Marco
Antonio Karam, commonly known as Lama Tony Karam, is a prominent figure
in the promotion of Tibetan Buddhist culture and spirituality in
Mexico, since in 1989 he founded the organization Casa Tibet México and
has directed it ever since.
Karam
met Carlos Castaneda around 1982, they became friends, and below I will
compile what Karam recounted about his relationship with Castaneda.
HOW DID THEY MEET?
Regarding their first meeting, in an interview with Karam, he commented the following:
« I had the opportunity to meet Carlos Castaneda for the first time in
the early 1980s, and it was when Castaneda came to Mexico to present one
of his greatest works, 'The Eagle's Gift.'
(Cid's note: this book was published in Spanish in 1982.)
Somehow, and for many years, Castaneda had managed to disappear from public life.
Of
course, the auditorium was packed to the brim; some 500 people were
waiting to meet the legendary writer, but time passed and he didn't
appear.
The
presenter went up on stage and said that Castaneda had had some kind of
impediment and that they had decided to cancel the presentation.
Then
everyone felt very disappointed and little by little they all drifted
away from the auditorium, but there was a small, tight-knit group of
people, maybe 10 or 12, who decided to stay. And I was among them. We
had a kind of inner certainty that Castaneda would appear.
And then, after about four or five hours, to our amazement, Carlos came out and gave the presentation of his book.
And
later, when we asked him why he had arrived so late, he said that an
important event had occurred just as he was about to go on stage. He had
seen something on that stage, an auspicious event, an anomaly from the
perspective of the sorcerers. And that made him decide not to give that presentation and wait to see if a second sign would confirm it.
And that second sign manifested itself when that group waited so long for him. »
SUMMARY OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP
Journalist
Geoffrey Gray interviewed Karam about his friendship with Castaneda,
and he transcribed their conversation in chapter 11 of his article 'The
Case of the Missing Chacmools,' which you can read at this link.
Castaneda
referred to his last personal disciples as "chacmools" (and other women
among his disciples were witches and explorers), and below I present the main part of that conversation:
« Karam was a spiritual prodigy since he read Buddhist texts from adolescence, then he was given a copy of 'The Teachings of Don Juan' and he was astonished by the similarities between the ancestral indigenous Mexican traditions and those of Buddhism.
"It
was comforting," Karam says, "to discover that many of the Eastern
teachings I believed in also had their roots in my native Mexico."
(Cid's
note: In some aspects Buddhism and the teachings of Don Juan are
similar, but in others they are radically opposed; for example,
Castaneda says that reincarnation is a completely false belief.)
His first encounter with Castaneda
Karam
met Castaneda under curious circumstances; at the time he was not sure
if Castaneda was a real person considering all the questions that were
raised about his books.
"Imagine
my surprise," Karam says, laughing as he recalls hearing an
announcement that Castañeda would come out of hiding to give a lecture
at UNAM, Mexico's largest university.
"There
was great anticipation and the auditorium was completely packed," Karam
recalls, "but Castañeda was going to be late, the organizer said,
because he was stuck in traffic. An hour passed, then another hour, most
people left and the cleaning crew came to fold up the seats. By then, with only a dozen die-hard fans, Castañeda suddenly emerged from behind the curtains and gave an incredible lecture."
Afterwards,
Castaneda stayed to talk with the small group, and before leaving he
invited Karam to visit him at his compound in Los Angeles.
Castaneda wants Karam to be his successor.
"Being
with him was addictive," Karam says, "you couldn't distance yourself
from him, so soon the visits became regular and continued for several
years.
Castañeda began preparing Karam to succeed him as the spiritual leader of his group.
Their time together usually followed a routine:
Castañeda and some of his women would pick up Karam at the airport and
drop him off at a hotel near the resort. There, Karam would wait in his
room until he received a phone call from Castañeda.
"He
would pick me up at odd hours," Karam says, "and tell me all sorts of
stories. He had an incredible ability to generate an exalted state of
consciousness in you simply with his narratives, with his way of
speaking; he hypnotized you in many ways."
They often drove to the beach, or booked a table at a restaurant or cafe, or simply went for a walk.
"He would pick me up at 4 in the afternoon and we would finish talking at 3 or 4 in the morning," Karam says.
Karam confirmed how manipulative Castaneda was
Within the complex, Karam witnessed the tensions and power struggles that existed among Castaneda's women.
"It
was like a game of musical chairs where everyone was fighting to be the
favorite at that moment and capture his interest," Karam tells me, "it
was all planned, Castaneda manipulated everyone to compete with each
other, he was very brilliant at it like all cult leaders. And despite
that constant atmosphere of conflict, they were so loyal to Castaneda
that they often talked about committing suicide together when he died."
Karam
recalls that Regina Thal (better known as Florinda Donner) had a
pilot's license and she constantly said that when Castaneda left, if
they couldn't follow him to infinity then she would fly to Hawaii to
crash into a volcano.
Carol Tiggs
The arrival of Kathleen Pohlman (better known as Carol Tiggs) changed the dynamics of the group.
When
Castaneda named her his spiritual counterpart, the female nagual, there
were negative reactions from the other witches, who argued that
Kathleen didn't have the shamanic training or the time they had spent
with Castaneda to be their leader. She lacked authority. "They didn't
believe in Kathleen," Karam told me.
However, as part of his initiation into the cult's inner circle, Karam revealed
to me that Castaneda ordered him to have sexual relations with Kathleen
(whom Castaneda had married). Castaneda presented this to Karam as an
honor befitting his designated successor.
