First of all spiritual realities are best proved by direct personal experience,
but those are rarely things that can justified or proven to others, short of
inducing the direct experience in others, so all one can do is lay it on the
table if they wish, and leave it at that. I will approach your question from
that angle later.
As far as ties to the ideas of Castaneda I plead guilty. The concepts of
Castaneda brought me to TM in the mid 70's as a method to "shut of internal
dialog", as he would say. As most people in spiritual circles know Castaneda
was supposedly "debunked" by DeMille, but DeMille's work was rather flawed in
that he had a bone to pick from the start and did not really "disprove" much
anyhow.
ref -
http://www.artforthemasses.us/castacon/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1653&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=15
(I post there as Henry Morgan)
In Tenancingo I have found through elders and people who have never read
Castaneda, that many of the stories and beliefs which he writes about are
indeed backed up by local legends and beliefs. That got me to start posting on
The Twilight Zone a few years ago. That got me involved in a small group of
persons who are possibly more actively involved in finding out the real and as
yet almost unknown history of Castaneda, and trying to separate fact from
fiction in his works, which might never be really possible, but I am getting a
pretty good gut feeling about the lay of things, based more on facts than just
the emotions that the pro-Castaneda and anti-Castaneda camps go on.
The story of Castaneda and his teachings is most surely a complex and
interesting mix of his own insightful ideas, and straight fact as he writes
it. His opening up to the public in the 90’s and forming a cult group, in my
opinion, muddied his situation with the public.
My role up to now has been of translating dozens of things written about
Castaneda and his group in Spanish and never translated to English, and
visiting key people who knew Castaneda personally in Mexico.
Some of the more interesting sources are the family and friends of Castaneda in
Peru. Traveler did the original trips to Peru, one just a few months ago, and
shared original tapes with me because my Spanish is better than his. We have
come to different conclusions, mine siding with what I believe “Sho” Velez
(written about in The Active Side of Infinity) was saying, that the stories are
true, but that Carlos switch names and characters around. Traveler seems more
to want to say that Carlos was a creative seer, and made it all up, but that,
even if it is true, does not say enough in my opinion. There was a rich
history of sorcerery in the family of Carlos in Peru.
A respected Nahuat elder near Teotehuacan who knew CC personally in the 1960s
Mexico, along with DJ, who is the father of his son-in-law, who explained how
of course he knew DJ, and CC who tagged along with him, and he knew DG too at
times with CC, but that DG never knew DJ to his knowledge. The elder,
Tlakaelel, says that at first it was DJ teaching CC, but as time went on it was
CC who proved to be the true seer teaching DJ, and he has great respect for
Castaneda, as a great original seer. Note that the story as presented by CC
could still be correct, if DJ and DG were the great “stalkers” purported, in
not letting Tlakaelel know that they knew each other.
I know a certain Brazilian who was part of CC’s inner circle in Mexicoin the
90’s. He has shown me dozens of locations written about in the books by CC,
which Carlos brought him to personally in Mexico City, and TulaHidalgo. In
some of his books he is very descriptive about all sorts of odd details about
these locations, and after long and careful study the places fit to a tee, and
I can’t find anything substantial to argue there. We could still say that
Carlos made it all up, but based the fiction on true locations.
A third interesting line of evidence is a book written by a close friend of CC
in the 1950’s (before don Juan), Byron de Ford, when they lived in southern
California. This works paints a picture of a Castaneda with the ideas that he
presents in later works, already rather well formed, and with one of the most
eclectic circle of connections from all parts of the spiritual and spiritualist
community.
http://jovencarlos.blogspot.com/2007/03/1.html
As far as my ideas about all human emotion being based on an unquestionable
infinite loneliness and sadness, it is something which I have experienced
personally and have been able to analyze in great detail, but it is not
anything that I know how to justify to others who haven’t experienced it as
directly as I have.
As far as the shadow creatures, I first started to notice them and their
motives in early childhood. Carlos did not write about them until the very end
of the last book that he really wrote himself, The Active Side of Infinity, a
curious fact in my opinion, and his description fit my experiences exactly, so
that was significant to me.
I have also experienced other “inorganic” forces like he describes up close and
big time, stories in themselves. But they are all just stories until you
experience them.
Meditation, and for me TM, is an essential step to any of it, since it leads to
silencing the mind, providing a base point to distinguish self from non-self.
(true also that everything is self, but that point of view does not help with
discernment)
________________________________
From: pranamoocher <bh...@hotmail.com>
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tue, June 29, 2010 10:55:51 AM
Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: No one starting TM or "Dome-ing"? Rewrite the
sales brochure.
Please elaborate on the "dark side", which sounds reminiscent of Star
Wars and Carlos Castenada. You mention these forces in your posts on
BatGap and here.
Why do you think its so important to mention these forces, since if
practically speaking, and assuming they are present in daily life, most
people are unaware of them and therefore can't do anything about them
anyways?
Most happy successful people I know don't give this a 2nd thought and go
on with their daily routines. Its like the policy of "don't ask, don't
tell."
Inquiring minds want to know (before the dark forces swallow them up
whole).
