This post will explore the various parallels between Whitley Strieber (alleged alien abductee and author of Communion, Transformation, and The Key) and Carlos Castaneda, who wrote a series of books chronicling his apprenticeship with “Yaqui sorcerer” don Juan Matus in Mexico, during the sixties and seventies.
Over the years, Castaneda (who died in 1999) sold millions of books and stirred up a mountain of speculation and controversy.[1] Yet his influence on “alternative” Western thought has been incalculable. Strieber has also enjoyed best seller status, and his most recent works, The Grays and 2012, novels inspired by the author’s supposed real-life encounters with alien beings, are currently being developed as major Hollywood motion picture productions.
Both Castaneda and Strieber were apparently singled out by mysterious parties to undergo an extraordinary initiation process and bring account of it to the world. Without the intervention of don Juan Matus and his party of sorcerers, it’s doubtful we would ever have heard of Castaneda, and the same holds true of Strieber. Although he was already a best-selling author (of horror fiction) before his alien encounter of 1985, it was only with the publication of Communion, in 1986, that Strieber established himself as one of the most puzzling and original writers of our time. In the field he has chosen—or been chosen—to write, that of UFOs and alien visitation, Strieber is probably the current leading exponent.
Like Castaneda, Strieber has a gift for bringing almost inconceivable concepts and experiences into the realm of everyday reality. His work forms a bridge between two apparently (or previously) inseparable realities and invites the reader to cross over into the land of Oz. And although Strieber’s body of work cannot compete with Castaneda’s as a storehouse of esoteric wisdom, it serves a similar function: that of describing—and thereby helping to consolidate—a perception of reality (and of humanity’s predicament) utterly at odds with the current consensus view.
The other obvious parallel to be drawn between Castaneda and Strieber is that both authors have been denounced as hoaxers, opportunists, and just plain liars. Without going into detail, there are a considerable number of inconsistencies, if not glaring contradictions, to be found in the work of both writers, and these have led skeptics to deduce that the accounts were “cut from whole cloth.” I may as well say, right off the bat, that I consider such an idea untenable. In the case of both Castaneda and Strieber, there is simply too much in their work of obvious merit—too much insight, depth, and sheer novelty—for me to believe, even for a moment, that these accounts are wholly invented.
Even if one accepts the notion that the inconsistencies were deliberately placed as a kind of double-bluff (i.e., if the accounts were fiction, why include such glaring contradictions?), viewing these works as “simple” fiction (the best of Strieber, and all of Castaneda) raises far more questions than it answers. I believe the answer is far less straightforward or convenient than any simple verdict of “fact” or “fiction.” Since both authors are recounting their initiation into Imaginal realms, in which the laws of physics are closer to quantum mechanics than those of Newton (i.e., more microcosmic than macro-, more subjective dream reality than objective consensus reality), the shaky, amorphous quality of both Strieber’s and Castaneda’s accounts actually confirms their authenticity rather than undermines it.
Few writers have made such a fearless and thorough public exploration of their psyches as Strieber has. “Objectively” speaking, Communion—and its follow-up Transformation—remain to date the most compelling and insightful personal testimonies of “alien abduction” currently on record. The apparently naked honesty with which Strieber reports his experiences, and the raw emotion with which he imbues them, make for powerfully disturbing reading. Strieber’s willingness to refrain from judgment, to resist the almost overpowering urge to “explain” his experiences and make them fit into ordinary understanding (i.e., by assuming he is dealing with aliens from outer space), make it clear he is not merely peddling a doctrine, or if he is, is extremely cunning in his salesmanship. Strieber testifies to the ways in which he has been transformed by his experiences, despite his emotional resistance, and the eventual benefits he was able to reap from them. If taken at face value, Strieber’s accounts are testimony to the way in which these incredibly strange events—by refusing to submit to rational interpretation—forced his consciousness to adapt and evolve in order to survive. Like Castaneda’s books, Strieber’s works describe one man’s slow and traumatic initiation into a separate reality.
As Strieber points out, his experiences (and hence the body of his work to date) are essentially shamanic in nature. They resemble visits to the lowerworld of the collective unconscious which, however abstract and fantastic, are every bit as real as “objective” reality. Like Castaneda, his desire to share his experience appears to stem from a belief that, far from aberrations, these realities are pertinent to us all. The alien interface which Strieber describes and the separate reality of Castaneda are—both authors insist—universal experiences; as such, they are not only available to us but inescapable. Strieber’s cry in the wilderness is not so much “Repent!” as “Know thyself!” and it is fueled by a certainty that, whatever alien abduction is, it is not the exception to human experience but the rule. As Strieber sees it, it is the active element in an evolutionary process which, by definition, is not only happening at an individual level but to the species as a whole.
