WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.480 Hopefully the connection will take in. Okay, we're live. Hi, 2 00:00:02.560 --> 00:00:04.960 this is William Ramsey. Welcome to William Ramsey Investigates On 3 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:07.400 today's show. I have a very special guest. His name 4 00:00:07.440 --> 00:00:10.519 is Robert Robert or goes by Roberto Marshall. We're going 5 00:00:10.599 --> 00:00:13.039 to talk about a podcast that he's involved in on 6 00:00:13.080 --> 00:00:16.280 a subject I was very interested in. The title of 7 00:00:16.320 --> 00:00:20.519 that podcast is Trickster The Many Lives of Carlos Castaneda, 8 00:00:21.039 --> 00:00:23.160 somebody who is very popular in the sixties, kind of 9 00:00:23.160 --> 00:00:29.679 a culture countercultural figure, but there's also some interesting aspects, 10 00:00:29.760 --> 00:00:34.359 kind of a shadow world in his background, and mister 11 00:00:34.399 --> 00:00:38.799 Marshall is going to talk more about that. So, Robert Marshall, 12 00:00:38.840 --> 00:00:39.280 are you there. 13 00:00:43.280 --> 00:00:44.799 I am here and glad to be here. 14 00:00:45.119 --> 00:00:46.920 Awesome. Well, thanks for bringing to the interview For people 15 00:00:46.920 --> 00:00:48.640 who may not have heard your name or this project. 16 00:00:48.960 --> 00:00:51.200 Can you talk about your background and what led you 17 00:00:51.320 --> 00:00:55.799 to compile all of this audio together in this podcast Trickster. 18 00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:05.359 Sure. I'm a novelist and quite some time ago I 19 00:01:05.519 --> 00:01:08.519 published novel that was kind of a coming of age 20 00:01:09.319 --> 00:01:13.920 novel set in the seventies with a crisis of faith theme, 21 00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:17.879 but the faith was New Age religion. And the name 22 00:01:17.959 --> 00:01:21.120 Carlos Castaneda just came up a lot, and I had 23 00:01:21.200 --> 00:01:24.280 read his books when I was a kid, and when 24 00:01:24.280 --> 00:01:28.239 it came out, my agent suggested that I write a 25 00:01:28.280 --> 00:01:34.079 little article about whatever happened to Carlos Costeneda, and I 26 00:01:34.079 --> 00:01:38.319 started looking into it and just went down a rabbit 27 00:01:38.359 --> 00:01:44.200 hole which hopefully I'm about to emerge from. My biography 28 00:01:44.439 --> 00:01:51.400 of Constaneda is coming out next fall from University California Press. 29 00:01:51.719 --> 00:01:57.680 Cool, congratulations. What's the title of that book. 30 00:01:55.439 --> 00:02:02.120 Than Carlos Costaneda American Trickster? And I should say from 31 00:02:02.200 --> 00:02:06.079 the start that I'm the co producer of the podcast Trickster, 32 00:02:06.319 --> 00:02:10.400 but the director of it is Frank Horton, so I 33 00:02:10.479 --> 00:02:12.879 need to give him give him credit for that. 34 00:02:13.479 --> 00:02:16.199 Okay, apologize for that. Can you talk about so you 35 00:02:16.240 --> 00:02:19.319 got into Carlos Castia Maybe the simple question is who 36 00:02:19.479 --> 00:02:23.840 was Carlos Castaneda. 37 00:02:24.520 --> 00:02:30.000 Sure, well, just to start with, Carlos reach began to 38 00:02:30.599 --> 00:02:33.759 rise to fame in nineteen sixty eight with the publishing 39 00:02:33.960 --> 00:02:38.159 of a book called The Teachings of Don Juan, A 40 00:02:38.240 --> 00:02:42.599 Yucky Way of Knowledge, And at the time, Carlos was 41 00:02:42.639 --> 00:02:49.240 actually a dropout from the University of California Graduate Program 42 00:02:49.599 --> 00:02:56.400 in Anthropology, and this book very quickly became the time 43 00:02:56.439 --> 00:02:59.319 they called them underground best sellers. Then it quickly became 44 00:02:59.360 --> 00:03:04.240 an over ground bestseller. And in it he told the 45 00:03:04.280 --> 00:03:08.080 story of how he had met a shaman, Don Juan, 46 00:03:08.719 --> 00:03:14.360 in the Sonoran Desert, who had introduced him to three psychedelics, 47 00:03:14.400 --> 00:03:19.439 to datura, to mushrooms, and to peote, and even more importantly, 48 00:03:19.919 --> 00:03:24.280 to an entire way of seeing the universe that had 49 00:03:24.560 --> 00:03:30.840 supposedly never before been revealed to a Westerner, so called Westerner. 