Hi everyone, I recently stumbled upon your supreddit and am very impressed with what you do. I have a question: does everything you describe really happen in reality and in a sober mind, and are your visions not just hypnogothic images? I say this because I sometimes have hypnogothic visions during sleep, for example, a landscape quickly appears and then disappears, or are your visions more persistent? It's just that what you're describing sounds very fantastical and hard to believe. Has anyone else received any confirmation that the results you're getting aren't just fantasies, but something truly real? I apologize if my questions are too stupid.
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My suggestions would be to gather as much Inner Silence as possible during your day and then you will be able to asnwer most of these questions yourself.
What we do here is not so much about believing in it or not, or intelectually discussing it. You have to practice the techniques this sub offers; Inner Silence, Darkroom, Tensegrity, Recapitulation, Stalking, etc... Read the wiki and get to work. **https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/wiki/index/**
But...
Yes, everything happens "in reality."
And sober, yes. Some experiences can be induced or enchanced by drugs, however. This only serves to loosen you Assemblage Point and isnt permanent. Moreover, it isnt even the point of this subreddit, but drugs(psychedelics) do get a lot of people moving in this direction, so they do have some value for begginers.
You are using an unknown and undefined term "hypnogothic" which I will assume you're simply mistaking for the word "hypnagogic" which is defined as "an adjective that describes the transition state from being awake to falling asleep, or something that induces sleep," yes?
In any case;
Some people are more prone to their Assemblage Points moving. You can say... some are born with more talent? Some more easily achieve feats of perception that take others years to get to. You are lucky. I assume what mainstream science currently clasifies as "hypnagogic dreams is just a catchall term for experiences people like you have, naturally, with not so much effort. Our mental healthy "professionals" currently love to put labels on stuff, but EVERY & ALL shift in your ordinary perception is some variation of your Assemblage Point moving from its ordinary position.
With inner silence, you will gain more "dreaming energy." With more dreaming energy, your visions will gain more stability and your "landscapes" will persist during the day and be more stable.
Some here claim you are then also able to enter those worlds with your Double/dreaming body. I wouldnt know... I didnt get that far.
Lastly,
Yes, many such cases.
This is very cool.
There is an instance in the books where it says that the grass has been marked as if someone has been lying there for a long time. And you guessed it… it was the double!
The sorcerers of the lineages commonly traveled where they wanted to go, by flying there. Thousands of miles in 10 seconds in cases where we can guess the travel time from the story.
Or you can just dream up a portal to the location, perhaps on your bedroom wall, and then walk right off through the wall and into the destination. Seemingly in your physical body. There's nothing to indicate you didn't!
The advantage of one method over the other perhaps has to do with avoiding phantom versions of the destination. Theoretically, actually traveling the entire way helps make sure you land in the same version of reality as the person you're traveling to visit. The same way you can keep your rationality when you enter a phantom dream world, if you physically walk into it.
I've been trying to make a working flying carpet, since it can't be much different than just zipping somewhere in your energy body.
Why not go in style?! And I did that in the past.
Sometimes only the double of advanced sorcerers would go to another location, to interact with a student in a city far away.
But that double could "wake up" at that location if they wanted to transport their physical body. Until then, both versions of them could get work done at separate locations.
So the answer to your question is somewhere between that, and perhaps one might even say that neither the double, nor the tonal body, is actually "real" as you're thinking of it.
Once you start talking about what's "real", you're beginning to censor yourself based on "common sense". Which is precisely what keeps people from being able to perceive real magic.
Both your physical version, and your "double" come from those emanations in the dark sea, glowing because your beam of awareness focused on that region.
Just like in this cartoon.
All there is according to sorcerers, is that dark sea of the emanations and awareness to flow into it. Physical matter, time and space are just different emanations glowing.
As for "proving it", no one who could do that, would. That motivation runs counter to being willing to actually work hard enough to learn. It's an attention seeking motivation.
You'll have to gain the ability to prove things yourself, and then you'll understand why no one would do that.
But in fact, they already have. Over and over. That's how teaching in the lineages worked. Constant demonstrations of impossible things.
Maybe one day someone will give a demonstration of something simple like levitating small objects, and make a video with their phone to "prove it" to some scientists.
But obviously it won't change anything for the good. If people believed the video, it would destroy all of our efforts as we got flooded with bad people who are seeking attention and money.
