Castaneda claimed to have been born in São Paulo, Brazil on Christmas Day in 1931. Immigration records show, however, that he was born six years earlier in Cajamarca, Perú. Castaneda also claimed that "Castaneda" was an adopted name, but records show that it was given by his mother Susana Castañeda Navoa. His surname appears with the Ñ in many Hispanic dictionaries, even though his famous published works display an →anglicised version. He moved to the United States in the early 1950s and became a naturalized citizen in 1957. He was educated at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) (B.A. 1962; Ph.D. 1970). [citation needed]

Castaneda wrote twelve books and several academic articles detailing his experiences with the Yaqui Indians indigenous to parts of Central Mexico. His first three books, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, A Separate Reality and Journey to Ixtlan were written while Castaneda was an anthropology student at UCLA. Castaneda wrote these books as if they were his research log describing his apprenticeship with a traditional shaman identified as Don Juan Matus. Castaneda was awarded his bachelor's and doctoral degrees for the work described in these books.

His writings have been criticized by academics, and are seen as highly suspect in terms of strict anthropological fieldwork. Many have tried to corroborate Castaneda’s stories with his own personal history and that of his fellow apprentices. Considering that Castaneda described, as part of his efforts to follow the precepts he learned from the old nagual, Don Juan Matus, a personal effort to erase his own personal history, a lack of corroboration from others is not surprising. Indeed, to this day, the facts relating to his birth place and age and the nature of his death [some reports state he died of liver cancer, which is also uncorroborated] remain controversial. Contradictory evidence suggests Castaneda wrote in the traditional allegorical style of the storyteller (ethnopoetics) common to many native Indian cultures.

Perhaps the most highly contested aspects of his work are the descriptions of the use of psychotropic plants as a means to induce altered states of awareness. In Castaneda's first two books, he describes the Yaqui way of knowledge requiring the use of powerful indigenous plants, such as peyote and datura. In his third book, Journey to Ixtlan, he reverses his emphasis on 'power plants'. He states that Don Juan used them on Castaneda to demonstrate that experiences outside those known in day-to-day life are real and tangible.

Castaneda later disavowed all use of drugs for these purposes. He stated that they could inalterably damage the luminous ball of energy emanations from the body, as well as the physical body.[citation needed]. In Journey to Ixtlan, the third book in the series, he wrote:



My perception of the world through the effects of those psychotropic had been so bizarre and impressive that I was forced
to assume that such states were the only avenue to communicating and learning what don Juan was attempting to teach me.
That assumption was erroneous.
 

Great Books

The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1968) ISBN 0-520-21757-8
A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan (1971) ISBN 0-671-73249-8
Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan (1972) ISBN 0-671-73246-3
Sorcery: A Description of the World (1973)
Tales of Power (1975) ISBN 0-671-73252-8
The Second Ring of Power (1977) ISBN 0-671-73247-1
The Eagle's Gift (1981) ISBN 0-671-73251-X
The Fire from Within (1984) ISBN 0-671-73250-1

The Power of Silence: Further Lessons of Don Juan (1987) ISBN 0-671-73248-X
The Art of Dreaming (1993) ISBN 0-06-092554-X
Readers of Infinity: A Journal of Applied Hermeneutics (1996) Number 1/2/3/4
Magical Passes: The Practical Wisdom of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico (1998) ISBN 0-06-092882-4
The Active Side of Infinity (1999) ISBN 0-06-092960-X
The Wheel Of Time : The Shamans Of Mexico (2000) ISBN 0-14-019604-8

Books by other authors

Florinda Donner[-Grau]. Shabono: A Visit to a Remote and Magical World in the South American Rain Forest by (1992) ISBN 0-06-250242-5 This book was originally published before Witch's Dream in 1985.
Florinda Donner-Grau. The Witch's Dream. 1st edition 1985 ISBN 0-671-55198-1; current re-print(1997) ISBN 0-14-019531-9
Florinda Donner-Grau. Being-In-Dreaming: An Initiation into the Sorcerers' World (1992) ISBN 0-06-250192-5
Taisha Abelar. The Sorcerer's Crossing. 1st hardback edition 1992. 1993 edition ISBN 0-14-019366-9
Victor Sanchez. The Teachings of Don Carlos ISBN 1-879181-23-1
Richard de Mille. Castaneda’s journey : the power and the allegory (1976)- ISBN 0884960676 - Capra Press, Santa Barbara, CA.
Richard de Mille (ed.). The Don Juan Papers: Further Castaneda Controversies (1980) - ISBN 0915520257 - Ross-Erikson, Santa Barbara, CA. / (1990) ISBN 0534121500 Wadsworth Pub. Co., Belmont, CA.
Jay Courtney Fikes. Carlos Castaneda: Academic Opportunism and the Psychedelic Sixties (1993)
Daniel C. Noel The Soul of Shamanism: Western Fantasies, Imaginal Realities (New York: Continuum, 1997)
Robert J. Wallis. Shamans/neo-Shamans: Ecstasy, Alternative Archaeologies and Contemporary Pagans. London: Routledge, 2003. ISBN 0-415-30203-X
Amy Wallace. The Sorcerer's Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda (2003)
Filming Castaneda: The Hunt for Magic and Reason" by Gaby Geuter (2004) ISBN 1-4140-4612-X
Lujan Matus. The Art of Stalking Parallel Perception - The Living Tapestry of Lujan Matus(2005) ISBN 1-4120-4984-9
Edward Plotkin The Four Yogas Of Enlightenment: Guide To Don Juan's Nagualism & Esoteric Buddhism (2002) ISBN 0-9720879-0-7
Armando Torres Encounters with the Nagual: Conversations with Carlos Castaneda (2002) Spanish (2004) English ISBN 968-5671-04-4
Neville Goddard. "Awakened Imagination" by heavily influenced the work of Castaneda.[citation needed]
Alice Kehoe, Shamans and Religion: An Anthropoligical Exploration in Critical Thinking. 2000. London: Waveland Press. ISBN 1-57766-162-1