Strieber’s missionary zeal has not always enhanced his literary talents, however. After Transformation and Majestic (an effective novel about the Roswell UFO “crash” and cover-up), he wrote two negligible works in which he seemed to be milking his “alien” experiences for all they were worth. Perhaps he needed the money, because Breakthrough and The Secret School (and also The Communion Letters, a collection of correspondences from his readers, edited by Strieber and his wife, Anne) are almost entirely lacking the intensity and depth of his first two books. But then, since his abduction experiences allegedly tailed off soon after Transformation (according to Strieber, they have yet to recur), there was very little left for him to report. This didn’t stop him writing books, however, and Strieber has occasionally been accused of betraying an opportunistic streak. Weird things seem to happen to him at regular intervals, and even when they don’t, he finds new theories by which to re-examine his experiences and generate renewed interest in them. This may be a genuine desire to understand them, just as it may be simple mercenary tactics. Or it may stem from a neurotic need for attention. Perhaps Strieber summons up Imaginal crises and revelations whenever he needs to spice up his life and give him something new to write about?
As it happens, a similar charge has been leveled at Castaneda, namely, that once his “tales of power” had apparently reached a natural end (when don Juan left the world), he began to access buried memories of “the left side,” and was able to spin off a bunch more books. This is a fairly unimaginative theory, however, since (unlike with some of Strieber’s work) there is nothing in the books themselves that suggests such desperate subterfuge. The Art of Dreaming notwithstanding, Castaneda’s works continued to astonish, and even surpass themselves, with each subsequent book.
For the purposes of this study, and for the sake of argument, I am going to assume that, however unreliable their accounts might be, and despite any evidence of “tampering,” both authors weregenuinely reporting experiences that happened, and not merely inventing them or suffering from hallucinations. Any thorough examination of the evidence (if it includes the knowledge contained in the writings themselves, which debunkers rarely do) reveals this to be by far the most likely conclusion. Put simply: there is far too much truth in these books for them not to have at least some basis in fact.
If we allow for this, we can state the following: both Castaneda’s and Strieber’s gift is for relaying experiences and knowledge passed on from elsewhere. Their greatest insights, although they assuredly come through them, do not appear to come from them. This can be said of all great artists, in one way or another, but the problem with Strieber and Castaneda is that their source is not God but (apparently) godlike beings whom they have had direct contact with. In a way, if both authors are to be even partially believed, they are little more than glorified postmen for superior intelligence.[2] For a best-selling author to be reduced to the role of cosmic postman can be tough for a proud intellect to come to grips with, most especially if the message he delivers goes largely unheeded (as seems the case particularly with Strieber).
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“What writing produces when it is pressed to its extremes is a sense of isolation, an alienation, a cosmic aloneness in which nature and religion are lost.”
—William Irwin Thompson, Coming Into Being
Interestingly, both authors’ way of dealing with the soul-shattering truths they were forced to confront—both within and outside them—was to write them down. Castaneda became a figure of fun among the sorcerers for his relentless note-taking, and Strieber has managed to turn just about every major experience of his life (including family tragedies) into source material for his books and website journal. The intellect is the best defense against the onslaught of magikal reality, and writing about their experiences may have been these men’s way of distancing themselves from them. The danger of this is obvious. Writing fosters the illusion of having assimilated and understood an experience when the opposite is really the case: writing is a means not to assimilate experience fully, to keep it at bay. Intellectual understanding is theoretical and not practical—it’s all in the head.
It seems likely that Castaneda was allowed access to the sorcerers’ world not because he necessarily belonged there, but because he had the right kind of “journalistic” (i.e., intellectual) bent to pass on his experiences to the rest of humanity. The same may be true of Strieber. It may be that he has been exposed to a level of intensity, power, and revelation that would unhinge the sturdiest of minds, expressly in order to relay information to the world, and that his own assimilation of these experiences is inessential to his passing them on. In which case, neither Castaneda’s nor Strieber’s testimonies are what they appear to be; or rather, they are exactly what they appear to be (one man’s rational struggle with impossible experiences), but also something else entirely: a subtle and unwitting description of the pitfalls which the intellect creates for itself, once having strayed into the realm of the Imaginal.
