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The Life & Teachings of Carlos Castaneda

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Carlos Castaneda was always a man shrouded in uncertainty and mystery. Many people, including myself, who read his writings, were both intrigued and titillated by the steady stream of books in which he presented his work within the Sorceric tradition. His books were awaited in much the same way a new Beatles album was, with great anticipation and hope for revelation. What Castaneda had begun as an anthropological study for a college degree ended with Castaneda as the Nagual who opened this secret world to those who wished to explore it, at first from a distance though later directly.

Patterson traces Castaneda's path historically, while doing this Patterson vividly describes a little known cast of female participants that fell within Castaneda's influence and it must be said at times under his control and sexual domination. Patterson also writes of Castaneda from a new and different view point, of seeing the teaching Castaneda brought at first in books and later in his direct teaching from a Gurdjieffian / Fourth Way perspective. Patterson deftly lays out the case that, at the least Castaneda was influenced by G. I. Gurdjieff's teaching, known as the Fourth Way. In this book there is a sense that Castaneda did come to something but as can happen he came to it in a way that damaged him physically and psychologically leaving him ungrounded, with a wrecked body but with power.

This was a fascinating book and I would highly recommend it. It is a must read for those who have an interest in Castaneda and what he brought but also for those who wish to see one example of how the teaching that Gurdjieff brought to the West has influenced many of the "spiritual teachers" of the late 20th century. This teaching as I am sure Gurdjieff must have foreseen has been picked over by many but understood by few.

The Life & Teachings of Carlos Castaneda

Before Patterson's book, Castaneda appeared an elusive figure, almost larger than or beyond life. There were so many questions: Who really was Castaneda? Don Juan? The witches? But now Patterson has masterfully unearthed the details that make up the "man" and the "Nagual." Having a background in Gurdjieff's teaching of the Fourth Way, I found Patterson's fact-findings of Castaneda's contact with Lord John Pentland, the leader of the Gurdjieff Work in America (appointed by Gurdjieff himself), fascinating and revealing. It is astounding to read the long list of Castaneda idea-methods compared to Gurdjieff's teaching ideas. This was a connection I never knew about yet wondered whether Castaneda had learned it all from don Juan. No doubt, being well-read and having had contact with Lord Pentland, Castaneda reformulated these same ideas into his magical-Nagualist language.

The captivation for so many of us, for the "non-ordinary reality" that Castaneda speaks about--in denial of our "ordinary reality,"--may have perhaps thrown a veil over the whole Castaneda phenomenon. Patterson, who one gets the sense holds a deep respect for Castaneda, takes the details of the "ordinary reality" of his life and removes that veil by providing an entirely new perspective. He considers the whole of the man's life whose parts are interconnected as well as sources for motivating factors. For example: How did his experience with his parents manifest later in his life? His relationship to women? What was the heavy guilt he carried and tried to write about before he died?

Also included in the book is the full research paper by Dr. Daniel Brinton, M.D., on the origin of Nagualism. ...This is a fascinating book which for the first time has given context to Castaneda-- "man" and "Nagual," --as well as opened many questions.

Who was Carlos Castaneda? Who was the man that wrote a famed work entitled "The Teaching of Don Juan," and where did the ideas and sources in this work came from? Who was Don Juan Matus, and was he real or fictional? The research into these questions and a look into Castaneda's life has been brought to light by the author, William Patrick Patterson, in his latest book.

"The Life & Teachings of Carlos Castaneda" is simply a new profound perspective of the life of Castaneda and his work. It is a book that cannot be put down, and it was read with such enthrall. It consisted of nine chapters in addition of a chronology of Castaneda's life. This book also included an essay of Daniel Brinton's "Nagualism: A Study in Native American Folklore and History," which is an interesting read.

There was the one thing that stood out, to me, was Patterson's discovery of such a remarkable connection between G.I. Gurdjieff's teachings and that of Castaneda's. From this book, there is a chapter entitled "Ideas And Sources," which shortly revealed that mentioned connection, and the author has showed a list of the similarities in ideas between the two profound teachings. While there is such difference between the two men's works, both of them "aim to awaken one from the dream of ordinary life" (p. 91). It was a possibly before having read this book that Castaneda may have derived from Gurdjieff's teachings and reformulated it to some extent from a "sorcery" perspective in his books. It was rather interesting to see that there are very strong connections between the two teachings.

