Was Carlos Castaneda Running a Cult?

 

It's all about me!!!

From Wikipedia:

"In the English-speaking world, the term cult often carries derogatory connotations. In this sense, it has been considered a subjective term, used as an ad hominem attack against groups with differing doctrines or practices. As such, religion scholar Megan Goodwin defined the term cult, when it is used by the layperson, as often being shorthand for a "religion I don't like."

In the 1970s, with the rise of secular anti-cult movements, scholars (though not the general public) began to abandon the use of the term cult. According to The Oxford Handbook of Religious Movements, "by the end of the decade, the term 'new religions' would virtually replace the term 'cult' to describe all of those leftover groups that did not fit easily under the label of church or sect."

Sociologist Amy Ryan (2000) has argued for the need to differentiate those groups that may be dangerous from groups that are more benign. Ryan notes the sharp differences between definitions offered by cult opponents, who tend to focus on negative characteristics, and those offered by sociologists, who aim to create definitions that are value-free. The movements themselves may have different definitions of religion1 as well."

1 (Nagualism, for lack of a better term, is a technology and not a religion)

-----------------------------------------------------------

Below is a truncated and very slightly edited version of a Facebook post made by Daniel Lawton:

"I wouldn't care about this topic myself, because I now have most of the techniques from the 17 books and publications fully working. I get "in your face" amazing magic for hours each and every day. Just now, driving down the street in my car, I saw impossible sights along the way. Stuff no other person driving on that road even noticed.

Stuff even the Buddha himself never dreamed of. And was completely incapable of doing.

But it is true that once in a while a new person discovers the books of Carlos, and goes looking on google. Wanting the books to be true, but worrying it's all a scam.

And the top results say, "Carlos Castaneda was thoroughly debunked", and he was "running a cult".

Both so far from the truth, you have to figure anyone who falls for that is not someone we'd like to have to try to help learn sorcery. They won't put in the time!

It takes serious dedication to learn sorcery, with no leaders or teachers left to help us.

Still, others disagree with me and want to see some "answer" to the cult claim float to the top of the google results. To reassure new people, it's ok to believe the books. Because they are in fact 100% true.

So let's examine history. Back when Carlos was alive, teaching workshops, Sunday Classes, Evening classes, and hosting private training sessions with the inner circle out at Pandora.

Carlos had a plan. To go slowly. Use Tensegrity and recapitulation to "clean people off", and make them sturdier so they could withstand the unknown.

You can't understand this point, until you learn to get silent. But I'll tell you, and you just have to trust me. EVERYONE IS REALLY SCREWED UP! Everyone. But until you learn to move your assemblage point, you are deliberately blind to the awfulness of human behavior.

And it's humans we have to select from, to try to preserve this ancient Olmec technology of "the Mastery of Intent". Modern science doesn't even know it exists!

And it really can be quite disturbing when a giant (entity) materializes in front of a new student, ready to bite their head off.

That's why don Juan said, "The First enemy of a Man of Knowledge, is fear!" At some point, we all have to overcome that fear. But not too soon if you're trying to teach a large group.

It's not good for the workshop crowd if you have a bunch of terrified workshop attendees screaming in the middle of a practice session!

Tensegrity is a very DARK (primal) magic, but until you can "see" that yourself you have no idea. Looks like "chi gung" to people who can't "see energy". To people who can, it's kind of frightening to think about what it can do. Carlos mentions this in his Silent Knowledge publication. Be sure to read that one!

Tensegrity flows from deep in dreaming. It was not created in the "real world". So it can pull you down there, when done seriously.

Thus Carlos was "taking it slowly". He once did an imitation of "sawing the floor out from under someone", like in a cartoon. By the time the person noticed the floor was gone, all they could do is plunge into the darkness.

That's sort of what Carlos was doing, except that plunging into the darkness like that means your life now has real magic.

The very thing missing from the lives of humans, making them depressed, greedy, desperate, and leading to nothing but endless suffering until they get old and die.

Without magic, humans cannot be happy. It's just a fact. Look around, and see through the illusion.

People resort to anti-depressants, false religions (all of them are), alcohol, sex, drugs, too much TV, internet porn. Anything, to make up for the lack of amazing magic in their lives.

As I like to say, it's hard to be depressed when a real Fairy is standing on your hand, smiling for you.

So Carlos was taking it slow on purpose. Then at some point he was going to teach us to "stop the world".

Note that he didn't hold anyone back. He just didn't "nag" as much as he could have.