50 00:03:31.639 --> 00:03:39.039 And for about five years these books went pretty much unquestioned, 51 00:03:39.639 --> 00:03:46.039 at least publicly within academia and in the mainstream media. 52 00:03:46.520 --> 00:03:49.960 He was lavishly praised by pretty much everyone in New 53 00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:56.560 York Times, Harper's You Name It. By the mid seventies, 54 00:03:57.319 --> 00:04:02.960 some doubts began to up here. In the end, it 55 00:04:03.000 --> 00:04:08.639 turns out basically absolutely everything was made up. They were 56 00:04:08.719 --> 00:04:15.680 novels that he managed to pass off as anthropology. But 57 00:04:15.719 --> 00:04:20.279 he was never really publicly taken down in the way 58 00:04:20.319 --> 00:04:23.519 that say, somebody like James Frye and wrote a million 59 00:04:23.519 --> 00:04:29.240 of little Pieces was with by Oprah and Carlos's books 60 00:04:29.240 --> 00:04:34.600 continue to sell well he continues to have a worldwide following, 61 00:04:34.920 --> 00:04:40.839 and in the nineties he had always He started to 62 00:04:41.519 --> 00:04:43.920 develop a cult in the nineteen sixties, and I don't 63 00:04:43.959 --> 00:04:46.079 just mean a kind of cult in a sense of 64 00:04:46.120 --> 00:04:50.560 a cult following, but a real cult with mostly women 65 00:04:50.759 --> 00:04:55.959 who changed their names, cut off their families most of them, 66 00:04:56.040 --> 00:05:01.360 not all of them, and followed him. In the nineties, 67 00:05:01.439 --> 00:05:06.399 that group went public. They started holding seminars and workshops. 68 00:05:06.879 --> 00:05:12.560 Thousands of people came to sim Because Carlos was the 69 00:05:12.600 --> 00:05:17.879 most mysterious author in the world, he never allowed himself 70 00:05:17.920 --> 00:05:22.839 to be photographed. There are very few extant recordings of 71 00:05:22.920 --> 00:05:28.040 his voice voice, so when it came out that Carlos 72 00:05:28.040 --> 00:05:32.680 Costaneda had had emerged, this was a huge thing among 73 00:05:32.759 --> 00:05:41.399 his followers. He told his followers that they would if 74 00:05:41.399 --> 00:05:46.360 they had enough will, and they practiced something called tenseegrity, 75 00:05:46.480 --> 00:05:51.079 which he claimed was a movement technique that had been 76 00:05:51.160 --> 00:05:55.879 passed down by twenty five generations of tultec Shamans, that 77 00:05:55.920 --> 00:05:59.879 they would be able to make a leap into another 78 00:06:00.160 --> 00:06:05.199 their dimension and they would not have to die. When 79 00:06:05.360 --> 00:06:10.920 Carlos died in nineteen ninety eight from liver cancer, yeah, 80 00:06:11.000 --> 00:06:17.199 five five of these women disappeared, and the remains of 81 00:06:17.920 --> 00:06:22.560 one of them, Nurie Alexander, was later found in. 82 00:06:24.639 --> 00:06:27.240 Right. She was found in Death Valley, Right, And that 83 00:06:27.439 --> 00:06:30.959 kind of is the beginning of right, that's the beginning, right, 84 00:06:30.959 --> 00:06:34.360 that's the beginning of the story. But he even on 85 00:06:34.439 --> 00:06:37.680 his current Amazon page, it's a fake picture of him. 86 00:06:38.079 --> 00:06:43.839 So he engendered this kind of mysterious kind of element 87 00:06:43.879 --> 00:06:48.000 about his care about his outward authorship. But he really 88 00:06:48.160 --> 00:06:53.800 was a was it anthropology student at UCLA? Correct? 89 00:06:57.519 --> 00:07:01.319 Absolutely, and in a certain sense he was a real anthropologist. 90 00:07:01.360 --> 00:07:04.399 He studied anthropology. When it came to a very narrow 91 00:07:05.600 --> 00:07:08.800 field of anthropology, he actually knew a great deal. He 92 00:07:08.879 --> 00:07:11.959 knew everything that he needed to know to pull off 93 00:07:13.360 --> 00:07:16.519 what I think is the you know, certainly up there 94 00:07:16.519 --> 00:07:19.560 with the Piltdown Man as the greatest hoax in the 95 00:07:20.040 --> 00:07:24.920 history of anthropology and probably the greatest literary hoax ever. 96 00:07:25.040 --> 00:07:29.040 Because one thing that distinguished Carlos from other cult leaders 97 00:07:29.160 --> 00:07:35.160 and hoaxers was that he was brilliant and at his best, 98 00:07:35.199 --> 00:07:40.439 he was a very good writer. His cult, I call 99 00:07:40.480 --> 00:07:43.040 it a culture cult, because you had to be you 100 00:07:43.120 --> 00:07:47.160 had to be pretty highly educated and well read and smart. 