And perhaps (likely) get that person killed by a deranged person who latches onto that when it becomes a news story.
Do sorcerers just observe that dark sea of awareness or can they "interact" with it somehow? Are they at the end of the J-curve when they're supposed to see that?
Hell yea you can interact with it! It'll even materialize a teacher, to show you how to do it.
Unfortunately, if you get spellbound by the teacher you'll lose the lesson.
I learned that from "Miss Moneigh" in high school french. Don't look up her mini skirt all class (1970s) even though she sits on the desk. Better look at the blackboard.
So you need a "clean link to intent" when viewing Silent Knowledge.
One of those SKEs (silent knowledge entity) was trying to teach me how to calm Cholita down, by identifying the emanations that were the most "hot", in relation to her.
At the time it made total sense, but now that I describe the situation, it's total lunacy.
Yes, that sort of stuff is at the "end of the J curve" according to the lecture Carlos gave.
But he saw that we were losing interest. There was clearly more but he gave up.
It reminds me of my posts. If I post the most advanced stuff people's eyes glaze over and I start to get complaints all around that I'm making fun of women or somehow suppressing them, or misleading them.
If it's easy to do stuff, people get happy and start commenting.
Witchy creature's post is very popular on instagram and facebook. People sense they could do that themselves.
The hypnagogic question has come up a few times from new people. I’ve kinda chewed on that question. You think the hypnagogic state is our (remnant) connection to the dark sea of awareness?
Shutting off the internal dialogue is the way in.
It's green zone stuff.
Not very useful in the long run because viewing it doesn't help "clean your link to intent".
Much...
BUT...
It seems to be easier to find text, in the hypnagogic image realms.
Not that you can't find it later on in SK, but over there things get very crowded, as far as visible magic goes.
Hypnagogia is like meeting your friend at the nearly empty korean shoe store.
Sk is like trying to meet your friend in the middle of Disneyland, on their busiest day.
A tangent question. I can’t make AP to shift without tensegrity. I’ve been practicing for as long as I’ve been on the Sub. Tensegrity loosens the AP; even before gazing.
At some point, should a practitioner be able to turn of internal dialogue, shift the AP without tensegrity?
Yes, but that can become a trap where you start to neglect the tensegrity.
Also, your double can wake you up with a swarm of magical sights, including it's intense blue color flowing around you, with magical sights mixed in.
Some passes really appeal to me. I have a few favourites that I use, maybe a bit too much. Is it possible to use a pass too much? Can they lose their “influence” from over use?
(I try to mix it up, keep learning new passes cause the effects are noticeable).
We don't have the answer to that. Carlos taught new tensegrity each private class.
So it never came up.
I suspect he'd just be happy if people practiced at all, between private classes.
They pretty much didn't.
And here Dark Room got ppl motivated and practicing…no Nagual/Leader.
It would have been fascinating to see how people might have started actually learning, if Carlos hadn't died so soon.
There's no learning until you can move your assemblage point all by yourself! Even if you use physical movements to help that.
Carlos kept evolving Tensegrity, so it's not as if that were a path that had been perfected by the lineages.
And back in the time of the old seers, they concocted elaborate procedures. Even involving lowering people on a rope dipped in wax, stuck to their navel.
My theory: Rubber stuck to your navel, and you were lowered from a platform over a dark and deep cenote.
So clearly there's stuff you can do to get your assemblage point to move, which involves the environment.
But sooner or later, Carlos would have tinkered with the Tensegrity enough to get it to work as a "path" free from the need for the Nagual's blow. Which could be used long after he was gone.
You just can't ask everyone to be "Kylie Fierce" for years, without some leader around to remind them. And while you can substitute curiosity or "relishing" the tensegrity and get the same effect as "Fierce", people tend to lose interest when there's no other people around reinforcing the importance of something.
Darkroom just adds a little motivation from your energy body. In the form of visible magic.
Carol Tiggs was heading towards advising "Micro Nagual's Blows" where practitioners can slap each other on the back, and possibly push each other to the green zone.
And blowing through tubes.
So there's a lot more that could be done, to salvage the workshop learning model.
We just don't have any leftover leaders with actual understanding. So that instead of improving on how and where Tensegrity is done, their modifications all involve stealing more money from people through certificates of self-importance.
What if Carlos had regularly gotten people to the green zone, in private classes?
Would he figure out how to adapt the movements to exploit that?