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Don Miller <pod1...@...> wrote:
>
> When I knew the TMO they liked to throw all stray thoughts into a
single simple waste bin and say that it is all unstressing, and this is
where perhaps they are overlooking the other 50% of the energetic world,
which includes in our case as humans a conscious organization of dark
parasitic energy beings.
> Â
> Instead of throwing all stray thoughts into the garbage bin I will
provide a few categories here.
> Â
> 1)Some stray thoughts are the creation of our own active mind and
creativity.
> Â
> 2)Some stray thoughts are not our own, but the thoughts of other
people physically near to us, or people who are connected to us through
knowledge, or even by pure random chance. And likewise some stray
thoughts are those of other awarnesses, like plants, animals, or any
life-form.
> Â
> 3)Some stray thoughts are deliberately planted in our minds by
parasitic shadow creatures without physical bodies, with the intention
to direct us towards action or inaction which drain us of our most basic
energy, that of attention, through wasteful senseless activities.
> Â
> A careful study of the origins of these stray thoughts in meditation
may lead over time to “seeing� the form of the energetic
world composed of lines of attention.
> Â
> Transcending and seeing the world for what it is without veils, even
if it be temporary, makes one an important target for dark shadowy
forces that intelligently and consciously keep most of the world under
their domain. This is an organization of beings, intelligent bottom
feeders of sorts, which feed off of the broadly scattered and wasted
energy of the attention of common people. They implant thoughts in
all people to maintain these wasteful and misdirected activities.
> Â
> The dark side is indispensable to the positive side and perfectly
counterbalances it, and progress on the positive side cannot progress
far without some understanding of one of the two most fundamental
forces, the dark force, which I could describe in a series of equal
terms such as;
> Â
> 1) an infinite force of sadness, loneliness, melancholy, which is
irreducible, beyond explanation, and forms the basis of all other human
emotion and motivation (all other human emotions, including love, are
just temporary islands floating upon and empowered by this basic
reality);
> 2) The destiny of an ever expanding universe, of universal
dissolution;
> 3)Freedom;
> 4)Death.Â
> To understand this force one must find it within ones self, and grow
to love and respect it as a component part of self. One may also
become aware of the beings that inhabit this other realm, and their
motives.
> Â
> I won’t elaborate on the light side too much here, except to
say that it is the desire for life; structure; beauty; unification, all
that Maharishi stuff basically.
> Â
> A meditator which transcends, and perhaps occasionally
“sees� the energetic world in relation to that pure
transcendence is a prime target to these beings, and vulnerable if they
are anything but a total saint, and I don’t believe that there
really is such a thing as a saint, outside of the human desire to create
legends.
> Â
> Dark parasitic forces stalk us and try to find entry based on our
routines and habits. In my opinion there is no such thing as a good
habit, such as meditation strictly twice a day at the same time each
day. These habits squelch the development of fluid intuition of
what to do and when, that a transcending mind naturally develops.
> Â
> On the other hand, and this is very important, most people will use
this dissolution of so called “good� routines such as
meditation, to forego it altogether, and that is perhaps worse, like
throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I meditate sort of on the
average twice a day, and in various places, depending on calls from the
“spirit�. My meditations do have some amazing quality
of calming down local noise and strife, beyond any logical
explanation,... except for a certain insane explanation which would
state that reality is basically dream-like, and where transcending
touches the structuring property of that dream.
> Â
> I see the structure of the TMO then as providing a sort of initial
framework of security, such as nursery, but something which must also be
transcended eventually for advancement.
>
> --- On Mon, 6/28/10, authfriend jst...@... wrote:
>
>
> From: authfriend jst...@...
> Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: No one starting TM or "Dome-ing"? Rewrite
the sales brochure.
> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Monday, June 28, 2010, 10:25 PM
>
>
> Â
>
>
>
> --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@
> wrote:
> >
> > I have written before on the difference between talking
> > the talk of one's spiritual path and walking the walk of
> > it. And yes, as some have said, I have written about it
> > enough that they claim to find it boring. I think that a
> > larger reason than "boring" for the people saying this
> > might be "I couldn't find a way to refute it the first
> > time and I can't find one now, so I'm going to call it
> > 'boring' in hopes that he'll stop saying it." :-)
>
> Actually, I called your raps (not just this one by any
> means) "repetitious," not "boring." Interesting that
> you felt you needed to escalate the criticism, but I
> guess "repetitious" didn't work so well with your
> fantasy about the "larger reason" for the criticism.
>
> The whole point of "repetitious," of course, is that
> your trademark "raps" have been *repeatedly refuted*.
> You keep bringing them back, in slightly different
> clothing, in the hope that this time they'll pass
> muster.
>
> Sorry, Charlie. The new outfit for the "rap" in
> question suffers from the same poor workmanship in
> its current iteration as all the other times you've
> inflicted it on us.
>
> The question is, why on earth did you think you were
> the only one aware of the difference between "talking
> the talk and walking the walk"? It's a *cliche*, Barry.
> It was a cliche long before you ever attempted to
> preach it here. And it doesn't get any more original
> or insightful with repetition.
>
