Skepticism!


There are alot of issues which more or less rightly call for a certain degree of skepticism when one tries to verify the writings of Castaneda. This is, however, often exaggurated in absurdum: An interesting human phenomena is that when someone is caught with one lie, the whole concept that this person tries to introduce is dismissed. A rather famous example was a christian preacher/healer, who seemed to know the names of the people in the rather large audience who needed to be cured, or healed. This part of the 'show' was a proven hoax, where several coworkers of the healer gathered information and radioed it to the healer on stage. As in many cases, whether people actually got well or not became uninteresting, once this preacher was caught with this hoax.

Castaneda is also subject to alot of people trying to find inconsistencies and lies in his works. No one has, to my knowledge at least, come up with anything really substantial. There are alot of good points of criticism and skepticism, however, but I intend not to dwell into this here. This site is about what Castanedas teachings are, not about what they are not. However, a good measure of skepticism is not only healthy, but necessary.

-Be skeptical towards everything until you have verified it by yourself, by direct experience!

Here are some of the more commonly heard issues:
 
 

1. Did don Juan really exist?
2. Isn't Castaneda just making things up?
3. Why did Castaneda lie about so many things?

Aswers/solutions to these:


1. Whether don Juan (or whatever his real name may have been) did exist or not is not interesting at all. It is not this point which is the issue, but rather in the things Castaneda says that don Juan tells him.

2. No, Castaneda is not just making things up, at least not the mystical system as such. It may seem like that to the beginner, but after a serious study it is obvious that no single man alone could have come up with all this. Actually, by studying different metaphysical/mystical paths, it is obvious that no single man or woman has ever invented a body of work like this, completely different from from everything else. On the surface Castanedas teachings has little in common with other practices, but with a little work it is possible to see at least some parallels.

3. This is simply a part of castanedian practice. See "personal history"...
 

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My Skepticism

When I read the stuff about hidden memories in The Eagles Gift for the first time, I got really suspicious. How convenient, I thought. I spent years to verify (from other sources) that this at least could be possible. Nothing of what I know of psychology or hypnosis says this can't be done.

Also I found it disturbing that he introduced new persons in his books who where never even hinted at before.

Imagine that I got really tired when I found that there are a serious change in style between his 8:th and 9:th books, which made me wonder if this really was Castaneda at all. Then came the whole public business of Tensegrity, the new female sorcerers, the 'blue Scout' and the three chackmoles and the commercial thing with Cleargreen and so forth etc....

Not easy verifying Carlos Castaneda.

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The solution for me (after long periods of doubt) was that it didn't matter at all whether these new 'inventions' where real or not. I found that the system he taught made good sense, I was able to verify some points, and that made it up for me. After all, this is the only thing that matters: Does it 'work' or not?

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More Doubt

Other areas where it is easy to doubt Castaneda is when he started lawsuits against his former "wife" when she published a book about her relationship with Carlos before he met Don Juan.

He also made a totally uncalled-for lawsuit against Victor Sanchez.

Actually I do not know if it was Castaneda or Cleargreen Inc. who issued the lawsuits, or if it makes any difference...

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Like so many mystics or creators of new religions, Castaneda
have not presented one single proof of the existence of don Juan or of anything else. There are no proofs, really, of anything Castaneda, Abelar or Donner-Grau has written about. One has to seek evidence either indirectly from other sources, or by direct experience. See Verification.

This is no real hindrance, because one has to practice and experience things directly to actually learn, so this line of verification would be necessary anyhow.

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