Carlos Castaneda (1925–98) was a controversial American New Age icon. His 12 books sold 8 million copies in 17 languages before his death, and even more since.
Castaneda gained rapid celebrity during graduate school after his Teachings of Don Juan (1968) became a best-seller in the late sixties. This and his other books describe the mystical drug-stimulated escapades he claimed he had with his mentor Don Juan, a Yaqui Indian sorcerer whom Castaneda supposedly met in 1960 while studying medicinal plants used by American Indians.
Castaneda’s writings are as mysterious as the details of his life and death. Though records proved that he was born in Peru, he claimed he was born in Brazil. Despite his fame and notoriety, he refused to be photographed, tape-recorded, or interviewed. His death was disclosed only after two months.
Citing contradictions, factual discrepancies, and the fact that Don Juan could never be traced, critics argue that Castaneda’s books are works of fiction and not based on anthropological fieldwork.
Although Castaneda’s writings were not intended to be self-help books, his followers enthusiastically interpreted them as offering a practical philosophy of living and a set of life-improvement practices.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Carlos Castaneda
Intent is not a thought, or an object, or a wish. Intent is what can make a man succeed when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated. It operates in spite of the warrior’s indulgence. Intent is what makes him invulnerable. Intent is what sends a shaman through a wall, through space, to infinity.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Vision, Warrior, Defeat
The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Confidence, Self-reliance, Perception, Attitude, Illusion
If a warrior is to succeed at anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but with no stress or obsession.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Effort, Warrior, Action, Success, Stress
A warrior must cultivate the feeling that he has everything needed for the extravagant journey that is his life. What counts for a warrior is being alive. Life in itself is sufficient, self-explanatory and complete. Therefore, one may say without being presumptuous that the experience of experiences is being alive.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Attitude, Life, Warrior, Appreciation
A warrior chooses a path with heart, any path with heart, and follows it; and then he rejoices and laughs. He knows because he sees that his life will be over altogether too soon. He sees that nothing is more important than anything else.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Vision, Life, Purpose, Bravery, Warrior
Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore, a warrior must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if he feels that he should not follow it, he must not stay with it under any conditions. His decision to keep on that path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. He must look at every path closely and deliberately. There is a question that a warrior has to ask, mandatorily: ‘Does this path have a heart?’
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Heart, Purpose, Fear, Vision
All paths are the same, leading nowhere. Therefore, pick a path with heart!
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Heart
In the universe there is an immeasurable, indescribable force which shamans call intent, and absolutely everything hat exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Universe
The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or a curse.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Attitude, Warrior, Challenges, Perception
A warrior considers himself already dead, so there is nothing to lose. The worst has already happened to him, therefore he’s clear and calm; judging him by his acts or by his words, one would never suspect that he has witnessed everything.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Wisdom, Death
Once a man worries, he clings to anything out of desperation; and once he clings he is bound to get exhausted or to exhaust whomever or whatever he is clinging to. A warrior-hunter, on the other hand, knows he will lure game into his traps over and over again, so he doesn’t worry.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Attitude, Warrior, Worry
A warrior acts as if he knows what he is doing, when in effect he knows nothing.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Action, Warrior
A path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you … Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself alone, one question … Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t it is of no use.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Change, Being Ourselves
Whenever a warrior decides to do something, he must go all the way, but he must take responsibility for what he does. No matter what he does, he must know first why he is doing it, and then he must proceed with his actions without having doubts or remorse about them.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Doubt, Attitude, Warrior
The internal dialogue is what grounds people in the daily world. The world is such and such or so and so, only because we talk to ourselves about its being such and such and so and so. The passageway into the world of shamans opens up after the warrior has learned to shut off his internal dialogue.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Attitude, Warrior, People
The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Courage
The hardest thing in the world is to assume the mood of a warrior. It is of no use to be sad and complain and feel justified in doing so, believing that someone is always doing something it us. Nobody is doing anything to anybody, much less to a warrior.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Wisdom, Warrior
There’s no emptiness in the life of a warrior. Everything is filled to the brim. Everything is filled to the brim, and everything is equal.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Wisdom, Life, Experience, Warrior
Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge. A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Disappointment, Life, Knowledge, Regret, Courage, Warrior, Challenges, Remorse
A warrior never worries about his fear.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Attitude, Fear, Worry
If his spirit is distorted he should simply fix it—purge it, make it perfect—because there is no other task in our entire lives which is more worthwhile … To seek the perfection of the warrior’s spirit is the only task worthy of our temporariness, our manhood.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Growth, Courage
It doesn’t matter how one was brought up. What determines the way one does anything is personal power.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Power, Action
A warrior doesn’t know remorse for anything he has done, because to isolate one’s acts as being mean, or ugly, or evil is to place an unwarranted importance on the self.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Attitude, Warrior
All paths lead nowhere, so it is important to choose a path that has heart.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Heart
To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Courage, Growth
A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Action, Warrior, Knowledge
Feeling important makes one heavy, clumsy and vain. To be a warrior one needs to be light and fluid.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Attitude, Warrior
The spirit reveals itself to everyone with the same intensity and consistency, but only warriors are consistently attuned to such revelations.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: War, Spirit, Consistency, Warrior
For a warrior, to be inaccessible means that he touches the world around him sparingly. And above all, he deliberately avoids exhausting himself and others. He doesn’t use and squeeze people until they have shriveled to nothing, especially the people he loves.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Friendship, People, Love
When a man has fulfilled all four of these requisites—to be wide awake, to have fear, respect, and absolute assurance—there are no mistakes for which he will have to account; under such conditions his actions lose the blundering quality of the acts of a fool. If such a man fails, or suffers a defeat, he will have lost only a battle, and there will be no pitiful regrets over that.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Growth, Defeat, Courage, Fear
A warrior takes responsibility for his acts, for the most trivial of acts. An average man acts out his thoughts, and never takes responsibility for what he does.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Attitude, Responsibility, Warrior
A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war: wide-awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance. Going to knowledge or going to war in any other manner is a mistake, and whoever makes it might never live to regret it.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Courage, Growth, Fear, Knowledge
Warriors do not win victories by beating their heads against walls, but by overtaking the walls. Warriors jump over walls; they don’t demolish them.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Action, Win, Warrior
The warrior: silent in his struggle, undetainable because he has nothing to lose, functional and efficacious because he has everything to gain.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Wisdom
Only the idea of death makes a warrior sufficiently detached so that he is capable of abandoning himself to anything. He knows his death is stalking him and won’t give him time to cling to anything so he tries, without craving, all of everything.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Wisdom, Death
A warrior seeks to act rather than talk.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Action, Warrior
A rule of thumb for a warrior is that he makes his decisions so carefully that nothing that may happen as a result of them can surprise him, much less drain his power.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Courage, Decide, Power, Warrior
It is important to do what you don’t know how to do. It is important to see your skills as keeping you from learning what is deepest and most mysterious. If you know how to focus, unfocus. If your tendency is to make sense out of chaos, start chaos.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: To Be Born Everyday, Creativity, Change
There are lots of things a warrior can do at a certain time which he couldn’t do years before. Those things themselves did not change; what changed was his idea of himself.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Growth, Courage, Warrior
The world is incomprehensible. We won’t ever understand it; we won’t ever unravel its secrets. Thus we must treat the world as it is: a sheer mystery.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Wisdom, Mystery
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