This is just one of the many textbook definitions of bad player behavior, and ego-poisoned human psychology in general, that anyone can easily find on the internet in 2021:
Anti-vaxxers wanting to boycott restaurants they are banned from
And some go farther than just boycotting, when their "adversary" threatens their worldview.
After perusing the main Wikipedia article on Carlos Castaneda, Dan pointed out to me in private chat how surprised he was at how biased it was, with the following:
"I'm afraid, they locked it. What a hit job!
They say Carlos talked about suicide often. He did not! He talked aobut what was likely Amy's father, who got so sick, he wanted to shoot himself. He was in pain all the time. He tried to crawl up the stairs to get a gun, but his family pulled him back on the couch. And he never had enough energy to try that again.
Then they imply the witches comitted suicide. Unless they never showed up, that sort of makes them very much alive. But they announced they would be taking over workshop teaching in 2002. Order reversed on last 2...
I suppose there's no way to fix that wiki, other than a big donation.
The co-founder of wikipedia says he's ashamed, and they've developed a bias. He has the idea to make a new one, which merely index the best articles and publication, so that no small group can do any censoring."
And in this comment in a post Dan created on the shamanism sub, he corrects some more of the bad information that's floating around.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Wikipedia Situation
Nobody should trust Wikipedia, says man who invented Wikipedia
"Larry Sanger, the man who co-founded Wikipedia, has cautioned that the website can’t always be trusted to give people the truth.
He said it can give a “reliably establishment point of view on pretty much everything.”
“Can you trust it to always give you the truth? Well, it depends on what you think the truth is..."
...He said it (Wikipedia) “seems to assume that there is only one legitimate defensible version of the truth on any controversial question. That’s not how Wikipedia used to be."
Wikipedia Co-Founder Says Site is now Propaganda
"Now you can only rely on the site to “to give an establishment point of view,” rather than the diverse range of opinions it was set up to give, he insisted.
If only one version of the facts is allowed then that gives a huge incentive to wealthy and powerful people to seize control of things like Wikipedia in order to shore up their power,” he said.
“And they do that,” he continued. “There’s a very big, nasty, complex game being played behind the scenes to make the article say what somebody wants them to say."
17 Comments
It has also been mentioned that there's notable bias even in some science articles.
So reader beware, Wikipedia is not immune to the digital ills of the 21st century.
Note: the main Castaneda Wikipedia page was locked "because of vandalism." One can only imagine what exactly the vandalism was...
And just to acknowledge something else that everyone has thought at one time, but that some never moved forward from after directly experiencing the second attention:
"Did you ever worry that Carlos made it all up?
If not, you're a liar!
Or really gullible.
But the story in the books seemed so true. It also seemed to combine all systems of magic and spirituality, and resolve them. So that something higher emerged, and was the obvious truth.
So you didn't give up.
Good news! It's all true.
Now admittedly, we still don't know if you can teleport or fly, despite having done both myself. When you do, there's always an "explanation". The explanation makes no sense, but neither does teleporting.
But who cares? You know any Yogis, Buddhists, or Daoists who can do this?
I mean, really do it. Not talk about it. Or claim a teacher of a teacher of a teacher... going back hundreds of years, could do it....
...we have a young guy over in the subreddit who is still in college, and wanted to practice longer. So he "took it outside".
Works just fine in sunlight (but he started out in a darkroom)."
source
This is something that happened to me a lot wen I was experimenting hard with psychedelics - people would become almost like hyper-wise totally fulfilled versions of themselves and tell me / show me mind blowing things about perception and awareness. The next day when I tried to continue the conversation, every single person said they didnt remember the last night, they got too drunk. Now, I lived with alcoholics, the only time literally everyone would forget what happened the night before (or tell me they forgot) were nights like that. Had some other experiences in that area, but the majority that were "explained away" ended up having to do with other people
Having forced my way into whatever that state was with drugs, I entered without silence or balance. It was both terrifying and warped my ego - resulting in a god complex that lasted a year. Wanted to note that as I dont want anything to think Im saying you can actually get to the actual states techno is talking about in a meaningful way thru drugs, you really do need silence to be something you are very familiar with, and you can ever seriously damage your physical body / end up in jail doing what I did - in fact that exploration gave me a lot of presumptions and misreadings that I had to, and still am, shedding
Though funny enough, in one of those experiences someone asked me "youre an aritist, you read, right?" I did not read. I took it personally! I should read! So I picked up my first book since i was 12, and read thru Castenada's work
I sort of enjoy arguing with the "Carlos was thoroughly debunked" types.
Because they can't win! Everything they have is virtually childish.
And it helps me figure out things I'd missed.
Let's take Gordon Wasson, the mycologist who "officially" stated, you don't smoke mushrooms.
Sounds logical, right?
But it's not at all! It only makes sense as an anti-Carlos argument, if you are angry with the guy and will fall for anything.
The smoking mixture consisted of powdered Mexican mushrooms, which are quite potent. And I don't think don Juan was worried about how much this would cost at the local drug dealer.
He was picking them in the wild! He could probably pick 100 doses if he felt like it, all for free.
He dried a bunch in a manner that would make even more grow inside the container, since the shroom is basically fine white threads that will grow on most rotting leaves, and he stuffed the ones he wanted into the container before sealing it.
Probably doubled the volume because it resumed growing.
He then let it dry, powered it, and mixed it with stuff so you could smoke it.
Carlos was instructed to inhale deeply.
So here's a question. Do you suppose Gordon Wasson would have taken a deep inhalation from a pipe loaded with Tabaco and powered Mexican mushrooms?
No way! You intuitively know you'd get complete smashed! The power would coat the inside of your mouth, and even go down your throat and into your lungs.
Wasson was lying! He knew that argument was bogus!
But people still fall for it.
I suppose it's partly because shrooms are very valuable if you don't live where they grow, and only an idiot would waste them that way.
You could get 8 doses out of them, instead of 1.
But, ask yourself. Did Carlos need much of the smoking mixture?
It wasn't the power plants that gave him those "intent gifts" of spectacular magic.
It was Little Smoke.
No, not the mixture. That's not little smoke!
Little smoke is a golf ball sized puff of bright white light, with a few yellow fibers visible in the middle.
She is literally a, "little smoke ball".
At least, in daylight. She used to follow Cholita around like a puppy dog, even obeying her commands.
My guess is, don Juan "watered down" the smoking mixture on purpose. He wanted Carlos to expect to get super plastered, so he wouldn't be afraid a demon had taken control of him.
Little Smoke can be very scary, if you think it's a real being. I swore off calling her, before I got tricked into mistaking "Fairy" for a new entity.
So even better than being super strong, mildly powerful would do the job of hiding where the magic was actually coming from.
An inorganic being.
And give Little Smoke more control over his assemblage point.
The first time I stopped the world, was with the help of Little Smoke.
The same as Carlos and the talking Coyote. That was an inorganic being also.
Likely Little Smoke again.
Let's take another silly argument.
His book said it was a Yaqui way of knowledge, but then later Carlos changed it.
How do you explain that except as deception?
You just have to read the storyline!
Carlos wanted to find his own "information", to teach him how a particular tribe used power plants.
He tried at Morongo where they also specialize in Devil's Weed.
But Lowell Bean already had them in his grip. And maybe another before my time. I didn't start paying attention there, until 1968. Though I was around there in 1965.
So Carlos went looking again, and ran into don Juan.
Now, if don Juan had told him, "Yea, I know some Indian shamanism. Originally it was Olmec, then they died off or migrated, and it went to the Toltecs. But the Spanish destroyed their civilization, so the shamanism went to a Catholic Church official, a Chinese pirate, and some local Indians who were either crazy, or down on their luck."
Carlos would have left.
So instead don Juan told him it was from his own tribe, which worked out great because the freeway leading south from LA into Mexico is the bus route that ends at the site of the Yaqui wars in Mexico. Not only would Carlos easily believe it, but if don Juan took him down into Mexico, where they drove to would be consistent with the Yaqui story.
I have no doubt don Juan slapped his back and corrected the lie right away.
But it took Carlos years to remember what happened in heightened awareness.
Which any good darkroom gazer can tell you, is true.
Once you get "out there", it's nearly impossible to remember anything later on.
For instance, Cholita decided to spend half a day at home. She fled again somewhere around 4AM, but while I was doing darkroom, Cholita was home.
At one point I was experimenting with the fastest way to store up energy from the puffs, and noticed a patch of intense purple and blue stuck to the inside of a cave.
My room had turned into a cave.
I heard Cholita banging the back door, and walking towards the bath.
The entire room filled with dense purple, likely Cholita's dark energy. She's been pretending to be homeless in Beverly Hills, and seems to have picked up more dark energy than usual.
Lily saw me wondering about the purple stuck on the inside of the cave, and explained dark energy in general to me.
She even showed me to reach up and "pull" on it, to see that it attaches itself to things.
It was somehow related to how women store it.
But it's all gone. The entire explanation is impossible to recall.
I only thought about what I do remember, because of writing this.
Which is one benefit to posting your experiences. Later you'll look at it and think, "Oh yea, I did do that!!! I'd forgotten."
The Sex, Drugs, and Suicide drama is what most fixate on, as it's the cliched stance that people are conditioned to stereotypically harp on whenever a close-knit group of people get together to work on esoteric endeavors....and it's what fills soap operas and pulp fiction.
Not interested in going into either one of those in depth again as they've already been covered in here, and the choice posts collected into this section of the wiki:
https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/wiki/reputation
In short, salacious sex and orgies? Who cares, what are you Catholic? Is this the 1950's or Victorian England?
Drugs? Carlos never ever suggested or recommended that people in private classes or the workshops use the substances that Don Juan gave him, unless they were absolutely certainly a hopeless cause....like he himself had been, apparently.
He was simply reporting in his early books how he himself was taught, and not claiming it was how everyone should be instructed.
And he was committed to crafting a non-substance based teaching method in his later years.
Suicide? Several of the people in private classes and the "inner circle" expressed concern in the year before Carlos passed that some people may try to kill themselves if he were to die. He caught ear of these rumors, was flabbergasted, and said "No, Don't Do That!"
But you can't stop the ennui that exists in certain people.
Don't forget that the suicide discussion in private classes was the direct result of the "Heaven's Gate" cult, killing themselves en mass.
That's what triggered that.
Had nothing to do with Carlos, other than he was dying at that point, and people thought maybe some would be so lost they'd take their own lives.
Or worse, fantasize that if they were dead, he'd scoop them up and take them along.
It wasn't something he ever mentioned, but they got it from the books by speculating how poorer members of a lineage managed to tag along with the Nagual leaders.
I'm afraid, there were those thinking like that.
Corey was one of them!
He actually blames Carlos for his own idea to copy the blue scout's fate.
By the way, the blue scout was supposed to do what she did.
The claim was, she was merely visiting here because Carlos freed her from the inorganic being's realm.
She was a body snatcher, and on death theoretically would just find another body.
Not any theory Carlos put out there.
Everyone was obsessed with the blue scout.
They put her on the spot at a workshop, and she threw a tantrum.
But she was always pleasant when she was standing right next to me.
Cholita found her hard to get along with, but agreed there was certainly something unusual about her.
I don't believe she killed herself.
I think she drove into the desert believing Carlos would hear her, and take her along.
Maybe he did...
But not her body.
I suppose the rumors the witches had killed themselves, came from the angry sustained action people.
It was uncontained inventory warrior bullying, with a strong sense of entitlement because they were in private classes.
Dan, how did you meet little smoke?
Probably the same way any student "officially" meets an Ally that's intended to become his.
If you're an expert on the books of Carlos, don't read further. See how good of a sleuth you are.
Now, I must admit, Carlos forbid me to read the books anymore, and it's been a long time, so I might be off on the sequence of this, from the books. But even that would be perfectly normal in sorcery.
Figured it out?
Here's a hint: There's a moth on the cover of several of the books, including the women's books.
Who do you suppose that moth is?
Almost 90% sure, it's little smoke himself!
Carlos never said so, which is the missing 10% chance.
But in the early books, ALL of the magic Carlos witnessed had nothing to do with the power plants.
The power plants just shut off his internal dialogue for him, so his assemblage point could move.
Frankly, the way don Juan used the power plants, tended to weaken them. Not make them stronger.
It was one of don Juan's 2 allies doing the magic! The power plants were just a distraction for Carlos.
Ok, time's up.
I met Little Smoke the same way Carlos met him, and the same way I introduced him to another person.
Little Smoke, "swooped".
He did that over the campfire for Carlos.
All don Juan had to do was, make him aware of it.
Once you become aware of something, you leave a few "emanations" in it, and that's all an inorganic being needs in order to become visible to you.
In my case, Carlos brought Little Smoke and Devil's Weed entities to private classes.
He was dying and needed to pass them on to someone.
He had them "swoop" from above the watercooler on the east wall of Dance Home, to ground level on the west side.
He pointed it out as they swooped, hoping someone noticed the sensation.
As it turned out, no one of the 50 people there (Cholita the witch estimated that for me), learned to summon them.
So I suppose, they concentrated on torturing me for 20 years, before I figured out who they really were.
At their worst, they opened up a tunnel of l ight in an expensive hotel room in Shanghai, walked right out into the room, absolutely real looking, and chased me through the hotel hallways.
I'd had enough at that point, and swore off interacting with them.
If you don't do some form of silence practice (or meditation), there's little chance your assemblage point will move to the green line, where they become visible.
So the answer is, if you want to give away your inorganic being, have them "swoop".
It's very much like a huge moth swooping by.
They can also "swoop" and tap your left shoulder, to do a mild form of the "Nagual's Blow".
Little smoke did that for me once, when she saw I was right about to "stop the world".
That talking coyote who helped Carlos was almost surely little smoke too.
The Devil's Weed entity is a little bastard. I don't like him at all.
Cholita seems to have control over it for now.
She once brought it into my room when I was practicing darkroom gazing. She walked right through my locked door, and stood there pretending to be an angel.
It was Cholita, that was obvious. She was as bright as the sun, except it didn't hurt my eyes.
She spread her arms out to show off, and floated up a foot or two into the air, to show me she wasn't in her physical body.
As if that weren't obvious.
Then she walked to the end of the bed, and lay down on my legs. They were stretched across the bed as I sat up on pillows, practicing with my eyes open, doing Tensegrity to manipulate energy.
She glanced back to the door, and I turned my head just in time to see, "Minx", her version of the Devil's Weed entity.
You can select a new form and name for them when they become yours.
In fact, naming them seems to be important.
Minx floated around 2 feet off the floor, looking like a little blue cloud of smoke.
They he reached the foot of the bed, where Cholita was now looking up towards the ceiling, and he rose up high, turned into a gigantic demon head, with blood dripping from his fangs, and eyes that were nearly dead, threatening to bite my head off.
No kidding...
Fully awake, eyes open, no drugs, and in fact I wasn't even sleepy.
I suppose Devil's Weed entity expected me to run for my life. I had the last time he showed up in Singapore.
But instead, I was curious. He was so bright!!
Most inroganic beings are sort of transparent when they first show up. It has to do with how far you are into dreaming awake. At a distant point, you can share the eyes of the dreaming double, and things are more realistic looking.
Minx was brilliant!
So instead of running for my life my nerd instincts took over, and I was wondering if there was a brightness adjustment switch on his bottom side. It made no sense, but that was the first though: How do you control this device?
Minx, who had been threatening to gobble me up violently, got a sad look on his face. He was clearly disappointed.
Then he tuned into a magical device.
I wanted technology. He turned into a piece of alien technology that was "impossible".
It was like a mobius strip fountain for water.
He realized I was a nerd, and did what all IOBs do.
He figured out how to interact with me, so as to get the maximum emotion.
The result shattered our home into 2 pieces, creating a phantom copy.
It's common. All sorcerer's homes end up with a copy in the second attention.
A "crack" in reality.
Pandora, the compound Carlos owned, had one.
And if you do darkroom gazing, you'll be building your own, each time you do it.
Thanks for the response!
I actually found Carlos’ books after experiencing Datura (and Brugmansia which tended to find me easier) I would chew the leaves with lemon juice slowly until my mouth became dry and that’s when I would know I needed to stop. That was something that came from no previous knowledge, that method of ingestion just took hold of me I guess.
The only thing that those experiences gave me was a path towards learning of the assemblage point. I was lucky!
Anyway, the prospect of meeting an IOB way down the line that has the characteristics of the plant without me having to ingest it is exciting. Because what a confusing and obscure plant it is.
