If Castaneda's work is a factual account, then our universe is far more bizzare and amazing than the wildest theories of the whackiest quantum physicists. Conversely, if Castaneda's work is pure fiction, then he is a far greater genius that most people give him credit for. Either way the value of his work cannot be diminished by academic "debunking" whether said debunking has any merit or not.

Anthropologist Jay Fikes adds his voice to those exposing the deceptions of Carlos Castaneda, such as Richard deMille.Castaneda has played a big role in the packaging of the shaman and selling him to those New Agers who seek exotic experience.Any real insights of "Don Juan" have been taken from esoteric and occult tradition.Only the neophyte would find Don Juan to be original or profound.Castaneda, among others, is in the business of turning shamanic experience into a consumer product to be sold in the market place.The true shaman works for the benefit of his people.He does not seek kicks or strange experiences for their own sake, as do would-be Anglo "shamans".Fikes is concerned that people like Castaneda who distort Native cultures cause harm to those cultures.In their misguided attempts to experience Native ways, some New Agers have disrupted Native people and put in jeopardy their traditional values and way of life.Fikes calls for New Agers to respect Native people.Unlike Castaneda, Fikes has done genuine fieldwork among the Huichol people in Mexico, and he presents some of his findings, particularly in relation to the peyote hunt.The lesson of Castaneda is that you can't base truth on half truths and deception, no matter how appealing it is on a superficial level.

As an undergraduate I was heavily influenced by the books of Carlos Castaneda. After I began learning first-hand from Huichol healers and singers, the problems with Castaneda's version of American Indian spirituality became evident. I was amazed at the amount of indifference and hostility I encountered among academic anthropologists as I did my investigative research. Some professors threatened me with lawsuits. My first publisher, Madison Books, abandoned publication of this book because of threats of litigation. When I and two other Huichol scholars sent complaints about the professor who made those threats the Ethics Committee of the American Anthropological Association did nothing. In fact, the Ethics Committee is now defunct and there are no professional standards enforced among American anthropologists. I guess that means academic freedom is unlimited. Although I did more than 20 radio interviews nationwide, Carlos Castaneda, Academic Opportunism and the Psychedelic Sixties has been curiously neglected by the mainstream print journalists. I deduce from this that debunking sensational and misleading accounts of American Indian shamans and ceremonies is less "sexy" than publishing them was almost 30 years ago. I am convinced that eventually the truth about authentic Indian shamans will be more widely disseminated. The net is a great way to bypass the academic censors and official reviewers. I apologize to readers for the technical elements in my book. I look forward to doing another edition of this book.It will include the failure to deal with ethical issues within the profession of anthropology. This must be seen as an important public issue. My ability to write clearly for a general audience has improved since I wrote Carlos Castaneda, Academic Opportunism and the Psychedelic Sixties. My latest book, Reuben Snake, Your Humble Serpent, is written for a non-academic audience. It is the biography of one of America's greatest contemporary spiritual and political leaders.