, disciplines taught and techniques used, but the
underlying structure is fundamentally different.
According to Castaneda, the most significant facts in a person's life are his possession of awareness and its impending termination at death. The primary
goal of a Toltec "Warrior" is the continuation of his awareness after bodily death: to "dart past the Eagle and be free", in the words of
the tradition, where the Eagle is the force which consumes the awareness of all living beings.
To cheat death in this way requires all of the discipline and procedures that constitute the Warrior's way of life. These practices are devised to maximise
the Warrior's personal power, or energy. The condition of not wasting this energy is known as "impeccability".
Sufficient personal power leads to the mastery of awareness, chiefly the controlled movement of what is known as the "assemblage point". This is an
artifact of the tradition's description of another world underlying what we perceive as ordinary reality. In this description men are glowing cocoons of
awareness inhabiting a universe consisting of the Eagle's "emanations", described euphemistically as all-pervading filaments of light.
Humans' cocoons are intersected throughout by these filaments, producing perception, but they filter our perceptions by concentrating on only a small
bundle. The assemblage point is the focusing lens which selects from the emanations. In its accustomed position, the assemblage point produces what humans
perceive as everyday, 'normal' reality. Movement of the assemblage point permits perception of the world in different ways; small movements lead to
small changes in perception and large movements to radical changes. For example, dreaming is presented as the result of a movement of the assemblage point;
"power plants" such as Peyote, used in the early stages of Castaneda's apprenticeship, produce powerfully altered states of mind through such
movement.
Castaneda describes complex and bizarre worlds experienced through the controlled movement of the assemblage point in dreaming; his premise is that the world
of the dreams of a warrior is no less real than the world of daily life. This follows logically from the description of both worlds as being simply the result
of positions of the assemblage point. He depicts complex interactions with unearthly beings in dream worlds and describes his fear of being physically trapped
by these malicious but charismatic beings.
Amongst the various practices of a warrior, Tensegrity, a series of meditative stretching and posing techniques, is introduced in Castaneda's final works.
The term is borrowed from architecture"tensional integrity". Tensegrity is promoted by Cleargreen, Inc., a company founded in the 1990s, closely
affiliated with Castaneda, which runs workshops and sells various materials relating to Castaneda's work. There are many individual and group practitioners
around the world. Tensegrity and much of Castaneda's other work are the subject of a variety of recurring disputes.
Brief Description of Books
1. Yaqui way of knowledge - discription of plant allies and way towards knowledge: mescalito (peyote cactus)- the protector of man, seeing beings as liquid
colors; mushrooms- learning to handle, fly, and percieve as animal form; datura (weed)- female spirit, hard to handle, gives strength, lengthy procedure
2. Further conversations - idea of will
3. Journey to Ixtlan - lessons about the warriors way, or stalking the world, routines, personal history, self-importance, not-doing, dreaming
4. Tales of power - description of points of perception in body or luminous cocoon, tonal or toñal (1st attention, known, right side awareness, left-brain) and
nagual (2nd attention, unknown, left side awareness, right-brain), dreaming double
5. Second Ring of Power - experiences with the women warriors of the original nagual's party, 2nd attention (second ring of power), losing human form,
human mold, dreaming, gazing
6. Eagle's gift - description of the force that creates, destroys, and rules the universe (or at least the 48 bands of earth), also source of emanations
themselves, description of the eagle's command to man, the rule of the nagual, various levels of petty tyrants, and way towards freedom, self-stalking and
dreaming, power spots. Note that don Juan described the energy-structure/entity called eagle a thing that is not what we call an eagle, but rather a thing so
vast as to be incomprehensible.
