The dark legacy of Carlos Castaneda (2007)
salon.com
salon.com
One of the techniques he revealed in his books for expanding your awareness as a human being was to consciously diffuse your gaze for long stretches of time. In other words, in your day to day life, most people, myself included, navigate through the world with fixed vision. If I were to walk down a hallway or through a hiking trail, I would normally look at a tree, then maybe at a bird, then maybe some clouds might catch my attention, squirrel jumps off a log, etc. and I would go on like this. His suggestion was to take in the whole panoramic view, constantly engaged in peripheral vision, not focusing on any one particular object, for hours at a time. After consistent experimenting with this particular technique, I came to one realization that it was a tool that can be used to quiet the mind, similar to a sorts of meditation. It was my introduction to the study of energy (I study Internal Martial Arts).
There were other practical wisdoms embodied in his texts and that held my attention for many years. It wasn't until recently that I began to read of Castaneda and the shadows that began to surround his legacy. To be honest, it didn't take away from the treasure of his stories and wisdom. Most, if not all his concepts, can be traced back in time to different religions, groups of people, other yogis and individuals, etc. I believe that ideas and methodologies do not belong to any individuals. They are just mediums that the universe uses to express its consciousness. We say if it weren't for scientist X, this theory wouldn't come to fruition but who knows? I remember reading once about an important theory that a scientist discovered (galileo?) that another scientist was uncovering at about the same time but got beaten to the punch. They were not in the same geographic region but it was interesting to read about an idea being ripe and wanting to be expressed to who is available and able. I digress.
Castaneda had a positive influence on many people and a negative influence on others, as the stories in the article revealed. Such is the way of humanity and life, and you make your mark on this world however you see fit. One door opens, another one closes. Castaneda was the first to open up doors for me, so he has a special place in my heart, as imperfect as he may have been.
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Dreaming-Carlos-Castaneda/dp/0060...
The first one is to try to see your hands in the dream.
You can also read about Dream yoga https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Yoga-Illuminating-Through-Dream...
Lucid dreaming itself is a researched subject and there are a lot of material on that but the simplest techniques as keeping a dream journal (writing what you dreamt about each morning) so the mind recognizes that it's important to be aware of dreams and testing if you are dreaming. When you are reading this comment do you think you are dreaming? How do you know? Contrary to usual thinking dream world is quite different from "normal" world. For example you can block you nose and mount in a dream and not suffocate. Or turn on a light, in a dream it won't be as fast as in real world.
Usually sleeping during the day also triggers lucid dreams. One way or another it's a skill one can learn given some time and practice.
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Exploring-World-Dreaming-Stephen-LaBe...
And I always wonder - if that happens - what should I do ? (provided that all the 'truths' I've learned while dreaming are still true)..
Should I buy Apple stock ? Should I write a search engine ? How would I convince my parents to buy me a new PC ? How should I talk to my teachers, now that I know all there is to know about math and geography and history ? Should I meet the girls that I loved ?
Things get complicated fast if you go on that path, so I hope this life is not a dream from which I'll wake up and have to live it all over again.
In terms of movies also About time incidentally explored some of the same concepts.
Tibetans have techniques called dream yoga so that you can learn to know in your dream that you are dreaming, and they call life a longer dream and the waking from this dream, ultimate liberation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caballo_de_Troya
It's a novel series about a trip back in time to meet Jesus. The author kept a calculated ambiguity and there was a lot of readers (most) that believed it was non-fiction.
I tried the first tome. It was terribly boring. After reading a quarter of it, I skimmed more and more of the text. By the time I reached the end, I readed one paragraph each other page at most. Still I wanted to know what so much people were talking about... big mistake.
A Separate Reality - the original Castaneda novel is a lot of fun. Painfully obvious it's fiction, almost fairytale-like, but highly entertaining. Not to mention the wisdom for a twenty-something receptive to any "grounded" life-hack and spiritual skills that aren't delivered from certified curriculums, or worse your parents. I remember one of the books taught me literally how to walk properly, via one of Don Juan's scolding remarks to the apprentice as they hiked up the mountain! Great stuff.
How does one walk properly? I'm genuinely curious.
You have to curl your fingers gently as you walk in order to keep your attention on the trail and the surroundings. Your ordinary way of walking is debilitating and you should never carry anything in your hands. If things have to be carried one should use a knapsack or any sort of carrying net or shoulder bag. By forcing the hands into a specific position one is capable of greater stamina and greater awareness.
[1]: http://www.prismagems.com/castaneda/donjuan3.html
This site is where I read some of Castaneda's work for the first time. He doesn't just tell you how to walk, he tells you how to sleep, which side to go to sleep on, how to intend things and how to project your intent, how to set up dreaming, how to run like a warrior (sprinting in the dark), and a whole bunch of fun stuff like that. It's very easy reading, you can probably get through all of this stuff at least inside of a day or two if you don't have much to do.
