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New York Times (1) - Jun 1998 New York Times, June 19th, 1998 Carlos Castaneda, Mystical Writer, Dies at 72 By Peter Applebome Carlos Castaneda, whose best-selling explorations of mystical and pharmacological frontiers helped to define the psychological landscape of the 1960s, died two months ago just as privately and secretly as he had lived, associates revealed this week. Befitting a man who made an aesthetic out of mystery, even his age is uncertain, but he was believed to be 72. He died of liver cancer on April 27 at his home in Los Angeles, said Deborah Drooz, an entertainment lawyer, friend of Castaneda and executor of his estate. She said he had suffered from the illness for at least 10 months. After his death, his body was cremated and the remains were sent to Mexico, she added. In books like "The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge," Castaneda spun extraordinarily rich, hallucinogenic evocations of ancient paths to knowledge based on what he described as an extended apprenticeship with a Yaqui Indian shaman named Don Juan Matus. His 10 books, etched in layer upon layer of psychological nuance and intrigue, became international best sellers translated into 17 languages and were credited with helping to usher in the New Age sensibility and reviving interest in Indian and Southwestern cultures. Over the years, scholars and critics have debated whether Don Juan existed and whether the books were anthropology or fantasy, fact or fiction, distinctions which no doubt amused Castaneda. Rather than respond, he lived in almost total anonymity, refusing to make public appearances, or to be photographed or tape-recorded. He continued to write up to his death and wanted his death to remain as private as his life, Ms. Drooz said. The Los Angeles Times reported his death on Thursday after it was revealed by an Atlanta man who said he was Castaneda's son. He said he heard about the death when he learned of probate proceedings. "Carlos Castaneda was a very impeccable man," Ms. Drooz said. "Everything he wanted done he made clear to the very end, and to the very end he never remotely suggested he wanted an epitaph or a eulogy or a press release about this death. He spend his life eschewing media coverage and those around him respected that and allowed him to pass peacefully without attention. It was no secret. It just didn't seem appropriate to make a fuss." But C.J. Castaneda, 36, who owns a coffee shop in suburban Atlanta, and his mother, Castaneda's former wife, Margaret Runyan Castaneda, both say they are skeptical of that account and question why Castaneda's death certificate said he was never married and why news of his death was kept from them. Mrs. Castaneda, who said they were married from 1960 to 1973, said Castaneda was not her son's biological father but he had the boy's birth certificate changed legally to say that he was the boy's father. Ms. Drooz said Carlos Castaneda was estranged from C.J. Castaneda, and the younger man was not his son. The death certificate lists a niece, Talia Bey, who is president of Cleargreen Inc., which organizes seminars based on Castaneda's teachings. A hearing on Castaneda's estate, which benefits from enormous worldwide sales of his books, is to be held on July 2 in Los Angeles. If confusion follows in the wake of Castaneda's death, it would be consistent with the story of his life. Castaneda had said that he was born on Dec. 25, 1931, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and that Castaneda was an adopted surname. Immigration records indicate that he was born on Dec. 25, 1925, in Cajamarca, Peru, and Castaneda was his given name. He came to the United States in 1951 and was an obscure graduate student in anthropology when he sent off a manuscript in 1967 to the University of California Press in Los Angeles. The book was released as "The Teachings of Don Juan" in 1968. After its paperback rights were resold, it became an international best seller. In the book, in encounters at once fanciful and intellectually and psychologically challenging, Don Juan instructs his disciple about becoming a "man of knowledge" in ways that "clash disconcertingly with our prevailing scientific conception of reality," as Theodore Roszak put it in a review in The Nation. As the book begins, Don Juan instructs his pupil through the use of hallucinogenic drugs but as the book goes on, drugs are less a part of the learning process. His second book, "A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan," continues the education process, this time focusing on the nature of sorcery. The third volume of the Don Juan books, "Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan," is the most personal of the three, focusing on what Castaneda has learned. A review in Book World called it "one of the most important statements of our time." The books made Castaneda an international celebrity, featured on the cover of Time. But many of his later books received cooler reviews. In The New York Times Book Review, Margot Adler described "The Power of Silence: Further Lessons of Don Juan" as "an unnecessarily cloudy pathway to the world of dreams and altered states." And his career was clouded almost from the beginning by the controversy over whether Don Juan even existed or whether Castaneda was, as one critic put it, "one of the great intellectual hoaxers" of all time. Castaneda insisted that Don Juan was real. But others have said that, real or not, the books stand on their own both as windows onto the spiritual currents of the '60s and as part of a long tradition of vivid intellectual and spiritual quests. "The most important question we can ask is not, 'Can Juan Matus be located in 1977 in Sonora, Mexico?' wrote Sam Keen in Psychology Today. "It is rather: "What does Don Juan tell us about ourselves, about the millions in this country and abroad, who have read his words in 11 languages?' As an archetypical hero, Don Juan may reveal to us something about the contours of the collective unconscious and the longings of our time." Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company

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