Castaneda / Don Juan on Water / Fire Entities

[Jessup2]

 

"I talk to myself endlessly in my dreams, reminding myself to look at things," I said to don Juan. I had all along respected our agreement that we would talk about dreaming only when he brought up the subject. However, I thought that this was an emergency. "Does it sound to you like it's not you but someone else?" he asked. "Come to think of it, yes. I don't sound like myself at those times." "Then it's not you. It's not time yet to explain it. But let's say that we are not alone in this world. Let's say that there are other worlds available to dreamers, total worlds. From those other total worlds, energetic entities sometimes come to us. The next time you hear yourself nagging at yourself in your dreams, get really angry and yell a command. Say, Stop it!" I entered into another challenging arena: to remember in my dreams to shout that command. I believe that, perhaps, out of being so tremendously annoyed at hearing myself nagging, I did remember to shout, Stop it. The nagging ceased instantly and never again was repeated. "Does every dreamer experience this?" I asked don Juan when I saw him again. "Some do," he answered, uninterestedly. I began to rant about how strange it had all been. He cut me off, saying, "You are ready now to get to the second gate of dreaming." I seized the opportunity to seek answers for questions I had not been able to ask him. What I had experienced the first time he made me dream had been foremost in my mind. I told don Juan that I had observed the elements of my own dreams to my heart's content, and never had I felt anything even vaguely similar in terms of clarity and detail. "The more I think about it," I said, "the more intriguing it becomes. Watching those people in that dream, I experienced a fear and revulsion impossible to forget. What was that feeling, don Juan?" "In my opinion, your energy body hooked onto the foreign energy of that place and had the time of its life. Naturally, you felt afraid and revolted; you were examining alien energy for the first time in your life. "You have a proclivity for behaving like the sorcerers of antiquity. The moment you have the chance, you let your assemblage point go. That time your assemblage point shifted quite a distance. The result was that you, like the old sorcerers, journeyed beyond the world we know. A most real but dangerous journey." I bypassed the meaning of his statements in favor of my own interest and asked him, "Was that city perhaps on another planet?" "You can't explain dreaming by way of things you know or suspect you know," he said. "All I can tell you is that the city you visited was not in this world." "Where was it, then?" "Out of this world, of course. You're not that stupid. That was the first thing you noticed. What got you going in circles is that you can't imagine anything being out of this world." "Where is out of this world, don Juan?" "Believe me, the most extravagant feature of sorcery is that configuration called out of this world. For instance, you assumed that I was seeing the same things you did. The proof is that you never asked me what I saw. You and only you saw a city and people in that city. I didn't see anything of the sort. I saw energy. So, out of this world was, for you alone, on that occasion, a city." "But then, don Juan, it wasn't a real city It existed only for me, in my mind." "No. That's not the case. Now you want to reduce something transcendental to something mundane. You can't do that. That journey was real. You saw it as a city. I saw it as energy. Neither of us is right or wrong." "My confusion comes when you talk about things being real. You said before that we reached a real place. But if it was real, how can we have two versions of it?" "Very simple. We have two versions because we had, at that time, two different rates of uniformity and cohesion. I have explained to you that those two attributes are the key to perceiving." "Do you think that I can go back to that particular city?" "You got me there. I don't know. Or perhaps I do know but can't explain it. Or perhaps I can explain it but I don't want to. You'll have to wait and figure out for yourself which is the case." He refused any further discussion. "Let's get on with our business," he said. "You reach the second gate of dreaming when you wake up from a dream into another dream. You can have as many dreams as you want or as many as you are capable of, but you must exercise adequate control and not wake up in the world we know." I had a jolt of panic. "Are you saying that I should never wake up in this world?" I asked. "No, I didn't mean that. But now that you have pointed it out, I have to tell you that it is an alternative. The sorcerers of antiquity used to do that, never wake up in the world we know. Some of the sorcerers of my line have done it too. It certainly can be done, but I don't recommend it. What I want is for you to wake up naturally when you are through with dreaming, but while you are dreaming, I want you to dream that you wake up in another dream." I heard myself asking the same question I had asked the first time he told me about setting up dreaming. "But is it possible to do that?" Don Juan obviously caught on to my mindlessness and laughingly repeated the answer he had given me before. "Of course it's possible. This control is no different from the control we have over any situation in our daily lives." I quickly got over my embarrassment and was ready to ask more questions, but don Juan anticipated me and began to explain facets of the second gate of dreaming, an explanation that made me yet more uneasy. "There's one problem with the second gate," he said. "It's a problem that can be serious, depending on one's bent of character. If our tendency is to indulge in clinging to things or situations, we are in for a sock in the jaw." "In what way, don Juan?" "Think for a moment. You've already experienced the outlandish joy of examining your dreams' contents. Imagine yourself going from dream to dream, watching everything, examining every detail. It's very easy to realize that one may sink to mortal depths. Especially if one is given to indulging." "Wouldn't the body or the brain naturally put a stop to it?" "If it's a natural sleeping situation, meaning normal, yes. But this is not a normal situation. This is dreaming. A dreamer on crossing the first gate has already reached the energy body. So what is really going through the second gate, hopping from dream to dream, is the energy body." "What's the implication of all this, don Juan?" "The implication is that on crossing the second gate you must intend a greater and more sober control over your dreaming attention: the only safety valve for dreamers." "What is this safety valve?" "You will find out for yourself that the true goal of dreaming is to perfect the energy body. A perfect energy body, among other things of course, has such a control over the dreaming attention that it makes it stop when needed. This is the safety valve dreamers have. No matter how indulging they might be, at a given time, their dreaming attention must make them surface." I started all over again on another dreaming quest. This time the goal was more elusive and the difficulty even greater. Exactly as with my first task, I could not begin to figure out what to do. I had the discouraging suspicion that all my practice was not going to be of much help this time. After countless failures, I gave up and settled down to simply continue my practice of fixing my dreaming attention on every item of my dreams. Accepting my shortcomings seemed to give me a boost, and I became even more adept at sustaining the view of any item in my dreams. A year went by without any change. Then one day something changed. As I was watching a window in a dream, trying to. find out if I could catch a glimpse of the scenery outside the room, some windlike force, which I felt as a buzzing in my ears, pulled me through the window to the outside. Just before that pull, my dreaming attention had been caught by a strange structure some distance away. It looked like a tractor. The next thing I knew, I was standing by it, examining it. I was perfectly aware that I was dreaming. I looked around to find out if I could tell from what window I had been looking. The scene was that of a farm in the countryside. No buildings were in sight. I wanted to ponder this. However, the quantity of farm machinery lying around, as if abandoned, took all my attention. I examined mowing machines, tractors, grain harvesters, disk plows, thrashers. There were so many that I forgot my original dream. What I wanted then was to orient myself by watching the immediate scenery. There was something in the distance that looked like a billboard and some telephone poles around it. The instant I focused my attention on that billboard, I was next to it. The steel structure of the billboard gave me a fright. It was menacing. On the billboard itself was a picture of a building. I read the text; it was an advertisement for a motel. I had a peculiar certainty that I was in Oregon or northern California. I looked for other features in the environment of my dream. I saw mountains very far away and some green, round hills not too far. On those hills were clumps of what I thought were California oak trees. I wanted to be pulled by the green hills, but what pulled me were the distant mountains. I was convinced that they were the Sierras. All my dreaming energy left me on those mountains. But before it did, I was pulled by every possible feature. My dream ceased to be a dream. As far as my capacity to perceive was concerned, I was veritably in the Sierras, zooming into ravines, boulders, trees, caves. I went from sharp faces to mountain peaks until I had no more drive and could not focus my dreaming attention on anything. I felt myself losing control. Finally, there was no more scenery, just darkness. "You have reached the second gate of dreaming," don Juan said when I narrated my dream to him. "What you should do next is to cross it. Crossing the second gate is a very serious affair; it requires a most disciplined effort." I was not sure I had fulfilled the task he outlined for me, because I had not really woken up in another dream. I asked don Juan about this irregularity. "The mistake was mine," he said. "I told you that one has to wake up in another dream, but what I meant is that one has to change dreams in an orderly and precise manner, the way you have done it. "With the first gate, you wasted a lot of time looking exclusively for your hands. This time, you went directly to the solution without bothering to follow the given command: to wake up in another dream." Don Juan said that there are two ways of properly crossing the second gate of dreaming. One is to wake up in another dream, that is to say, to dream that one is having a dream and then dream that one wakes up from it. The alternative is to use the items of a dream to trigger another