Karam
recalls staying in a hotel with Kathleen during his trips to Mexico
City; they were simply two disciples following their master's orders.
Castañeda
told Karam and Kathleen that making love was a ritualistic exercise
that united energies and sought to align the spiritual genes of their
group.
"It
wasn't passionate," Karam says of those sexual encounters, "it was
something mechanical that simply had to be done to achieve that supposed
connection."
He
recalls that Kathleen remained indifferent and impassive in the face of
that order. "They simply told her she had to do it, and she did it," he
tells me.
Karam is disillusioned with Castaneda
Karam
says that little by little he became aware of Castaneda's falsehoods,
"he had invented so many different things that were not real," he tells
me, "and he maintained them as if they were true."
"Castañeda
was also very abusive; he didn't hit anyone or become physically
violent, but he psychologically manipulated people," Karam says, "he
made them break their family ties, he made them hurt their loved ones."
"Sleeping
with the witches was also a way of controlling them; that sexual and
predatory attitude that Castaneda had towards all of them was not a sign
of a spiritually developed person," says Karam, "over the years I saw
how manipulative he had become and I began to realize that there was
something wrong with his lineage, something that was missing, something
that had gone astray."
His last meeting with Castaneda
Karam
remembers the last time he saw his mentor; it was one day in Mexico
City where they stopped for lunch at a Sanborns, a chain of cafe-style
restaurants located next to department stores throughout Mexico.
Castañeda
felt that this particular place in the historic center of Mexico City
was special because he believed that the restaurant known as "Casa de
los azulejos" had been built on top of an Aztec temple and was therefore
imbued with centuries of ancient powers.
The
dining room was immaculate with imposing walls covered in large murals
and framed by ornate gilded borders that reflected the brilliance of the
chandeliers.
Castañeda
had a plan; he had been waiting for this lunch for years and told Karam
that he wanted him to become the new nagual, offering the young man the
opportunity to succeed him as the new leader of the warriors and their
followers, who, adding the people who attended the workshops, numbered
in the thousands.
The
offer seemed irresistible at first glance; Castaneda was rich, Karam
would never have to worry about his livelihood again, and there were
also Castaneda's women who would take care of him.
"This
is the moment to make a decision," Castañeda said. He was getting old
and needed a successor, and he didn't have much time to put his plans
into action. But Karam, disappointed by what he had seen, refused.
"Then
I can't spend any more time with you," Castaneda said, and his mood
changed, his tone became sharp and his voice filled with anger, saying,
"I have wasted a lot of time with you preparing you and now I will not
have an heir, our lineage is coming to an end at this moment."
Castaneda left in a rage and they never spoke again.
"In
the end, everything fell apart," says Karam, "without a capable leader
to replace Castaneda, the burden fell on Kathleen," who according to
Karam was not prepared for that position.
Before
ending the conversation, I asked Karam to help me determine what had
happened to the missing women. He knew them all well and was familiar
with their personal quirks and the cult's business operations, since he
had been personally chosen to lead it.
He
thinks for a moment and then explains that the disappearance of those
women had nothing to do with those mystical ideas of "the search for
infinity" or "the search for a shamanic lineage"; he believes there were
other motives at play, and finally he answers me: "Follow the money
trail." »
Cid's
note: In this case, I believe that the disappearance of these five
disciples of Carlos Castaneda after his death was not due to financial
issues, but rather because Castaneda had controlled them so much that
when they lost their guru, they didn't know how to go on in the world,
and therefore they chose to take their own lives. This shows you the
extent to which Castaneda was a perverse and controlling man.
THE POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE SIDES OF CASTANEDA
In another interview with Marco Antonio Karam, regarding Castaneda's dual personality, he mentioned the following:
« I believe that in the case of Carlos Castaneda, he was a complex and
difficult person to define because on the one hand he was a person
endowed with an exceptional culture, he was a very intellectually
refined man, he had even obtained a doctorate in anthropology from the
University of California.
He
was also a man with artistic skills, a man endowed with exceptional
charisma, an incredible and extraordinary ability to communicate, and I
believe he undoubtedly possessed certain extraordinary qualities.
But
it is also true that he was a man very interested in power, very
interested in control, obsessed with controlling people (particularly
his female disciples), and also very obsessed with sex, always trying to
manipulate the attractive women he met into having sex with them.
So in the case of Carlos Castaneda – as also happens with many sectarian leaders – genuine
and exceptional qualities coexisted with, let's say, a kind of fracture
in his very worldly and very ordinary personality, and to a certain
extent very negative.
And I think those two elements never quite managed to reconcile themselves with him or with his world either.
The interviewer comments:
I believe Jacobo Grinberg said somewhere that Carlos Castaneda was an egomaniacal being, more interested in power than in truth.
To which Karam replies:
I agree, and I also believe that Carlos Castaneda was an individual very
obsessed with control, with power, with influence within his group. »
VIDEOS
You can see the first interview in this video starting at minute 5:35.
And you can see the third interview in this other video starting at minute 5:35.
OBSERVATIONS
When
I analyze the life of Marco Antonio Karam, I get the impression that he
is an honest man, and other people have given similar testimonies about
Carlos Castaneda, so I conclude that what Karam said about Castaneda
must be true.
And
another factor that supports Karam's assertion is that Carlos Castaneda
gave several lectures at Casa Tibet Mexico, something very unusual for
Castaneda.
