Carlos Castaneda

Carlos Castañeda (December 25, 1925 A 1981 article in ''The New York Times'' stated that Castaneda "was born Carlos Arana in a Peruvian mountain town 66 years ago", indicating a 1915 birth. Most sources tend to favor the Peruvian birth and 1925 date.}} – April 27, 1998) was an American writer. Starting with ''The Teachings of Don Juan'' in 1968, Castaneda wrote a series of books that purport to describe training in shamanism that he received under the tutelage of a Yaqui "Man of Knowledge" named don Juan Matus.

Castaneda's first three books—''The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge'', ''A Separate Reality'', and ''Journey to Ixtlan''—were written while he was an anthropology student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He wrote that these books were ethnographic accounts describing his apprenticeship with a traditional "Man of Knowledge" identified as ''don Juan Matus'', a Yaqui Indian from northern Mexico. The veracity of these books was doubted from their original publication, and they are now widely considered to be fictional. Castaneda was awarded his bachelor's and doctoral degrees based on the work described in these books. At the time of his death in 1998, Castaneda's books had sold more than eight million copies and had been published in 17 languages. Provided by Wikipedia