"Don Juan" Castaneda Carlos: description, interesting facts and reviews

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The unspoken palm of the strangest and most mysterious writer of the 20th century rightfully belongs to Carlos Castaneda. In order to understand how he deserved such a right, you need to get acquainted not only with his works, but also with information about his life. First of all, the book "Don Juan" can contribute to this. Castaneda opens the veil of secrecy over her life in her.

Biography: facts and speculation

The figure of one of the mystical writers of the earth is shrouded in a veil of legends and fictions. Fictional and real facts are so intertwined that it is very difficult to separate them. There is not even reliable information about the place of his birth. According to one version, he was born on December 25, 1925 in the Peruvian city of Cajamarca. Another says that he was born a few years later, in 1931. The place of birth also changed to Brazil. Castaneda was very fond of inventing the facts of his biography, and this also applied to information about his parents.

His parents were very young: his mother was barely 15 and his father was only two years older. As children themselves, theycouldn't raise a child. Little Carlos was raised by his grandparents. Later, the parents took their son away, but not for long. The mother died early, and the boy was again taken by relatives. After graduating from school, he studied as a sculptor, but, not having achieved great success, he changed his field of activity. He worked as a taxi driver, wrote poetry, sold liquor.

In 1951 he emigrated to the USA and entered the University of California for a course in anthropology. People who knew Carlos closely spoke of him as a good friend and master of hoaxes. More or less reliable information about the life of Castaneda can be taken from his books. It's good that there are photographs, although this man did not like to be filmed.

Was there a favorite family?

His wife was Margaret Runyan, or so she herself says in her memoirs of her husband. Castaneda himself claimed that he had never married. From the book, we can learn that the couple divorced after living together for only six months, although they did not part until the death of Carlos.

Whether Castaneda had children is hard to say. What is true and what is not, apparently, we will never know. Anyway, there is one young man named Adrian Vachon who believes that his father is Carlos Castaneda.

Is Don Juan a fictional character or a real person?

In 1960, an event occurred in the writer's life that changed not only his life, but also the lives of many people on earth. A university student who came to Mexico for materials for his diploma met an Indian whohis name was don Juan, and the world around him changed beyond recognition. Until now, people who are interested in his work cannot come to the same opinion.

Did this person really exist or was he invented by Castaneda? It is difficult to unambiguously answer this question. The name Juan is very common in Mexico, but the author in his work at first only talked about an Indian who agreed to teach him. The name began to be mentioned much later.

A shaman whose ancestors were real magicians - that's what don Juan was. Castaneda possessed the main quality necessary for the teaching of ancient magic - the desire to avoid any conventions. Seeing a good student in him, the Indian passed on the secrets of ancient magic to him for 13 years. The most important idea that don Juan Carlos inspired was that the magician should be able to erase any information about himself. The student handled it easily.

Don Juan

Castaneda wrote books about how he was introduced to the world of magic in the form of spoken notes. They have gained popularity all over the world. The first book was called Don Juan's Teachings: The Yaqui Way of Knowledge, published in 1968.

After its release, a huge number of tourists and students of Carlos Castaneda went to Mexico in search of don Juan. But the search was not successful. Even if don Juan really existed, no one would have been able to find him.

List of the writer's books

Only three times the book "Don Juan's Teachings" was rewritten. Castaneda Carlos wrote the second three years later, and the third- one year later. After its release, the author was awarded a PhD degree.

There was no free space at his lectures, those wishing to get acquainted with ancient magic were not placed in the audience. Producers actively begged to sell the film rights to books. But Carlos did not agree, explaining that he did not represent a single acting actor playing the role of don Juan.

Over the following years, six more books were written, for a total of nine. The third and fourth reveal the philosophy of teaching, and the rest complement it.

Reviews from readers

Admirers of the writer's work say that it doesn't matter to them whether Don Juan actually existed. Castaneda or a great anthropologist who carefully studied and described the magical world of the Indians, or a great writer who created a vivid figure in literature. In any case, he is a brilliant man who lived in the 20th century and deserves to be studied.

Castaneda's books can be re-read more than once and always find something new.

Many readers call books about don Juan's teachings a balm for the soul. They answer the philosophical questions that every person asks himself at least once in his life. These are truly great books that open the veil of the world around.

Don Juan's main life principles

Castaneda could not immediately understand and accept the proposed philosophy. Its main principles are:

1. Always act decisively.

2. A man mustbe able to change throughout your life.

3. If you failed to do something, you do not need to explain the reasons for the failure to others.

4. Do not be angry with people, it is justified only when the person is dear to you.

5. If you don't like what you're doing, you can always start doing something else.

6. You don't like what you get, think about what you give and change it.

7. Remember that any of your actions or deeds may be the last thing you do in this life.

8. Every person at any moment of his life can throw out of his life what prevents him from moving on.

9. We make ourselves unhappy or strong only by ourselves. The most interesting thing is that in both cases, the forces spent on this are the same.

10. The wisest counselor is death. If you feel like everything in your life is going badly, ask her about it.

Able student

The young man was greatly influenced by don Juan's teachings. Carlos Castaneda, in order to understand the magic of the ancient shamans, learned to do the following things:

1. Meditate to expand the boundaries of your consciousness. The wider they are, the more limitless the world that you perceive.

2. Let go of people or memories that do not allow you to move on and have an inhibitory effect on the person.

3. To destroy the existing framework for the perception of the world, Castaneda took herbal psychotropic drugs for some time.funds. True, in his books he constantly said that in order to learn how to control his consciousness and change it, additional means should not be used. There are other methods for this, which are described in his works.

4. Analyze your personality and decompose it into its components: strengths of character, your mood and your desires. Also learn how to remove everything unnecessary that prevents you from moving towards your goals.

5. Turn off your "internal dialogue" in order to learn how to effectively use the capabilities of your brain. There is one exercise that helps a lot. Concentrate your attention on the second hand of the clock and follow it for 30 seconds.

6. Learn to be in harmony with the world and your goals.

7. Learn to perform all your actions and actions, guided by the dictates of the heart. It means doing only what makes you feel light and happy.

The difficulty of learning, as Castaneda argued, was to learn to perceive the world around us with the whole body, and not just with the eyes and mind.

The phenomenon of life and death

The apprenticeship with Don Juan changed Castaneda a lot. He began to talk about how he wanted to die like his teacher - "burn from the inside." One of the legends about his death says that he did not die, but vanished into thin air. The official version says that Carlos died on April 27, 1998 from liver cancer. His body was cremated, and the ashes, according to the will, were sent to Mexico.

There are many books that significantly change the worldview, one of these stands out in particular - "The Teachings of don Juan". Carlos Castaneda, even after his death, continues to cause incessant disputes about himself and his works. Probably, it’s no longer worth trying to understand what is true in them and what is fiction, the main thing is different. Your view of the world, your attitude towards yourself is changing, and this is an indicator of good literature that you need to read.