Rusakov, Yu. A. The Phenomenon of Carlos Castaneda

Abstract: Carlos Castaneda, the author of the Teachings of Don Juan, presented the teaching about the world and human which hasn’t been viewed as a philosophy yet due to its exoticism and intentional academicism. The world of Castaneda creates the ‘meta-reality’ that has a complex interaction structure, both internal and external. Similar to exoteric and mystic teachings, human is shown as a knower of unknown Transcendental Reality (nagual). Using special methods such as stalking (hunting), i.e. tracing back defects of one’s perception in order to get closer to nagual and therefore expend and extent our consciousness, and dreaming, i.e. unconsciously entering nagual for the same purpose by controlling one’s dreams, human gain control over himself and his perception which is, according to Castaneda, interpretation of existing energetic reality. These two methods, in their turn, include a number of other techniques such as inaction, erasing personal history, recapitulation, controlled stupidity and etc.). Castaneda’s ideas are somewhat similar to Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Meister Eckhart, Jakob Böhme, George Berkeley and others. The author of the article allows himself a comparative analysis. The analysis shows some similarities between ancient Indian wisdom partly adopted by Castaneda and famous Western and Eastern philosophies.

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