7. The Fire from Within - step by step (actually chapter by chapter) elucidation of the mastery of awareness or the new seers knowledge:
everything is energy (eagles emanations or luminous emanations)
the luminous cocoon and assemblage point(glow of awareness)
the known (1st attention or tonal),unknown (2nd attention or nagual), unknowable (outside luminous cocoon)
petty tyrants as a way to move assemblage point and foster warriors way
twin worlds of organic and inorganic ( more correctly matter-beings and non-matter-bound beings -- carbon-based/not-carbon-based wasn't what was meant )
shifting the assemblage point and other bands of awareness
bundles of emanations that are the basis for the different species source of awareness and forms/molds
the human mold
the rolling force or tumbler (that hits luminous cocoon)
the death defier
self-stalking, intent, and dreaming
8. Power of silence - stories about essentially the mastery of intent, set into what were called sorcery cores.
9. Art of dreaming - steps to mastering control and consciousness of dreams, called gates.
10. Magical passes - tensegrity, sets of magical passes with pictures
11. Active side of infinity - recapitulation, making a log of significant life events (as seen by the spirit)
Many critics doubt the existence of don Juan, citing inconsistencies in don Juan's personality across the books and in the sequence of events in the books.
Many Castaneda supporters claim in turn that the very fact of handling awareness and perception accounts for this; and that the actual existence per se of don
Juan is irrelevant, since the important matter is the theme that don Juan presents.
What is easily understood is the fact that the writing style changes greatly from the first to the last of the "don Juan" books. The Teachings of Don
Juan is an anthropologist's journal containing a lot of seemingly irrelevant, non-fiction information. The quasi-journalistic or academic tone of the
earliest books disappears definitively in Castaneda's fifth book, The Second Ring of Power. This book marks a significant change in the character of the
series. In addition to introducing a large cast of new characters, the later Castaneda books present don Juan's shamanism in far greater complexity than in
the earlier books. The Eagle's Gift (eighth book) is a novel-like work with specific characters on a journey towards what they call "Total
Freedom", and where the words of don Juan seem more like those of a scientist. This could be the result of changes in the mind of Carlos Castaneda.
As Castaneda was very elusive, and because his works were taken up by young people at a time when mystical and shamanic traditions were in fashion, many
professionals cast doubt on the authenticity of contents of his works. When he followed up The Teachings of Don Juan with a series of equally popular books,
including A Separate Reality (1971), Journey to Ixtlan (1972), and Tales of Power (1975), even more questions were raised as to how much of his work was true
anthropology and how much was his own creation.
Today Castaneda's books have been mainly forgotten and other than a few sites on the WWW and Cleargreen's endeavors, his legacy is fading into
obscurity.
of books that described his training in Ancient Toltec Sorcery.
Castaneda met a Yaqui shaman named Don Juan Matus in 1960. Castaneda's experiences with don Juan inspired the works for which he is known. He inherited
from don Juan the position of nagual, or leader of a party of seers. He also used the term "nagual" to signify that which is unknown, neither known
nor knowable; implying that, for his party of seers, don Juan was a connection to that unknown. The term has been used by anthropologists to mean a shaman or
sorcerer who is capable of shapeshifting, or changing to an animal form, and also to mean the form to which such a person might shift.
Castaneda's works contain descriptions of paranormal or magical experiences, several psychological techniques, Toltec magic rituals, shamanism and
experiences with psychoactive drugs (e.g. peyote). Carlos Castaneda's works have sold more than 8 million copies in 17 language.
He wrote that he was born in São Paulo, Brazil on Christmas Day in 1931, but immigration records show that he was born 6 years earlier in Cajamarca, Peru. He
anglicized his name by changing the "ñ" (in Castañeda) into "n". He moved to the United States in the early 1950s and became a naturalized
citizen in 1957. He was educated at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) (B.A. 1962; Ph.D. 1970).
His first three books, The Teachings of don Juan: a Yaqui way of knowledge, A Separate Reality and Journey to Ixtlan were written while Castaneda was an
anthropology student at UCLA. Castaneda wrote these books as if they were his research log describing his studies under a traditional shaman he identified as
don Juan(used the name Juan Matus, but not the man's 'real' name). Castaneda was granted his masters and doctoral degrees for the work described in
these books.
In Castaneda's first two books he describes that the Yaqui way of knowledge also required the heavy use of powerful psychoactive or entheogenic plants,
such as peyote and datura.
In his third book, Journey to Ixtlan, he describes don Juan telling him he only needed to use drugs with Carlos because Carlos was so dumb. In this book the
way of knowledge that don Juan describes was perceived by some as resembling the newly popular New Age movement.
