The 20th Century Shaman

My summer holiday read was Carlos Castaneda’s first book, ‘The Teaching of Don Juan: a yaqui way of knowledge’. This is the topic of this morning’s service. We are entering into an imaginal realm. It is completely different to, and yet reminds me of, the imaginal realm of the 19th Century Irish poet, Æ. His world is of course that of Ireland, of her trees, of her Nature, and of her folklore. Whereas Carlos Castaneda’s world is, as we will see, that of the desert. The desert of Western Mexico and Arizona, and the Native peoples of that land, the Indians, or the Native Americans. However, the ultimate repercussions of Castaneda’s spiritual journey into the desert, is, as we will see, for a lot of reasons very controversial, and so there is the added complication this morning of having to glean that of value from Castaneda’s work, while at the same time recognising and acknowledging the harm that was done.

So, Carlos Castaneda was born in 1925, in Peru. In his 20s he moved to and became a naturalised citizen of the United States. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where he did his degree in anthropology, which is the discipline in which you study different cultures, and the beliefs and practices of those different cultures, whether it’s a culture that exists in the present or in the past. After completing his degree, he stayed on to do his Masters in anthropology, and his dissertation for his master’s degree was this book, ‘The Teaching of Don Juan’. So, first of all, it’s interesting to consider how this master’s dissertation is written. I’ve been writing a lot of essays of late, and as you probably know, if you’ve had to write any long-form essays in the past, there’s a tradition that says you shouldn’t use first person pronouns. You shouldn’t say 'I,' 'me,' 'we,' 'us,’ and so forth in an academic essay. You shouldn’t say, “I will be arguing” you should say, “this essay will contend.’ Or you shouldn’t say ‘I think Jung’s postulated belief in the collective unconscious suggests...’ The ‘I think’ there is unnecessary and should be cut. The reason this, at least traditionally, used to be seen as so important has to do with the belief that it was possible to study something objectively and dispassionately. That was considered the proper academic way of writing.

Today though, we tend to recognise that as a fallacy. Take anything which is produced, such as this address this morning - even if at no point I tell you how I feel about any of this, even if I never insert any of my own personal anecdotes, the topic choice itself obviously says a great deal about me (there is no way of getting away from that). You’ll be able to make the connections as to how it intersects with a number of my areas of interest, without me having to say anything. We need not make any such leaps, however, when we read ‘the teaching of Don Juan’. It is very personal and subjective throughout, so much so, that it's fair to say that the central figure in the book is not even Don Juan, the figure in the title, but it is the author himself. How he feels and experiences the world he has thrust himself into is front and centre. It is not at all objective and dispassionate; Castaneda is dramatically swept up into this world.

Admittedly, subverting the traditional academic essay writing form is very prevalent today, but in the early 1960s it was far less so. On top of that, Castaneda was also subverting the traditional way of doing anthropology. It used to be believed that if you were studying a native culture for instance, one must strive to be as detached as possible, again to maintain objectivity, perhaps by literally observing the culture in question from afar. But it has become increasingly questionable as to how effective such an approach actually is. Does the act of observing not alter the culture in question? You can imagine, for example, an anthropologist studying English culture, and to do such deciding to stand in plain sight on the street, opposite your house, with a pair of binoculars in hand, to watch an ordinary day in the life of you unfold. Would their observations constitute an approximation of an ordinary day in the life of you? Almost certainly not. It is far more likely that it would result in you calling the police, confronting them, or drawing the curtains.

So, if it’s not possible to observe a culture from afar, perhaps a better way to study a culture is to immerse yourself within that culture. But how far could or should you go with that? Perhaps if you immersed yourself entirely, you’d lose any objectivity you once had. Indeed, if you have immersed yourself within a culture entirely, can that even be said to still be research? Is that not just living? Nonetheless, however much we should critique Carlos Castaneda’s approach after the fact (and we certainly should), this is exactly what he does: he forgoes objectivity, he ‘goes native’ if you like, for the prize of complete immersion.