I like the description as "it really happened! fiction" -- this is exactly what I think I felt when I was reading it.
It wasn't until a couple of years after, or maybe before, that, that I finally laid hands on Illuminatus!. Only book I ever stole from a library, if you want to call it "stealing" - it'd been there over a decade, never once checked out, and wasn't even in the electronic card catalog; I felt sorry for the poor thing, which seemed desperately lonely, and gave it a good home in place of a neglectful one. Still have it, in fact. Probably still have a copy of Principia, too, but if so, I don't know where in my shelves it is, which should tell you all you need to know about which comes first in my estimation.
(On reflection, I suspect I first found an electronic copy of Principia, rather lacking in illustration being the plain text file it was, then discovered the existence of Illuminatus! and found my copy, and finally sent off for a paper Principia which by that point was amusing but somewhat supernumerary. Do you really call yourself a Discordian in public? Why?)
L Ron Hubbard?
Church of all world still nominally exists, and has been through several incarnations during the 60s. Although its foundational premise was indeed deeply silly, it was self-consciously so: an act of intentional myth-making. It encouraged its members to explore other spiritual paths as well as to create their own; and there were many CAW members who were committed Buddhists, Jews, atheists, etc.; a large majority counted themselves as Discordians. The only principles held as official dogmas were things like "Nature is Good", and "Be Excellent to Each Other" (because why the fuck shouldn't Bill & Ted be part of your mythos?). So it was all in rather good fun.
This is not to say that the organization didn't have its problems. Chiefly, it was frequently subject to nasty internal politicking -- personality-driven power-plays of the sort that are unfortunately quite common in idealistically non-hierarchical organizations. But when measured against typical metrics for cults, eg[1], it fails on every single count.
Anyhow, just a gentle reminder that not every new religious movement is a cult (in the conventional modern pejorative sense of the word).
[edit: fixed link.]
("Nature is Good" strikes me as lacking nuance, though. I see what you're going for, but toothache is natural, too.)
Judging by his written works, Wilson seems like he would've been quite a man to know. I'd like to be able to say I'm not so small a person as to envy you that opportunity just a little, but honesty compels me otherwise. He was kind of a minor hero to me in my youth and early adulthood, seeing as Illuminatus! helped me gain the perspective to get through some very difficult times in my life; if nothing else, I'd have liked the chance to thank him for that.
And yep, Wilson was the real deal. His work had also been a huge influence on me at the time that I met him. I still evangelize Quantum Psychology to anyone who I think can handle it.
http://www.sustainedaction.org/ http://sustainedreaction.yuku.com/
I always wondered if the scifi author Peter Hamilton was inspired by Castaneda's Flyer predator when writing about the Starflyer (as he was inspired by hippy culture in general when describing the Star People and hippy bus in The Night's Dawn) http://peterfhamilton.wikia.com/wiki/Starflyer
https://www.metahistory.org/gnostique/gnosticastaneda/CCgnos...
This is perhaps getting into twilight zone territory, but in 2001 there were a series of slightly changed intruiging spam messages clearly referring to Castaneda's Flyer (called the Entity) and a prophecy coming true 'later this year' a month before 11 september 2001. I think I tracked it down to some vague viral marketing for a B movie on alternate realities in Australia, but sometimes I still wonder about the coincidence... a real world 'man in the high castle'? http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18796
Which, if you say anything about those it's in bad taste at minimum or possibly even a capital crime.
[Long ago, the native sorcerer/shamans of Mexico] discovered that we have a companion for life," he said, as clearly as he could. "We have a predator that came from the depths of the cosmos, and took over the rule of our lives. Human beings are its prisoners. The predator is our lord and master. It has rendered us docile; helpless. If we want to protest, it suppresses our protest. If we want to act independently, it demands that we don't do so.
They took over because we are food for them, and they squeeze us mercilessly because we are their sustenance. Just as we rear chickens in chicken coops, gallineros, the predators rear us in human coops, humaneros. Therefore, their food is always available to them.
Think for a moment, and tell me how you would explain the contradiction between the intelligence of man the engineer, and the stupidity of his systems of beliefs; or the stupidity of his contradictory behavior. Sorcerers believe that the predators have given us our systems of beliefs; our ideas of good and evil; our social mores. The predators are the ones who set up our hopes and expectations, and dreams of success or failure. They have given us covetousness, greed, and cowardice. It is the predators who make us complacent, routinary, and egomaniacal
They gave us their mind! Do you hear me? The predators give us their mind which becomes our mind. The predators' mind is baroque, contradictory, morose, and filled with the fear of being discovered any minute now
The more I thought about it, and the more I talked to and observed myself, and my fellow men, the more intense the conviction that something was rendering us incapable of any activity or any interaction or any thought that didn't have the self as its focal point.