In the green zone you can visit heaven, God, and explore insect hive mind awareness.
Theoretically, you could use environmental conditions (+fear) to help push people into the green zone while doing tensegrity.
I recently remote viewed Cholita in Mexico during the 4 months she was down there, and saw her walking alongside a banana grove.
I bought a "blue java" banana tree hoping to get her to start talking about banana groves, but all she said was "As long as I don't have to think about it."
Occasionally she rejects plants I buy her by moving them to a side yard, or putting them into the green recycle bin.
I think tensegrity is the modern path. Might even play into the three chamber Nagual mission Silvio spoke of. It makes sense if we are allowed to make any sense of any of it. As you mention you can move your AP with fear, suffering, lack of sleep, environment (this one worlds for me: maybe-sometimes while gazing) or you can recognize what you’re doing, learn to turn off internal dialogue and do tensegrity. Much more fitting methodology for modern times, no?
We are using tensegrity sans a leader or Naguals blow. With only other practitioners posts and comments to motivate. You’ve been at this for 55yrs., I’m sure you’ve encountered enough ppl by now to see some minuscule possibility of potential. Even me in my very limited and primitive experience with darkroom can see enough of a speck of something to know there’s something to this.
But man…..the through of having CC around and being able to turn of internal dialogue…..would’ve been awesome
He might become available further out there in SK.
That's a pretty good answer!
Wouldn't being a bad person preclude someone from advancing in the path anyways?
Absolutely!
But the truth is, out of 100 people who subscribe to this subreddit (which means there's another 5 onlookers), only one of those will actually make any real effort to learn.
We're so used to fake magical systems where all you have to do is memorize some chants, or sit with your eyes closed and take a short nap, that people are largely unwilling to do any actual work.
By comparison, no one believes you can pick up a trumpet and just start playing well.
They KNOW you have to do a lot of very unpleasant practicing.
But when it comes to magical systems, they somehow think you shouldn't have to do any actual work to learn them.
Is it possible to physically change yourself in a way that other people can actually see it? For example, changing your face?
Of course, compared to the things you mentioned, this is nothing — I know. But I’m still curious.
We don't know. Sorcery isn't like Taoism or Magick, where the only point of what they do is telling others about it, so that they can get money over it. And in fact, they can't actually do what they claim. But they sure love to explain it.
Sorcery on the other hand is a non-profit endeavor, and sorcerers tell their apprentices as little as they can. Possibly so that they don't put limitations on them.
But I do know that Cholita used to make herself 30 years younger, and I could certainly see it.
She could also do instant outfit changes.
I just don't know if others would see it. And Cholita won't talk to me for more than 5 seconds, and only once every few days.
Thus I can't just ask her about it.
Possibly one of the earlier books implies that sorcerers can transform and everyone will see it.
There was some story about a witch turning herself into a dog, so she could steal cheese.
The owner of the cheese shot the dog with a shotgun, and then people tried to punish him saying, he knew it wasn't really a dog.
At least, that's my memory of what I read more than 40 years ago.
And the Nagual Julian could make himself appear to be young or old at will.
If you read all of the books, there are several examples of reality splitting into two, so that the participants see something impossible such as La Gorda flying into the sky with Carlos holding on to her skirt, but no bystanders seem to notice what they just did.
The bridge story is a better example, but I can't remember what they did. Only that it was a busy bridge in Mexico, with lots of people, but while they were in the alternate version of reality no one was around.
The people returned when the impossible events ended.
There's also the consideration of whether just one person can do such impossible things. Or whether there has to be two, or it deviates off into phantom dreaming realms.
My "impossible" activities never end cleanly, unless I have Cholita around.
Yes, I remember that these things were mentioned in the books.
There was even that sorcerer they called the “death defier” who changed his own gender and became a woman.
But it’s really interesting. I want to try it — maybe I can start with a physical change in my face.
Although there are also bigger goals that I need to reach.
Just to confuse things, we don't know for a fact that the death defier could leave his phantom village in Tula.
Both Jadey and I have concluded (but aren't sure), that when he escaped the IOBs, he didn't have a physical body anymore.
Just his double, plus whatever tonal awareness he managed to bring along when he was first captured.
According to Carlos, the IOBs snatch your double first.
Then come back later for the physical body.
But I doubt they keep it in the refridgerator for 7000 years so that you can escape and raid the fridge on the way out.