101 00:07:47.519 --> 00:07:52.000 He wasn't he At the end, he loosened things up, 102 00:07:52.040 --> 00:07:57.240 but he wasn't just taking anybody there. And just to 103 00:07:57.279 --> 00:08:03.199 go back to your question, Carlos was a great storyteller, 104 00:08:03.639 --> 00:08:07.279 and he knew how to get people to go along 105 00:08:07.319 --> 00:08:11.160 with those stories and then repeat those stories, and those 106 00:08:12.439 --> 00:08:17.439 became part of the public record. And so one of 107 00:08:17.439 --> 00:08:21.800 the great challenges in writing this biography was to sift 108 00:08:21.959 --> 00:08:27.800 through kind of countless fantasy stories that he had made up, 109 00:08:28.360 --> 00:08:30.000 you know, to begin with his name. You know, his 110 00:08:30.040 --> 00:08:33.679 real name is Carlos Costeneda. You know, every single thing 111 00:08:34.159 --> 00:08:37.120 that people thought they knew about him was not true. 112 00:08:38.120 --> 00:08:40.759 Wow, it's really incredible. He's from like he claimed he 113 00:08:40.879 --> 00:08:44.720 was from Brazil, but he was really from Peru. He 114 00:08:44.759 --> 00:08:48.039 had a different last name. So he really just created 115 00:08:48.080 --> 00:08:49.879 this whole He was like the really kind of an 116 00:08:49.919 --> 00:08:53.240 American huckster who came and started a whole new identity. Right. 117 00:08:55.720 --> 00:08:58.000 Yeah, he's a I think of them as a huckster 118 00:08:58.200 --> 00:09:02.559 of you know, both both Americans Americas. But one thing 119 00:09:02.600 --> 00:09:06.399 that he did figure out pretty fast was that he 120 00:09:06.480 --> 00:09:10.080 could say almost anything. This is in the sixties and 121 00:09:10.120 --> 00:09:14.559 early seventies in California about what was going on south 122 00:09:14.600 --> 00:09:18.720 of the Rio Rand. And you know, Gringas believed it 123 00:09:19.320 --> 00:09:23.399 all and he knew as good khan Min do what 124 00:09:23.919 --> 00:09:27.240 people wanted to hear and what the society wanted to 125 00:09:27.279 --> 00:09:30.080 hear at the moment. And it was a time when 126 00:09:30.399 --> 00:09:34.600 there was a huge revaluation of traditional you know, white 127 00:09:34.679 --> 00:09:39.320 North American attitude it's towards Indigenous people and an attempt 128 00:09:39.399 --> 00:09:42.799 to come to terms with some of the horrific history. 129 00:09:43.559 --> 00:09:46.799 And rather than making people deal with, you know, the 130 00:09:46.840 --> 00:09:52.559 horrible reality of it, he gave them this magical fantasy 131 00:09:53.240 --> 00:09:58.159 indian who would lead them, you know to other realms 132 00:09:58.200 --> 00:10:00.679 and other and other realities. 133 00:10:01.519 --> 00:10:04.120 Right. He called them Don Juan. Right, so Don Juan 134 00:10:04.600 --> 00:10:08.639 was a bruo or kind of a magic person from 135 00:10:08.919 --> 00:10:13.159 an indigenous magician. But also he gave them also the 136 00:10:13.240 --> 00:10:16.919 opportunity to see drugs as a spiritual thing, which they 137 00:10:17.000 --> 00:10:19.799 really wanted. So you're absolutely right that he did that. 138 00:10:20.000 --> 00:10:22.559 In the intro, I mean, the chapter one had so 139 00:10:22.600 --> 00:10:26.000 many famous names and famous people who were influenced by Castaneda. 140 00:10:26.240 --> 00:10:27.120 Can you talk about that. 141 00:10:30.240 --> 00:10:33.720 Absolutely? I mean everyone was interested in people. You know, 142 00:10:33.840 --> 00:10:39.000 Joni Mitchell named an album after him. Don Lung's reckless daughter. 