Edit: practicing silence, not silent knowledge
I (female) had an experience while practicing silent knowledge, where maybe 10 or 20 minutes into trying to keep my mind quiet, I found myself in a flat expanse with sky and a thin layer of water, the kind that looks like they fade together and reflect each other infinitely. It was very bright. I asked "where is this? " and immediately knew "Heavens Gate", and that there are multiple- based on planetary rotation cycles.
Is this silent knowledge or is my brain just imagining stuff to distract me from silence?
Thanks
11 Comments
While practicing "Silent Knowledge"??? Do you mean 'silence'?
When you say "found yourself", do you mean you had your eyes closed and were envisioning the expanse...
...or were your eyes open and you knew you could interact with the surrounding environment if you tried?
Eyes closed (is really hard for me to get a truly dark room in my house during the day) . Trying to just focus on the pink floaty shapes and quiet my inner monologue.
If that's the case, then I'd go with that's Pretend. Some people use masks for Dark Room with varying results. But practicing DR with the eyes closed increases the risk of pretending.
https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/comments/g5z9rb/revisiting_the_blindfold_topic/
I'm trying to figure a lot of stuff out, so bear with me.
Even if the eyes are open, isn't it still possible that we can be pretending or dreaming because it is dark? Instead of shutting out the light using your eyelids, you're just using something else externally to do that (I know it's not exactly the same, but still..)
Apparently, some people can dream briefly with their eyes open.
I think the point of practicing in the dark sober & eyes open is to prove to yourself that you aren't asleep, or dreaming, or pretending. When you see something you'll know it's not from your imagination.
Practicing dark sober & eyes open does not prove that you aren't asleep, dreaming or pretending. That's why I asked the question.
It looks like there are documented cases where people can do all of that with eyes open - even fall asleep briefly in the daylight.
Did you read this post, and some of the others on Sleepwalking?
Inner Silence Is Sleepwalking?
Western science does not have a good understanding of the intricacies of altered states of consciousness, or of levels, mostly because all research into it was basically made illegal not that long after Carlos released his first book.
Do it right now, go stand in the dark and "pretend" that there is a woman's face in a purple cloud. You know you're not dreaming, because you're standing up (unless that is one of your talents too).
Hello. I suggest you edit the misspelling of "silent knowledge" to "practicing silencing your mind" , to your post, so that misrepresentation is avoided.
Since you are a female, in case you haven't found this post about womb dreaming, here it is: https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/comments/151gq0e/womb_dreaming_how_tos/?share_id=52RwRxowWcHHkANV7bXQU&utm_content=2&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1
About your experience, since you were forcing silence I don't see how this experience is invalid.
Did it feel like you had your eyes open? In different positions on the J curve you can indeed visit heaven, which you seem to have done. Did you had thoughts when this happened? And how long do you estimate it lasted?
The best you can do is practice again to find out more about it. I highly suggest you to focus on your womb while forcing silence, putting a physical weight on the area.
It sounds to me that you entered dreaming.
As far as the content of the dream, until we don't remove our inventory by doing a thorough recapitulation, mostly everything we see is an interpretation. So you entered dreaming by moving your assemblage point, if I moved mine to the exact same position you did, most likely I would have seen something totally different, because "heaven's gate" is not in my usual inventory. For example, one time, I was sure (while I was there), that I was inside a computer, like the movie "Tron". I studied computer sciences and I am a software engineer, so computers are in my daily world. I am pretty sure I wasn't in the "world of computers", but that's how I interpreted it, how I gave it meaning when I was there.
It's a preview at the least.
You can even travel to heaven over and over again, or make an occasional visit to God himself.
That's very scary, so just remember to ask for something. It's easy to decide to run for your life instead. I made that mistake.
However, I sure would prefer to hear you did that fully awake with your eyes open, sitting or standing up.
That way you can rule out just having a dream, and misinterpreting it to be something more.
Everyone does that.
Even the most famous Yogis do what they do with their eyes closed. And one has to wonder if they didn't just doze off out of boredom.
As far as I know, only sorcerers can repeatedly view "videos in the air", and travel into them in their physical body.
(Or so it seems at the time)