This is why this sub was so anemic for so many years, it's too difficult to form a cogent response to a single sentence quote. You need a bit more, at least a short passage and an explanation of why it interests or challenges you.
Also, anybody can navigate to a random page and find a meaningful and thoughtful quote from Castaneda. The books are chock-full of them!
That being said, any interest is good interest and we all have to start somewhere I guess.
All I can come up with is the difficulty in reaching a level of silence so profound that the death of don Juan's son, I believe that's the passage that this quote is from, can do anything but emotionally devastate him.
He chooses to see his death rather than see it, because the pain of seeing it with his biological eyes was too profound. Must be nice to have an option when the average man has none.
Maybe someone out there has seen the forces involved in the death process, in animals etc. The rolling force is one, I'm drawing a blank on the other one.
[-]
u/danl999
3 points2019-08-30 17:21
I've never *seen* any of those myself.
But I suspect the rolling force will turn out to be real. I've seen the emanations, and there's plenty of room for forces flowing through that realm.
The bundles of emanations for example, have a sort of "pull" to them. If you get near one, you get pulled towards the world that bundle represents. Or more precisely, it seems to turn your head in a new direction, facing into that realm.
The great bands of emanations have a pull also. They seem to be transports of some sort. If you watch one, the hypnotic view of it causes you to feel like you're moving along on it, to another place.
I've seen that twice.
It's not hard to imagine there's also a force out there, pushing on us, and related to the emanations themselves.
The other one you might be alluding to is death watching you, with some association to the left side of your body.
In my opinion, that one was likely a teaching aid, like pretending don Juan's Ally was in the smoking mixture.
I'm also not very fond of that concept, of death watching you as a little dot.
It's yet another thing from the books, which becomes a placebo for people's minds.
I can't count how many times I've heard or read someone insisting that they've seen that, as if it was yet another eagle feather in their cap.
People are chowing down on pricey chips and soda from the don Juan hotel mini-bar, when there's a Vegas style buffet if they'd just get up and go downstairs.
[-]
u/TechnoMagical_Intent
1 points2019-08-30 17:40
From The Fire From Within, pages 992-994 of that all-in-one PDF:
"...he added that for purposes of seeing the cocoon of man, one has to gaze at people from behind, as they walk away. It is useless to gaze at people face to face, because the front of the egglike cocoon of man has a protective shield, which seers call the front plate, it is an almost impregnable, unyielding shield that protects us throughout our lives against the onslaught of a peculiar force that stems from the emanations themselves.
...
...it was a dazzling sight that immediately shattered my balance. I fell down on the cement walk on my side. From there, I saw the compelling fibers of light multiply themselves. They burst open and myriads of other fibers came out of them. But the fibers, compelling as they were, somehow did not interfere with my ordinary view. There were scores of people going into church. I was no longer seeing them. There were quite a few women and men just around the bench. I wanted to focus my eyes on them, but instead I noticed how one of those fibers of light bulged suddenly. It became like a ball of fire that was perhaps seven feet in diameter, it rolled on me. My first impulse was to roll out of its way. Before I could even move a muscle the ball had hit me. I felt it as clearly as if someone had punched me gently in the stomach. An instant later another ball of fire hit me, this time with considerably more strength, and then don Juan whacked me really hard on the cheek with his open hand. I jumped up involuntarily and lost sight of the fibers of light and the balloons that were hitting me.
Don Juan said that I had successfully endured my first brief encounter with the Eagle's emanations, but that a couple of shoves from the tumbler had dangerously opened up my gap. He added that the balls that had hit me were called the rolling force, or the tumbler."
...
"What exactly is the tumbler?" I asked.
"It is a force from the Eagle's emanations," he said. "A ceaseless force that strikes us every instant of our lives, it is lethal when seen, but otherwise we are oblivious to it, in our ordinary lives, because we have protective shields. We have consuming interests that engage all our awareness. We are permanently worried about our station, our possessions. These shields, however, do not keep the tumbler away, they simply keep us from seeing it directly, protecting us in this way from getting hurt by the fright of seeing the balls of fire hitting us. Shields are a great help and a great hindrance to us. They pacify us and at the same time fool us. They give us a false sense of security."
...
"The rolling force is the means through which the Eagle distributes life and awareness for safekeeping," he said. "But it also is the force that, let's say, collects the rent. It makes all living beings die. What you saw today was called by the ancient seers the tumbler."
He said that seers describe it as an eternal line of iridescent rings, or balls of fire, that roll onto living beings ceaselessly. Luminous organic beings meet the rolling force head on, until the day when the force proves to be too much for them and the creatures finally collapse. The old seers were mesmerized by seeing how the tumbler then tumbles them into the beak of the Eagle to be devoured. That was the reason they called it the tumbler."
He explains in the middle that when you are finally without any shields, the stage of losing the human form begins...and that it is obligatory.
[-]
u/danl999
3 points2019-08-30 18:02
he added that for purposes of seeing the cocoon of man, one has to gaze at people from behind, as they walk away.
Wow, that's useful!
I didn't realize this.
But in fact, I've only seen that sight in people walking away from me. When they just slightly pass enough that you can't say you're only facing the side of them.
And Cholita's energy body so far, has only shown up when I'm slightly behind her. If we're walking along side by side, and then she passes me very slightly, that's when I've seen them more than a few times now.
Once I sat in the Bangkok airport, an excellent place for running into powerful people.
I was looking for those worms Carlos mentioned, which are left in people by sex. I sat on a bench next to the conveyor belt for moving people.
And as I now recall, when I tried to see as people approached on the conveyor belt, I was unable to do it. I thought it was just because I needed more time. And sure enough, when they just barely passed me, I could see them.
A Tibetan monk leader went by, and just as he passed, the entire airport lit up like it was on fire. I was sure the police had gotten worried about me sitting there with my eyes closed, and were pointing a huge flashlight into my face.
Nope. I opened my eyes, and it was an older man in a saffron robe. When he arrived at the end of the conveyor belt, 4 or 5 other monks surrounded him.
[-]
u/TechnoMagical_Intent
1 points2019-08-30 21:29
Wow, that's useful!
I didn't realize this.
There's tons more vital info for a mid-level and up practitioner in the books, stuff that is in fact useful solely or geared toward just them. Since you're quite a ways along, and in less danger of faultering, it may be time to get out that 21st century notebook and start re-reading the books...all of them, including the witch's.
You might not be doing yourself as large a favor with abstaining from re-reading them as you think. It has been 22 years after all.
[-]
u/danl999
3 points2019-08-30 21:37
Cholita has volunteered to read them again for me.
It'll be interesting to see her take on things.
Besides, I'd rather discover what's written in the books on my own, and then find out later from someone else that it matches what was written.
Like that part about not being able to see people head on. I have in fact experienced that on my own.
That's better than if I'd read it again, remembered it, and found it to be true.
I'd always wonder if having been told was the deciding factor.
Edited:
This is off topic, but I had a thought while walking around the building in silence.
What if, on that 8 point diagram, "talking", which is lodged between reason and dreaming/seeing, was the thing hiding seeing. I don't mean, your internal dialogue holds your assemblage point in place, etc., etc.
I mean, reason can't handle seeing and dreaming at all. And so if talking has gone haywire, talking to no one about nothing, reason has no access.
By quieting it, maybe seeing and dreaming can use what's left of talking to send information to reason.
[-]
u/TechnoMagical_Intent
1 points2019-08-30 22:46
Besides, I'd rather discover what's written in the books on my own, and then find out later from someone else that it matches what was written.
That what I thought you'd say. And it also forces us to engage with the books which benefits us and by proxy you.
[-]
u/danl999
3 points2019-08-30 23:09
Not to mention, Carlos told me to stop reading them.
I only make exceptions when someone asks a question, or a topic comes up that puzzles me.
As long as I remain hooked to Carlos' intent as best possible, I'll be better off.
Oddly, we might in the long run end up with practitioners who have barely read any of Carlos' books, but succeed in assembling other worlds anyway.
Carlos would have liked that.
[-]
u/thisgreatusername
1 points2019-08-30 19:22
if what you are looking for is more than reason:
"a human being is first of all 'will'; because 'will' is directly connected to three points: 'feeling', 'dreaming' and 'seeing'.
"Then next, a human being is 'reason'. This is properly a center that is smaller than 'will'. It is connected only with 'talking'."
"The more rigid and stationary it [the assemblage point] is, the greater our confidence in ourselves; the greater our feeling of knowing the world; of being able to predict.
He added that what dreaming does is give us the fluidity to enter into other worlds by destroying our sense of knowing this world. He called dreaming a journey of unthinkable dimensions; a journey that, after making us perceive everything we can humanly perceive, makes the assemblage point jump outside the human domain and perceive the inconceivable."
The passage continues about the dangers of being righteous versus having a fluid assemblage point.
"We are back again," he went on, "harping on the most important topic of the sorcerers' world; the position of the assemblage point.
[-]
u/TechnoMagical_Intent
1 points2019-08-30 19:31
dangers of being righteous versus having a fluid assemblage point.
Fortunately I'm well aware of my own "specialness" problem, it comes from certain particulars of my conception and upbringing. I'm chiseling away at it every chance I get, but it's still preternaturally strong.
And the anemic posts in years past is largely the result of not having the right people subscribed and reading them. A one-sided conversation isn't a conversation, it's a rant.
[-]
u/thisgreatusername
1 points2019-09-03 18:48
Your comment helped me see what my intent is, so I thank you. Your comment followed my intent to focus on the subject of death. In my reply to your comment I did not focus on the subject in the original post: death.
[-]
u/TechnoMagical_Intent
1 points2019-09-03 19:32
I seem to more focused on life at the moment, even as I'm continually disassembling my personal shields.
A monk once said that the only way to live fully everyday, is to die fully everyday.
[-]
u/thisgreatusername
2 points2019-09-04 15:33
"The key to all these matters of impeccability is the sense of having or not having time."
[-]
u/TechnoMagical_Intent
1 points2019-09-06 09:57
Good longer blog post on death and it's importance in Castaneda's and other's work:
14 Comments
This is why this sub was so anemic for so many years, it's too difficult to form a cogent response to a single sentence quote. You need a bit more, at least a short passage and an explanation of why it interests or challenges you.
Also, anybody can navigate to a random page and find a meaningful and thoughtful quote from Castaneda. The books are chock-full of them!
That being said, any interest is good interest and we all have to start somewhere I guess.
All I can come up with is the difficulty in reaching a level of silence so profound that the death of don Juan's son, I believe that's the passage that this quote is from, can do anything but emotionally devastate him.
He chooses to see his death rather than see it, because the pain of seeing it with his biological eyes was too profound. Must be nice to have an option when the average man has none.
Maybe someone out there has seen the forces involved in the death process, in animals etc. The rolling force is one, I'm drawing a blank on the other one.
I've never *seen* any of those myself.
But I suspect the rolling force will turn out to be real. I've seen the emanations, and there's plenty of room for forces flowing through that realm.
The bundles of emanations for example, have a sort of "pull" to them. If you get near one, you get pulled towards the world that bundle represents. Or more precisely, it seems to turn your head in a new direction, facing into that realm.
The great bands of emanations have a pull also. They seem to be transports of some sort. If you watch one, the hypnotic view of it causes you to feel like you're moving along on it, to another place.
I've seen that twice.
It's not hard to imagine there's also a force out there, pushing on us, and related to the emanations themselves.
The other one you might be alluding to is death watching you, with some association to the left side of your body.
In my opinion, that one was likely a teaching aid, like pretending don Juan's Ally was in the smoking mixture.
I'm also not very fond of that concept, of death watching you as a little dot.
It's yet another thing from the books, which becomes a placebo for people's minds.
I can't count how many times I've heard or read someone insisting that they've seen that, as if it was yet another eagle feather in their cap.
People are chowing down on pricey chips and soda from the don Juan hotel mini-bar, when there's a Vegas style buffet if they'd just get up and go downstairs.
From The Fire From Within, pages 992-994 of that all-in-one PDF:
"...he added that for purposes of seeing the cocoon of man, one has to gaze at people from behind, as they walk away. It is useless to gaze at people face to face, because the front of the egglike cocoon of man has a protective shield, which seers call the front plate, it is an almost impregnable, unyielding shield that protects us throughout our lives against the onslaught of a peculiar force that stems from the emanations themselves.
...
...it was a dazzling sight that immediately shattered my balance. I fell down on the cement walk on my side. From there, I saw the compelling fibers of light multiply themselves. They burst open and myriads of other fibers came out of them. But the fibers, compelling as they were, somehow did not interfere with my ordinary view. There were scores of people going into church. I was no longer seeing them. There were quite a few women and men just around the bench. I wanted to focus my eyes on them, but instead I noticed how one of those fibers of light bulged suddenly. It became like a ball of fire that was perhaps seven feet in diameter, it rolled on me. My first impulse was to roll out of its way. Before I could even move a muscle the ball had hit me. I felt it as clearly as if someone had punched me gently in the stomach. An instant later another ball of fire hit me, this time with considerably more strength, and then don Juan whacked me really hard on the cheek with his open hand. I jumped up involuntarily and lost sight of the fibers of light and the balloons that were hitting me.
Don Juan said that I had successfully endured my first brief encounter with the Eagle's emanations, but that a couple of shoves from the tumbler had dangerously opened up my gap. He added that the balls that had hit me were called the rolling force, or the tumbler."
...
"What exactly is the tumbler?" I asked.
"It is a force from the Eagle's emanations," he said. "A ceaseless force that strikes us every instant of our lives, it is lethal when seen, but otherwise we are oblivious to it, in our ordinary lives, because we have protective shields. We have consuming interests that engage all our awareness. We are permanently worried about our station, our possessions. These shields, however, do not keep the tumbler away, they simply keep us from seeing it directly, protecting us in this way from getting hurt by the fright of seeing the balls of fire hitting us. Shields are a great help and a great hindrance to us. They pacify us and at the same time fool us. They give us a false sense of security."
...
"The rolling force is the means through which the Eagle distributes life and awareness for safekeeping," he said. "But it also is the force that, let's say, collects the rent. It makes all living beings die. What you saw today was called by the ancient seers the tumbler."
He said that seers describe it as an eternal line of iridescent rings, or balls of fire, that roll onto living beings ceaselessly. Luminous organic beings meet the rolling force head on, until the day when the force proves to be too much for them and the creatures finally collapse. The old seers were mesmerized by seeing how the tumbler then tumbles them into the beak of the Eagle to be devoured. That was the reason they called it the tumbler."
He explains in the middle that when you are finally without any shields, the stage of losing the human form begins...and that it is obligatory.
Wow, that's useful!
I didn't realize this.
But in fact, I've only seen that sight in people walking away from me. When they just slightly pass enough that you can't say you're only facing the side of them.
And Cholita's energy body so far, has only shown up when I'm slightly behind her. If we're walking along side by side, and then she passes me very slightly, that's when I've seen them more than a few times now.
Once I sat in the Bangkok airport, an excellent place for running into powerful people.
I was looking for those worms Carlos mentioned, which are left in people by sex. I sat on a bench next to the conveyor belt for moving people.
And as I now recall, when I tried to see as people approached on the conveyor belt, I was unable to do it. I thought it was just because I needed more time. And sure enough, when they just barely passed me, I could see them.
A Tibetan monk leader went by, and just as he passed, the entire airport lit up like it was on fire. I was sure the police had gotten worried about me sitting there with my eyes closed, and were pointing a huge flashlight into my face.
Nope. I opened my eyes, and it was an older man in a saffron robe. When he arrived at the end of the conveyor belt, 4 or 5 other monks surrounded him.
There's tons more vital info for a mid-level and up practitioner in the books, stuff that is in fact useful solely or geared toward just them. Since you're quite a ways along, and in less danger of faultering, it may be time to get out that 21st century notebook and start re-reading the books...all of them, including the witch's.
You might not be doing yourself as large a favor with abstaining from re-reading them as you think. It has been 22 years after all.
Cholita has volunteered to read them again for me.
It'll be interesting to see her take on things.
Besides, I'd rather discover what's written in the books on my own, and then find out later from someone else that it matches what was written.
Like that part about not being able to see people head on. I have in fact experienced that on my own.
That's better than if I'd read it again, remembered it, and found it to be true.
I'd always wonder if having been told was the deciding factor.
Edited:
This is off topic, but I had a thought while walking around the building in silence.
What if, on that 8 point diagram, "talking", which is lodged between reason and dreaming/seeing, was the thing hiding seeing. I don't mean, your internal dialogue holds your assemblage point in place, etc., etc.
I mean, reason can't handle seeing and dreaming at all. And so if talking has gone haywire, talking to no one about nothing, reason has no access.
By quieting it, maybe seeing and dreaming can use what's left of talking to send information to reason.
That what I thought you'd say. And it also forces us to engage with the books which benefits us and by proxy you.
Not to mention, Carlos told me to stop reading them.
I only make exceptions when someone asks a question, or a topic comes up that puzzles me.
As long as I remain hooked to Carlos' intent as best possible, I'll be better off.
Oddly, we might in the long run end up with practitioners who have barely read any of Carlos' books, but succeed in assembling other worlds anyway.
Carlos would have liked that.
if what you are looking for is more than reason:
"a human being is first of all 'will'; because 'will' is directly connected to three points: 'feeling', 'dreaming' and 'seeing'.
"Then next, a human being is 'reason'. This is properly a center that is smaller than 'will'. It is connected only with 'talking'."
https://www.federaljack.com/ebooks/Castenada/sites/rarecloud.com/cc_html/cc_html_04/tp1c.html
if your goal is to move the assemblage point:
"The more rigid and stationary it [the assemblage point] is, the greater our confidence in ourselves; the greater our feeling of knowing the world; of being able to predict.
He added that what dreaming does is give us the fluidity to enter into other worlds by destroying our sense of knowing this world. He called dreaming a journey of unthinkable dimensions; a journey that, after making us perceive everything we can humanly perceive, makes the assemblage point jump outside the human domain and perceive the inconceivable."
The passage continues about the dangers of being righteous versus having a fluid assemblage point.
https://www.federaljack.com/ebooks/Castenada/sites/rarecloud.com/cc_html/cc_html_09/taod04.html
"We are back again," he went on, "harping on the most important topic of the sorcerers' world; the position of the assemblage point.
Fortunately I'm well aware of my own "specialness" problem, it comes from certain particulars of my conception and upbringing. I'm chiseling away at it every chance I get, but it's still preternaturally strong.
And the anemic posts in years past is largely the result of not having the right people subscribed and reading them. A one-sided conversation isn't a conversation, it's a rant.
Your comment helped me see what my intent is, so I thank you. Your comment followed my intent to focus on the subject of death. In my reply to your comment I did not focus on the subject in the original post: death.
I seem to more focused on life at the moment, even as I'm continually disassembling my personal shields.
A monk once said that the only way to live fully everyday, is to die fully everyday.
"The key to all these matters of impeccability is the sense of having or not having time."
Good longer blog post on death and it's importance in Castaneda's and other's work:
https://longsworde.wordpress.com/2012/02/11/becoming-what-you-are-narcissism-and-self-overcoming/