143 00:10:39.799 --> 00:10:44.320 Mark Gay was a big fan. Oliver Stone is a 144 00:10:44.440 --> 00:10:50.799 huge fan the Eagles, and you know, all kinds of 145 00:10:51.080 --> 00:10:54.519 of of novelists were into him, and people, you know, 146 00:10:54.559 --> 00:10:58.720 people in the arts tended to be very drawn to 147 00:10:58.840 --> 00:11:02.919 these books. I think in because Carlos when he was 148 00:11:02.919 --> 00:11:05.879 back in Peru, he was an art student, and a 149 00:11:05.919 --> 00:11:08.879 lot of his appeal was that he you know, he 150 00:11:08.919 --> 00:11:16.240 wrote about these things with that with that knowledge. So yeah, 151 00:11:16.559 --> 00:11:19.720 the first person who really called him out was Joyce 152 00:11:19.759 --> 00:11:23.360 Carlos in a nineteen seventy three letter in New York Times, 153 00:11:23.360 --> 00:11:26.279 where she wrote, oh, I don't know, am I the 154 00:11:26.320 --> 00:11:31.000 only one who thinks these books are actually novels? And 155 00:11:31.279 --> 00:11:34.200 other people have had their doubts. But what Carlos knew 156 00:11:34.279 --> 00:11:38.399 was that when you get a consensus of people going 157 00:11:38.440 --> 00:11:40.440 along with something, and when they have a kind of 158 00:11:40.519 --> 00:11:45.279 emotional investment in a belief, you know, whether it's Santa 159 00:11:45.320 --> 00:11:48.200 Claus or whether it's Donald Trump, because it's really the 160 00:11:48.240 --> 00:11:52.000 same principles that are at work, and when all of 161 00:11:52.039 --> 00:11:55.799 the people who are around them also believe the same thing, 162 00:11:56.240 --> 00:12:03.360 it becomes very hard for people to say they were wrong. 163 00:12:03.879 --> 00:12:07.399 To go against the. 164 00:12:09.000 --> 00:12:15.279 Yeah, we're conformist animals, and Carlos before studying anthropology, when 165 00:12:15.360 --> 00:12:20.320 he was an undergraduate studied psychology, he took a one 166 00:12:20.360 --> 00:12:26.120 class specifically in you know, manipulation of behavioral manipulation of 167 00:12:26.159 --> 00:12:29.759 people living in group situations. And what he went on 168 00:12:29.840 --> 00:12:32.320 to do in the cult was really to just apply 169 00:12:33.039 --> 00:12:38.120 the same kind of maneuvers that he had used to 170 00:12:38.159 --> 00:12:42.440 get his PhD at UCLA and to get published by 171 00:12:43.159 --> 00:12:46.360 University of California Press, which also happens to be my publisher, 172 00:12:46.480 --> 00:12:52.039 So God bless him. And yeah, he knew that people 173 00:12:52.480 --> 00:12:58.679 come to their beliefs not through reason but through emotion. 174 00:12:58.960 --> 00:13:05.279 There's a vast body of psychological experimentation that backs that up, 175 00:13:05.360 --> 00:13:07.840 and Carlos studied it. 176 00:13:08.440 --> 00:13:11.080 And he implemented it. And can you talk about how 177 00:13:11.120 --> 00:13:15.120 he he put together this group you call a cult 178 00:13:15.519 --> 00:13:20.440 and what was its what were central ideas? 179 00:13:22.120 --> 00:13:25.360 You know, the thing was a cult is as far 180 00:13:25.399 --> 00:13:29.720 as I know, it always starts with one person, with 181 00:13:29.919 --> 00:13:34.120 one leader and one follower. And that started really almost 182 00:13:34.120 --> 00:13:38.519 the same time that he began working on his first book, 183 00:13:38.559 --> 00:13:44.039 and that was in nineteen sixty and it stayed, you know, 184 00:13:44.240 --> 00:13:48.240 very small at first, but I think the key things 185 00:13:48.320 --> 00:13:56.159 that Carlos. Carlos lived in fantasy and he needed other 186 00:13:56.759 --> 00:14:02.759 people to join that fantasy with him. And that's one 187 00:14:02.799 --> 00:14:07.360 way of looking at what cults really are. And there's also, 188 00:14:07.399 --> 00:14:13.799 of course the ego reinforcement and the and the narcissism. 189 00:14:13.879 --> 00:14:17.559 Because there's something that happens at the very beginning of 190 00:14:17.559 --> 00:14:20.559 the teachings of Don Juan. It's kind of extraordinary that 191 00:14:20.679 --> 00:14:24.639 no one noticed, which is that Don Juan, who is 192 00:14:24.679 --> 00:14:27.639 the Brujo, as you said, and you know, most people 193 00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:30.600 called him Mishanan, even though Carlos actually didn't use that 194 00:14:30.720 --> 00:14:36.639 word for him. The Brujo. The sorcerer says to Carlos, 195 00:14:37.120 --> 00:14:43.200 it's been revealed me that you are the chosen one, now, 196 00:14:43.759 --> 00:14:46.159 you know. I normally kind of a lot of alarm 197 00:14:46.240 --> 00:14:50.720 bells should sort of go off off when somebody is saying, 198 00:14:50.840 --> 00:14:53.960 you know that they are the