The Road Into Infinite Wonder: Carlos Castaneda discovers innumerable worlds in the aura of dreams
Author: Robert Edward Bell
Published on: May 1, 2004
The Road Into Infinite Wonder: Carlos Castaneda Discovers Innumerable Worlds In The Aura Of Dreams. (Part I)
As the world of the l950′s turned over into the years of the l960′s, the social culture in America slowly had begun a series of small stages in the transformation of mind and perception in regard to viewing the world around the almost hidden enclave of the Bohemian world existing in the artistic world of that era. Writers along with their fellow Americans discovered a new way of observing reality. Suddenly, it seemed that the windows had been thrown open to chambers of the heart, the memory of soul, and the eyes of the intellectual mind. Americans were beginning to experiment with new forms of lifestyles and different ways of thinking. With the end of the cold war; America appeared to be emerging from her own cocoon, created from a world of her own design; and the beauty of her spirit seemed to burst upon the world with a sense of renewal wrapped inside a package of rebirth. As a society, we were beginning to view other cultures from different viewpoints; realizing that the lens of existence could be relative and the way towards truth might lie on a path with several turns and curves on the infinite road of a reality turned inside out, as stereotypes of ideology had begun to fall in the dying embers of the cold war.
Writers also were allowed to experiment with the literary art form, and words were free to flow across the printed page, as other cultures entered the art world. They had more room to experiment, a great amount for freedom to explore various cultures, different ways of artistic and self-expression. The Beat movement that had begun a slow genesis in the l950′s was no different than the other subgroups of writers contained in the general culture and the literary realms of the avant-guard. While the other writers of the beatnick era began to take journeys of their own in the world of the l960′s, Carlos Castaneda had discovered his own path in the realization of enlightenment. In a piece of prose, he recounts one of his numerous famous memories centering on a conversation between himself and his old friend and companion, Don Juan. The passage reads almost like the musings of an ancient religious parable.
“All paths are the same: they lead nowhere.” (1)
Don Juan would soon become the main character in a series of novels that describe several encounters that Carlos Castaneda had with a Yaqui Indian in the hills of the Southwestern desert. Because of a chance meeting with an Indian Shaman, Castaneda would walk down a path into his own search for personal enlightenment.
Not only had Castaneda begun his own journey, but it seems that his paths did turn into the abyss of nowhere, for once scholars had begun their search for the identity of Carlos Castaneda, his own recollection of his personal history, appears as nonliteral as some of the symbols hidden in the allegorical technique running through the pages of any of his fictional novels. Critics and scholars alike became more confused as they studied the life of this elusive and mysterious man. As the facts of his life slowly leaked out, they became intertwined with his novels to such and extent, that historians were not sure if these events occurred, if there was even a physical person known as Don Juan or not, and whether Castaneda was even who he claimed. Castaneda even added to the confusion by purposely rearranging facts in his own life, and speaking of those facts in the spiritual words in shaman-like apprentice poetic prose. To the confusion, he once claimed,
“To ask me to verify my life by giving you my statistics, is like using science to validate sorcery. It robs the world of its magic and makes milestones out of us all.” (2)
Such playful musings did not help the poor historian attempting to get to the literal physical facts, but it did make the novels and prose of Castaneda even more interesting. It also helped books sales, and his novels continued to sell at an even faster rate. Titles such as, “Journey To Ixtlan, The Tales Of Power, The Second Ring of Power, The Fire From Within” are just a few of these novels and attest to the talent and art of this great writer. So, who was Don Juan, Carlos Castaneda, and were his writings to be taken literal or nonliteral. In the second part of this article (next month), we will look deeper into the writings of Castaneda and attempt to discover the true nature of this mysterious man, who seemed to reach mythical supernatural terms with each passing year.
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