dream, exactly as I had done. Just as he had been doing all along, don Juan let me practice without any interference on his part. And I corroborated the two alternatives he described. Either I dreamt that I was having a dream from which I dreamt I woke up or I zoomed from a definite item accessible to my immediate dreaming attention to another one, not quite accessible. Or I entered into a slight variation of the second: I gazed at any item of a dream, maintaining the gaze until the item changed shape and, by changing shape, pulled me into another dream through a buzzing vortex. Never was I capable, however, of deciding beforehand which of the three I would follow. My dreaming practices always ended by my running out of dreaming attention and finally waking up or by my falling into dark, deep slumber. Everything went smoothly in my practices. The only disturbance I had was a peculiar interference, a jolt of fear or discomfort I had begun to experience with increasing frequency. My way of discarding it was to believe that it was related to my ghastly eating habits or to the fact that, in those days, don Juan was giving me a profusion of hallucinogenic plants as part of my training. Those jolts became so prominent, however, that I had to ask don Juan's advice. "You have entered now into the most dangerous facet of the sorcerers' knowledge," he began. "it is sheer dread, a veritable nightmare. I could joke with you and say that I didn't mention this possibility to you out of regard for your cherished rationality, but I can't. Every sorcerer has to face it. Here is where, I fear, you might very well think you're going off the deep end." Don Juan very solemnly explained that life and consciousness, being exclusively a matter of energy, are not solely the property of organisms. He said that sorcerers have seen that there are two types of conscious beings roaming the earth, the organic and the inorganic, and that in comparing one with the other, they have seen that both are luminous masses crossed from every imaginable angle by millions of the universe's energy filaments. They are different from each other in their shape and in their degree of brightness. Inorganic beings are long and candlelike but opaque, whereas organic beings are round and by far the brighter. Another noteworthy difference, which don Juan said sorcerers have seen, is that the life and consciousness of organic beings is short-lived, because they are made to hurry, whereas the life of inorganic beings is infinitely longer and their consciousness infinitely more calm and deeper. "Sorcerers find no problem interacting with them," don Juan went on. "Inorganic beings possess the crucial ingredient for interaction, consciousness." "But do these inorganic beings really exist? Like you and I exist?" I asked. "Of course they do," he replied. "Believe me, sorcerers are very intelligent creatures; under no condition would they toy with aberrations of the mind and then take them for real." "Why do you say they are alive?" "For sorcerers, having life means having consciousness. It means having an assemblage point and its surrounding glow of awareness, a condition that points out to sorcerers that the being in front of them, organic or inorganic, is thoroughly capable of perceiving. Perceiving is understood by sorcerers as the precondition of being alive." "Then the inorganic beings must also die. Is that true, don Juan?" "Naturally. They lose their awareness just like we do, except that the length of their consciousness is staggering to the mind." "Do these inorganic beings appear to sorcerers?" "It's very difficult to tell what is what with them. Let's say that those beings are enticed by us or, better yet, compelled to interact with us." Don Juan peered at me most intently. "You're not taking in any of this at all," he said with the tone of someone who has reached a conclusion. "It's nearly impossible for me to think about this rationally," I said. "I warned you that the subject will tax your reason. The proper thing to do then is to suspend judgment and let things take their course, meaning that you let the inorganic beings come to you." "Are you serious, don Juan?" "Deadly serious. The difficulty with inorganic beings is that their awareness is very slow in comparison with ours. It will take years for a sorcerer to be acknowledged by inorganic beings. So, it is advisable to have patience and wait. Sooner or later they show up. But not like you or I would show up. Theirs is a most peculiar way to make themselves known." "How do sorcerers entice them? Do they have a ritual?" "Well, they certainly don't stand in the middle of the road and call out to them with trembling voices at the stroke of midnight, if that's what you mean." "What do they do then?" "They entice them in dreaming. I said that what's involved is more than enticing them; by the act of dreaming, sorcerers compel those beings to interact with them." "How do sorcerers compel them by the act of dreaming?" "Dreaming is sustaining the position where the assemblage point has shifted in dreams. This act creates a distinctive energy charge, which attracts their attention. It's like bait to fish; they'll go for it. Sorcerers, by reaching and crossing the first two gates' of dreaming, set bait for those beings and compel them to appear. "By going through the two gates, you have made your bidding known to them. Now, you must wait for a sign from them." "What would the sign be, don Juan?" "Possibly the appearance of one of them, although that seems too soon. I am of the opinion that their sign will be simply some interference in your dreaming. I believe that the jolts of fear you are experiencing nowadays are not indigestion but energy jolts sent to you by the inorganic beings." "What should I do?" "You must gauge your expectations." I could not understand what he meant, and he carefully explained that our normal expectation when engaging in inter action with our fellow men or with other organic beings is to get an immediate reply to our solicitation. With inorganic beings, however, since they are separated from us by a most formidable barrier-energy that moves at a different speed- sorcerers must gauge their expectations and sustain the solicitation for as long as it takes to be acknowledged. "Do you mean, don Juan, that the solicitation is the same as the dreaming practices?" "Yes. But for a perfect result, you must add to your practices the intent of reaching those inorganic beings. Send a feeling of power and confidence to them, a feeling of strength, of detachment. Avoid at any cost sending a feeling of fear or morbidity They are pretty morbid by themselves; to add your morbidity to them is unnecessary, to say the least." "I'm not clear, don Juan, about the way they appear to sorcerers. What is the peculiar way they make themselves known?" "They do, at times, materialize themselves in the daily world, right in front of us. Most of the time, though, their invisible presence is marked by a bodily jolt, a shiver of sorts that comes from the marrow of the bones." "What about in dreaming, don Juan?" "In dreaming we have the total opposite. At times, we feel them the way you are feeling them, as a jolt of fear. Most of the time, they materialize themselves right in front of us. Since at the beginning of dreaming we have no experience whatsoever with them, they might imbue us with fear beyond measure. That is a real danger to us. Through the channel of fear, they can follow us to the daily world, with disastrous results for us." "In what way, don Juan?" "Fear can settle down in our lives, and we would have to be mavericks to deal with it. Inorganic beings can be worse than a pest. Through fear they can easily drive us raving mad." "What do sorcerers do with inorganic beings?" "They mingle with them. They turn them into allies. They form associations, create extraordinary friendships. I call them vast enterprises, where perception plays the uppermost role. We are social beings. We unavoidably seek the company of consciousness. "With inorganic beings, the secret is not to fear them. And this must be done from the beginning. The intent one has to send out to them has to be of power and abandon. In that intent one must encode the message 'I don't fear you. Come to see me. If you do, I'll welcome you. If you don't want to come, I'll miss you.' With a message like this, they'll get so curious that they'll come for sure." "Why should they come to seek me, or why on earth should I seek them?" "Dreamers, whether they like it or not, in their dreaming seek associations with other beings. This may come to you as a shock, but dreamers automatically seek groups of beings, nexuses of inorganic beings in this case. Dreamers seek them avidly." "This is very strange to me, don Juan. Why would dreamers do that?" "The novelty for us is the inorganic beings. And the novelty for them is one of our kind crossing the boundaries of their realm. The thing you must bear in mind from now on is that inorganic beings with their superb consciousness exert a tremendous pull over dreamers and can easily transport them into worlds beyond description. "The sorcerers of antiquity used them, and they are the ones who coined the name allies. Their allies taught them to move the assemblage point out of the egg's boundaries into the non human universe. So when they transport a sorcerer, they transport him to worlds beyond the human domain." As I heard him talk, I was plagued by strange fears and misgivings, which he promptly realized. "You are a religious man to the end." He laughed. "Now, you're feeling the devil breathing down your neck. Think about dreaming in these terms: dreaming is perceiving more than what we believe it is possible to perceive." In my waking hours, I worried about the possibility that inorganic conscious beings really existed. When I was dreaming, however, my conscious worries did not have much effect. The jolts of physical fear continued, but whenever they happened a strange calmness always trailed behind, a calmness that took control of me and let me proceed as if I had no fear at all. It seemed at that time that every breakthrough in dreaming happened to me suddenly, without warning. The presence of inorganic beings in my dreams was no exception. It happened while I was dreaming about a circus I knew in my childhood. The setting looked like a town in the mountains in Arizona. I began to watch people with the vague hope I always had that I would see again the people I had seen the first time don Juan made me enter into the second attention. As I watched them, I felt a sizable jolt of nervousness in the pit of my stomach; it was like a punch. The jolt distracted me, and I lost sight of the people, the circus, and the mountain town in Arizona. In their place stood two strange-looking figures. They were thin, less than a foot wide, but long, perhaps seven feet. They were looming over me like two gigantic earthworms. I knew that it was a dream, but I also knew that I