Intro

Carlos Castaneda was a brilliant storyteller whose best selling tales, drawing from other great literature and spiritual traditions, communicated useful principles in a way that was vivid and compelling for many. He also lied as casually and often in those books and his daily life as any other con man with narcissistic personality disorder. And he used his fame and storytelling talent to create a cult around him. The members of that cult were made to cut ties with family and longtime friends, and to devote themselves entirely to following Castaneda and his whims.

The information provided on this site is based on the experiences of Richard Jennings and Amy Wallace, both students of Castaneda and members of his cult in the years before his death. It is also based on extensive research into court and other records, and numerous interviews with other cult members, and former cult members, which is thoroughly documented here (e.g., Chronologies). This site is the only comprehensive source of this information.

This website was first established in 1999 to delve into the questions presented by Carlos Castaneda’s teachings and legacy following his death the preceding year. The questions included what was authentic, what may have been merely “stories” designed to “trap our attention,” what “works” and what doesn’t, and what may be better described and taught by other energetic disciplines. Unveiling the truth about Carlos Castaneda’s legacy became a significant focus of this inquiry. The site was a place to publish the real facts about Castaneda’s biography and those of the women he claimed had also been students of his supposed teacher, Don Juan Matus. That information debunked the stories Castaneda and the so-called Witches told about themselves and their claimed apprenticeships with a Yaqui shaman and others of his lineage. But the philosophies and concepts introduced by the books continue to influence and impact our culture in many ways. Unveiling the truth about Carlos Castaneda’s legacy is, therefore, a crucial goal of this site, alongside exploring what is useful in the concepts and philosophies he popularized.

The site was established by Richard Jennings (aka Corey Donovan for purposes of all things Castaneda), a student of Carlos Castaneda beginning in 1995. That was when Richard first met Castaneda and the so-called Witches at workshops and lectures in Los Angeles and Omega Institute in upstate New York. By the fall of 1995, Richard was attending private weekly sessions with Castaneda that are detailed on the site and having lots of other interactions with Castaneda and his group. Richard, a spiritual seeker who had long been fascinated by shamanism, thought he had found his teacher in Castaneda. Along with a small circle of others who had been chosen to attend private sessions with Castaneda in his last few years, Richard performed Tensegrity (the growing series of movements Castaneda and his group taught that were claimed to have been handed down by Castaneda’s lineage of “sorcerers”), engaged in Recapitulation (the process of reviewing one’s life events and reintegrating the energy from those events), and followed other practices taught by Castaneda in private sessions.

Richard’s complete story will be told in a memoir he is currently writing. In brief, Richard was devastated when his teacher died of liver cancer in 1998 rather than “burning with the fire from within,” the magical transition to traveling permanently in other realms Castaneda had long promised. Richard’s sense of loss was compounded by the sudden disappearance of the five women closest to Castaneda–Florinda Donner, Taisha Abelar, Nury Alexander, Kylie Lundahl and Talia Bey. (Those were not these women’s original names, but the ones they were known by in Castaneda’s books and mythology, as further explained on this site.) Richard had grown very close to those women, especially Florinda, Kylie and Talia, considering them and others in the group around Castaneda to be his adopted family. As Richard pieced together the story of what had happened in Castaneda’s inner circle after his death, it became increasingly clear those women had committed suicide in a deluded attempt to “follow” Castaneda. This tragic revelation is part of unveiling the truth about his legacy.

Richard himself was feeling suicidal following Castaneda’s death and the womens’ disappearance. In the weeks immediately following, he even made a trip to Death Valley, the womens’ last reported location, to see if he could figure out what had happened to them there. His tentative plan in making the trip was ultimately to jump to his death in an effort to “follow” Castaneda and the missing women, much as Castaneda had claimed in his books he had done following don Juan’s departure. Richard’s journey to Death Valley was a dark chapter in uncovering the reality behind Castaneda’s promises.

While Richard survived that trip, his sense of loss and devastation turned to shock and, ultimately, anger as the group Castaneda left behind (Cleargreen) continued to put on workshops and events without acknowledging Castaneda’s passing. When Castaneda’s death finally was made public as the result of probate being filed, Richard was appalled at the nonsensical “explanations” Cleargreen put out. He continues to be appalled and disgusted by their failure, now going on 25-plus years, to honestly report the disappearance and deaths of their former colleagues, the five women who had been closest to Castaneda. These were the reasons he started the Sustained Action mailing list in 1999 and, with the help and written contributions of many of his former fellow Castaneda followers, ultimately put up the first version of this website in summer 1999. [The last version of that website can still be found on the “Wayback Machine” here.]

That version of the website contained material that would be of interest to fellow Castaneda followers (workshop notes, summaries of private sessions with Castaneda) in an effort to lure them into reading the other material (e.g., chronologies of Castaneda and the Witches, reports on likely source material for Castaneda’s books) that would helpfully lead them to question their belief in Castaneda and the stories he insisted all his life were literally true. It included discussion pages where all kinds of theories about the Castaneda phenomenon and his teachings were hashed out at length. This was essentially a forum for helping to “deprogram” those of us who had become part of the Castaneda cult. The forum played a critical role in unveiling the truth about Carlos Castaneda’s legacy.

At 25 years on, this site has been revamped to memorialize what we’ve since learned about Castaneda, his teachings and the cult he built around him. Unveiling the truth about Carlos Castaneda’s legacy is more relevant than ever. Since there are many who continue to quote Castaneda as a supposedly legitimate shamanic teacher and source of mystic truths, this site is intended as an ongoing antidote and reality check for those claims. Borrowing one of the terms Castaneda coined, this site and the work behind it is truly a “sustained action.” In contrast to the way he used the term, however, this action is in the interest of questioning would-be gurus, and the pursuit of self reflection and integrity.

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