Maybe I didn’t word that right.
I just finished reading Carlos’ first meetings with little smoke, and the moth-swoop he witnessed, after posting the question. I did notice the moths on the covers! I love the art selection. I got most of my books from the second hand store so I have the old copies you could buy for a dollar fifty in the sixties. Despite my dad being born in 70s HA
My grandpa definitely had some sort of interaction or at least knew of Carlo’s work. He was deep into the hippy movement and led an extremely solid, hardworking life.
In fact I am sure he had some sort of knowledge given what I remember of him. He was too cool all the time. Laid back but engaged.
The Indians at Morongo used devil's weed leaves to make tea.
Some did...
I never learned the procedure.
Can you tell us in general, how many leaves one could consume without worry?
And why the lemon?
Knowing of course, the problem with wild plants is you don't know how strong they are.
Which is why the plants at Morongo have been there at least 53 years that I've been seeing them.
Their strength is well known.
So if you do tell, and anyone tries it, they should start with 1/4th what you say the first time. And don't get high, then start consuming more because it's cool!
You'll end up "abducted by aliens", and write a book.
Datura commonly put horses into comas if they chomped on it while traveling around in the hills.
And it's very tempting to chomp on.
I can't imagine them thinking the flavor was good though.
The first time I tried it I made a tea and lost my vision for about a day and a half.
Like you suggested the strength varies between leaves, I would consume different amounts of plant matter and base my level of intoxication by the drying out of my mouth. This proved to be very effective because by the time that first symptom accrued I had a good amount in me. Any more past that made the experience very long, confusing, and uncomfortable.
I’d say that I bounced between two full leaves and five.
It also made a difference when I picked them, normally I would venture out at night when they are blooming to harvest. I think their alkaloid content is more potent then, although I am not certain. All I can say is that is when it felt “right” to pick them.
You said 1/4 of a leaf in Morongo in a tea would be dose?
Edit: I reread your post and you were recommending people who read this take 1/4 of what I suggest, I 100% agree. There is no reason to jump in with both feet! You will not know what to make of it and at best think that you are dead
The few times I made a tea I used between one or two leaves. One time I even used the seeds and root. (I used the small root before discovering the process Don Juan described to Carlos on how to ingest the devils weed) The process of brewing it made the concoction much more powerful. I did not necessarily want it to be much more powerful so I developed my chewing method which I have found to be the safest and most consistent, especially when dealing with wild plants.
I chewed it with lemon because one time when chewing the leaf I came across a lemon tree. I had remembered a special way of ingesting mushrooms that required it to soak in lemon juice. That may have prompted my desire to pluck and squeeze the juice into my mouth.
What an explosion of flavor! I actually enjoyed the process and the acidity seemed to help coerce the green juice from the plant with higher efficiency. I would end up with much less matter in my mouth as before when I was done chewing.
I might also want to add that I did not preselect the leaves and decide how much I would eat. I simply started and knew when to stop.
The cotton mouth from Datura and Brugmansia was always my first effect and tell-tale sign I had consumed enough.
I am the only one that I have ever met in person that knows anything of datura and definitely the only one who has tried it. So any process I developed came to me from the plant Itself.
No, I was only 12. Ruby would not show me how to brew the tea.
I meant to say, when you come across an unknown plant, start with 1/4th what others have said is the right dose. Play it safe.
Besides, I have a theory that don Juan watered down all of his power plants. Made them weaker than they should have been, while putting on a big show, to hide that Carlos was only getting small doses.
The Devil's Weed entity is fully capable of pulling him into amazing magic.
She's done it with me before.
Same for Little Smoke. Chances are, Carlos wasn't as buzzed as he believed, and it was just her.
Once you have an Ally, there's no reason to use any drugs. In fact, they prevent leaving the red zone. And the really cool stuff happens over in the orange.
Hopefully your info on usage will get into the right section of the wiki. I've got Cholita issues today, or I'd look into it.
Sweet! Mine are also all secondhand paperbacks from used book stores.
They have history 😎
If you type "Don Juan" into the Reddit search for this sub, you'll find a number of posts over the past two years detailing people's own queries about whether or not don Juan existed.
