There has been a fair amount of disagreement in the past from members of the subreddit, on what Don Juan was referring to when he talked about being a "Man of Knowledge."
u/danl999 has made clear his understanding, most directly stated in this post from three years ago, that it was a sort of professional magical craftsperson who inherited certain rituals and psychoactive plant mixtures/preparations that aided them in shifting their assemblage points...and thus in calling forth the assistance of an inorganic being (once perceived).
First reference is from chapter two of The Teachings of Don Juan, by Carlos Castaneda:
>"But I don't care about seeing things in a different way, don Juan. I think I am going to leave the learning about Mescalito alone. I can't handle it, don Juan. This is really a bad situation for me."
>"Of course it is bad—even for me. You are not the only one who is baffled."
>"Why should you be baffled, don Juan?"
>"I have been thinking about what I saw the other night. Mescalito (an inorganic being) actually played with you. That baffled me, because it was an indication [omen]."
>"What kind of indication, don Juan?"
>"Mescalito was pointing you out to me."
>"What for?"
>"It wasn't clear to me then, but now it is. He meant you were the 'chosen man' [escogido]. Mescalito pointed you out to me; and by doing that, he told me you were the chosen man."
>"Do you mean I was chosen among others for some task, or something of the sort?"
>"No. What I mean is, Mescalito told me you could be the man I am looking for."
>"When did he tell you that, don Juan?"
>"By playing with you, he told me that. This makes you the chosen man for me."
>"What does it mean to be the chosen man?"
>"There are some secrets I know [tengo secretos]. I have secrets I won't be able to reveal to anyone unless I find my chosen man. The other night when I saw you playing with Mescalito, it was clear to me you were that man. But you are not an Indian. How baffling!"
>"But what does it mean to me, don Juan? What do I have to do?"
>"I've made up my mind and I am going to teach you the secrets that make up the lot of a man of knowledge."
>"Do you mean the secrets about Mescalito?"
>"Yes, but those are not all the secrets I know. There are other secrets of a different kind which I would like to give to someone. I had a teacher myself, my benefactor, and I also became his chosen man upon performing a certain feat. He taught me all I know."
And since there are many more references in the early books, maybe it would be best to skip from the beginning, and go forward six books, with a passage from chapter one of The Fire From Within:
>I asked him then about the origin of the Toltecs' knowledge.
>"The way the Toltecs first started on the path of knowledge was by eating power plants," he replied. "Whether prompted by curiosity, or hunger, or error, they ate them. Once the power plants had produced their effects on them, it was only a matter of time before some of them began to analyze their experiences. In my opinion, the first men on the path of knowledge were very daring, but very mistaken."
>"Isn't all this a conjecture on your part, don Juan?"
>"No, this is no conjecture of mine. I am a seer, and when I focus my seeing on that time I know everything that took place."
>"Can you see the details of things of the past?" I asked.
>"Seeing is a peculiar feeling of knowing," he replied, "of knowing something without a shadow of doubt. In this case, I know what those men did, not only because of my seeing, but because we are so closely bound together."
>Don Juan explained then that his use of the term 'Toltec' did not correspond to what I understood it to mean. To me it meant a culture, the Toltec Empire. To him, the term Toltec meant 'man of knowledge'.
>He said that in the time he was referring to, centuries or perhaps even millennia before the Spanish Conquest, all such men of knowledge lived within a vast geographical area, north and south of the valley of Mexico, and were employed in specific lines of work: curing, bewitching, storytelling, dancing, being an oracle, preparing food and drink. Those lines of work fostered specific wisdom, wisdom that distinguished them from average men. These Toltecs, moreover, were also people who fitted into the structure of everyday life, very much as doctors, artists, teachers, priests, and merchants in our own time do. They practiced their professions under the strict control of organized brotherhoods and became proficient and influential to such an extent that they even dominated groups of people who lived outside the Toltecs' geographical regions.
>Don Juan said that after centuries of dealing with power plants, some of these men had finally learned to see. The most enterprising of them then began to teach other men of knowledge how to see. And that was the beginning of their end. As time passed, the number of seers increased, but their obsession with what they saw, which filled them with reverence and fear, became so intense that they ceased to be men of knowledge. They became extraordinarily proficient in seeing and could exert great control over the strange worlds they were witnessing. But it was to no avail. Seeing had undermined their strength and forced them to be obsessed with what they saw.