Towards the end they started joking maybe Carol Tiggs should get a bullwhip, and take over "encouraging" people to work hard.

When I heard about that I thought, "Joke??? It's not a joke!!! I'll even buy the bullwhips!"

But then, Carlos died. Too soon.

Around the time that was known to be inevitable, the "Heaven's Gate" cult came along and killed themselves.

Some of the women in private classes were worried other women might do that too. It had nothing to do with Carlos, who was horrified at the idea.

A few of the "fair minded" men in private classes sought to figure out if we were in a "cult".

The term "cult" is hurled around as an insult, but in fact there are people who study such things and are happy to provide lists of "requirements" to call something a cult.

Carlos did not meet those. At least, at the time.

Later after he died, and with all the opportunist people looking to cash in on his death, such as Robert Marshall, you might make a different argument and come to a different conclusion. Using the same "scientific standard".

But frankly, who cares?

The entire question doesn't make any sense once you think about it more, realizing he was in fact teaching the exact magic he promised to be teaching.

But when Carlos died, the forces of the world came in to trash him and forever eliminate that concern from their mind. Because if Carlos was the real thing, then their own lives were pretty much pointless. The religion they believed in false, the meditation technique they use impotent. Even Buddhism and Daoism are revealed to be con games, once you know that what Carlos wrote in his books was 100% true.

Expecting someone to honestly study the group Carlos formed is naive at best, and criminally minded at the worst.

So the bad results of greedy men, motivated to cash in on Carlos like everyone else, still lingers on google. It's from before it became obvious the amazing magic from the books is in anyone's reach. It was all left over from "none of this works, so why did Carlos do it?"

But once on google, it didn't go away. 24 years later, the same garbage floats to the top.

Or to put it another way, if you were holding Tinkerbell (the Fairy) in your hand, would you look her in the eyes and say, "I'm sorry, I just don't like cults and want nothing to do with them. So please fly away and never come back"?

If you would, then go become a Jehovah's witness or something. And get a good Buddhist doctor who has plenty of anti-depressants to give you. You'll need them later in life...

Suicide?

But what about all the "suicides"?

Which ones exactly?

You mean the death of Patty Parton, who people called "moonchild" when she wasn't in earshot?Patty threatened to kill herself several times a week, in order to get her way. She was an odd creature.

She even tried to stop the Sunday classes, saying she'd simply "leave" if Carlos did that.

Carlos explained, she could "spin around" and drop her body. Supposedly she came from elsewhere. Keep in mind, in sorcery there is voluntary "body snatching". Or look at it more like, "Upgrades are available". Carol Tiggs is said to contain an 8000 year old sorcerer, who escaped from the inorganic being's realm.

Until you've actually stood in there yourself, many times (as a few now have), that's hard to swallow. But the actual facts are, after Carlos died Patty was found in death valley, in or near her car. How she died is unknown, but as the child of an anthropologist studying Indians, I was warned over and over. NEVER GO THERE IN THE SUMMER. People die in hours if they get stranded.

We just don't know how Patty died, but it's safe to assume she drove out there herself.

A magazine misreported her death as 2 deaths. And it kept going around. It gets carelessly mixed into new reporting on Carlos.

Other than that, we have no other deaths. We have the missing inner circle women, but that's pretty expected. They're just hiding out somewhere. Sorcerers have no desire for attention, unless they have a specific purpose.

I wouldn't be chatting with you here, if I could get out of it as the witches did.

Like all the other negative Carlos stuff, the "suicide cult" charge was cooked up to make him look bad. The other "behaviors" people mention, wanting to make him seem like an evil cult leader, are just normal sorcery teaching.

I could go into details on what that is, but you'll get to hear that if you ever get serious. Otherwise, there's nothing you can say to a person with no sorcery knowledge, to justify the odd behavior of sorcerers."

Source Facebook Post

--------------------------------

Analysis

Characteristic #1 - Cults oppose critical thinking:

If you've ever actually read the books, or Castaneda's Journal of Applied Hermeneutics , you'd know that this path is saturated with a mood of inquiry and sobriety. Multiple members of don Juan's group were academics, and most of the individuals in Carlos' inner circle either had advanced degrees or were encouraged to pursue them.

Characteristic #2 - Cults go to extreme lengths to retain members of their flock:

Castaneda booted perhaps several dozen, people who could not get their sh*t together and actually put into practice what he was relating to them, from his private classes held in the mid-1990's. Carlos had precious little time for that last public endeavor, and none to waste on those who didn't even take their own lack of time on this earth seriously...much less his.

