“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Castaneda’s books, for all their seeming unconventionality, had a niche to fall into, for here was the quite conventional scholar exploring a culture, even of the mind; not his own—but safely, within an academic framework to which he then returned, and to which academic readers could identify. Castaneda had his society’s credentials ahead of time. That society could then accept his journeys, and the individuals could allow themselves to follow his adventures, and forgive him for his cultural transgression because he brought home goodies.

(Pause at 9:37.) Give us a moment.... The point, however, was always made that Don Juan’s inner culture was alien—natural perhaps to Don Juan, but not to Castaneda or to the reader.

Castaneda could report. Other so-called psychic books of current nature are reported also, but usually by someone even further removed from the original experiences. A writer, free-lance, will do the life story of so-and-so, because the “psychic” himself is considered too erratic, too out of it, and too untrustworthy to honestly record his own experience.

(One-minute pause at 8:52.) I did want to make some comments about the Sinful Self in general, and how it is perceived and assimilated in say, Castaneda’s work and in the belief structure of Kubler-Ross. [...]

The Castaneda system accepts the power of evil, for example (long pause), presenting a framework in which those people who do accept such power can confront it, along with a system of exercises and beliefs meant to minimize evil’s effects. [...]

The books are immediate in a way, for example, that the Castaneda books are not. Castaneda speaks of what is really exotic behavior from your cultural viewpoint. [...]