This is a book about a man who journeyed on a perilous road and who shared with the world about his experiences and his interactions with varies of unique individuals. It is a book about Carlos Castaneda, a man of mystery whose famous sorceric stories has enthralled the mind of the modern people for forty years.

Personally, I have found this book to be quite intriguing and an eye-opening read as the author's writing style was very enjoyable. It is certainly to be recommended.

Three methods of writing appear prominent in Patterson's brief book (little more than a pamphlet) entitled,The Life & Teachings of Carlos Castaneda. First, Patterson fills his pages with lengthy, double indented quotations from Castaneda and other insiders. Passages employing this style may initially attract the reader's interest because the quotes and descriptive narratives of others closer to the source sometimes recall to us fragments of the journey through the world of sorcery Castaneda documented. The cut and pasted content gives the overall impression, though, of a hurriedly prepared Castaneda-miscellany blog produced by someone having, admittedly, no firsthand knowledge of the man.

The second style Patterson employs in his book, which we can only categorize as unrestrained pontification, first appears full force in a chapter entitled "Ideas and Sources." Here Patterson, unable to fill the shoes of a man of knowledge casts himself in the role of a man-of-knowing, a professor. Patterson not only knows all and everything about the Gurdjieff teaching in which he has long fancied himself an authority but having conjectured that Don Juan's world is more or less the Gurdjieff teaching in disguise, presto! He becomes an all embracing authority on the world of sorcery as well.

Patterson's know-it-all attitude should at least raise an eyebrow. Some of us who saw relevance in the teachings of Don Juan were more attracted to the unknown, which Don Juan, through Castaneda, helped to open for us, a state in which a more alive attention appears. Some of us also shared heart-felt sympathy for the genuine struggles the apprentice faced in trying and failing to meet the challenges offered him by his teacher. How many of us saw, while reading Castaneda, that the shortcomings of which he wrote so candidly reminded us of our own? Journeying along with him, we felt our own lack of understanding. Who could wax superior while following his frustrating, sometimes painful reports of trials and failures which, in a real way, had the quality of mirroring one's own imperfections? Every opportunity Castaneda provided, we listened as if with new ears to the nagual Juan Matus as he never failed to surprise us from the pages with his penetrating knowledge tempered by an attitude of deep humility, equally surprising to us. Even Don Juan, who seemed to know everything, often expressed his bafflement at the extraordinary designs of power that were beyond human understanding . . but nothing baffles Patterson! Matters which, for Don Juan and his circle of apprentices are forever shrouded in unfathomable mystery are to Patterson, elementary, my dear! Readers accustomed to the sizzling excitement stirred by Castaneda's searching, sometimes terrifying, unpredictable leaps into the unknowable may find themselves experiencing repeated yawning while suffering Patterson's relentless knowing.

The third element Patterson adds to his short-story-rush-job about Carlos Castaneda's entire life history and work is amateurish psycho-babble to explain the causes for Castaneda's behavior in his role as a nagual.

Questions, now stale, voiced by jealous critics to cast doubt on the source of Castaneda's work were never of particular importance to some of us - not because we were intellectually dead or more highly suggestible than others but because we could see that the real substance of what Castaneda was sharing with us was unmistakably genuine from an interior standpoint, regardless of how it came to him. Patterson doesn't really dispute that point. By Patterson's own reports he felt the same on reading Castaneda's books. So influenced was he that he claims to have read them enough times to have memorized them. None of us could know whether the source was exactly as Castaneda reported but some of us could respect the measures he took to protect the source. If Castaneda were only an academician writing mostly fiction (Patterson leans on his readers to conclude as much) could he really have contrived the extraordinarily rich content he gave us in his books? Could one really create from an uninitiated mind such a convincing disciple, such a convincing course of self-study, such a convincing sangha and a master the likes of Don Juan? Could a pilferer lacking the requisite experiential basis really put into the master's mouth all those extraordinary, original insights and subtle teachings? Patterson, conceding Castaneda probably did meet an old Indian somewhere along the line, nevertheless tries to suggest Castaneda got the material for his books from academic studies combined with his casual brush with the Gurdjieff teaching. He believes one can gain knowledge and experience on the level of the Teachings of Don Juan by reading books, taking a short course in Gurdjieff and doing some dreaming. Some things, one cannot fake.

