Customer Reviews

The Don Juan Papers: Further Castaneda Controversies

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If you are a truly dedicated student of the concepts in Castaneda's material- one of those who has found real-world, concrete and "objectively verifiable" benefit in things gleaned from Castaneda's writings, AND if you are doing your level best to reconstruct a "self-initiation" or other truly comprehensive learning course to develop as full and robust of a working knowledge, bodily and consciously, as you can, DeMille's book is an excellent cross-reference of similar and in some cases nearly identical teachings and procedures that can help you fulfill your learning goals. Techniques for learning to shut off the internal dialog- from many traditions; for working with your own behavior(s), stalking; for developing facility with dreaming; for learning to "see"- every aspect of the CC books have a counterpart which can be studied. One of the traditions of Nagualism never expressly noted, but inferred, is that part of the tradition involved each member of a "Nagual's Party" bringing their knowledge to the table and teaching it to the other members. Remember Silvio (or Vicente) taught ALL the members of the party about the use of herbs.

DeMille's book is a whole host of traditional voices offering themselves in service to your own "inner Nagual's Party". If you are a solitary practitioner, or part of a group, DeMille's books can help you find much worthy of study. I highly recommend his books- and suspect that very few dedicated students give a damn about the "did he or didn't he" question in light of the very real changes that have come about from enacting even a few of his principles. Remember that he said it himself: "The Rule is a myth" - but the myth is also a map; the map is not the territory, but the territory is real.

In this excellently written, occasionally very funny book, DeMille exposes what he calls "the greatest anthropological hoax since the Piltdown Man." While reading Castaneda's early books, I sometimes wondered why his Yaqui sorcerer sounded at times like a Taoist and at others like Martin Heidegger. Now I understand.

Anyone seriously interested in Carlos Castaneda's books needs to read this one too. Don't be afraid of reality!

"The Don Juan Papers" is Richard Demille's scholarly and fascinating debunking of Carlos Castaneda's popular series of cult bestsellers about his apprenticeship to Yaqui sorcerer, Don Juan Matus. Demille makes convincing argument that these books are in fact "fiction", rather than anthropological "non-fiction".

How about questioning DeMille's motives now. This reviewer is a practicing psychic and researcher in the practical occult sciences for many years now. When the question of Casteneda's authenticity came up, it was submitted to this reviewer's oracle which has yet to be proven wrong. The answer was this: Don Juan did live, and Casteneda was his apprentice. However, it must be remembered that Casteneda was reporting and interpreting what Don Juan taught him, and that it took him many years to regain the memory of what Don Juan taught him. It is also true that Don Juan was interpreting what his teacher, Julian, taught him, and so on. Casteneda's books are not forgeries. If you remember, there were periods when Casteneda was very much in conflict and doubt about Don Juan. It is clear that DeMille is intent on debunking Casteneda. Those who choose to believe him are either intent on not understanding the essence of Don Juan's teachings as transmitted by Casteneda or are just plain gulls hoping not to appear like gulls. But that is their affair. What is most amazing, however, is that DeMille, with infinite know-how and arrogance, spent all that time construing all the garbage he needed to write this imbecilic book. Mr. DeMille, if you are looking for the phoney, you don't have to look further than your own mirror.

DeMille, there is a table and you can put everything on top of the table: time , space, Don Juan, Castaneda, Jesus, war, year 25000, the whole universe and what's beyond it, void, ad infinitum, whatever you can or cannot imagine, God, light, everything is on top of that table, ok ?!
Now what is around the table ? ...... ... ? No ! wrong answer, that's also on top of the table..... What is around the table ?

Who cares about what you think Castaneda was ? We care about our dreams, our memory. We dreamed, we remembered, without dope, we appreciated Castaneda's insights; a lot better than your ET-phone-home-nobody-home-guy-option...

Catch the difference between "The master always is the master" and "Master Always is the master" ....

Writer De Mille not counscious enough ... and wasting life while writing a piece of crap about others.

I do not understand why this 1973 book and its predecessor are reprinted now. It has been 3 1/2 decades since Castaneda published the 1st of what was to become 12 books, now collectively referred to as The Written Record of the Toltec Warrior's Dialog. After his death, a 2nd and then a 3rd generation of Toltec commentators emerged, some from his own lineage (Taisha Abelar, Florinda Donner-Grau), some from very different Mesoamerican lineages (Don Miguel Ruiz and Donna Bernadette Vigil), some from no lineage at all (Victor Sanchez, James Endredy, Frank Diaz; "Tomas", Ken Eagle Feather, Merilyn Tunneshende, Susan Gregg, Martin Goodman), and now Castaneda's former wife, Margaret Runyan Castaneda, has provided her perspective in her own memoirs. And now Theun Mares, located in all places in Cape Town, South Africa, is representing a very different Eurasian lineage, writing as fast as he can, 4 volumes so far in his "Toltec Teachings" and more to come. Mares pays tribute to Castaneda, but does not presume to defend him, in impeccable Toltec fashion. He makes free reference to all of Eurasian philosophy, literature, history and religion, which I am not comfortable with, but he does it well. Half of what Mares writes in unintelligible gobbledegook to me, but he explains beforehand why this must be so: he is using 1st attention language, the only language available to us, to describe 2nd and 3rd attention realities, and so if you don't already know what he's talking about, which I do not, the text is intermittantly cryptic. But I think 1/2 of what Martin Heidegger writes is unintelligible gobbledegook too, but I know it isn't because 2nd generation commentators (David Michael Levin, who finds it expedient to refer back to Castaneda) show me it isn't, which Heidegger himself lacked the verbal facility to do. We are so dazzled with our newest cuttingest-edge technologies and our communal financial trance, wrapped up tightly in our very own little beliefs, expectations, and assumptions, we can't see what is in front of our nose. We have not the beginning of an idea of what time is, or consciousness, or why hydrogen, when combined with oxygen in the right way, gives - water. Where did that come from? And now that we find ourselves caught between fundamentalist Muslim martyrs who live in the 7th Century and know it, and fundamentalist Christian Texans who live in the 18th and don't, I find it odd to disdain a tradition older than any we know, that can help at least some of us get out of this mess.