chosen one. But Carlos 199 00:14:54.039 --> 00:14:57.360 was such an artful writer that he kind of weaves 200 00:14:57.600 --> 00:15:01.919 this in as he weaves in all so and this, uh, 201 00:15:02.039 --> 00:15:05.039 I think this is the first time I've spoken on 202 00:15:05.080 --> 00:15:09.000 the air about this, that he's he's a disciple of 203 00:15:09.039 --> 00:15:12.519 the devil, he's a diablero. That Don Juan is a 204 00:15:12.600 --> 00:15:15.000 dia blero, which is, you know, it's the kind of 205 00:15:15.000 --> 00:15:20.559 brujo who gains his powers from devil worship. But that's 206 00:15:20.679 --> 00:15:25.759 it's so subtly done in the first books that you know, 207 00:15:25.840 --> 00:15:28.000 you could easily overlook it because there's all of this 208 00:15:28.159 --> 00:15:32.080 other magical, amazing stuff going on in the later books, 209 00:15:32.120 --> 00:15:34.360 which were you know, they sold well, they were all 210 00:15:34.440 --> 00:15:36.159 best almost all of them are best sellers in the 211 00:15:36.279 --> 00:15:36.639 York Times. 212 00:15:36.919 --> 00:15:39.840 Millions of copies, millions and millions of copies. 213 00:15:42.360 --> 00:15:45.360 Oh yeah, easily. I mean, there's no way to know exactly, 214 00:15:45.440 --> 00:15:48.039 but you know, well, I mean a long long time ago, 215 00:15:48.399 --> 00:15:54.120 they passed ten million copies. The later books are just 216 00:15:54.120 --> 00:15:56.759 to put a blowing they're really crazy, you know, because 217 00:15:56.799 --> 00:16:01.039 he's at first he wanted to have academic credibilities. He 218 00:16:01.480 --> 00:16:05.600 you know, was very careful, and it's all longer that 219 00:16:05.720 --> 00:16:10.080 he stayed within his own kind of fantasy world and 220 00:16:10.120 --> 00:16:15.039 developed this cult around him that reinforced him, you know, 221 00:16:15.120 --> 00:16:17.759 the deeper off into it. 222 00:16:18.399 --> 00:16:22.639 He went, would you consider that going into the occult? 223 00:16:26.879 --> 00:16:28.039 Going into the occult? 224 00:16:28.080 --> 00:16:32.039 Did you say, yes, a cult? Like he hear the question, No, 225 00:16:32.120 --> 00:16:34.720 it's okay, I'm just saying like you say that in 226 00:16:34.759 --> 00:16:38.360 the beginning he was a diabe the area or a 227 00:16:38.440 --> 00:16:41.480 double worshiper, but as he got later on, did you 228 00:16:41.519 --> 00:16:45.360 feel like that double worship was more emphasized in the 229 00:16:45.440 --> 00:16:48.759 later books. 230 00:16:51.360 --> 00:16:53.960 Yeah, I think that what happens is this. I think 231 00:16:53.960 --> 00:16:57.080 that at the beginning, it's one of many ideas that 232 00:16:57.159 --> 00:17:01.200 he's playing around with. You know, He's Carlos was very hostile, 233 00:17:01.840 --> 00:17:07.640 you know, with some good reason toward Christianity, especially toward 234 00:17:08.519 --> 00:17:11.319 toward the Catholic Church, and that goes into issues in 235 00:17:11.359 --> 00:17:17.720 his childhood in Peru, and also the probability that he 236 00:17:17.880 --> 00:17:21.319 was a crypto Jew, that he was descended from the 237 00:17:21.440 --> 00:17:28.160 secret Jews of of Peru. But as what happens in 238 00:17:28.200 --> 00:17:30.279 the seventh you know, at first he's riding high, He's 239 00:17:30.279 --> 00:17:36.079 on the cover of Time magazine. Everybody wants to meet him. Yeah, 240 00:17:36.119 --> 00:17:38.839 he he couldn't be bigger. And it happened very suddenly. 241 00:17:39.440 --> 00:17:40.279 But then in the. 242 00:17:40.279 --> 00:17:44.039 Late seventies, once some of his uh, you know, his 243 00:17:44.240 --> 00:17:49.680 vast plagiarism began to be revealed, people at U c 244 00:17:49.880 --> 00:17:55.400 l A whose respect he actually always really wanted very deeply, 245 00:17:55.880 --> 00:18:00.839 began to avoid him and shun him and you know, 246 00:18:00.920 --> 00:18:03.799 he read his reviews. He knew what was what was 247 00:18:03.839 --> 00:18:06.559 going on in the culture at large, and I think 248 00:18:06.599 --> 00:18:12.160 this took him into a dark, dark place where some 249 00:18:12.240 --> 00:18:18.759 of the ideas about devil worship and Don Juan being diablero, 250 00:18:19.920 --> 00:18:24.039 which may have been kind of more playful or not 251 00:18:24.799 --> 00:18:29.839 necessarily totally committed to. By the end of the seventies, 252 00:18:30.240 --> 00:18:34.359 he was. He was. He was very sery about it. 253 00:18:35.079 --> 00:18:38.240 Wow, fascinating. I didn't know that. And so how did 254 00:18:38.319 --> 00:18:41.640 he what happened after he kind of got exposed in 255 00:18:41.680 --> 00:18:45.400 the late seventies, How did Carlos Castanada his life progress 256 00:18:45.440 --> 00:18:45.960 from there? 