>"There were seers, however, who escaped that fate," don Juan continued, "great men who, in spite of their seeing, never ceased to be men of knowledge (which is a good thing, in this usage/context). Some of them endeavored to use seeing positively, and to teach it to their fellow men. I'm convinced that under their direction, the populations of entire cities went into other worlds and never came back.
>"But the seers who could only see were fiascos, and when the land where they lived was invaded by a conquering people, they were as defenseless as everyone else.
>"Those conquerors," he went on, "took over the Toltec world. They appropriated everything, but they never learned to see."'
>"Why do you think they never learned to see?" I asked.
>"Because they copied the procedures of the Toltec seers without having the Toltecs' inner knowledge. To this day there are scores of sorcerers all over Mexico, descendants of those conquerors, who follow the Toltec ways but don't know what they're doing, or what they're talking about, because they're not seers."
>"Who were those conquerors, don Juan?"
>"Other Indians," he said. "When the Spaniards came, the old seers had been gone for centuries, but there was a new breed of seers who were starting to secure their place in a new cycle."
>"What do you mean. a new breed of seers?"
>"After the world of the first Toltecs was destroyed, the surviving seers retreated and began a serious examination of their practices. The first thing they did was to establish stalking, dreaming, and (the mastery of) intent as the key procedures; and to de-emphasize the use of power plants; perhaps that gives us a hint as to what really happened to them with power plants.
>"The new cycle was just beginning to take hold when the Spanish conquerors swept the land. Fortunately, by that time the new seers were thoroughly prepared to face that danger. They were already consummate practitioners of the art of stalking."
>Don Juan said that the subsequent centuries of subjugation provided for these new seers the ideal circumstances in which to perfect their skills. Oddly enough, it was the extreme rigor and coercion of that period that gave them the impetus to refine their new principles. And, owing to the fact that they never divulged their activities, they were left alone to map their findings.
>"Were there a great many new seers during the Conquest?" I asked.
>"At the beginning there were. Near the end there were only a handful. The rest had been exterminated."
>"What about in our day, don Juan?" I asked.
>"There are a few. They are scattered all over, you understand."
>"Do you know them?" I asked.
>"Such a simple question is the hardest one to answer," he replied. "There are some we know very well. But they are not exactly like us because they have concentrated on other specific aspects of knowledge, such as dancing, curing, bewitching, or talking; instead of what the new seers recommend- stalking, dreaming, and intent. Those who are exactly like us would not cross our path. The seers who lived during the Conquest set it up that way so as to avoid being exterminated in the confrontation with the Spaniards. Each of those seers founded a lineage. And not all of them had descendants, so the lines are few."
>"Do you know any who are exactly like us?" I asked.
>"A few," he replied laconically.
>I asked him then to give me all the information he could, for I was vitally interested in the topic. To me it was of crucial importance to know names and addresses for purposes of validation and corroboration.
>Don Juan did not seem inclined to oblige me.
>"The new seers went through that bit of corroboration," he said. "Half of them left their bones in the corroborating room. So now they are solitary birds. Let's leave it that way. All we can talk about is our line. About that, you and I can say as much as we please."
>He explained that all the lines of seers were started at the same time and in the same fashion. Around the end of the sixteenth century every nagual deliberately isolated himself and his group of seers from any overt contact with other seers. The consequence of that drastic segregation, he said, was the formation of the individual lineages.
And concluding with a passage from chapter seven of Being-In-Dreaming, by Florinda Donner:
>"Isidoro Baltazar (Castaneda) saw through you and through the whole thing," Mariano Aureliano (don Juan Matus) judged when I finally finished with my various accounts. "But he doesn't see well enough yet. He couldn't even conceive that I had sent you to him."
>He regarded me wickedly and corrected himself. "It wasn't really I who sent you to him. It was the spirit. The spirit chose me to do it's bidding, though, and I blew you to him when you were most powerful, in the midst of your dreaming-awake."
>He spoke lightly, almost listlessly: Only his eyes conveyed the urgency of his knowledge. "Perhaps your dreaming-awake power was the reason Isidoro Baltazar didn't realize who you were, even though he was seeing; even though the spirit let him know the very first time he set eyes on you. A display of lights in the fog is the ultimate giveaway. How stupid of Isidoro Baltazar not to see the obvious."