was seeing. Don Juan had discussed seeing in my normal awareness and in the second attention as well. Although I was incapable of experiencing it myself, I thought I had understood the idea of directly perceiving energy. In that dream, looking at those two strange apparitions, I realized that I was seeing the energy essence of something unbelievable. I remained very calm. I did not move. The most remarkable thing to me was that they didn't dissolve or change into something else. They were cohesive beings that retained their candlelike shape. Something in them was forcing something in me to hold the view of their shape. I knew it because something was telling me that if I did not move, they would not move either. It all came to an end, at a given moment, when I woke up with a fright. I was immediately besieged by fears. A deep preoccupation took hold of me. It was not psychological worry but rather a bodily sense of anguish, sadness with no apparent foundation. The two strange shapes appeared to me from then on in every one of my dreaming sessions. Eventually, it was as if I dreamt only to encounter them. They never attempted to move toward me or to interfere with me in any way. They just stood there, immobile, in front of me, for as long as my dream lasted. Not only did I never make any effort to change my dreams but I even forgot the original quest of my dreaming practices. When I finally discussed with don Juan what was happening to me, I had spent months solely viewing the two shapes. "You are stuck at a dangerous crossroad," don Juan said. "It isn't right to chase these beings away, but it isn't right either to let them stay. For the time being, their presence is a hindrance to your dreaming." "What can I do, don Juan?" "Face them, right now, in the world of daily life, and tell them to come back later, when you have more dreaming power." "How do I face them?" "It's not simple, but it can be done. It requires only that you have enough guts, which of course you do." Without waiting for me to tell him that I had no guts at all, he took me to the hills. He lived then in northern Mexico, and he had given me the total impression he was a solitary sorcerer, an old man forgotten by everybody and completely outside the main current of human affairs. I had surmised, however, that he was intelligent beyond measure. And because of this I was willing to comply with what I half-believed were mere eccentricities. The cunningness of sorcerers, cultivated through the ages, was don Juan's trademark. He made sure that I understood all I could in my normal awareness and, at the same time, he made sure that I entered into the second attention, where I understood or at least passionately listened to everything he taught me. In this fashion, he divided me in two. In my normal consciousness, I could not understand why or how I was more than willing to take his eccentricities seriously. In the second attention, it all made sense to me. His contention was that the second attention is available to all of us, but, by willfully holding on to our half-cocked rationality, some of us more fiercely than others, keep the second attention at arm's length. His idea was that dreaming brings down the bathers that surround and insulate the second attention. The day he took me to the hills of the Sonoran desert to meet the inorganic beings, I was in my normal state of awareness. Yet somehow I knew I had to do something that was certainly going to be unbelievable. It had rained lightly in the desert. The red dirt was still wet, and as I walked it got clumped up in the rubber soles of my shoes. I had to step on rocks to remove the heavy chunks of dirt. We walked in an easterly direction, climbing toward the hills. When we got to a narrow gully between two hills, don Juan stopped. "This is for sure an ideal place to summon your friends," he said. "Why do you call them my friends?" "They have singled you out themselves. When they do that, it means that they seek an association. I've mentioned to you that sorcerers form bonds of friendship with them. Your case seems to be an example. And you don't even have to solicit them." "What does such a friendship consist of, don Juan?" "It consists of a mutual exchange of energy. The inorganic beings supply their high awareness, and sorcerers supply their heightened awareness and high energy. The positive result is an even exchange. The negative one is dependency on both parties. "The old sorcerers used to love their allies. In fact, they loved their allies more than they loved their own kind. I can foresee terrible dangers in that." "What do you recommend I do, don Juan?" "Summon them. Size them up, and then decide yourself what to do." "What should I do to summon them?" "Hold your dream view of them, in your mind. The reason they have saturated you with their presence in your dreams is that they want to create a memory of their shape in your mind. And this is the time to use that memory" Don Juan forcefully ordered me to close my eyes and keep them closed. Then he guided me to sit down on some rocks. I felt the hardness and the coldness of the rocks. The rocks were slanted; it was difficult to keep my balance. "Sit here and visualize their shape until they are just like they. are in your dreams," don Juan said in my ear. "Let me know when you have them in focus." It took me very little time and effort to have a complete mental picture of their shape, just like in my dreams. It did not surprise me at all that I could do it. What shocked me was that, although I tried desperately to let don Juan know I had pictured them in my mind, I could not voice my words or open my eyes. I was definitely awake. I could hear everything. I heard don Juan say, "You can open your 'eyes now." I opened them with no difficulty I was sitting cross-legged on some rocks, which were not the same ones I had felt under me when I sat down. Don Juan was just behind me to my right. I tried to turn around to face him, but he forced my head to remain straight. And then I saw two dark figures, like two thin tree trunks, right in front of me. I stared at them open mouthed; they were not as tall as in my dreams. They had shrunk to half their size. Instead of being shapes of opaque luminosity, they were now two condensed, dark, almost black, menacing sticks. "Get up and grab one of them," don Juan ordered me, "and don't let go, no matter how it shakes you." I definitely did not want to do anything of the sort, but some unknown drive made me stand up against my will. I had at that moment the clear realization that I would end up doing what he had ordered me to, although I had no conscious intention of doing so. Mechanically, I advanced toward the two figures, my heart pounding nearly out of my chest. I grabbed the one to my right. What I felt was an electric discharge that almost made me drop the dark figure. Don Juan's voice came to me as if he had been yelling from a distance away. "You drop it and you're done for," he said. I held on to the figure, which twirled and shook. Not like a massive animal would, but like something quite fluffy and light, although strongly electrical. We rolled and turned on the sand of the gully for quite some time. It gave me jolt after jolt of some sickening electric current. I thought it was sickening because I fancied it to be different from the energy I had always encountered in our daily world. When it hit my body, it tickled me and made me yell and growl like an animal, not in anguish but in a strange anger. It finally became a still, almost solid form under me. It lay inert. I asked don Juan if it was dead, but I did not hear my voice. "Not a chance," said someone laughing, someone who was not don Juan. "You've just depleted its energy charge. But don't get up yet. Lie there just a moment longer." I looked at don Juan with a question in my eyes. He was examining me with great curiosity. Then he helped me up. The dark figure remained on the ground. I wanted to ask don Juan if the dark figure was all right. Again, I could not voice my question. Then I did something extravagant. I took it all for real. Up to that moment something in my mind was preserving my rationality by taking what was happening as a dream, a dream induced by don Juan's machinations. I went to the figure on the ground and tried to lift it up. I could not put my arms around it because it had no mass. I became disoriented. The same voice, which was not don Juan's, told me to lie down on top of the inorganic being. I did it, and both of us got up in one motion, the inorganic being like a dark shadow attached to me. It gently separated from me and disappeared, leaving me with an extremely pleasant feeling of completeness. It took me more than twenty-four hours to regain total control of my faculties. I slept most of the time. Don Juan checked me from time to time by asking me the same question, "Was the inorganic being's energy like fire or like water?" My throat seemed scorched. I could not tell him that the energy jolts I had felt were like jets of electrified water. I have never felt jets of electrified water in my life. I am not sure if it is possible to produce them or to feel them, but that was the image playing in my mind every time don Juan asked his key question. Don Juan was asleep when I finally knew I was completely recovered. Knowing that his question was of great importance, I woke him up and told him what I had felt. "You are not going to have helping friends among the inorganic beings, but relationships of annoying dependence," he stated. "Be extremely careful. Watery inorganic beings are more given to excesses. The old sorcerers believed that they were more loving, more capable of imitating, or perhaps even having feelings. As opposed to the fiery ones, who were thought to be more serious, more contained than the others, but also more pompous." "What's the meaning of all this for me, don Juan?" "The meaning is too vast to discuss at this time. My recommendation is that you vanquish fear from your dreams and from your life, in order to safeguard your unity The inorganic being you depleted of energy and then recharged again was thrilled out of its candle-like shape with it. It'll come to you for more." "Why didn't you stop me, don Juan?" "You didn't give me time. Besides, you didn't even hear me shouting at you to leave the inorganic being on the ground." "You should have lectured me, beforehand, the way you always do, about all the possibilities." "I didn't know all the possibilities. In matters of the inorganic beings, I am nearly a novice. I refused that part of the sorcerers' knowledge on the ground that it is too cumbersome and capricious. I don't want to be at the mercy of any entity. organic or inorganic." That was the end of our exchange. I should have been worried because of his definitely negative reaction, but I was not. I somehow was certain that whatever I had done was all right. I continued my dreaming practices without any interference from the inorganic beings.

[oak]

Carlos Castañeda: a life of lies!... and how is followers messed up this documentary that was posted on youtube... What good can come out of a immense lie?

 

 

[Jessup2]

Lol, the same can be said of practically all beliefs and religions. Luckily, I had many experiences of my own before reading any of his books. However, some claim his accounts come from a lot of research into other experiences or religions. A form of plagerism perhaps. I see many truths in the materials, and better explained than in most of the esoteric nonsense and practices people devote an entire lifetime to.

If all it does is to make people aware of other possibilities, which it has, then it was a success. I found the materials to be very funny and the interactions entertaining. I am sure plenty of people since the first publishing went on many drug trips and got lost in the trash heap that surrounds everything.

I am sure there are those that will take offense to you calling it a life of lies, just like they take offense when you trash religions or beliefs based on Dao or other systems. I myself enjoy putting together a nativity scene made of bacon and posting it to muslim websites... the purpose is the same as your comments. To get a rise out of people whom I believe are making poor choices. Yet it isn't my place to make those decisions for them, or point out what I think is wrong, now is it?

 

10 minutes ago, oak said:

Carlos Castañeda: a life of lies!... and how is followers messed up this documentary that was posted on youtube... What good can come out of a immense lie?

 

[oak]

46 minutes ago, Jessup2 said:

Yet it isn't my place to make those decisions for them, or point out what I think is wrong, now is it?

 

No, everyone must make its own choice, being aware of what that choice is...

[Jessup2]

My point in the posting was the description of water and fire electricity beings. Having lived with an electric-like being for years, I don't question the existence of them, or what they do. It is a fact for me, and I find it interesting when I see it printed in literature for comparison.

 

What is very interesting, and might be the source of the Castaneda books, are the comparisons between practices, beliefs, and cultures using history BEFORE mass communicaiton.

When we reduce any system down to the basics, and we see common ground, we should know that these are basic truths. The rest is probably as colorful as the person trying to share what they have learned or experienced.

To get biblical for a moment, which is not my thing, but a huge system, every character in the Koran or Bible that was "touched" by the "spirit" appears to have a distinct form of using that energy that directly relates to the personality of that person and the situation they are in. Daniel and Lions. People surviving being burned alive. Calling down plagues. Healings. Some of it very mean and nasty, other parts full of compassion.

Personally, I believe the Bible and Koran are both a bunch of crap, probably opium induced or too much desert sun on the brain. Perhaps myth and story to present to children like Santa. But in any case, it appears to work as a guide to do both severe damage to others, and to help others. 400 years of the inquisition where people either claimed the faith, or died by being burned alive... great stuff. And Catholics are still allowed to practice this crap..

 

There have been a huge number of other religions and belief systems that christians destroyed, from the Germanic times to the modern Hawaiians, and christian faith has killed and destroyed every other person or religion in the way, in the name of love and peace. And in my opinion, also a bunch of lies. They can't even substantiate any of it with real energy or powers of any kind, except for violence and money.

 

Anyway, to get to the point, now we have a measure for chirp waves that are produced by people practicing healing using Dao and Tai Chi methods. Chirp waves stimulate stem cells, thus immediate healing. So a real and measureable thing we can look at and see.

 

So, in my brain, we can now create testing devices that will measure the "bullshit" factor in Eastern religions also. So I would hope to see a certificate on the wall of the Reiki and other "healing" practices that say, "YES, PASSED the chirp wave test".

This should filter out the liars and idiots that think they are doing the correct practices and charging money for teaching, healing or anything else involved with the bull surrounding that belief and practice system.

 

Hopefully science will uncover more about other systems, and we can apply those in the near future.

 

This will include actual testing for real energy flows, and not just some hocus pocus from a Feng Shui practitioner that can just say whatever they want about whatever flows and expect people to believe it without question.

We can measure for energy change from underground sources, and those will certainly also play a role.

I think the age has come that we can start to move beyond blind faith and the muddy interpretations of "masters". 

 

I think it was you who quoted the 9 masters to change a lightbulb...?

 

 

[LAOLONG]

http://www.indiana.edu/~brain/category/random-event-generator-reg/

[3bob]

there are 1st hand (written) accounts of Carlos C.being a sex creep, besides whatever forms of sorcery he may have got involved with, btw. sorcery is not about Self Realization but of various forms of power manipulation per ego. 

Edited December 29, 2017 by 3bob

[Zhongyongdaoist]

4 hours ago, Jessup2 said:

My point in the posting was the description of water and fire electricity beings. Having lived with an electric-like being for years, I don't question the existence of them, or what they do. It is a fact for me, and I find it interesting when I see it printed in literature for comparison.

 

What is very interesting, and might be the source of the Castaneda books, are the comparisons between practices, beliefs, and cultures using history BEFORE mass communicaiton. (Emphasis mine, ZYD)

 

Having lived with an electric-like being for years: Is this the one that you refer to here?:

 

I thought that this was a particularly interesting post, and some of your other posts were interesting also, but I have not had time to follow them in detail or reply to them as fully as I think I should.  I do hope to in the new year.

 

Castaneda was an interesting character, and sometimes people can make better use of material like he produced then the original author did, so I hope that you will keep posting and continue to avoid becoming mired in controversy, as it seems you're wisely trying to do.

 

I have spent a lifetime studying and practicing weird spooky stuff, and certainly reading Castaneda in the 70s was part of it.  As I developed in other areas I moved on from Castaneda, for reasons to complex to recount now.

 

Like you, I have also spent a lot of time with trying to unify these types of studies with science, which is not easy, because you must not only understand science as it is today, but also how it got that way, in other words its history.  I hope that we can have a fuller discussion about these things at some future point.

 

ZYD

 

 

 

Edit: Added, "wisely", to "as it seems you're trying to do", to get "as it seems you're wisely trying to do",  to emphasis that I think it is a good idea to avoid getting mired in controversy.

[Taiji Bum]

I've seen all the books and videos exposing him as a fraud, but I still love Castaneda's material. I am not even sure I believe all the material saying his stuff is fake. All I know is that everything that I have tried from his books has worked. I've never experienced elemental beings though. Of course, that's never interested me.

[Zhongyongdaoist]

6 minutes ago, Taiji Bum said:

I've seen all the books and videos exposing him as a fraud, but I still love Castaneda's material. I am not even sure I believe all the material saying his stuff is fake. All I know is that everything that I have tried from his books has worked. I've never experienced elemental beings though. Of course, that's never interested me.

 

This is in a lot of ways how I think about the matter, though "love" is far too strong a word for me to use.  I read enough of the debunking material, but I was also familiar with some of the types of things he was talking about from my own practice, or traditional material that I trusted enough to see that he was moving in interesting directions, but not exactly how I wanted to pursue them.  I never practiced anything of his per se, as apparently Taiji Bum has, but I have done similar things drawn from other traditions, which led me to believe that there was merit to some of what he was talking about, which is why I am interested in Jessup2's posts, he seems to have made good use of Castaneda's material.

 

ZYD

[oak]

1 hour ago, Taiji Bum said:

I've seen all the books and videos exposing him as a fraud, but I still love Castaneda's material. I am not even sure I believe all the material saying his stuff is fake. All I know is that everything that I have tried from his books has worked. I've never experienced elemental beings though. Of course, that's never interested me.

 

So, lets suppose that you were a pathological liar like Castañeda (I'm not insinuating that you are), and that you had that writing genious... Wouldn't you be able to write  amazing books based on your own life experience with dozens of techniques that worked? What that would make of you? Well, a millionaire for sure... and someone dangerous to be around too.

 

Unfortunately the history of planet earth is full of these dark geniouses with enough charisma to manipulate the masses.

[Jessup2]

3 minutes ago, oak said:

 

So, lets suppose that you were a pathological liar like Castañeda (I'm not insinuating that you are), and that you had that writing genious... Wouldn't you be able to write  amazing books based on your own life experience with dozens of techniques that worked? What that would make of you? Well, a millionaire for sure... and someone dangerous to be around too.

 

Unfortunately the history of planet earth is full of these dark geniouses with enough charisma to manipulate the masses.

 

What would really interest me, is where he got the materials he used for the books. I would like to know if it is possible to go back and see what he checked out while going to the University, or what his book shelf looked like...

I see correlations to all sorts of Eastern teachings here, which were certainly available in the 60's and 70's, plus many of the esoteric works... which is mainly all I am attempting to do, which is to pick out the materials that do have substance when compared to other systems that have shown or produced very astounding results, or in the case of science, that show changes in body or brain chemistry, affect the world around us, or are something we can measure.

 

My own experiences I keep on my personal shelf, and compare as needed. Shared experiences have a place closer to the front of that shelf, since they were confirmed by other people and not just a possible figment of imagination. What is most interesting here, is that I see them repeated in his books, which makes me wonder where he got it from, and where else these experiences exist, in what cultures, and in what practices, and if they came up with explanations.

 

I also see the same inconsistencies in many religions, where one new leader / master will change the practices to correct the mistakes of those in the past. It is all very colorful and sometimes takes hundreds of years before someone gets the balls to take charge and make the change.

 

Concerning the dark types, charisma and masses, the world has a very rich history of them. I hope we don't add to that pile of crap...

 

[Taiji Bum]

8 minutes ago, oak said:

 

So, lets suppose that you were a pathological liar like Castañeda (I'm not insinuating that you are), and that you had that writing genious... Wouldn't you be able to write  amazing books based on your own life experience with dozens of techniques that worked? What that would make of you? Well, a millionaire for sure... and someone dangerous to be around too.

 

Unfortunately the history of planet earth is full of these dark geniouses with enough charisma to manipulate the masses.

I tend to judge the content of the book and not the character of the author. Character is for the gods to judge.

[oak]

48 minutes ago, Taiji Bum said:

I tend to judge the content of the book and not the character of the author. Character is for the gods to judge.

 

We'll have to agree in disagreeing than. Peace.

[Jessup2]

2 hours ago, Zhongyongdaoist said:

 

Having lived with an electric-like being for years: Is this the one that you refer to here?:

 

Yes, this was a "tenant" for years that bothered me and my siblings. I would have thought it was a figment, but the repeat attacks and confirmation by siblings proved it to be an actual "thing". I figured out how to deal with it over the years, my siblings did not. My sister will cry if I bring it up, and it has been almost 45 years ago.

My older brother went on to do LSD, and said it reminded him of the "electric monster" many people on LSD experience. I tried to Google that, but didn't find much information on 'shared' LSD visions or similar hallucinations. I did see some interesting medical uses like fusing split personalities.. strange.

 

 

[oak]

51 minutes ago, Jessup2 said:

I hope we don't add to that pile of crap...

 

 

As I told you before, it's your choice... and I don't have the genious to add to that pile of crap. Lucky me.

[Jessup2]

4 hours ago, 3bob said:

there are 1st hand (written) accounts of Carlos C.being a sex creep, besides whatever forms of sorcery he may have got involved with, btw. sorcery is not about Self Realization but of various forms of power manipulation per ego. 

 

He turned out to be a real creep, and died of liver cancer, probably from using too many drugs to create these visions he was sharing. The sex scandal and suicides are true, he would not even stay in contact with his own son. It appears that he believed in his own creepy way, and tried to practice that, but it was way off center and certainly not what I would have expected.

 

In the end, he did not step into infinity, or use his powers to heal himself, or show any signs of actually accomplishing anything except to have a lot of sex with women who believed in him, and to enjoy his millions, and to die from a bad liver. And by the way, they found the adopted daughter's bones in the desert, and he not only adopted her, but was having sex with her as well. It is assumed that she went to the desert after his death, and either killed herself, or died from exposure. She was one of the main women in his little harem, I believe a waitress from some restaurant that needed a guru and got sucked into his web.

 

But, that doesn't change the recognition factor of what he wrote down. The very basics which include many of the same techniques used to meditate, for example. The descriptions of the energy body. So much... but not in any instructional way, just a story.

 

That being said, I have been to the Castaneda fan websites, and I have rarely encountered so many whack-o crazy people in one place. So it obviously has appeal with the psycho and drug crowds, those with mental illnesses, the gullible, and the greedy who use them to make money.

 

I suppose you get those in every philosophical and religious setting... drink the Kool-Aid and all that jazz.

 

Edited December 30, 2017 by Jessup2

[Jessup2]

I find Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Colonel Henry Steel Olcott and the Theosophical Society to be quite a farce, yet they did put together quite a library of materials that still have some merit and substance. A few gems in the muck of profit.

 

I find the works of Edgar Cayce to be quite interesting, and hypnosis was the basis. Yet he came up with medical things that are still used today that didn't exist before his "readings". So even without training or a master, there are some very interesting benefits to understanding them.

 

Edward Peach "Ophiel" had a grasp on many of the basic symbolic things that the silent part of the brain understands. Many of them bypass your reason and create conditions that literally kick open doorways. The issues there are that people may not be ready for the truth, and then suffer mental illness (at least that is what the doctors are calling it).

 

Many Russian studies and those publications are also very interesting. I can't think of the black box guy that could change motor speeds, others that can separate an egg albumen from yolk while it was suspended in water. 

 

Now we see the YouTube videos of the Java master, trying hard to help measure his chi and demonstrating for the camera and the scientists. I appreciated these very much.

 

In all of them, you must be chosen to get anywhere. So I don't worry about people too much, except for those I have seen drop off the deep end into the trash pile of human insanity trying to figure things out or chasing after practices.

 

[Zhongyongdaoist]

24 minutes ago, Jessup2 said:

What would really interest me, is where he got the materials he used for the books. I would like to know if it is possible to go back and see what he checked out while going to the University, or what his book shelf looked like.

 

Then Richard de Mille is the man you want to read.  He actually did review what Castaneda checked out of the UCLA library and what books he read.  Here is a short online post about him:
 

Quote

Then, after mentioning the name Castaneda, state the name Richard de Mille, and chances are neither one questioned will know who that is. Richard de Mille (1924-2009 died April 9. I found this out after starting this post. Richard (most people were on first name basis with him, as was I) was author of two key books on Castaneda, both written in the 1970s: Castaneda’s Journey, the Power and the Allegory, and The don Juan Papers.

Through Richard de Milles’s diligence and intellectual power, Carlos Castaneda was exposed as a fraud, and his eight books describing psychedelic rituals and perceptions of Yaqui Indians of Sonora were proved to be mislabeled creative fiction. Castaneda did not deny the charge and never brought legal charges against de Mille.

 

. . . .

 

I read Castaneda’s The Teachings on a ski trip in 1970 or so . . .

(Science Based Medicine)

 

 

Like the above author, I read The Teachings of Don Juan, very early, not later than 1970, and found it fascinating.  At the time I had already been reading books yoga, hypnotism, Western Ceremonial magic, Daoism, Tibetan Buddhism, the list goes on, since I was ten or so, and practicing as much as a teenager could of such things in the 60s.  For example, I started practicing yoga in the Summer of 1961 watching Richard Hittleman's "Yoga for Health" TV program.  No one in my family was into this stuff, but for me it was physics and magic, that's what I wanted to do when I grew up.