The contention that Castaneda's work was mostly invented was, to many of us, the most farfetched notion of all. Guided by intuition rather than negative suspicion, we were willing to let Castaneda share his adventure with us in whatever form he chose. He rang a bell unlike any we had ever heard and we stopped dead in our tracks to listen to its deep, rich peal. So did Patterson. Patterson's teacher, John Pentland, also held Castaneda's books in high esteem. Now, in return for Castaneda's novel gifts to a whole generation of seekers, his mortal remains are violently unearthed to be displayed and ravaged by scavengers.

Patterson, who has never produced writing faintly comparable to anything Castaneda wrote on his worst day has jumped onto the bandwagon with other gossipmongers who add to their income by reverse-recapitulating, over a warrior's corpse, his personal history.
"Who knows a man better than his mistress," Patterson quips. One wonders how Patterson, who holds himself out as a representative of the Gurdjieff teaching, forgot Gurdjieff's imperative, "Don't judge a man by the tales of others." [Aphorism 17.] Back-fence talk about a man's feelings toward his mother and father, his friendships, sexual habits, health problems, dysfunctional relations with spouse and child, personality quirks, wine preferences, stray meetings with Gurdjieffians, details about his outer garments and hairstyle, all taken from the tales of others, all spattered low budget onto cheap canvas, garishly and without the slightest tinge of compassion or human sensitivity, presented tabloid-like, as cheezy as Entertainment Tonight or Inside Edition and as pornographic as Hustler, together with rank speculation floating dark clouds over the sunset of a man's life's work, all from a guy who actually fancies himself a spiritual guide -- all this is, of course, fair game in a culture where dirty laundry is highly prized. It will be of interest to certain types of people but with respect to all that Castaneda gave to a generation in his writings, what Patterson serves up is unpersuasive, at least to readers who are not already prejudiced by gossip. His effort is a kind of uncontrolled folly that will never diminish Castaneda's immense contribution, except perhaps in the minds of certain jealous individuals afflicted with a pathological need to feel superior or to those who, unable to think for themselves, are predisposed to be influenced by anyone pretending to be an authority.

Some of us were drawn to Castaneda's works because we too longed for a path with heart. We devoured his books. They gave us the taste of a vast mystery of awareness behind the ephemeral world of our own marginal, conditioned personalities and reminded us of something unknown, yet strangely true, fresh, relevant and perhaps even discoverable despite being hidden in secret places inaccessible to ordinary, intellectual inquiry. We thank him for that. Castaneda's literary work, whether he intended it or not, actually reached inside us and touched something at an energetic depth that was revolutionary for us. He was (and is) among a very few in that respect.

Patterson's book, on the other hand, offers nothing new, nothing original, nothing evolutionary. Whatever Patterson's motivation in producing it, one thing is clear: he gives to his readers only from the comparatively small island of the formatory mind. His is the type of writing that recalls to mind Gurdjieff's observation about contemporary writers in his introduction to Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson,: "If the invalid is somewhat literate and his rent is paid a few months in advance, he, she or `it' unfailingly begins to write either some `instructive article' or a whole book." Speaking through Beelzebub in chapter XII of the same book, Gurdjieff distinguishes genuine writers, those who write something honestly "by themselves" from the kind of writers that contribute to the degeneration of human reason, the worst of them being those who ". . . only copy from many already existing books all kinds of ideas, and by fitting them together, make a `new book.'" Thank you, Mr. Patterson, for giving us such a splendid example of that.

I had not thought about Carlos Castaneda for decades. In my mind he was connected with my distant past when I was just beginning to search for new answers to old questions. So I was very surprised when I found that Mr. Patterson had written a book about him. As I am interested in G.I. Gurdjieff, I have read all of Patterson's other books and wondered why he would be writing about Castaneda. I had not suspected that there was any similarity between Gurdjieff's teaching and Castaneda's teaching - if it can really be called that. Patterson lays out the connections with clarity and insight.

What I had not realized when I first read Castaneda's books - being intrigued by the sorcery and drugs - was that the sacred was missing. As Patterson states it, there is no "spiritual appreciation and valuation of the scale of Being and the duty to serve and offer 'help for God,' as Gurdjieff says."

