“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.

Both varieties of books allow the reader a built-in distance that provides a cushion against cultural shock: the story is, after all, secondhand. Castaneda told his own story, but it was still secondhand, because his own opaqueness added the necessary distance that protected the reader.

Publishers deal with the culture that you know, with people who follow it. Prentice does not understand why the books have sold. Castaneda does not become Don Juan. He holds himself clearly apart from the reality he explores. If our material was not excellent it might have found its way to some spooky underground publisher.

Fiction, again, puts a lovely distance between the reader and experience. Publishers can handle it. But Ruburt is saying “This experience of mine means that this other kind of mental and spiritual world-view is natural—not alien, not a part of another culture.”

Bantam is helping—but no one there would have had the guts to make any initial investment. What I have said however applies now to Bantam, as it did to Prentice in the beginning. You give them no handle of a recognizable nature in your culture, upon which their kind of advertisement can be written.