If there is one recurring flaw in Strieber’s work (which separates it from Castaneda’s), it relates to an earnestness and gravity that tends to preclude much humor or playfulness. Castaneda may have taken himself too seriously, but if so it was more than compensated for by the playful jibes of the sorcerers he describes. This is true to some extent of Strieber’s “aliens” (who are mischievous in the extreme); but since there is obviously less of an overlap between Strieber and the “visitors” and Castaneda and his sorcerers (who are at least of the same species!), much of the humor of Strieber’s accounts seems to bubble up almost despite him. Unlike don Juan Matus, Strieber doesn’t seem too fond of jokes. He appears to have been too severely traumatized by his experiences to ever make light of them, and at some deep level, Strieber is clearly divided against himself. This divided allegiance acts like a dead weight that inadvertently distorts his message. There is something heavy about much of Strieber’s writings, and it is most evident—and most troubling—in this almost complete lack of humor.
A lack of humor is often a dead giveaway for an excess of self-importance, and if anything is guaranteed to distort and corrupt “sacred wisdom,” it is self-importance. When it comes to conveying apocalyptic truths to an unreceptive public, the danger is not so much that someone will decide to “kill the messenger”—though this can happen too—but that the messenger becomes so puffed up at being “chosen” that he confuses the gravity of the transmission with his own self-importance, and distorts the message in the process of delivering it. This is a surefire way to alienate both the people the message is intended for and whoever or whatever provided it to begin with. In the end, the burden and responsibility of the message may well prove fatal to the person chosen to deliver it.
Castaneda wrote to the bitter end, yet if we are to give any credence to accounts of his final years (primarily Amy Wallace’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which oddly enough Strieber reviewed), the truth he had worked so hard to bring to the world slipped through his own fingers. Apparently, exposure to the incomprehensible forces of sorcery proved too much for him: unwilling or unable to relinquish his self-importance, he was defeated by the third enemy of a man of knowledge, succumbed to the temptations of power, and became (in the words of don Juan) a “cruel, capricious man.” Strieber does not appear to be treading the same path; missionary zeal aside, he is not playing the role of guru yet. He is warming to the role of “prophet of doom,” however, and since the kind of experiences he has undergone, or believes he has undergone, are bound to traumatize anyone, it is difficult to say how close to the edge he is.
It may be that the same formidable intellect that allowed Castaneda (and Strieber) to communicate these energetic truths made them unable, finally, to fully assimilate them. In the first of Castaneda’s books, The Teachings of Don Juan, a third of the work is devoted to an unreadable appendix called “A Structural Analysis,” in which the author attempts to wrestle the Imaginal realities (which he has just recounted so splendidly) down to the rubber mat of reason. Exactly so far as he succeeds in this endeavor, so far does he strip the experiences of all their magic, power, and meaning. In the process, he revealed himself as an unwitting clown, a rational lunatic, dancing while Infinity took pot-shots at his feet.
According to don Juan Matus, a man of knowledge is someone who has erased every last trace of personal history, and with it the personal self. If there is no more nor less to the path of knowledge than this, then with his intensely romantic works, Castaneda may have unwittingly glorified and mystified an incredibly simple (though monumentally difficult) accomplishment. Such mystification and glorification would be inextricably bound up with the fact that Castaneda could not attain this primary goal himself. His works might then be seen as his attempt to erase his personal history by writing it down, and by reinventing it. Since, judging by the evidence of his life, he failed in this task, his books remain contaminated by that history, like pure water that has passed through a dirty filter. Brilliant and inspired as they are, the books are not to be trusted; or rather, they should not be taken entirely at face value.[3]
Both Castaneda and Strieber were permitted an extremely rare audience with a very specific kind of “royalty”: Castaneda with superhuman sorcerers, Strieber with “aliens.” But it’s possible they were only granted this audience because someone was required to pass specific information (information of gravest urgency) onto humankind. If such were the case, then perhaps neither author was actually “worthy” of (i.e., ready for) the secret knowledge they were given? Perhaps they were even chosen partially for this very limitation, chosen because, as intellectually sophisticated Western males, they were equipped to present the knowledge in a way that would be easily digestible to the general public?
Although the message was not intended for just anyone (only a select few would be able to fully understand it), it would have to be made accessible to all. This way, the message could be enjoyed, dismissed, or ignored as a clever yarn, disingenuous hoax, or senseless gibberish, respectively, by those who failed to decipher its true meaning. Neither Castaneda nor Strieber presented their works as fiction—on the contrary—yet they were cunning enough to make sure they read as fiction. As such, their books are in a sense indistinguishable from fiction. I’d wager that this is a major reason for all the confusion and skepticism, because anything that looks this much like a yarn must be a yarn. But perhaps this was also part of the subterfuge? For it allows more literal-minded readers, those unable to entertain the subtle, subjective nature of Imaginal truth, to dismiss the books, based on purely circumstantial evidence (the many contradictions). This subterfuge might have been considered necessary, not only for the protection of the message, but that of the messenger also (and the public); for if he were recognized as what he was—a spy for the Imaginal among common folk—he would be dispatched at once. [4]
The temptation to succumb to a sense of power and uniqueness is great. Prophets are usually considered insane, and often wind up that way. The combination of exposure to divine knowledge with frustration, anger, and despair in the face of the world’s incomprehension and indifference often leads to self-righteous superiority. Likewise, the traumatic effects of revelation combined with a complete lack of support from his fellow men is likely to drive the messenger to take refuge in psychotic delusions of grandeur. The only way for the messenger to withstand the pressure and not wind up half-mad with a mixture of paranoia and megalomania (two symptoms exhibited by Castaneda in his final years) is to constantly remind himself that he is only a messenger, a carrier of information, with neither power nor responsibility to create (or even interpret) the message. His only task to deliver it faithfully and withdraw.
Caught between a strange and deeply threatening new reality and an old reality that no longer offers comfort or assurance, that seems increasingly hollow and illusory, is it any wonder if both Strieber and Castaneda took refuge in writing, and in the grand gestures of prophet-gurus? It would have been the only bridge they had between the two worlds, the only way for them to make sense of either. The pitfall is that the tool they are using to protect themselves from madness—the intellect—is the very thing likely to undo them in the end. Writing becomes not so much a bridge between worlds but a refuge from them, creating an illusion of power and control so intoxicating it is almost bound to turn into obsession, the neurotic drive for power.
The very gift for which they were chosen as conveyers of forbidden knowledge would make Castaneda and Strieber outcasts, both in the world of men, and the realm of sorcerers and “aliens.” Like Mercury, the price of being granted free passage between the realms meant that they belonged to neither. Intellect, like the messenger, like language itself, is a means and not an end; it has no place in the primal realms or the supernal spheres: the one is beneath it, the other beyond it. This is the comedy and tragedy of the word, and why a day comes in the life of every writer when he or she is forced to choose between the illusory control of the written word—being the messenger—and the power and freedom of direct experience: becoming the message. He who lives by the pen, dies by the pen.
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Footnots:
1: Castaneda was even called “the godfather of the New Age,” an ironic designation, since, unlike Strieber, his works are anything but populist.
2: This is not to say that Strieber lacks imagination—on the contrary, like Castaneda, his accounts are rich in imagery and feeling—but apparently only when inspired by actual individuals and events. Strieber’s straight fiction, for example (what I have read of it, and not counting Majestic and 2012), has been unremarkable. His most powerful work by far, a self-published work called The Key, is actually (Strieber claims) a transcript of a conversation he had with a godlike being who burst into his hotel room one night in Toronto and proceeded to reveal to him the secrets of the Universe. The book certainly supports Strieber’s outlandish claim: whatever its source, Strieber did a commendable job arranging and presenting the information it contains. Yet—if he is to be believed—that’s all he did: transcribe and pass on the message.
3: The same must be said of Strieber’s work, although in Strieber’s case there is an added complication (one which I can only touch upon here), relating to his reputed history of child abuse, and his possible affiliations with government organizations. Castaneda may have been to some extent an unwitting patsy of sorcerers, and he may have lost his marbles in the end. But (tensegrity and those last few dodgy years aside), I believe he was serving an authentically magikal tradition. With Strieber, it may be that (wittingly or not) he is serving two masters at once.
4: Nonetheless, the real danger which the messenger faces is his own incapacity to shoulder the burden of knowledge. Since he is privy to the inner workings of the Imaginal realm, he is obliged to carry experiences which he can share with no one, not even his readership. Since he will be unable to comprehend much of the knowledge he has been granted, so far beyond his experience does it lie, he won’t be able to write about it either, so it is solely for him. This is why it is essential that, whatever else, the messenger must not allow his experiences—neither the honor nor the nigh-unbearable pressure of being chosen as divine emissary—to go to his head. To do so will prove fatal in one way or another.