>He chuckled softly, and I nodded in agreement, without knowing what I was agreeing to.
>"That'll show you that to be a sorcerer is no big deal," he continued. "Isidoro Baltazar is a sorcerer. To be a man of knowledge is something else. For that, sorcerers have to wait sometimes a lifetime."
>"What's the difference?" I asked.
>"A man of knowledge is a leader," he explained, his voice low, subtly mysterious: "Sorcerers need leaders to lead us into and through the unknown. A leader is revealed through his actions. Leaders have no price tag on their heads, meaning that there is no way to buy them or bribe them or cajole them or mystify them."
>He settled more comfortably in his chair and went on to say that all the people in his group had made it a point to study leaders throughout the ages in order to see if any of them fulfilled the requirements.
>"Have you found any?"
>"Some," he admitted. "Those we have found could have been naguals."
>He pressed his finger against my lips and added, "Naguals are, then, natural leaders; men of tremendous energy who become sorcerers by adding one more track to their repertoire: the unknown. If those sorcerers succeed in becoming men of knowledge, then there is practically no limit to what they can do."
>"Can women..." He didn't let me finish.
>"Women, as you will learn someday, can do infinitely more complex things than that," he affirmed.
So, since there does not, in fact, seem to be any singular definition of what a Man of Knowledge is, and it's more a way of referring to someone who is continually/actively pursuing expanded perception (which has no actual limit), and integrating that skill into how they live their daily lives, it's not surprising that someone with autism who has a "preference for clarity, predictability, and explicit communication over ambiguity and nuance" would be annoyed by how it's used in the books!
Not to mention the whole Nagual/nagual confusion...
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This post was made to clarify several passages posted as comments in a post just a few hours ago.
And lastly, from chapter 3 of The Teachings of don Juan:
"But then, don Juan, it is possible that a man may abandon himself to fear for years, but finally conquer it."
"No, that is not true. If he gives in to fear, he will never conquer it because he will shy away from learning and never try again. But if he tries to learn for years in the midst of his fear, he will eventually conquer it because he will never have really abandoned himself to it."
"How can he defeat his third enemy, don Juan?"
"He has to defy it, deliberately. He has to come to realize the power he has seemingly conquered is in reality never his. He must keep himself in line at all times, handling carefully and faithfully all that he has learned. If he can see that clarity and power without his control over himself are worse than mistakes, he will reach a point where everything is held in check. He will know then when and how to use his power; and thus he will have defeated his third enemy.
"The man will be, by then, at the end of his journey of learning, and almost without warning he will come upon the last of his enemies: Old age! This enemy is the cruelest of all; the one he won't be able to defeat completely, but only fight away.
"This is the time when a man has no more fears, no more impatient clarity of mind- a time when all his power is in check, but also the time when he has an unyielding desire to rest. If he gives in totally to his desire to lie down and forget; if he soothes himself in tiredness, he will have lost his last round and his enemy will cut him down into a feeble old creature. His desire to retreat will overrule all his clarity, his power, and his knowledge.
"But if the man sloughs off his tiredness, and lives his fate through, he can then be called a man of knowledge; if only for the brief moment when he succeeds in fighting off his last, invincible enemy. That moment of clarity, power, and knowledge is enough."
I suspect all this no longer applies much to us...
We're a different type of seer.
Who learns to "see" first, then figures out if the rest of it is important to them.
Or not...
You can't use that method unless you have access to tens of thousands of new recruits, the way we do.
However, don't any beginners get their feathers ruffled.
Once you can see daily, you covet having full control over it, including having it be continuous, and especially including time traveling into the visions that float in the air.
In your physical body.
And THAT
Whats the difference in seeing then and now i struggle to diffrentiate and what difference does it make to have tens of thousands of recruits
I'm not understanding your first question. So I'll answer the second one.
Sorcery can ONLY be learned by methods used in the past. That's because it took thousands of years to discover and develop to its current super advanced stage where it literally breaks the laws of physics (from time to time).
It's not a pretend magical system which is merely green line effects, which you can see in our J curve map. You'll find everything they promise up there at the green line. But none of what's at the red line and beyond.
Those colors symbolize how far your assemblage point moved, kind of like a radio knob tuning stations all over the dial range.