257 00:18:48.920 --> 00:18:51.279 Well, you know, the thing is people, because nobody knew 258 00:18:51.319 --> 00:18:54.200 anything about him, it was possible to project and imagine 259 00:18:54.240 --> 00:18:57.799 all kinds of, you know, mysterious things going on. For 260 00:18:57.839 --> 00:19:03.440 the most part, he was living in Westwood, you know, 261 00:19:03.720 --> 00:19:09.240 about a fifteen minute walk from the UCLA campus, in 262 00:19:09.319 --> 00:19:15.200 this house with uh. The first they were called he 263 00:19:15.480 --> 00:19:17.440 called these women who were his followers. First they were 264 00:19:17.440 --> 00:19:21.680 called the winds. Later he called them the witches. And 265 00:19:21.759 --> 00:19:23.480 he he, I think, had a kind of fantasy of 266 00:19:23.599 --> 00:19:28.920 establishing this sort of alternate academy, you know, and he 267 00:19:29.160 --> 00:19:33.599 slowly began to you know, gather more followers. He was 268 00:19:33.680 --> 00:19:38.759 always very busy having a career as a compulsive seducer. 269 00:19:40.119 --> 00:19:43.039 That's you know, it would require an endless book to 270 00:19:43.480 --> 00:19:46.079 chronicle all of that. He was definitely a some kind 271 00:19:46.119 --> 00:19:51.000 of sexual compulsive, so he's busy with that. And he'd 272 00:19:51.000 --> 00:19:54.279 loved to just play mind games on people. That took 273 00:19:54.359 --> 00:19:56.480 up a lot of time. And he was writing. He 274 00:19:56.519 --> 00:20:00.079 was a prolific writer, you know. And I think in 275 00:20:00.119 --> 00:20:04.079 away what led to him taking the cult public and 276 00:20:04.640 --> 00:20:10.119 having these workshops and making making a much more theatrical 277 00:20:11.400 --> 00:20:16.200 project was simply the need for excitement and the need 278 00:20:16.279 --> 00:20:21.559 to you know, keep his followers excited. There's always a 279 00:20:21.599 --> 00:20:24.839 thing with him of like, oh, something amazing is right 280 00:20:24.880 --> 00:20:28.440 around the corner. It's something incredible, it's going to be revealed. 281 00:20:28.759 --> 00:20:31.880 And that's in the books, and it was true in 282 00:20:31.920 --> 00:20:35.640 real life too, because somebody knew would be brought into 283 00:20:35.680 --> 00:20:38.119 the group and it would be you. You, You are 284 00:20:38.160 --> 00:20:41.079 the magical one. You have the special energy, and you 285 00:20:41.160 --> 00:20:44.039 are going to take us to what you call it, 286 00:20:44.079 --> 00:20:46.519 you know. The second attention was was often what he 287 00:20:46.599 --> 00:20:51.200 called it, which just meant another world. But he never 288 00:20:51.319 --> 00:20:55.160 he never defines just what it is this amazing thing 289 00:20:55.240 --> 00:20:56.400 that they're going to reach. 290 00:20:57.680 --> 00:21:00.359 And what were the doctrines of tense segrety. 291 00:21:06.519 --> 00:21:10.200 God. That is really hard to say. Well, yeah, I 292 00:21:10.200 --> 00:21:13.039 mean I can say it. It's very abstruse. One important 293 00:21:13.039 --> 00:21:16.279 thing about Carlos was that his mentor was a fellow 294 00:21:16.359 --> 00:21:21.160 named Harold Garfinkel, who is a professor of sociology at UCLA, 295 00:21:21.359 --> 00:21:23.400 who was a you know, some people say it's one 296 00:21:23.440 --> 00:21:27.680 of the top ten sociologists of the twentieth century. And 297 00:21:28.079 --> 00:21:30.920 this gets into some pretty abstruse stuff, but the gist 298 00:21:30.960 --> 00:21:35.960 of it is that we assemble our own realities. One 299 00:21:36.000 --> 00:21:40.079 of the central tenets of Don Juang, of the Shaman 300 00:21:40.200 --> 00:21:45.440 of Costaneda, and of his mentor Garfinkel is that reality 301 00:21:45.799 --> 00:21:50.440 is an agreed upon description. In other words, you can 302 00:21:50.519 --> 00:21:53.079 look at a house from a certain angle describe it 303 00:21:53.119 --> 00:21:55.119 one way. I'll look at it from another way and 304 00:21:55.440 --> 00:21:59.039 describe it a different way. Both of those things are valid. 