Castaneda was a popular enough phenomenon for Time magazine to do a cover article on Castaneda on March 5, 1973 (Vol. 101 No. 10) that was five or six pages
long.
His fourth book, Tales of Power, ended with Castaneda preparing to leap off a cliff that would mark his graduation from disciple to man of knowledge (actually
a leap from the tonal into the unknown). Some writers thought this must necessarily mark the end of his series. They were very surprised to see he continued to
produce more books. Despite an increasingly critical reception Castaneda continued to be very popular with the reading public. Castaneda went on to write
fourteen books in all, and release 3 videos.
In 1997 Castaneda launched a law suit against his ex-wife, Margaret Runyon Castaneda, over her book, A Magical Journey with Carlos Castaneda; but this was
dropped when Castaneda died.
The official story is that Castaneda died on April 27, 1998 from liver cancer. Little is known about his death. There was no public service, Castaneda was
apparently cremated and the ashes were sent to Mexico.
Castaneda's account of Toltec knowledge
There are three main elements to Casteneda's description of Toltec beliefs:
a. mastery of awareness - nagual (2nd attention) and tonal (1st attention), art of dreaming, description of the seers perception of luminous energy and bubbles
of energy around living things (luminous cocoon) and ultimately the source of these energetic lines which are consciousness itself.
b. art of self-stalking - dealing with the world and actions in it.
c. mastery of intent - dealing with the primary force of the universe or the spirit or the means to move the assemblage point.
Castaneda's books can be read as a philosophical/pragmatical text that express a world view by which a person can live one's life. There is a movement
world-wide of practitioners of this philosophy, applying Castaneda's published ideas either independently or through consultation with Castaneda's
associates.
This school of applied shamanism, sometimes called "nagualismo", purports to be unlike either traditional Western or Eastern culture (what about
Northern or Southern(shamanism, Australia,African?)). Castaneda's ideas, insofar as they can be called a "system", share some similarities with
Eastern mysticism ,Zen, Taoism, or Tibetan Buddhism in terms of the inherent order (or chaos) of the universe, disciplines taught and techniques used, but the
underlying structure is fundamentally different.
According to Castaneda, the most significant facts in a person's life are his possession of awareness and its impending termination at death. The primary
goal of a Toltec "Warrior" is the continuation of his awareness after bodily death: to "dart past the Eagle and be free", in the words of
the tradition, where the Eagle is the force which consumes the awareness of all living beings.
To cheat death in this way requires all of the discipline and procedures that constitute the Warrior's way of life. These practices are devised to maximise
the Warrior's personal power, or energy. The condition of not wasting this energy is known as "impeccability".
Sufficient personal power leads to the mastery of awareness, chiefly the controlled movement of what is known as the "assemblage point". This is an
artifact of the tradition's description of another world underlying what we perceive as ordinary reality. In this description men are glowing cocoons of
awareness inhabiting a universe consisting of the Eagle's "emanations", described euphemistically as all-pervading filaments of light.
Humans' cocoons are intersected throughout by these filaments, producing perception, but they filter our perceptions by concentrating on only a small
bundle. The assemblage point is the focusing lens which selects from the emanations. In its accustomed position, the assemblage point produces what humans
perceive as everyday, 'normal' reality. Movement of the assemblage point permits perception of the world in different ways; small movements lead to
small changes in perception and large movements to radical changes. For example, dreaming is presented as the result of a movement of the assemblage point;
"power plants" such as Peyote, used in the early stages of Castaneda's apprenticeship, produce powerfully altered states of mind through such
movement.
Castaneda describes complex and bizarre worlds experienced through the controlled movement of the assemblage point in dreaming; his premise is that the world
of the dreams of a warrior is no less real than the world of daily life. This follows logically from the description of both worlds as being simply the result
of positions of the assemblage point. He depicts complex interactions with unearthly beings in dream worlds and describes his fear of being physically trapped
by these malicious but charismatic beings.
Amongst the various practices of a warrior, Tensegrity, a series of meditative stretching and posing techniques, is introduced in Castaneda's final works.