Other magical system limit you to just a few channels at the start of the dial. Just barely enough weird stuff, to keep you coming back and giving them your money.
Meditation, prayer, repetitious motion, koans, contemplation all just served to either replace the internal dialogue with something else, such as a mantra, or they alter the situation so much, that the internal dialogue is somewhat distracted.
But none of them ever produce anything humans don't do all the time. They just seem like magic because they have stories to go along with their lame techniques. Stories designed to make promises to followers which they can use for self-flattery.
Such as "you'll reach enlightenment".
Sorcery on the other hand, is venturing off past where any human currently goes. So you'll get absolutely no help or support from anyone else, and if you succeed, they'll try to stop it.
We come under attack in here, on a regular basis.
The only thing that will help you learn, is some outside force helping your assemblage point move.
You can't possibly do it on your own.
8000 years ago, small children were given to seers, to become their apprentice.
Small children just copy whoever is in charge of them, so that learning method worked well.
But the world that made that possible, a stable, "long ago" civilization where you can give your kids away to evil wizards, is long gone.
Around 800 years ago, they switched to a new teaching model.
Using a "double being". A freak of nature. A person with twice as much energy of awareness inside them.
Perhaps 1 in 500 by my estimates.
And those have to be trained, so it won't do any good to find one who wasn't. Also, those people tend to dominate or organize others around them, so you can pretty much never find a real one, who would join you on a bizarre question for real magic.
the new teaching method involved tricking apprentices with something else they believed was what they were learning, but striking their left shoulder blade using the double person's energy, to dent their luminous shell.
And push their assemblage point all the way to the other side of that reality dial.
Those are the only 2 methods by which sorcery was ever learned in the past.
Carlos introduced a new one.
But it didn't work. He failed miserably.
Because in fact, no one would actually do any sustained work.
Sorcery always works, if you follow the instructions Carlos gave us.
But everyone is too lazy.
Even famous Buddhist masters have never gotten off that green part of the reality dial. They're too lazy to even do what they claim, and get rid of their internal dialogue.
Many say it's impossible.
Fortunately, Carlos gave his 2 allies out to his private class, and after 20 or so years, they decided no one was going to learn, and created "darkroom" as a method that gave beginners real feedback, and prevented t hem from pretending their results.
But only 1 in 100 who subscribe here (which means 1 in 200 since half don't subscribe and only lurk) , never put in any effort at all.
And from those 1 in 200, only 1 in 5 will go on once they understand what sorcery is.
Sorcery is COLD. There's no one to join you,. when you venture out into realities no one has seen before.
So it perhaps takes 1 in 1000 to get someone who who works hard enough to make it to "seeing".
We're trying to gather 10 who can do that, to make sure this magic can never be lost.
My first question was about the difference between old seeing and new seeing as in whats the main goal or end game when compare the two
"Seeing" is when you can perceive the puffs.
That's also technically "stopping the world".
But in the books you also get the impression that "stopping the world" is a dramatic thing, with Carlos floating in the air, suspended between worlds.
And "seeing" is elevated to such a height, that you'd doubt you'd done it at all, until you fully mastered the purple zone on the J curve.
It's only thanks to La Gorda that we have the differing opinion on what those two are.
Anything past the start of the green zone is "seeing". And it's also "stopping the world".
You've gotten caught up in the confusion over this topic. I did too.
You are "seeing", the instant you get darkroom to work, for real.
Which I guess is damned hard, keeping in mind how few new people coming here, continue to work until it does.
It's that initial speed bump that stops people.
But once you get over that...
Shit...
The things you get to see!!!!!
If you were wondering what our generation might become, with us being internet seers, no one knows.
But in a real magical system, the apprentices usually surpass their teacher!
It's only in fake systems like they have in Asia, where no one ever reaches the level of their founder.
Just the idea that our beginners kick the Buddha's butt (which they do), caused a famous internet buddhist who came here to attack to say,
"Jyajyajya".
Or "harharharhar".
I don't recall, but clearly it's not ok to make what ought to be a normal claim. So he felt he'd won the argument (which he started).
Namely, the claim that each generation improves on the magic of the last generation.
The way science also grows over time.
But not in Buddhism...
Because it's not real.
Sorcery is real, so it's always evolving.
