I'm Dan from Carlos' private classes. I'm happy to see people are still interested, but what's with all the quotes? Shouldn't the discussion here have gone a little further? Or maybe I didn't look at enough titles.
But along that line, I've noticed that "the wall" isn't nearly as fun or "useful" without the appearence of a "person" along the periphery.
Does anyone remember what Carlos wrote or said in class about the influence of the allies on his lineage?
He told us not to read his books anymore, so I don't have any copies around. And it would take forever to find something like that even if I had them.
And does anyone from Carlos' classes remember if "the wall" was created by Carlos in reaction to a particular female student? Who was it that actually painted the picture of the wall? Was it because she saw that?
The wall is a wonderful game, and a very good teacher about the nature of intent. But there's a bunch of seeing techniques you can learn if you get silent. Why did he emphasize that one in particular, in his last 3 books?
Not everyone sees that purple cloud. My experience is that if you always saw the wall without starting at the intense purple colors, you might never realize what it was for, or even fully remember that you saw it.
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Every lineage is dominated by allies. There are spirits and spirits are meant to be here. This is not Don Juan's wording of it, but we can still talk like this. Spirit shows you and power is claiming it as your own. Don Juan excelled at claiming power as his own, maybe even perhaps before being shown.
I don't recall anything about a "wall" (unless you are referring to "the wall of fog") or a purple cloud in any of Castaneda's published works.
It's in the last 3 books. Carlos told us not to read his books anymore, back in 97 or so. I did what he said. Then later someone asked me about the fliers, and I decided to read his last 3 books. It's a good thing I hadn't, because I discovered the emphasis he put on things in those, including the purple blob leading to the wall.
It's also the same technique as "finding your spot" in the long run, because the run-up to seeing the wall requires seeing energy at large in a dark room. And the same as the fuzzy pajamas thing in second ring of power (or might have been one of the others with La Gorda).
There was a general disdain for the allies among some in Carlos classes. They even accused his lineage of turning themselves into inorganic beings at the end.
Myself, I don't really care, except it does seem that the most interesting things only happen when one of the allies shows up. And sometimes they don't.
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I know what you're talking about now. Funny. I think that was "The Art of Dreaming."
I have a thing against reading Carlos' books (he told us to stop), but eventually I'll find out why I thought the wall was mentioned. I had access to a bunch of lectures Carlos gave, so if I read something in one of his last books, I can remember that topic from class. My suspicion is that he gave lectures on the various chapters as he wrote them. So it's possible that I read more into them than someone who hadn't heard the lecture would.
The wall was emphasized in class for quite a while, and it was possibly the first time he'd encouraged us by telling us specifically what you could learn to see, if you practiced that technique.
Seems like you've been at this a while. Did you ever literally hear the "knock of the spirit"?
I had the most peculiar experiences with hearing someone knocking on my front door, while recapitulating or practicing silence. Hasn't happened since Carlos died, but it was quite literally a "knock". And not the sound my own front door would make, it was more like a theater stage effect knock on a door.
If I get time I'll go back and try to figure out why you might not have noticed the wall in the last 3 books, assuming I didn't hallucinate it.
Carlos harped on the wall for quite a while in classes, which leads me to believe that was when he was writing that chapter of his book. I believe he was either rehersing what was going into the last books, or trying to emphasize various topics for the sake of some of the new women he'd brought in. Somewhere along the line, he brought in younger women and removed full power from the ones who had been there longer.
He deliberately sowed discord among cleargreen.
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I sure have felt the Knock of the Spirit.
If you practice dreaming, look for feverish dreams where you're aware it's a dream, but it's so abstract that you can't really interact with it as you normally can in dreaming. You'll be some kind of abstract thing in an impossible to understand environment. But you'll know you're dreaming.
I'm inclined to believe that this is dreaming using the rest of the body's ability to perceive. Like, a dream the legs had. Thus it's "abstract", but somehow familiar.
Some seers remain on that level of seeing. Maybe feeling the knock of the spirit is like that, more encompassing than just hearing someone knock on the door.
Which I heard yesterday again. Clear as anything. 3 knocks on the door while I was seeing energy in my room. The only reason I knew there was no one at the door was, it was very could outside, pouring rain, and it was 7AM.
First mention of the purple cloud is in the very first task given to Carlos by don Juan. Finding his "spot". He marked the intense purple color with his jacket, and called don Juan.
My thanks to someone for telling me how to get a searchable copy of all of his books.
Basically, "seeing the wall" was the first thing don Juan had him do, but in a different form. I have no doubt that if someone searched all of the books, they'd find this technique mentioned several times.
It's rather similiar to the Fire Kasina people's use of candles to form after-images with eyes closed, then using that to activate the second attention. Except that in Carlos' case, you look for "after-images" that are always present.
If I thought they wouldn't be offended, I'd point this out to them. But it's nice enough that they exist at all. I struck out with looking for Carlos' techniques among daoists. They've become too elaborate over the last 5000 years.
Here are all of his books in one searchable PDF:
Carlos Castaneda - All books in one
It's not 100% accurate. It must have been created by scanning printed books. But it's useful for searching.