He likely escaped into a prison of his own making. Tula where perhaps he first met this lineage, 800 years earlier.
Until Carol Tiggs came along and volunteered to be body snatched.
An "upgrade" as she put it, and she suggested we shouldn't fear those.
It's not like a movie where two consciousness are fighting over control.
All of the energy of awareness seems to either merge, or get along smoothly.
I'm hoping to "upgrade" Cholita, with Julian.
But it's not a popular idea in here.
The Death Defier is a complex, mysterious, and ambiguous puzzle, and I don’t think we’ll ever reach a definitive answer about her.
By the way, Cholita has a really interesting personality — though she’s also quite strange.
She might know things about sorcery that no one else is aware of yet, and she definitely wouldn’t tell anyone.
I hope you succeed in upgrading Cholita.
I wish someone else was there to see her do super advanced things even Carlos couldn't do!
Using his own allies.
Which reminds me...
I fell into an alternative timeline last night, with Cholita and one of the two Allies. I just didn't recall it until now, because I had no reason to think about it.
There's no connection between alternate timelines and this one, unless you manage to remember one when in the other, and do something to get yourself to recall it.
Especially if you don't "get sucked into it". It could just branch off and your double go experience it. But your physical version could still be back in the normal reality, wondering why it didn't work.
I've concluded lately, that in Silent Knowledge you can intend to visit someone, and it can happen instantly without you being aware of it.
I only know that from remembering later on, and then when I add up the time spent in both timelines, I find that the alternate timeline happened instantly, when I requested it in Silent Knowledge.
Of course if you can't remember it, it's not of much use.
The reason this is somewhat inevitable, is that to reach SK, the assemblage point of your tonal awareness, has to align with that of your energy body (double).
So whatever is going on, is known both to you, and your double.
Which might even be wondering why your tonal didn't come along too, since it was the one obsessed with visiting that person.
What a cool experience!
A few questions came up for me:
When you reach Silent Knowledge, do you get access to all kinds of magic? Even the ones you specifically want to know?
Also, what’s the final goal? Is it reaching Silent Knowledge or the Double?
Yes, you get access to all kinds of magic.
But that means, access to 1 billion things.
And there's no table of contents on SK. And no index.
It's kind of like, if you go into the library of congress but they got rid of all the indexing help, do you have access to nearly all books ever written?
Yes, but good luck finding the one you want.
>Even the ones you specifically want to know?
That makes it even harder to locate.
Until you have a "clean link to intent".
Which is very, very far away.
If you have a clean link to intent, you'll know it for sure! You see infinity in all places you look. And wonder why you never noticed something so amazing, before then.
>Is it reaching Silent Knowledge or the Double?
Carlos gave us our goal in his Silent Knowledge publication. And in Readers of Infinity.
Basically, we're screwed. Carlos died, Taisha and Florinda ditched us as hopeless, and even Carol Tiggs couldn't stand to stick around and watch Cleargreen become outright evil.
And not a single person Carlos tried to teach, learned much of anything.
So he figured all he could do is explain how to get to Silent Knowledge, and tell us we'd find new guidance there.
Or was it new leadership?
Those books are over here. If you take the time to look, quote us the passage.
It's the one where Carlos says that all of his comrades agree it's the right thing for us to be doing.
Readers of Infinity:
https://archive.org/details/the-warriors-way-readers-of-infinity-1996
Silent Knowledge:
https://archive.org/details/carlos-castaneda-silent-knowledge-cleargreen-1996
It has a little control at the bottom that looks like a control for a video, but it just moves to the next page when you click the arrow symbol.
There's a small chance that the "goal" I think is in there, was in the other 3 publications Carlos released at the end.
But I'm pretty certain it's in the Silent Knowledge publication.
I feel like this whole thing is so massive and complicated that we probably only know like 5% of it!
Also, glad you brought up Intent when talking about those kinds of magic. From what you said, it sounds pretty hard to get there, but according to the book, with enough Intent, anything should be possible.
Thanks for the guidance and for the link you shared. I guess I need to go back and read that book again.
There us a chapter in " The power of Silence" which deals with this- "Intending Appearances ".
Really? I’ve read this book, but I honestly don’t remember that at all. Thanks for mentioning it. I’ll definitely read it again.
expensive tourist ey
these people just think they are special
To me the real question is Why should I be self-centered (or as the CC books often put it, self-important)? What's the real payoff?