I was just listening to the audio book art of dreaming and don juan mentions there he steers clear of IOB yet he has mescalito is this a contradiction or could you choose your IOB according to your preference?
More likely that he steered clear of them in his later years, as much as he could that is, since they are still needed.
Analogy might be a tool that you used to use all the time, even though you had a bit of shame when doing so, but as you get more experienced only utilize sparingly when it's truly called for (in especially demanding situations).
Or like training wheels and fat tires on a bicycle.
Can you elaborate more please on the part of analogy
I was curious if that statement by don Juan, contradicted us later finding out the Olmecs were the source.
If you assume his use of "Toltecs" is not the traditional one, and then look at th egeographical location he described, it seemed contradictory to me.
Which is fine... Sorcery is rather fond of misrepresenting things if that helps an apprentice learn.
But it turns out it doesn't.
I asked an AI:
How is this passage from the book of Carlos Castaneda, to be interpreted in terms of locations in Mexico? It is: He said that in the time he was referring to, centuries or perhaps even millennia before the Spanish Conquest, all such men of knowledge lived within a vast geographical area, north and south of the valley of Mexico, and were employed in specific lines of work.
Does this contradict what he told us later, which is that the Olmecs were the source? Is that too far north?
The AI said:
Excellent question — and one that gets right into the heart of how Castaneda’s mythology overlaps with real Mesoamerican geography.
No, it’s not really a contradiction — it’s more like a deepening or extension of his earlier idea. The Olmec heartland is indeed somewhat farther east and south than the “valley of Mexico,” but it fits perfectly as the earliest layer of the same ancient tradition he’s describing.
You specified Mescalito as being an inorganic being, but I’ve seen Dan reference Mescalito as being a Silent Knowledge Entity (SKE) before? I don’t know much about SKE’s specifically.
Both are possible.
Or neither, and take it on the terms of Mescalito being "in" the psychoactive plants/mushrooms that shifted the apprentice's assemblage point.
Human language, or maybe just non-indigenous languages like English and Spanish, is not really up to the task of describing these states.
Maybe don Juan's use of this term, "Man of Knowledge" is more like our use of the term "scientist".
Scientists come in two varieties. There's the fake ones who are only pretending to be scientists, and who get angry when new evidence contradicts their current beliefs.
They'll practically lynch people if their discoveries or ideas upset too many things.
There's plenty of historical examples of that.
But then there's the scientists who are actually conosseurs of knowledge, and who endeavor to use it, to help mankind.
To use a fairly petty example, fans of sci-fi and warp drive and future technology which solves all problems, who are old enough, will remember when most physicists got very angry if you mentioned faster than light travel.
They were just copying their idol Einstein. Not actually having a "romance with knowledge". They were having a romance with reputation.
But these days it's been reversed. Every physicist seems to now agree that warp drives and faster than light travel are probably inevitable.
In the same way, there's crummy "men of knowledge" in sorcery, and there's actual ones who have a relationship to knowledge which furthers mankind's progress in that direction.
Unfortunately the number of those is extremely few, compared to the ones just playing dress up, who never acquire any actual sorcery knowledge at all.
It comes down to what actually motivates you.
Socializing and money making, or navigating into the unknown and passing on any progress you make, over what's known about how to navigate as far as possible.
I stopped practicing just now because I got flooded with "knowledge" due to seeing.
Random topics, but all of them worth preserving.
Most of what you "see", isn't retainable. Because reality isn't actually like we believe it is.
Take the topic of the Allies.
One value of the Allies, is to have a second awareness with you. One that can focus on second attention sights, and make them more stable.
Some of the coolest sorcery super powers I've gotten to experience, only took place because I had a second awareness around.
Cholita, or an Ally.
Our sense of "cool sorcery powers" requires at least a tiny bit of shared experience.
Without that, it's like all the things you can "see", which fade away soon after it's over.
"Reality" requires at least a tiny bit of agreement.
But not too much...
If you describe magical states too much, you destroy them.
By turning them back into a socializing mechanism.
You get the fake scientists, who now have their list of orthodoxy which gets you praise, if you repeat it.
It becomes a currency of agreement, to buy you praise from others involved in repeating orthodoxy. It's not a romance with knowledge, but rather a romance with exotic inventory items.
Real magic isn't like that, because it's outside "agreement".
