MYSTICAL WRITER WHO DIED 2 MONTHS AGO KEPT HIS OWN LIFE SECRET TO THE END

LOS ANGELES -- Carlos Castaneda, the self-proclaimed ``sorcerer'' and
bestselling author whose tales of drug-induced mental adventures with a
Yaqui Indian shaman named Don Juan once fascinated the world, apparently
died two months ago in the same way that he lived: quietly, secretly,
mysteriously.

He was believed to be 72.

Castaneda died April 27 at his home in Los Angeles, according to
entertainment lawyer Deborah Drooz, a friend of Castaneda's and the
executor of his estate. The cause of death was liver cancer.

Though he had millions of followers around the world, and though his 10
books continue to sell in 17 different languages, and though he once
appeared on the cover of Time magazine, he died without public notice,
without the briefest mention in a newspaper or on television.

As befitting his mystic image, he seemingly vanished into thin air.

``He didn't like attention,'' Drooz said. ``He always made sure people did
not take his picture or record his voice. He didn't like the spotlight.
Knowing that, I didn't take it upon myself to issue a press release.''

No funeral was held; no public service of any kind took place. The author
was cremated at once and his ashes were spirited away to Mexico, according
to the Culver City mortuary that handled his remains.

He left a will, due to be probated in Los Angeles next month, and a death
certificate fraught with dubious information. The few people who may
benefit from his rich copyrights were told of the death, Drooz said, but
none chose to alert the media.

Even those who counted Castaneda a good friend were unaware of his death,
and wouldn't comment when told, choosing to honor his disdain for publicity.

``I've made it a lifetime practice never to discuss Carlos Castaneda with
anyone in the newspaper business,'' said author Michael Korda, who was once
Castaneda's editor at Simon and Schuster.

Castaneda's literary agent in Los Angeles, Tracy Kramer, would not return
phone calls about the author's death but issued this statement: ``In the
tradition of the shamans of his lineage, Carlos Castaneda left this world
in full awareness.''

Carlos Cesar Arana Castaneda emigrated to the United States in 1951. He was
born Christmas Day 1925 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, or Cajamarca, Peru, depending
on which version of his autobiographical accounts can be believed. He was
an unrepentant liar about the statistical details of his life, from his
birthplace to his birth date, and even his given name remains in some doubt.

``Much of the Castaneda mystique is based on the fact that even his closest
friends aren't sure who he is,'' wrote his ex-wife Margaret Runyan
Castaneda, in a 1997 memoir that Castaneda tried to keep from being published.

Whoever he was, Castaneda undoubtedly galvanized the world 30 years ago. As
an anthropology graduate student at the University of California-Los
Angeles, he wrote his master's thesis about a remarkable journey he said he
made to the Arizona-Mexico desert.

Hoping to study the effects of certain medicinal plants, Castaneda said he
stopped in an Arizona border town. There, in a Greyhound bus depot, he said
he met an old Yaqui Indian from Sonora, Mexico, named Juan Matus, a brujo,
or sorcerer, who used powerful hallucinogens to initiate the student into
an occult world with origins dating back more than 2,000 years.

Under Don Juan's strenuous tutelage, which he said lasted several years,
Castaneda experimented with peyote, also known as mescal, jimson weed and
dried mushrooms, undergoing moments of supreme ecstasy and stark panic, all
in an effort to achieve varying ``states of non-ordinary reality.''

Wandering through the desert, with Don Juan as his psychological and
pharmacological guide, Castaneda said he saw giant insects, learned to fly,
grew a beak, became a crow, and ultimately reached a plateau of higher
consciousness, a hard-won wisdom that made him a ``man of knowledge,'' like
Don Juan.

The thesis, published in 1968 by the University of California Press, became
an international bestseller, striking just the right note at the peak of
the psychedelic 1960s. A strange alchemy of anthropology, allegory,
parapsychology, ethnography, Buddhism and perhaps fiction, ``The Teachings
of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge'' made Castaneda a cultural icon.

Many still consider him the godfather of America's New Age movement. In one
of the few profiles with which Castaneda cooperated, Time magazine wrote:
``To tens of thousands of readers, young and old, the first meeting of
Castaneda with Juan Matus . . . is a better-known literary event than the
encounter of Dante and Beatrice beside the Arno.''

After his stunning debut, Castaneda followed with a string of bestsellers,
including ``A Separate Reality'' and ``Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of
Don Juan.'' Soon, readers were flocking to Mexico, hoping to become
apprentices at Don Juan's feet.

But the old Indian could never be found, which set off widespread
speculation that Castaneda was the author of an elaborate, if ingenious, hoax.

To the end, however, Castaneda stubbornly insisted that the events he
described in his books were not only real, but meticulously documented.

``I invented nothing,'' he told 400 people attending a 1995 seminar on
shaman practices that he conducted in Anaheim. ``I'm not insane, you know.
Well, maybe a little insane.''

Even his death certificate, apparently, is not free from misinformation.
His occupation is listed as teacher, his employer the Beverly Hills School
District. But school district records don't show Castaneda teaching there.

Also, though he was said to have no family, the death certificate lists a
niece, Talia Bey, president of Cleargreen Inc., a company that organizes
Castaneda seminars throughout the nation. Bey was unavailable for comment.

Further, the death certificate lists Castaneda as ``never married,'' though
he was married from 1960 to 1973 to Margaret Runyan Castaneda, of
Charleston, W.Va.

``I haven't been notified (of Castaneda's death),'' said Margaret
Castaneda, 76, audibly upset. ``I had no idea.''

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski