CARLOS KASTANEDA! Who here ever read his books?
 

Are they worth reading? :Oh crap

Depends on if you are into "Spirtiual Enlightenment" in the form of novels.

As novels I found them to be better reads than the "celestian prophecies"

:2 cents:

I've read a big quote from his book on one forum... and I liked the idea...

Now I'm thinking of reading more....

http://nrfiles.net

ctrl+f castaneda

Thanks for the link. Already downloaded "Don Juan" :thumbsup

I read most of his books when I was drug addled youth. To enjoy them it helps to take large quantities of LSD as well as to suspend your abilty to think coherently or logically. If you do those things his books are pretty enjoyable. :2 cents:

These books actually got me into a lot of trouble I'm still trying to fix today.

Stay away from them if you have the capacity to integrate some of the things in there in your life. If you're just reading it for a good time then forget I said anything and have fun.

I readed one
 

I don´t know the name in english, but I think is the most famous one.
I liked ;)

:thumbsup

What trouble I wonder?

The first four books are alright - I mean, they are all fiction, but the first four are interestingly done fiction, with a lot of Korzybski and Gurdjieff restated thru the mouth of the non-existent "Don Juan".

Better than a lot of similar books.

The history and background of the books is actually a lot more interesting then the books themselves.

But, their ideas perculated thru a lot of people, and beceme fairly influential, before everybody realized they were fiction.

There was a time everyone thought they were fact, and they were discussed openly in anthropology and religious studies circles.

I like both Korzybski and Gurdjieff, so I enjoyed them.

Why the flip-flop, ya think?

.......... :uhoh

What proof is it you have that they indeed were fiction? Or are you basing these statements on public opinion...

As far as I know it's always been a debate, and it ceased to be a hot topic among scholars because noone really knew for sure whether it was real or not.

I could be wrong though.

Well, the "proofs" that they are fiction is fairly complex and technical, and because we are dealing with liturature and academic issues here we aren't talking about "hard proofs", but a 'preponderance of evidence' type of proof.

Some of the arguments are 'technical' - such as the fact that you can't effectively smoke mushrooms to get a psychedelic experience, and that the mushroom recipe described in the book is nonsense, and doesn't work. And the Datura recipe described is a copy of the western european witches ointment recipe, and that no similar "ointment" use of daturas has ever been described by anthropologists and ethobotanists who have done well documented and accepted studies of psychedelic use in mexico and central america.

And, descriptions of certain events in the books were taken nearly verbatim from at-the-time unpublished writings from other anthropologists. The best known example of this is the "shaman jumping from rock to rock" scene, taken from Barbara Myerhoffs writings which were later published in her excellent book about peyote use in mexico.

In order to really understand the evidence that the books are fiction, you need to do the reading and background study about how the books were written, why they were origibnally accepted as a masters thesis and doctoral thesis, who Castenada's Academic advisor was, and how these books compare to later studies which have been accepted as quality research into the actual use of psychedelics and the religious and shamanic traditions of the tribes in that area.

It's all a fascinating story really.