The other surprise for me was Castaneda's connection with Anais Nin.

This book was my introduction to Carlos Castaneda. Of course, I had heard of him, and seen his books, but I'd never read any. So I thought this might give me some insight into what I was or wasn't missing. And this book did not disappoint. Castaneda is an enigmatic and contradictory figure, and his inconsistencies are put before us along with the energy and intensity of his work. Such a complicated and influential figure deserves the kind of treatment he received in this book, an untainted window into his life, and an opportunity to draw our own conclusions. It struck me as an intelligent book written for an intelligent reader.

I went to the book presentation in Baltimore, not knowing what to expect especially after WPP's claim that "Shown concept-by-concept, is the primary source of Castaneda's ideas--Gurdjieff's Fourth Way."
In the actual book i believe there are couple of attempts to bring together the two - but primarily it was "silencing the internal dialogue" that was seen as the only connecting link between Castaneda and Gurdjieff. Anyone who is familiar with both 4th way and Castaneda would agree that there are many many other connections to be discovered.
The rest of the book is just a collection of gossip on Castaneda with the only link to 4th way - that one of Castaneda witches attended Gurdjieff's group under of course a different name. Finally, the essay on Nagualism at the end is not only dry - it is written from a very materialistic point of view treating nagualism from the perspective of a historian without any attempt at understanding the spiritual aspect of it.

I read Carlos Castaneda's early works many years ago, and I have come to read and study the teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff only recently. I was shocked, quite frankly, to see the similarities between what Castaneda claims to be his own teachings and the Fourth Way teachings of Gurdjieff as outlined in William Patrick Patterson's book, The Life and Teachings of Carlos Castaneda. An aficionado of Castaneda himself when he was young, Patterson at one point literally lists, for several pages, the concepts of Castaneda that are derived from the Gurdjieff teaching. He then goes on to recount the contacts Castaneda had with the Gurdjieff Work, including meetings with Patterson's own teacher, Lord John Pentland, who was a student of Gurdjieff. In addition, Castaneda's student and lover of many years, Carol Tiggs (who was one of the infamous ?witches?), was a student of Lord John Pentland when Castaneda first met her. Patterson connects all the dots and makes a strong argument for Castaneda's reliance on the Fourth Way for much of his theory. There is an important difference, however, in that Castaneda's writings focus on sorcery and the shamanic, a focus that does not exist in Gurdjieff's teachings which, as Patterson points out, are grounded in the spiritual not the shamanic.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Castaneda's work. Seeing the source of the ideas for much of his theory is an eye-opening experience, and Patterson's vivid language and lively descriptions of Castaneda's life and work make for an excellent read.

How could a man who seemed to have seen so much of "the other side,"
who purported to understand so much of what lived there, and who
worked to "help" others through his knowledge die in an atmosphere of
need, fear, and anger? How could Carlos Castaneda move from
searching for the "Path of Heart" to domineering and degrading those
closest to him in the name of personal evolution? This new book from
William Patrick Patterson searches Castaneda's life and writings in
an effort to answer these questions. Reading this book I was taken
by the contrast between Castaneda's tales of his spiritual search and
the bizarre chaos of the life that was born from it. Patterson
describes well how the fascination and desire for, and even belief in
and knowledge of, the esoteric secrets of human life lead to nothing
without true understanding. This book is, at its base, an
interesting history of a complicated and unusual man, but also goes
much farther, investigating the reasons for Castaneda's search, the
validity of what he claimed to have found, and, finally, where it
lead him.

Una investigacion seria sobre la vida de uno de los personajes que ha
atraido la atencion gran numero de lectores a veces como ficcion, veces como antropologo recabando informacion sobre una cultura
diferente. Castaneda fue lejos en el uso del shamanismo y hechiceria
buscando una forma de aprehender la realidad, a veces parecen no
tener sentido las descripciones contenidas en sus libros. En "The
Life & Teachings of Carlos Castaneda" se explican entre otras cosas
el papel del cuerpo fisico como punto de partida para el camino al
conocimiento, su relacion con Don Juan, la comparacion con otra
linea espiritual, (El Cuarto Camino). Definitivamente
recomendable y facil de seguir, aun asi un libro de profundidad en
los datos que aporta.