To the postgraduate anthropology class of 1960 at UCLA in California, the lecturer decried the lack of original work. He explained how so much anthropological post-graduate work at the university in recent years had just been second-rate regurgitated research already done, already published, just cobbled together from other people’s work in the library. Post-graduate work is supposed to be original work, and in the discipline of anthropology, original work almost certainly requires field research. It was this lecture’s pep talk that encouraged Carlos Castaneda to go out and study Native American culture firsthand. And sure thing, in a small town on the Mexican border, Castaneda found the native American man who would shape the rest of his life - Don Juan Matus, a shaman from the tribe of yaqui. A man who was supposed to possess a great knowledge, and thus be the perfect subject for Castaneda’s anthropological research paper.

The initial meeting was very awkward. Imagine eager young man with a million questions meets quiet, contemplative, native American who just watches, as Castaneda rabbited on. But slowly, as Castaneda drove down time after time from California, the trust began to grow. Castaneda began to be let into Don Juan’s world, the world of a shaman. Shaman’s are figures which crop up in many different cultures the world over, figures that are a cross between doctors, mediums, sorcerers, mystics, and priests; figures who are proficient in entering altered states of consciousness. And entering altered states of consciousness the world over is achieved in many different ways. Some examples include depriving the body of food, water, or sleep, or through breathing exercises, or through deep meditation, or through active imagination exercises, or through different types of movement, such as dance, or through taking conscious-altering substances. And in Native American cultures, taking conscious-altering substances, in order that one might commune with the spirit world, is especially prevalent. Once one has made contact with these spirits, in Native American shamanic practice, one is taught by them, guided by them, and given special knowledge by them. And because shamanic figures are able to cross between the material world and the spirit world in this way, they are revered figures, or sometimes even feared figures. 

Castaneda wanted to explore such a Native American shamanic practice on its own terms, not as a scoffing Westerner, not as one attempting to understand such practices through a Western constrained lens, but through the lenses by which Native American’s themselves understand such practices. As Castaneda spent time with Don Juan, he began to learn about the spirit of plants. This is something we do have in Western culture to some extent. We may find ourselves intuitively assigning personal characteristics to particular types of trees for instance, such as the wisdom of the tall oak tree. Owl’s house in the Hundred Acre Wood is in an oak tree. Or we may assign characteristics to a very particular tree that we have a relationship to. But in some Native American cultures this is far more visceral; certain trees or plants are characterized as being friendly, or tricksy, or pure malevolence, on account of one’s intuited sense in their presence, or on account of the effect such plants have on one when consumed. And in the same way that you might find yourself adapting in your approach to dealing with a particular type of person, a particular type of personality that you encounter time after time, so you might adapt and learn as you encounter a particular character or personality which is emergent when you consumed a particular type of plant.

And so it was, that after a period of time, Castaneda began to be taught by Don Juan about peyote – the cactus plant with hallucinogenic properties. A cactus plant which, according to some Native America traditions, contains a sacred ancestral spirit, which was sometimes benevolent and sometimes terrifying. And so, Castaneda consumes the peyote. And we get the first of several narratives in the book recounting the experience which follows the consumption of a conscious altering plant. Castaneda’s experience on peyote is surprisingly positive as far as Don Juan is concerned. The spirit of the plant manifests to Castaneda as a big black dog, a black dog from which emanates a bright light. The dog is not simply benevolent, but actually playful. Don Juan is so amazed that the spirit of the peyote plant would manifest to Castaneda in such a manner, that he takes it as a sign, a sign that the ancient spirits had chosen Castaneda, and that Don Juan was therefore commissioned not simply to teach Castaneda about his peoples’ customs, but rather to take Castaneda on as a shamanic apprentice – despite the fact that Castaneda was of course not of Native American decent, but rather a Peruvian. Note how filmographic this all sounds. He is apparently the chosen one; it sounds like a Star Wars narrative.

