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by J.R. Moehringer
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES - Carlos Castaneda, the self-proclaimed
"sorcerer" and best-selling author, apparently died two months ago in the
same way he lived: quietly, secretly, mysteriously.
His tales of drug-induced mental adventures with a
Yaqui Indian shaman named Don Juan once fascinated the world. And though
his 10 books continue to sell in 17 languages, he died without public
notice on April 27 at his home in Westwood.
The cause was liver cancer; he was believed to have
been 72.
As befitting his mystical image, he seemingly
vanished into thin air.
"He didn't like attention," said lawyer Deborah
Drooz, a friend of Castaneda's and the executor of his estate. "He always
made sure people did not take his picture or record his voice. He didn't
like the spotlight. Knowing that, I didn't take it upon myself to issue a
press release."
No funeral was held; no public service of any kind
took place. The author was cremated at once and his ashes were spirited
away to Mexico, according to the Culver City mortuary that handled his
remains.
He left behind a will, to be probated in Los
Angeles next month, and a death certificate fraught with dubious
information. The few people who may benefit from his rich copyrights were
told of the death, Drooz said, but none chose to alert the media.
Even those who counted Castaneda a good friend were
unaware of his death and wouldn't comment when told, choosing to honor his
disdain for publicity, no matter what realm of reality he now inhabits.
Details of birth in dispute
Carlos Cesar Arana Castaneda immigrated to the
United States in 1951. He was born Christmas Day 1925 in Sao Paulo,
Brazil, or Cajamarca, Peru, depending on which version of his
autobiographical accounts can be believed. He was an inveterate and
unrepentant liar about the statistical details of his life, from his
birthplace to his birth date, and even his given name is in some doubt.
"Much of the Castaneda mystique is based on the
fact that even his closest friends aren't sure who he is," wrote his
ex-wife, Margaret Runyan Castaneda, in a 1997 memoir that Castaneda tried
to suppress.
Whoever he was, whatever his background, Castaneda
galvanized the world 30 years ago. As an anthropology graduate student at
UCLA, he wrote his master's thesis about a remarkable journey he made to
the Arizona-Mexico desert. Hoping to study the effects of certain
medicinal plants, Castaneda said he stopped in an Arizona border town and
there, in a Greyhound bus depot, met an old Yaqui Indian from Sonora,
Mexico, named Juan Matus, a "brujo" - a sorcerer or shaman - who used
powerful hallucinogens to initiate the student into an world with origins
dating back more than 2,000 years.
Under Don Juan's strenuous tutelage, which lasted
several years, Castaneda experimented with peyote, jimson weed and dried
mushrooms, undergoing moments of supreme ecstasy and stark panic, all in
an effort to achieve varying "states of nonordinary reality." Wandering
through the desert, with Don Juan as his psychological and pharmacological
guide, Castaneda said he saw giant insects, learned to fly, grew a beak,
became a crow and ultimately reached a plateau of higher consciousness, a
hard-won wisdom that made him a "man of knowledge" like Don Juan.
The thesis, published in 1968 by the University of
California Press, became an international bestseller, striking just the
right note at the peak of the psychedelic 1960s. A strange alchemy of
anthropology, allegory, parapsychology, ethnography, Buddhism and perhaps
fiction, "The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge" made Don
Juan a household name.
After his stunning debut, Castaneda followed with a
string of best sellers, including "A Separate Reality" and "Journey to
Ixtlan." Soon, readers were flocking to Mexico, hoping to become
apprentices at Don Juan's feet.
Was there a Don Juan?
The old Indian could not be found, which set off
widespread speculation that Castaneda was the author of an elaborate, if
ingenious, hoax.
Such concerns have all but discredited Castaneda in
academia.
"At the moment, (his books) have no presence in
anthropology," said Clifford Geertz, an influential anthropologist. But
Castaneda's penchant for lying and the disputed existence of Don Juan
never dampened the enthusiasm of his admirers.
"It isn't necessary to believe to get swept up in
Castaneda's otherworldly narrative," wrote Joshua Gilder in the Saturday
Review. "Like myth, it works a strange and beautiful magic beyond the
realm of belief. . . . Sometimes, admittedly, one gets the impression of a
con artist simply glorifying in the game. Even so, it is a con touched by
genius."
To the end, Castaneda stubbornly insisted that the
events he described in his books were not only real but meticulously
documented.
Even his death certificate is not free of
misinformation. His occupation is listed as teacher, his employer the
Beverly Hills School District. But school district records don't show
Castaneda teaching there.
Also, although he was said to have no family, the
death certificate lists a niece, Talia Bey, who is president of Cleargreen,
a company that organizes Castaneda seminars on "Tensegrity," a modern
version of ancient shaman practices, part yoga, part ergonomic exercises.
Bey was unavailable for comment.
Further, the death certificate lists Castaneda as
"Nev. Married," though he was married from 1960 to 1973 to Margaret Runyan
Castaneda, of Charleston, W.Va., who said Castaneda once lied in court,
swearing he was the father of her infant son by another man, then helped
her raise the boy.
The son, now 36 and living in suburban Atlanta,
also claims to have a birth certificate listing Castaneda as his father.
"I haven't been notified" of Castaneda's death,
said Margaret Runyan Castaneda, 76. "I had no idea."
When he wasn't writing about how to better
experience this life, Castaneda was preoccupied by death. In 1995, he told
a seminar:
"We are all going to face infinity, whether we like
it or not. Why do we do it when we are weakest, when we are broken, at the
moment of dying? Why not when we are strong? Why not now?"
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