Several of these individuals are featured in the various documentaries produced in the early 2000's, and several more wrote tell-all gossip style books. Two even resorting to rummaging thru Carlos' trash and doing spy-type photography to collect material that would increase the sales of their book. To stay was a choice, not an enforced "decree" from the head of a belief system.

Characteristic #3 - Cults are attractive because they promote an illusion of comfort:

Carlos pulled no punches, and never coddled people...or fluffed-up their egos with "love-bombs," strategies that actual cults are known to employ.

The world of sorcerer's isn't cozy. Once you jump out of the river of filth , the behavioral shields that we have learned over the course of our lives are proven to be laughably not up to the task of deflecting the onslaughts of the unknown....so most return their allegiance to the human social order, and it's various shallow/surface comforts.

Characteristic #4 - In-group mind control:

"Destructive cults, groups, movements and/or leaders maintain...conditioning techniques that constrict attention, limit personal relationships, and devalue reasoning." source

Reasoning has already been addressed here.

On attention, the whole point of the books is to relate to the reader just how much our innate human awareness (attention) has been constricted by the dictums of human society. Freedom, not just of awareness, but also from one's behavioral and perceptual limitations is the goal.

And Inner Silence can only be accrued thru one's own efforts and not the influence of any human group.

Also, being a recluse or an avoidant-type was expressly frowned-up by don Juan in the books. And Carlos was himself, by many accounts, a gregarious libertine.

Differentiation From Harmful Groups

"Are all so-called "cults" (harmful) and destructive?"

"No. Just because a group is "cultic" and its adherents are focused on unusual leaders and/or ideas is no reason to call them unsafe or destructive. There are groups centered on seemingly strange (ideas or concepts)...that may appear eccentric, but most often don't harm anyone. An unsafe or destructive group is not defined by what it believes, but by what it does. That is, the behavior that causes actual harm and injury to the members of the group and/or others in society." source

"Do you ever find that complaints you receive about a group or person are false and/or unfounded?"

"Yes, there have been times that families have over-reacted to a group or situation that later proved to be benign and/or not dangerous or destructive. This has often occurred regarding claims about "Satanism" and/or so-called "Satanic ritual abuse". Such claims have often been based upon supposed "recovered or repressed memories" gathered through therapy sessions. This is a controversial practice and/or process that relies upon a theory, which has been increasingly rejected as unscientific and unproven in the courts and also rejected by many mental health professionals."

"Again, it is crucial to understand that behavior is the issue and not belief. When those concerned about someone's group involvement find clearly destructive behavior, this is an issue for legitimate concern. But when a group is simply perceived as strange, eccentric and/or even personally repugnant, such as some adherents to "Satanism," this does not mean the group is destructive. Satanists, just as Christians, Jews and Moslems, have religious rights that are constitutionally protected. I have rarely found that the claims of horrific acts attributed to "Satanic" conspiracies can be objectively proven. And those destructive acts that were proven were rather examples of isolated and atypical groups. This has been substantiated again and again by law-enforcement reports and numerous studies." source

"Isn't criticism of so-called "new religious movements," a form of religious bigotry, hatred and persecution?"

"It seems that many so-called "cults" have forgotten that the First Amendment is expansive and protects both their freedoms and the free speech of their critics. Margaret Singer once said that "The conduct of certain cults, however, especially groups that tend to overtly exploit and abuse people and engage in deceptive, unethical, and illegal conduct, does (deservedly) provoke the surrounding society into a critical stance."" source

Ethics

Carlos did not engage in either illegal or unethical conduct, and did not threaten physical harm to anyone. Ever. Neither did he consider himself an unimpeachable messiah, dealing judgement onto unbelievers.

Actual destructive cult groups usually have at least two sets of ethics: one for the leadership, and another for the membership. Demonstratedly , Carlos lived what he wrote in his books. Every day. There was zero hypocrisy.

Cult critics by and large are not concerned about issues of doctrine, but rather with behavior, including what they consider the criminal behavior manifested by many cultic groups. The groups that are charged by critics with physical abuse, psychological torture, undue influence, fraud, and countless other offenses are usually actionable in a court of law.

Beliefs that appear bizarre or irrational to the society at large can sometimes fuel tremendous breakthroughs. After all, they tortured Galileo and laughed at Marconi for unusual beliefs. Open and honest scientific, philosophical and/or theological debate and inquiry will eventually reveal the "truth" about unusual or presently uproven phenomena. source

source - https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/comments/tu4ujr/was_carlos_castaneda_running_a_cult/