305 00:21:59.599 --> 00:22:02.799 But when we can agree upon how to describe it, 306 00:22:03.240 --> 00:22:07.839 that's what most people consider reality, which is true enough. 307 00:22:08.000 --> 00:22:10.440 You know, for the nation state, there's no United States. 308 00:22:10.480 --> 00:22:13.359 If people don't agree that there is, there's no money. 309 00:22:13.640 --> 00:22:17.160 People don't agree that money is real. Carlos though, took 310 00:22:17.240 --> 00:22:20.519 that to be also about the physical world, that there 311 00:22:20.559 --> 00:22:25.440 are no rocks or trees or buildings without that. And 312 00:22:25.799 --> 00:22:29.039 this does get around to tense secrity because the idea, 313 00:22:29.039 --> 00:22:33.000 and it's totally wacky, basically, is that through doing these 314 00:22:33.519 --> 00:22:41.559 movements you will assembol your perceptions of reality differently and 315 00:22:41.720 --> 00:22:48.160 thus enter another world. If you listen to the to 316 00:22:48.319 --> 00:22:52.880 the recordings, watch the videos of tense Segrity, or read 317 00:22:52.920 --> 00:22:56.160 anything about it, you know it's just endlessly complicated. And 318 00:22:56.200 --> 00:22:59.079 that's you know, another thing that cult leaders, some cult 319 00:22:59.119 --> 00:23:05.839 leaders like to do is just get some some people 320 00:23:06.480 --> 00:23:11.039 past absolutely be completed, and that will exhaust it. You know, 321 00:23:13.240 --> 00:23:15.880 it's all crap because they were claiming this was stuff 322 00:23:16.240 --> 00:23:19.920 that we just handed down from. 323 00:23:19.880 --> 00:23:24.160 Right that came out of this Seamanic background. He lost them. 324 00:23:24.599 --> 00:23:29.480 I guess we lost them right there. Let's see Carlos Castaneda. 325 00:23:29.720 --> 00:23:31.599 One of the interesting things if you guys are listening, 326 00:23:31.599 --> 00:23:33.400 if you want to go to the podcast Trickster the 327 00:23:33.440 --> 00:23:35.759 Many Lives of Carlos Castaneda, you can see that he 328 00:23:35.839 --> 00:23:40.400 was influenced by al Thos Huxley and the Doors of perceptions, 329 00:23:40.440 --> 00:23:47.200 so he integrated some of that stuff into tenseegrity. And yeah, 330 00:23:47.200 --> 00:23:50.119 he was an interesting guy. Came from Peru and uh, 331 00:23:51.160 --> 00:23:53.319 these books are all over the place, very influential in 332 00:23:53.359 --> 00:23:55.960 the sixties. I think it was George Lucas who said 333 00:23:56.000 --> 00:24:02.000 that the dynamic between Obi Wan and Luke Skywalker was 334 00:24:02.039 --> 00:24:09.200 the dynamic between Carlos Castaneda and Don Juan, the so 335 00:24:09.279 --> 00:24:14.599 called Brewo. But that part of actual Mexico. My understanding 336 00:24:14.640 --> 00:24:17.279 is that I had all kinds of weird cults and 337 00:24:17.359 --> 00:24:20.519 all kinds of strange occultism and things like that, going 338 00:24:20.599 --> 00:24:25.079 way back and back to the Spanish conquest. It's my 339 00:24:25.200 --> 00:24:28.960 understanding of all that stuff. But we'll see if mister 340 00:24:29.000 --> 00:24:31.519 Marshall is going to make it back aer here or not. Sure. 341 00:24:31.720 --> 00:24:34.319 But the Trickster, the Many Lives of Carlos Castaneda. You 342 00:24:34.319 --> 00:24:37.359 can get that on iTunes, you can get it on 343 00:24:37.440 --> 00:24:43.480 how You're back still there? Yeah, it's okay. I kept talking. 344 00:24:43.559 --> 00:24:46.640 I kept talking. I kept talking. Yeah, I kept talking 345 00:24:46.640 --> 00:24:49.799 the whole time. So you kind of bought blacked out it. 346 00:24:50.359 --> 00:24:52.680 Yeah it's okay, you backed out right there, kind of 347 00:24:52.680 --> 00:24:55.400 a tense segrety. So leading up, so this is a 348 00:24:55.559 --> 00:24:58.960 serial womanizer as well, and it leads up. So he 349 00:24:59.039 --> 00:25:02.359 has these girls the Way choose and he passes away 350 00:25:02.359 --> 00:25:03.200 in nineteen ninety eight. 