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
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: Stress, Action, Success, Effort, Warrior
A warrior thinks of death when things become unclear. The idea of death is the only thing that tempers our spirit.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Wisdom, Death, Warrior
No person is important enough to make me angry.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Anger
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 humbleness of a warrior is not the humbleness of the beggar. The warrior lowers his head to no one, but at the same time, he doesn’t permit anyone to lower his head to him. The beggar, on the other hand, falls to his knees at the drop of a hat and scrapes the floor to anyone he deems to be higher; but at the same time, he demands that someone lower than him scrape the floor for him.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Humility, Attitude
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: Courage, Growth, 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: Creativity, Change, To Be Born Everyday
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: Power, Warrior, Courage, Decide
A warrior acts as if he knows what he is doing, when in effect he knows nothing.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Action
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
Death is our eternal companion. It is always to our left, an arm’s length behind us. Death is the only wise adviser that a warrior has. Whenever he feels that everything is going wrong and he’s about to be annihilated, he can turn to his death and ask if that is so. His death will tell him that he is wrong, that nothing really matters outside its touch. His death will tell him, I haven’t touched you yet.’
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Wise, Wisdom, Death, 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, People, Love, Friendship
A warrior never worries about his fear.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Fear, Attitude, Worry, Warrior
Nothing in this world is a gift. Whatever must be learned must be learned the hard way.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Wisdom, Learning
All paths lead nowhere, so it is important to choose a path that has heart.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Heart
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: Warrior, Attitude
A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Knowledge, Action, 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, Vision, Purpose, Fear
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: Defeat, Growth, Courage, Fear
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
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: Courage, Growth, Warrior
We talk to ourselves incessantly about our world. In fact we maintain our world with our internal talk. And whenever we finish talking to ourselves about ourselves and our world, the world is always as it should be. We renew it, we rekindle it with life, we uphold it with our internal talk. Not only that, but we also choose our paths as we talk to ourselves. Thus we repeat the same choices over and over until the day we die, because we keep on repeating the same internal talk over and over until the day we die. A warrior is aware of this and strives to stop his internal talk.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Attitude, Life, Warrior
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
Learn to see, and then you’ll know that there is no end to the new worlds of our vision.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Vision, Discovery
A warrior-hunter knows that his death is waiting, and the very act he is performing now may well be his last battle on earth. He calls it a battle because it is a struggle. Most people move from act to act without any struggle or thought. A warrior-hunter, on the contrary, assesses every act; and since he has intimate knowledge of his death, he proceeds judiciously, as if every act were his last battle. Only a fool would fail to notice advantage a warrior-hunter has over his fellow men. A warrior-hunter gives his last battle its due respect. It’s only natural that his last act on earth should be the best of himself. It’s pleasurable that way. It dulls the edge of his fright.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Knowledge, People, Earth, Wisdom, Death, 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: Warrior, Wisdom, Life, Experience
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: Mystery, Wisdom
The spirit reveals itself to everyone with the same intensity and consistency, but only warriors are consistently attuned to such revelations.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Consistency, War, Warrior, Spirit
Personal history must be constantly renewed by telling parents, relatives, and friends everything one does. On the other hand, for the warrior who has no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with his acts. And above all, no one pins him down with their thoughts and their expectations.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Parents, Friend, Warrior, Individuality, Courage, History
The most effective way to live is as a warrior. A warrior may worry and think before making any decision, but once he makes it, he goes his way, free from worries or thoughts; there will be a million other decisions still awaiting him. That’s the warrior’s way.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Mystery, Wisdom
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