 

As for Castaneda I read him through the publishing of Tales of Power, I think it was, where if I recall correctly, he introduced Nagual, but completely broke from any traditional Shamanic model of it, and I think that is also when he talked about meeting Don Juan in Mexico City.  Since this was getting far from my original interest in his writings, I stopped at that point, though I also thought that what he was opening up was interesting in its own way, I just preferred approaching it from other directions.

 

I read Richard de Mille's book in the late 70s, and his criticisms of Castaneda rang true, it was disappointing, but at the same time made sense of Castaneda's work up to a point, but not as far as where he went after he stepped off the Shamen's path.  After that I had more interesting, and to me relevant things to study.  For example around 1976 I discovered what I call Ritual Daoism, the Daoist practices that unify Ritual and Internal Alchemy methods in Michael Saso's Taoism and the Rite of Cosmic Renewal, which opened up a whole new avenue for study and research, though it took some time before I could put it into practice.

 

While I was writing the above, Jessup2 has posted again and though I was about finished with this, I can't help commenting on:

 

11 minutes ago, Jessup2 said:

Edward Peach "Ophiel" . . .

 

I started reading Ophiel in the summer of 1968, what a character!  Many "magicians" of my generation learned a lot from him, but are too stuck up to admit it.  He was without a doubt the most influential practical occultists/magician of the late 20th Century.  I have great sentimental attachment to him, far more than most other modern authors, just because he cared and it showed in his writings.  Reading Ophiel was like reading letters from your cranky old uncle about how to practice magic, and some of the ideas in his books are way deeper than he gets credit for, and some of it is, well silly, but all in such a lovable way, that I just had to love him.

 

Well, that is all I have time for now.

 

ZYD

[Jessup2]

17 minutes ago, Zhongyongdaoist said:

Reading Ophiel was like reading letters from your cranky old uncle about how to practice magic, and some of the ideas in his books are way deeper than he gets credit for, and some of it is, well silly, but all in such a lovable way, that I just had to love him.

 

 

Thanks for the candid reply. That makes you a child of the sixties then? I was born in 1961. 

Just an FYI, I was in contact with Edward in 1976-77. He was looking for an apprentice and I wanted the job at the time. He selected another person and then passed about 10-12 years later.

We had some nice conversations and exchanged many ideas at the time. The important take-away was that I understood better how to stay grounded and not leave myself halfway between here and there, since I was practicing many things without any teacher.

Contacting him back then was very easy. I got directory assistance for his area and he was the only Edward Peach listed in the phone book. He answered the phone himself. What a different world we live in now?

 

My question back to you, since you are familiar with his work: "Do you agree with the concept of symbols reaching farther and faster than words?"

 

In my opinion, the whole idea was not to be practicing these things in reality, except to learn them well enough to do them when you wake up in a dream, or during deep meditation, which is not the same thing, but both have special connections from what I have experienced using both.

 

Of course, I feel the same way about all things that are energy. The physical is what it is, and can be manipulated, but it is not the natural state of things. I call it "The Borders of This Dimension'. The other side, where these practices matter and have merit, is reached by many pathways, but all come from a condition that is closer to being asleep. Alpha and deeper if you will. And visual, symbolic, and much more awesome...

Since then I understand so much more of the structure of the brain, nervous system, and our connections. But there are many things I would like to experiment with in a lab given the opportunity.

 

In the interim, I will keep sewing like fabric to like fabric, and continue to map out the commonalities of mankind.

 

Thanks for the feedback and comments,

 

Stay fluid

 

[Zhongyongdaoist]

14 hours ago, Jessup2 said:

Thanks for the candid reply. That makes you a child of the sixties then?

 

I was a teenager in the sixties, but a "child of the sixties", no, most of the sixties swirled around me with little effect, a lot of it, I rejected as silly, and, in many ways what is usually remembered as the sixties was the last half of the sixties, not the first half, and I was already a very well defined person by the time the big changes were happening.  All that the "occult revival" of the sixties did was allow me to be more open about my interests.  I could point out to people Aleister Crowley's picture in the crowd of "friends" on the Sgt. Pepper's album cover because I had started reading him four years earlier, in the summer of '63, probably before any of the Beatles had.

 

It's interesting that you knew Edward Peach, he was very approachable, and invited people to contact him.  I spoke with him on the phone around 1980, when I was passing through San Francisco.  His assistant answered the phone and put him right on, no questions asked, we had a nice talk, but I never went further than that.

 

15 hours ago, Jessup2 said:

My question back to you, since you are familiar with his work: "Do you agree with the concept of symbols reaching farther and faster than words?"

 

As far as I'm concerned words are symbols too, that they are aural ones rather than visual ones, makes little difference if you train in certain ways, but in general, most people will respond stronger to visual symbols than verbal ones because most people are "visual".  If you realize, as I did early on, that the internal processing of words is linked with deep rooted images, which is how "words make sense  to you", then you can use those words to stimulate strong reactions.  I think that part of Peach's teaching was in some ways a reaction against the "affirmation" type teachings of Science of Mind, and his teaching was a little more in line with magic and its training methods, as they existed in the middle of the Twentieth Century, and thus in a sense, expanded the practice of magic as a creative and practical endeavor.  It could even be argued that he is the "creator" of Creative Visualization as a part of magic, something for which I don't think he gets enough credit.

 

In the rest of your post, you raise some interesting points, but I have already put more time into these responses than I should have, and I need to get back to my own projects.  I hope that we will have time to discuss these things more another time.

 

ZYD

[Nungali]

17 hours ago, Jessup2 said:

 

 

Electric monsters when you have LSD   ?  

 

I missed that one ! 

[Jessup2]

4 minutes ago, Zhongyongdaoist said:

 

As far as I'm concerned words are symbols too, that they are aural ones rather than visual ones, makes little difference if you train in certain ways, but in general, most people will respond stronger to visual symbols than verbal ones because most people are "visual".  If you realize, as I did early on, that the internal processing of words is linked with deep rooted images, which is how "words make sense  to you", then you can use those words to stimulate strong reactions. 

 

Well we are giving Edward some credit, so I will assume that he does get credit for things from those who have read his materials and spoken to him personally.

 

Please feel free to correct my thought process here:

I don't know if you learned another language to the point of not having to "think" or "translate" before you speak. My point there is that you suddenly realize there is no language. Words become a thought filter. But the thoughts are not a language. They are concepts, ideas, feelings, descriptions. Language is simply a form of communicating those. I internalized German, and I was raised using English. I realized one day that I was having issues separating the two languages, slipping back and forth without thinking about what was happening. I would dream in German, or English, and then slip and speak German to English speakers, while speaking English to German speakers. After a certain point, I learned had to stop and think about which language to use, switch gears, then move forward in another language. The flow of them was equal, where over time, my engineering skills were more fluent in German due to the nature of my daily tasks.