Anyway, Castaneda accepts the challenge. As such he takes anthropological research to a whole new level; he is not simply studying shamanic practice, he is now training to become a shaman himself, going through that process of breaking down his perception of reality, in order that he might reframe things, and perceive everything around him through new eyes. Further narratives follow, in which he recounts what happens after consuming other conscious altering plants. Some cause him to have visions of the future, some cause him to transform his body into different animals, including a crow, which means he is able to fly. There is an interesting dialogue around whether he is actually able to fly, which juxtaposes nicely our Western sense of the “real world” (i.e. the objective world, the world of things), in which he is of course not able to fly, with the subjective or experienced world, in which that is exactly what he is doing, prompting the question: which of these two is the “real world”? The first-hand experienced world, in which he is flying, or the theoretical world in which he is constrained by everyday Newtonian physics? And contrary to Western intuition, it is presupposed that the experiential world, the immediate world of his senses, is what is real. In time he finds that he is able to enter altered states of consciousness without the use of plants. He is able to discern the spirits, and experience the vividness of nature, in his normal conscious state. In other words he is able to see the world as a Native American might see it.

The book is also interlaced with Don Juan’s teachings, such as the one we had read out, in which we are encouraged to follow the path of our bliss. When the dissertation was submitted, and the book was published in 1968, it was a big sensation. There was even a Time Magazine cover about his book. All this is happening during the 60s counter-cultural movement, while the Vietnam War was ongoing, so it’s in that whirlpool, in which psychedelics are in vogue, and anti-establishment sentiment is in vogue, that Castaneda’s alternative vision of reality was seen as so appealing. More books followed, he did his Phd, he became the most sought-after guru in the United States. The twist of the story is, however, the question - was any of this actually real? Was Don Juan actually a real person, was Castaneda actually initiated into Native American shamanic practice? It is a debatable question. There is little evidence to verify Castaneda’s account of things. My sense is that it is not real, that at best, the entire thing is a collage of different experiences, some his own, but most probably not.

I wonder how much that actually matters. Castaneda’s book takes us into a vivid imaginal realm, and I am inclined to view his book favourably, despite the evident fabrications. Because, it does still contain wisdom. The work has an undeniable numinous quality about it. And it’s on that relatively favourable note that I would conclude my thoughts, if I didn’t know what came next. In a later book, Castaneda goes to visit his aging master Don Juan. He is with him at the end of his life, but Don Juan’s end is not a natural one. As his time on this earth concludes, his frame begins to shine. He becomes pure energy, pure light, which is absorbed back into the universe. This account becomes a prophecy, a prophecy as to how Carlos Castaneda himself would die. He would, like his master, become pure energy, at which point he would take his most devoted disciples with him. In other words, what started as an anthropological masters dissertation ultimately morphed into an apocalyptic cult, with Carlos Castaneda at the helm. The guru whose will would not be frustrated. The cult was called tensegrity and remains active to this day, but was most active in the 70s and 80s. In the mid-90s, Carlos Castaneda got cancer, and his body began to deteriorate. This triggered an existential crisis within the movement. It became increasingly apparent that Carlos Castaneda would have an ordinary, very human death. In April 1998 Carlos Castaneda died. Five out of the six women who constituted his innermost circle, upon his death, all took their own lives.

I find the extreme juxtaposition fascinating. I have found many references, many articles written by people, praising Carlos Castaneda’s immense contribution to both the worlds of spirituality and anthropology, and yet, evidently, he did immense harm. A number of people describe him as being like fire, offering warmth and light to many, but burning those who dared to get too close. I find this analogy weak, and overly generous. In Carlos Castaneda the extreme positive and the extreme negative sit so closely together, that we are left with a complex picture – the monstrous, and the undeniably insightful, hand in hand.

Amen.