351 00:25:03.240 --> 00:25:09.799 What happens next, Well, they start, you know, tense Secretary 352 00:25:09.839 --> 00:25:13.240 really starts taking off in you know, in nineteen ninety 353 00:25:13.279 --> 00:25:15.200 and it's just one of the things that you know, 354 00:25:15.240 --> 00:25:15.920 it's they start with. 355 00:25:15.880 --> 00:25:18.079 A few workshops, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. 356 00:25:19.200 --> 00:25:21.640 You know, more and more people are drawn in. You know, 357 00:25:21.720 --> 00:25:25.440 they're making Carlos was never motivated by profit, but he 358 00:25:25.559 --> 00:25:27.920 was supporting so many women that you know, they needed 359 00:25:28.359 --> 00:25:31.640 needed money for it. So by you know, by nineteen 360 00:25:31.680 --> 00:25:36.359 ninety five, it's a very big thing. And increasingly in 361 00:25:36.440 --> 00:25:41.720 these workshops, Carlos talks about taking the leap. We're all 362 00:25:41.759 --> 00:25:44.920 going to take the leap together. Now, if you've read 363 00:25:44.920 --> 00:25:48.200 the books, you'll remember at the end of book four, 364 00:25:49.400 --> 00:25:53.480 Carlos himself takes the leap, which is literally they're the 365 00:25:53.599 --> 00:25:57.359 character Carlos does, and that means that he jumps off 366 00:25:57.680 --> 00:26:03.000 a cliff and instead of it's to show his complete 367 00:26:03.119 --> 00:26:08.680 faith and the teachings of Don Juan, and because he 368 00:26:08.759 --> 00:26:13.079 has gone through this great source serh apprenticeship instead of dying. 369 00:26:13.440 --> 00:26:17.440 He he does not. He actually wakes up in in 370 00:26:17.599 --> 00:26:23.759 uh in Westwood, And so you didn't really really need 371 00:26:23.799 --> 00:26:26.960 too much to know that. You know, what he was 372 00:26:27.000 --> 00:26:32.079 talking about was that they would would do something similar 373 00:26:32.319 --> 00:26:36.279 and that they would do it together. Also, he starts 374 00:26:36.880 --> 00:26:43.079 becoming ill. Carlos, like many people of this ILK, you know, 375 00:26:43.200 --> 00:26:48.000 taught that illness was just a failure of the will. 376 00:26:48.359 --> 00:26:50.480 You know, it was you know, kind of in line 377 00:26:50.519 --> 00:26:52.880 with the whole kind of set teaching going back to 378 00:26:52.960 --> 00:26:56.559 Christian science. You know, he's not a big believer in 379 00:26:57.279 --> 00:27:01.519 in real science at all. So it was impossible for 380 00:27:01.640 --> 00:27:07.799 them to admit he might be very seriously ill. And 381 00:27:07.920 --> 00:27:11.799 it turned out that that he had liver cancer. But 382 00:27:11.920 --> 00:27:17.279 this had to be kept from from the followers, and 383 00:27:17.319 --> 00:27:20.039 I don't think, I think, very very late in the 384 00:27:20.119 --> 00:27:23.960 game were they able to even admit it to themselves 385 00:27:24.000 --> 00:27:29.839 at all, because it went straight against their most central 386 00:27:29.960 --> 00:27:32.319 kinds of beliefs, with which had to do with which 387 00:27:32.359 --> 00:27:34.480 was first all, the customer was not going to die. 388 00:27:34.599 --> 00:27:37.720 He was going to turn into a ball of light 389 00:27:37.920 --> 00:27:41.880 and send into the heavens. That was that was one 390 00:27:41.920 --> 00:27:48.000 of the teachings at that at that point but yeah, 391 00:27:48.079 --> 00:27:52.000 he wanted people to to go with him. And that's 392 00:27:52.160 --> 00:27:56.119 you know, basically, cult leaders do not like to be alone. 393 00:27:56.680 --> 00:28:01.279 And it sounds like Marshall Apple Marshall Apple White of what's. 394 00:28:01.160 --> 00:28:05.759 It's well, Apple White was exactly in nineteen ninety seven 395 00:28:05.880 --> 00:28:08.960 was really a year before, you know, and they're these 396 00:28:09.200 --> 00:28:12.680 chilling records of you know, car They're they're joking about 397 00:28:12.720 --> 00:28:15.880 and think, oh, you know, not we're not that called, 398 00:28:16.519 --> 00:28:20.000 you know, but Carlos was fully aware of of that. 399 00:28:20.240 --> 00:28:22.079 You know. It's I think the same thing happened on 400 00:28:22.119 --> 00:28:25.759 a vastly larger scale with Jim Jones or with Forrest. Yes, yes, 401 00:28:25.799 --> 00:28:26.920