I got this far on an incomplete list of people who personally met Don Juan:
-1. Florinda Donner-Grau (birth name Regine Thal)
-2. Taisha Abelar (birth name Maryann Simko (Sirnko?))
-3. Carol Tiggs (birth name Kathleen Pohlman (Pohlinan?))
-4. Tony "Lama" (birth name Marco Antonio Karam)
-5. Margaret Runyan (Carlos's ex wife)
-6. Carlos's adopted son (C.J. or Adrian Vashon?)
-7. The Uncle (informant) from The Wanderling site
-8. (+1 more that we can't recall right now...possibly Jacobo Grinberg)
Before I realized that no amount of proof would ever be enough for the person that doesn't want to believe in the first place.
And not only that, but they would constantly attack the credibility of any people included on the list. Even an unintentional lie about what they had for breakfast on a particular morning, would be enough in their eyes to discredit them.
And they would certainly see the first three people on the list as "accomplices."
Conversely, for them all it would take is one "official" mainstream spokesperson to declared it fiction, based on nothing but an opinion, and that one individual would be enough to confirm it for them.
Just like Dan is the one official person that for many people in this subreddit is confirmation that it's all true. Combined with all the other subreddit member's experiences of course.
There's a scene in the Netflix series Stranger Things, season 2 episode 5, that nicely portrays this dilemma with exposition, as well as the dilemma Castaneda faced when he was tasked with writing his books:
https://subslikescript.com/series/Stranger_Things-4574334/season-2/episode-5-Chapter_Five_Dig_Dug
"There's nothing simple about it.
Nothing simple about
anything you've told me.
You don't believe us, do you?
I believe you, but
that's not the problem.
You don't need me to believe you.
You need them to believe you.
With a capital "T."
Your priest, your postman, your teacher,
the world at large. [SCOFFS]
They won't believe any of this.
That's why we made the tape.
Oh. That's easy to bury. Easy.
He admits it. You heard it.
He admits culpability.
You're being naive, Nancy!
Those people...
[CHUCKLES]
They're not wired like me and you, okay?
They don't spend their lives
trying to get a look at
what's behind the curtain.
[CHUCKLES] They like the curtain.
It provides them stability,
comfort, definition.
This...
this would open the curtain,
and open the curtain
behind that curtain, okay?
So the minute someone with an ounce
of authority calls bullshit,
everyone will nod their heads and say,
"See? Ha! I knew it! It was bullshit."
That is, if you even get
their attention at all.
You're saying we did all
of this for nothing?
I'm saying, I'm thinking.
Ooh!
[GRUNTS]
[JONATHAN] This is ridiculous.
It's just too strong. Too strong.
Better.
Perfect.
We water it down.
Your story. We moderate it.
Just like this drink here.
We make it more tolerable."
Carlos often said that he had to moderate parts (leave stuff out) of what he wrote, or nobody would have believed him. That the reality of it all was even stranger than how he had to write it...for an audience of people who are still mired in this reality.
u/danl999 told me this morning that in private chat someone contacted him saying that they had listened to an interview with Nyei Murez, in which she talks about where Florinda and Taisha are now.
He asked them to make a post about it on the subreddit if they had the time.
If they don't do so, and someone is motivated, hopefully it's from a publicly available interview.
My guess: They did offer to take over at workshops, but it was seen as an offer to intent.
To see how intent felt about it.
And the "signs" weren't good.
I've done that. You commit to something crazy, but the signs are so bad you're off the hook.
You have to be faithful to intent, but it can also "let you off the hook" once in a while.
Same as when Elias committed to investigating Julian, but then Julian was dead so he started to leave, because his plans were no longer applicable.
I spent 2 years trying to arrange to have a double woman together with 4 other types of witches, to see what would happen.
I had no other ideas to save the teachings, after 15 years of trying to teach by email.
Then she showed up in person. So I had to go for it.
I was actually relieved when the omens were super bad.
I'd done my part whether it worked or not.
But it did ultimately lead here.
There's a talk layer for the main Castaneda Wikipedia page, which appears to not be locked. Meaning info could be added (as well as links etc.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Carlos_Castaneda
Didn't even know Wikipedia had this layer/functionality! Found it out, then decided to see if the Castaneda page had one as well.
But ANYONE can edit that section, without even logging in or creating an account. So vandalizing is possible.