Take the Allies.
What do they look like?
That depends on which variety, but in the case of the two allies of Carlos, we have his best description of them as being a kind of dual-being presence in a supernatural tunnel of some kind that humans can't possibly perceive correctly.
They seem to be a kind of hive being, such that you can't even be sure if the same one comes to visit you each time.
So "what do they look like"?
That's more of a reflection on your own state of being.
For La Gorda, they were rapists.
For Pablito, a basket with teeth, trying to bite him.
For Carlos, ravenous beasts.
For some, evil clowns.
But in the long run, you come to realize they don't actually look like anything from this world, and that the best you can do is not care what they look like. Just learn to notice their presence.
And enjoy whatever appearance you can manage to perceive.
They'll notice that you were pleased, and help it change to a new one.
In order to interact with you.
They're after the same benefit.
A second awareness to make exotic states of awareness, more real.
Just now I got up to practice and looked out into the darkness, seeing an instant sparkle.
Bits and pieces of the darkness were flecks of fairly bright yellow light, and inside those was a piece of a new reality, such that if you backed off from gazing at a few, to look overall , you could see an alternate reality there. Like backing off from staring at the objects inside a store window, to notice there's a reflection on the glass, of all the cars going by on the street, behind you.
I got the idea at the time that it was just the "shine of the eyes" don Juan mentioned was the key to gazing.
But then I realized, maybe that's actually the "shiny outer coating" of the luminous egg.
The very thing the fliers lick off, to keep us feeling nothing but self-pity.
Maybe the "shiny outer coating" of our luminous shell, is more like a description of the allies.
You can't resist trying to give them a form you can comprehend.
And reality literally responds, so that their appearance can be so real, it becomes frightening.
But in fact, there's nothing there.
The allies are located so far away, that their world is not even in our solar system.
The "shiny outer coating" is best left as a less described metaphor, for something you can't actually be so specific about.
It's not so much a "thing", as it's a different branch of knowledge, than the purple puffs and the energy body.
Wow thanks for the info Dan! Do you still get attacked by the Flyers? Is there a way to neutralize them completely? Or It will just happen gradually when enough well done work is put, cleaning your link with intent and being able to hold that position through enough stalking?
I have no idea.
Carlos said they were a "metaphor", but everyone in our community refuses to acknowledge that, because Cleargreen has been marketing them as a concrete "enemy" they're fighting, to save the world from.
that's the kind of damage their pretending does.
And we're the ones who are more like "the nasty old seers" according to Cleargreen.
Because we dare to actually make it work, instead of just funneling money to them like good "followers".
I suppose the only way to judge if the fliers aren't licking your "shiny outer coating" is to see it for yourself!
Then judge how much of it remains.
Try this, and see if you can learn to perceive it.
I have seen zero information showing that the fliers are a metaphor. Carlos said that Tony's photograph was an omen, not a metaphor.
I don't think it is good to be saying that they are a metaphor, because if they are not, then you underestimate them. "Oh, that's just a metaphor".
People already don't take all this seriously...
So it's not like you're going to keep people who will work hard, from learning.
It also challenges the orthodoxy, which is a good thing to do when you've been taken over by greedy bad guys like the various versions of Cleargreen.
However, I was told it's in there. I even heard what Carlos said to her about it, which was too detailed to be a casual mistake someone made in what they read.
He goaded Amy, to get her to write that book, saying, "It's a metaphor! But only you're intelligent enough to realize that."
Or at least, that's what I recall someone said was written in that book.
Carlos was basically taking Cleagreen down a notch in there.
And trying to get groupie types to curse him and go away.
Remove the "dead weight".
He said in the chapter "Bats"-that only she would have the intelligence to grasp the metaphor.. and that" The rest of them....they are not capable. They don't understand that we are like chickens in a coop, and some thing( -italics) Alien is eating us..yes, we're FOOD!"
I guess the chickens in the coop was a metaphor for our situation.
He goes on- " Sorcerers have two sayings. One concerns an academic who went into the Amazon to " observe the natives"- when they tried to eat him he wrote, " For a moment anthropology was forgotten!"
In way it's an outside force that blurs your link. Trying to put you back to "line", self pity. It can come in forms of memory (Self reflection), other people, and specially regarding other people feels like something is moving them to get to us.
A directly related comment.