There are over 100 uses of allies. Here are excerpts from The Active Side of Infinity:
It is clear that whatever involvement Don Juan's lineage had with allies, he himself was wary of them:
Castaneda's view of reality is unique, to my knowledge. There are elements I have not found in any other teaching, and so I see it as a valuable complement to other views. But some elements are missing that are essential for me. One of them is reincarnation, a word that is not used in any of his books. Actually, that concept is a simplified version of reality considering that time is non-linear. But nevertheless, the idea is implied of an evolving, eternally valid soul that encompasses many lifetimes and dimensions of existence, and is at odds with the idea that our awareness is consumed after only one lifetime unless we audaciously sneak around the Eagle.
Many believe in an afterlife dimension and that it is possible to communicate with spirits who have shared our human experience. Such spirit beings can serve as guides or "allies" for the living. They vary in their evolution as souls; some are wiser than others. Some are "ascended masters" and are accessible in dreams or through mediums. No need to get involved with inorganic predators, if one is seeking an ally from another dimension.
Leigh used to talk like that.
Thanks for that reference, it's invaluable! I'm trying to make use of all of the work Carlos put into teaching us, by passing it on. When people ask me "where's that in the books?", I'm kind of stuck. I don't want to, and was told not to, go back and read them all.
My query is because I pissed off the allies the other day, trying to stuff them into an Indian basket from Morongo. I was trying to see if it was possible to get them to follow an object, like the steel balls Carlos gave us in class and told us to polish. I have a correspondent who could profit from having an ally around and I don't know enough to be sure you don't need an introduction to them.
I got one of them into the basket, and covered the top with my hand. "He" just came out through my hand, like smoke, and gave me a very weird grin.
Then it proceeded to try to stuff me into a tube I found in dreaming the next night. It gave me the same weird grin, and refused to let me stare at it, to turn it into something else. It moved in so close, the only thing I could have done is wrestle it. So I woke up.
They haven't shown up on "the wall" for a week or more now. The wall kind of needs an ally to make it work. Or maybe, for anything other than reading off the wall, it's nice to have an ally watching it with you.
That's when I realized, we aren't on our own power if we want to go faster. Also ,in the end the allies were torturing Carlos, trying to get him to stay in their world.
Which seems like a nice enough place to me at this point. A little wet perhaps.
(For others reading this, it's pure crazy talk. Just ignore it and keep practicing.)
But what is the idea of Infinity if not this?
As I understand it, reaching for "infinity" is reaching for a rebirth of character without the transmigration of the self.
Don Juan talks a lot about the "mood" of a warrior, or his predilections. From reading I get the impression this is what Don Juan is attempting to get Castaneda to cultivate, so he has a strong sense of individuality without the ego, and that it is this which we carry forward when we "sneak past the Eagle to be free."
I'll just share what I've been taught by one of my spirit guides. I asked him what our connection was. He responded by saying the answer is complex, then elaborated.
We are actually composed of a collection of particles of awareness or soul particles, analogous to material objects being composed of a collection of molecules. Carlos experienced this directly:
Upon the death of a younger soul, the soul particles tend to fragment into subgroups, each subgroup having achieved internal harmony. Any one subgroup does not have enough "critical mass" to re-incarnate and so joins with potentially harmonious subgroups that were formerly part of another individual to prepare for the next incarnation.
This mixing and matching process continues for many lifetimes until a nearly harmonious collective is established. Old souls have very little fragmentation upon death. Instead, their goal is to strengthen cohesion until sovereignty is achieved. This marks the completion of the incarnational cycle, the purpose of which is to forge a viable sovereign being, cohesive enough to able to stand alone before Infinity without disintegrating and therefore free.
Old souls tend to become altruistic, because almost everyone they meet they recognize as having some soul particles they once were joined with. Even though they are now separated, threads of awareness still connect them. This accounts for such relationships as soulmates, soul siblings and so on.
My guide concluded by saying that he and I are connected this way, which is why he chooses to guide me. He said, "We are of the same soul, connected by threads of awareness." He and I, among others, are part of an oversoul which is itself seeking to evolve. Awareness is a fractal.
I have not found precisely this view from any other source. Carlos' description above comes closest. The idea of awareness being consumed by the Eagle might represent the fragmentation and recombination of awareness described above.
With this understanding, in my practice I focus on the binding energy (love). The goal is cohesion, integration, wholeness of being, sovereignty, freedom — on all levels of the fractal. It is something of a paradox that my freedom is attained by my constituent particles freely curtailing their freedom by bonding together. And my freedom is curtailed by freely aligning with my oversoul. But then we all share in the freedom we attain together.
Carlos often made fun of the idea of reincarnation. I don't think anyone should take that as offensive to your beliefs. He also made fun of Catholicism, Scientology, Tibetan Buddhism, anyone writing books to "clarify" his teachings, and so on. I believe each amusing mini-rant was "aimed" at one particular student. He didn't so much criticize as find a way to make a joke regarding it, in order to make someone's thinking more flexible.
In particular about multiple lives, he explained that someone told him you were being reborn in order to reach perfection.
He asked the question that only completely makes sense if you've directly experienced the abstract.
"Perfect for what?"
I have no opinion about reincarnation, but I do believe it could be beneficial if we keep our religions separate from his techniques. If we keep the two separate, then some of what Carlos taught, which hopefully we'd all like to preserve, might seep into other religions. That would make them more effective and spread this knoweldge further.
I like your thinking here. I don't mind so much talking of concepts and ideas. Like Don Generao who was so irreverent, both he and Don Juan knew not to take things too seriously, but on the other hand to still try and understand. I do like Carlos because he doesn't make any comparisons, and yet he helped usher in the New Age movement where everything was up for grabs.