The flyers are an essential part of the universe, and they must be taken as what they really are; awesome, monstrous. They are the means by which the universe tests us. We are energetic probes created by the universe and it's because we are possessors of energy that has awareness that we are the means by which the universe becomes aware of itself.
The flyers are the implacable challengers. They cannot be taken as anything else. If we succeed in doing that, the universe allows us to continue
in some cases, startup founders experience this same roller coaster ride.
I do understand the need to escape the "tedium of life" as one of the witches put it but it's still highly irritating to see otherwise normal people be consumed by conmen. I like to think it wouldn't happen to me, but seeing how skilled this guy was I'm starting to believe I would fall prey to someone like him just as easily as those women did.
It's more comforting to think that people are kidnapped, brainwashed and forced to do and think things by evil men - it takes all responsibility from the equation - that people are in this case "seekers", that they choose to live in this way, that there are benefits in living that life. Cults can be good!
It's not helpful to believe this if you want to leave a cult of course! And its not helpful to believe that truth in the future when you look back at your time - better to think it was all wrong. To admit to yourself that you played a part in your membership and had enjoyed some or most is much harder than believing you had no choice. If I was in that situation, I would certainly choose to believe I was 100% a victim - it's healthier, better and logical for me to do so.
So actually thinking that these people are vulnerable, weak, had no choice, were made prey of, were captitvated, hypnotised and consumed by an evil conman is actually a psychologically easier and often better thing to do! (if not really factual or truthful)
As I said, I believe that I am vulnerable to these types myself, but I do not regard myself as having no choice. Instead, I am simply aware that some aspects of social interaction mean that charismatic people can exert a stronger influence on my choices than many other factors, and that I'm capable to make choices that seem logical under the influence of strong emotion but seem utterly stupid in retrospect. Once again, not denying agency but being cognizant of its limitations.
I've come to believe that the ordinary state of human consciousness is actually a form of mild anhedonic depression.
It makes sense for a species that evolved in a world that rarely changed when most activity consisted of slow and painstaking work like farming, making simple things, and hunting. Up until the past few hundred years nothing changed within the time span of a single human life for most people. The ability to zone out for long periods and tolerate monotony would be an advantage. Being too "wound up" would be maladaptive as it would lead to needlessly reckless behavior and destruction of community.
But we don't live in that world anymore.
This is why stimulants of both dopaminergic (caffeine, amphetamine, modafinil) and serotonergic (antidepressants) forms are so popular. These drugs actually normalize our consciousness to the contemporary world. If homo sapiens evolved in the modern world we'd all be wired as if we were on 5-10mg of amphetamine and 10mg of escitalopram all the time.
Here's the thing though. Humans are hyper-social to the point that the mental state of others affects our own mental state. This is partly why centers like Silicon Valley and New York are so powerful-- being around a lot of like-minded productive people actually makes us more productive.
When someone comes along who is just naturally a little tweaked we say they have charisma, and we absorb a bit of that charisma vicariously. We get a nice tweaky brain chemical hit by being around them.
This makes them addictive in a sense, and as with many drugs people will toss their rational mind out the window to get more.
This interview with him is beautifully clear, probably because he's heard so much bullshit wrapped with fancy words in his life: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/miller/interviews/d...
Anyhow, America in 1965-1970s was just as naive, from this later vantage point in time. Carlos was a trickster and to write up a fable that repackaged all the info he acquired in his extensive research as a real world anthropology study makes perfect sense. His early books has literary value, and for those who can see below the surface of it, some more value. You just have to be open to it, and that is how a trickster operates.
A friend of mine who has Native American ancestry was livid when I gave her the first book to read - there were things in there "not for the white man to know". I understand what she meant these days. White people are idiots.
I have heard of de Mille, have his book somewhere, but had no idea he was a Scientologist. That explains _everything_. Big upvote for sunsbelly. A few people I know who lived the "60s" are rather down on Castaneda. They understand what he was trying to do, but they had friends who were too literal minded and so got lost in the bullshit. It was a chaotic era. But there is always going to be a large number of people who get lost in the bullshit, the current bullshit being around ayahuasca these days.
Or does it? Because taking it literally can also give you certain powers and certain outcomes that you cannot get from merely treating it as myth (strength of conviction, for one).
That said, even old Christians were quite complex creatures, and they have been able historically to both take christianity it literally and not take it literally, in intricate psychological ways. It was more of a philosophy for orthodox christians and more of a morality mythology for catholics, when protestants brought it back to naive literal interpretation.
Could you give an example or two of such things?
I wish so many people wouldn't try to force things they like into the categories of science or truth, and would be ok with having subjective appreciation for them and getting personal satisfaction from them. I also wish people wouldn't feel the need to try to bash someone's appreciation/satisfaction of a thing with it's scientific incongruity. As long as that thing isn't harming others - meh, live your life.