 

Anyway, the point being, science is proving that the part of the brain that does images only, including some dreams, most feelings, etc. is not language oriented. We do actually think (or we should) before we speak. So there is a bit of translation in the brain going on. I will have to look back at my links for studies. I really enjoyed "Stranger in a Strange Land" for this reason, since speaking Martian suddenly empowered the people who learned it.

 

But, the visualization techniques of many different cultures and practices was the point of this response. These are rarely language related, and they reach into the depths of things beyond language, in my opinion.

 

Where certain sounds and frequencies do have brain affects by themselves. These, however, are not language, but a type of tuning fork response.

 

In memory of Edward, remember "E-motion"!

 

Emotion and imagination, visualizing and feeling, connected to the deep state of mind between wake and sleep, appear to have the largest effects for me. Bringing that from the depths to our daily lives is the real magic. Why does imagination stay imagination? Why do certain things remain simple dreams? What is the difference between just visualizing, and visualizing things that become real? Why is it now real, and how did that happen? What is the difference between that dream that comes true, and the rest of them?

 

Now, as far as dreams go. I can tell which dream is a future vision, and which are just dreams, without knowing why, and without being able to explain it. I can speculate, and study, and try to explain it with science terms... but it never does it justice.

How do I know the thought just came from that other person? Because it sounds like their voice in my head. It is not my thought, simple. But how does that work? I don't know. It just does. It scares the crap out of people, so you learn that you just don't say anything to them.

 

And I didn't learn any of my early experiences from a book or practices. Instead, I went searching in the books and cultures and literature for explanations for what happens to me, and ways of keeping everything in check, under control, or turning it on and off. Mostly off... riding the bus became a horrible day for me. Being in crowded places became torture. People kept trying to lie to me constantly, every day, and I know they are lying, because I can hear them doing it. Thoughts from the perverts staring at the lady like greedy little demons invading my private space made my skin crawl. When you glance over at them, they have that far-away stare directed at her cleavage, mouth slightly open, just sad... human beings... yuck.

 

Lucky me I can usually tell what is me, and what is not me. That has always been distinct enough. When pressured for how it feels, I had to say that I had to struggle to mimic standard human processes as a child. I felt more akin to the family dog, simply feeling energy and being a witness to it, instead of being caught up in it or creating it.

 

 

[Zhongyongdaoist]

When I said:

 

1 hour ago, Zhongyongdaoist said:

I have already put more time into these responses than I should have

 

I meant it.

 

When I said:

 

1 hour ago, Zhongyongdaoist said:

I need to get back to my own projects

 

I meant it.

 

And while you were composing a another long post which I will have to ignore for now, and reply to at some future time, I wrote this in my PPD:

 

Which unfortunately non Dao Bums cannot access, and now I need to get on to the other things which have little to do with posting here, I have put off doing in order to make the responses that I have in this thread.  I am not kidding about being busy, nor is it some kind of excuse for not posting more on these matters, about which I could say a great deal, and have done so all over the Dao Bums for what is inching up on nine years now.

 

and when I said this:

 

1 hour ago, Zhongyongdaoist said:

I hope that we will have time to discuss these things more another time

 

I meant it also.

 

ZYD

[Jessup2]

53 minutes ago, Nungali said:

 

Electric monsters when you have LSD   ?  

 

I missed that one ! 

 

My brother could have simply recalled the electric monster event of our past during his "trip". But he claims others see the same thing at times. I wouldn't know, not ever having had any desire to lose control for 8 hours without an exit.

I figure that the things I do experience are strange enough without throwing something like that into my brain chemistry. Where his "crowd" was into all sorts of mind "expanding" drugs during the 70's. Nothing scientific there can confirm or deny the electric monster's existence, sorry to say.

 

I haven't seen much on shared hallucination that could be scientific. Much of what is available to read are statements from the stoners using it, and when you take things into consideration, we can't trust simple judgement calls from them while they are under the influence of hallucinogens. We would have to keep them separated, then interview them separately, and start taking things into consideration like location and distance to each other, or location and distance to the shared monster. Every time we have human beings as a measuring device, it all becomes a mess to study, since each day, everything can change, from attitude to body chemistry. We have to begin to rule out telepathic items, and prove or disprove shared mind experiences as the source. Since we know RCF is produced in the brain, we would have to be able to recreate the monster over and over, and then try to block the radio carrier frequency to see if it is a shared brain frequency. We would have to locate and measure the space where the monster appears to see if there are any physical changes there. We would have to determine if that monster is being created by the person seeing it, or if it is an independent item that can exist without the human factor. Etc... it would have to go on and on to determine what we are dealing with, and how to deal with it.

 

There are some interesting studies where people on LSD were capable of describing things hidden from view and unknown to the person testing them. It reminded me of Ingo Swann and the black box experiments. So he may have been one of the first autistic spectrum individuals or something?

 https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00787R000200130005-3.pdf

 

The two young ladies that made the news as psychic mediums back in the depression days were more than likely consuming rye mold, which is ergot, the simple basic form that causes severe cramps and hallucinations. That can't be confirmed, but it would make sense that many cultures have found things from frogs excreting bufotenine to cactus containing mescaline and much more. Given the nature of mankind, I would assume that many experiences become "similar" if they affect the brain chemistry in the same way across humanity. For all we know, the girls were autistic.

 

While I am on that subject, Bufotenine is a hallucinogen usually found in nature, like in some frogs, that causes altered states of consciousness. It is being discovered in high enough levels, as are DMT and some other natural hallucinogenic toxins, in some of the schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Enzo_Emanuele/publication/41425283_Elevated_urine_levels_of_bufotenine_in_patients_with_autistic_spectrum_disorders_and_schizophrenia/links/543f720a0cf2eaec07e81823.pdf

 

I have never had mine checked, but I wouldn't be surprised to find flare-ups of either of these chemicals, or something similar, in my own body chemistry. They have been able to confirm that it appears to be mainly created in the large intestine, and that re-absorption of these chemicals is the "trip" leading to forms of autism and schizophrenia, where a basic shift from standard reality is an apparent issue that creates the spectrum of what is now called autism, or in some cases, synesthesia.

 

I have tried to help a few parents with autistic children, and getting the doctors to even check for the levels of these and other toxins is like finding and pulling hen's teeth. So the science is not quite aware enough to be open and to listen to ideas.

 

Learning to deal with the effects of these is quite a task. Diet can be a huge help. We can't yet rule out types of bacteria being the producers and converters in the intestines, or physical differences like genetic mutation. I looked into that area and have a spreadsheet started, but it is very difficult and a slow process of digging in the data and figuring out what bacteria is doing what. At that point, you run into other things living inside us, that are as old as time, like Archae, and you see a symbiotic relationship that is necessary for proper health. You see how bugs and chemistry control how loving or humane we are, or how angry and pessimistic. They influence depression, hormone fluctuations, and general quality of life. They change the flow of chemicals in the brain and some cause a dump down toxic pathways that are neurotoxic. So many of them are not good, and science is apparently ignoring the gut...