The term is borrowed from architecture"tensional integrity". Tensegrity is promoted by Cleargreen, Inc., a company founded in the 1990s, closely
affiliated with Castaneda, which runs workshops and sells various materials relating to Castaneda's work. There are many individual and group practitioners
around the world. Tensegrity and much of Castaneda's other work are the subject of a variety of recurring disputes.
Brief Description of Books
1. Yaqui way of knowledge - discription of plant allies and way towards knowledge: mescalito (peyote cactus)- the protector of man, seeing beings as liquid
colors; mushrooms- learning to handle, fly, and percieve as animal form; datura (weed)- female spirit, hard to handle, gives strength, lengthy procedure
2. Further conversations - idea of will
3. Journey to Ixtlan - lessons about the warriors way, or stalking the world, routines, personal history, self-importance, not-doing, dreaming
4. Tales of power - description of points of perception in body or luminous cocoon, tonal or toñal (1st attention, known, right side awareness, left-brain) and
nagual (2nd attention, unknown, left side awareness, right-brain), dreaming double
5. Second Ring of Power - experiences with the women warriors of the original nagual's party, 2nd attention (second ring of power), losing human form,
human mold, dreaming, gazing
6. Eagle's gift - description of the force that creates, destroys, and rules the universe (or at least the 48 bands of earth), also source of emanations
themselves, description of the eagle's command to man, the rule of the nagual, various levels of petty tyrants, and way towards freedom, self-stalking and
dreaming, power spots. Note that don Juan described the energy-structure/entity called eagle a thing that is not what we call an eagle, but rather a thing so
vast as to be incomprehensible.
7. The Fire from Within - step by step (actually chapter by chapter) elucidation of the mastery of awareness or the new seers knowledge:
everything is energy (eagles emanations or luminous emanations)
the luminous cocoon and assemblage point(glow of awareness)
the known (1st attention or tonal),unknown (2nd attention or nagual), unknowable (outside luminous cocoon)
petty tyrants as a way to move assemblage point and foster warriors way
twin worlds of organic and inorganic ( more correctly matter-beings and non-matter-bound beings -- carbon-based/not-carbon-based wasn't what was meant )
shifting the assemblage point and other bands of awareness
bundles of emanations that are the basis for the different species source of awareness and forms/molds
the human mold
the rolling force or tumbler (that hits luminous cocoon)
the death defier
self-stalking, intent, and dreaming
8. Power of silence - stories about essentially the mastery of intent, set into what were called sorcery cores.
9. Art of dreaming - steps to mastering control and consciousness of dreams, called gates.
10. Magical passes - tensegrity, sets of magical passes with pictures
11. Active side of infinity - recapitulation, making a log of significant life events (as seen by the spirit)
Many critics doubt the existence of don Juan, citing inconsistencies in don Juan's personality across the books and in the sequence of events in the books.
Many Castaneda supporters claim in turn that the very fact of handling awareness and perception accounts for this; and that the actual existence per se of don
Juan is irrelevant, since the important matter is the theme that don Juan presents.
What is easily understood is the fact that the writing style changes greatly from the first to the last of the "don Juan" books. The Teachings of Don
Juan is an anthropologist's journal containing a lot of seemingly irrelevant, non-fiction information. The quasi-journalistic or academic tone of the
earliest books disappears definitively in Castaneda's fifth book, The Second Ring of Power. This book marks a significant change in the character of the
series. In addition to introducing a large cast of new characters, the later Castaneda books present don Juan's shamanism in far greater complexity than in
the earlier books. The Eagle's Gift (eighth book) is a novel-like work with specific characters on a journey towards what they call "Total
Freedom", and where the words of don Juan seem more like those of a scientist. This could be the result of changes in the mind of Carlos Castaneda.
As Castaneda was very elusive, and because his works were taken up by young people at a time when mystical and shamanic traditions were in fashion, many
professionals cast doubt on the authenticity of contents of his works. When he followed up The Teachings of Don Juan with a series of equally popular books,
including A Separate Reality (1971), Journey to Ixtlan (1972), and Tales of Power (1975), even more questions were raised as to how much of his work was true
anthropology and how much was his own creation.
Today Castaneda's books have been mainly forgotten and other than a few sites on the WWW and Cleargreen's endeavors, his legacy is fading into
obscurity.