Was Castaneda Right?

Sounds like we've both got some tales to tell ... Have a good rest of your day ...

"Journey Through Ixtlan" is a masterpiece of literature. Without realizing it at first, you are slowly drawn into the story and finally, toward the end, begin to feel as if you are tripping on psychedelics yourself, just from reading it. By the last page, I felt as if I'd been guided through the best one ever. I got a feeling of distortion of time and space, although not necessarily of reality, because his prose was so cohesive and coherent.

But I enjoy all the books, especially the earlier ones. One of my favorite chapters, is chapter 3 of "Fire From Within". It describes how Juan Matus escaped capture and enslavement by some work gang (evidently one with some kind of established 'connections'), after they'd first shot and injured him physically. So it was an example of how he was able to utilize his philosophy in a manner which probably saved his life.

I also enjoy reading (and learning) about 'dreaming', 'seeing' and 'stalking' (not the kinds most people think of); and about different kinds of energies, in his books. I never stop gaining wisdom from those books, even years after I've read them. After forming the intent to simply look at my hands within a lucid dream, I finally was able to do it -- six months later. There was no actual work involved, I just had to be patient, lol. Sometimes of course, I go back and study them again (I believe I have a complete collection of them all, now).

I carefully read the quote from the book. It does not state anywhere that the predator is directly responsible for our reincarnation amnesia. The predator is most probably responsible for the creation of this fearful reality and our (willing) enslavement to it.

The amnesia, however is part of the learning path of the soul and the reincarnation cycle on planet Earth. It is a tool for the soul to truly learn the lessons it needs to. I believe the predator is just taking advantage of it.

Read the book of Ph.D. Michael Newton - "Journey Of Souls", it's an amazing study in the afterlife and reincarnation.

Read the whole series and then we'll talk about it.

Wed learn much more much faster if we didn't forget everything we learned every go around. Your assertion makes no sense, but I respect you for making it.

The new age belief that we can't remember our past lives generally because it would interfere with the lessons we need to learn in this life is ludicrous. Somehow, we plan the circumstances for this life then "forget" all the planning and forget why we're here, who we are and even the lesson we are supposed to learn. Ridiculous.

Our memory loss is far more complex. We are being duped and given absurd rationalizations for it.

Hmmm. OP, Like I said I don't want to take a position in this debate.

But, I did have a thought about it. If these memories did exist and were taken away somehow...wouldn't it be possible that 'starting fresh' could be just as advantageous as starting with memories intact?

Let's say that one had complete memories of five past lives. Would that person's recall of these memories make it harder for one to overcome clarity? If you had a deep well of past experiences to make decisions based on...wouldn't that diminish your respect for death? Wouldn't we fear it less...perhaps use our previous experiences as a 'wisest adviser' in the place of death? Wouldn't such a person more easily fall prey to the temptations of power...to use his 'experience' of past lives to prey on the lesser experienced among us?

Perhaps having no memories puts fear, clarity, and power in their proper place. Perhaps it levels the playing field. Perhaps these 'past lives' are already figured into the equation by spiritual intent. Perhaps they are converted to intent upon every re-incarnation?

After all, when we die and don't make it past the eagle...our awareness is disentangled and consumed. Our intent cannot be disentangled...because it isn't tangled in the first place. Perhaps in this way our intent rides along for the next incarnation.

Who knows?

I haven't read the thread yet, excuse me, but it has crossed my mind that it is tough maintaining a Castaneda thread on the GLP forum.

Just as it should be. His knowledge was never intended for the masses or even for large groups, (even though Castaneda mistakenly went public, IMO)

The Castaneda forums that seemed to work best, back in their day seemed to have some 10-20 knowledgeable participants, but not much more or they go all negative like SR.

It seems the philosophies that emerge from his works are by nature occult and not are really expected to be adopted by the masses.

There is a revival of ingenious and occult practices going on this last decade in Mexico, and it is good to see that for most groups race has little or nothing to do with it, but rather just clear intent. But even if there are ten times as many participants now than earlier, it is still a narrow segment of the population.

However regular popular Mexican ways of thinking (A.P.position) is a lot closer to Nagualisim than the US/Canada way of thinking.

Good work. I don't mind.

My recommended reading list for the uninformed would start with the 4th (correction 3rd) book, Journey to Ixtlan.

The following book, Tales of Power is also excellent, but half way through the book there is a change in style, and it was written CC says after don Juan passed on. From that point on is where some theorize that CC's work got more "fictional", but regardless his works reveal the most sublime and self confirming and self balancing or self-contradictory knowledge, similar to Sufi or Zen knowledge in that aspect.

Perhaps his best work for using words to approach profound abstract knowledge is "The Power of Silence". Castaneda's original title of that work was "Silent Knowledge" but the publishers wanted the word "Power" to be in the title so they changed it.

And maybe one of his best works in regards to a tantalizing "how-to" manual, and the possibilities there-in is, The Art of Dreaming.

So my short-list is-
Journey to Ixtlan,
The Power of Silence,
and The Art of Dreaming.


To those who have already read Castaneda's works I would recommend the two books written by Armando Torres, who knew Carlos at times, and who joined up with a similar Nagual tradition located somewhere near Tepotzlan.

Last Edited by ehecatl on 08/31/2012 11:02 AM

Going public was no mistake. The knowledge should be out there for any to pursue.

Hoarding knowledge of the esoteric or spiritual nature is what has gotten mankind into its current debacle.

And, allow me to put on my know it all suit and say that 'The Journey to Ixtlan' was the third book.

The Teachings of Don Juan, A Separate Reality, Journey to Ixtlan, etc.

Edit for grammar.

Last Edited by Jonny Blaze on 08/31/2012 11:02 AM

casteneda is not correct but some of the stories told in his book are true..i found them true after my experiences...he definitely got some training under some brujos then he combined many budhist and hindu texts with native american beliefs...wrote excellent books.
his books should be written as fiction not true account

yes, there are no mistakes, especially when dealing with the nagual. Correct on all counts, (but true knowledge is also contradictory, and it is this balance of opposites where our common AP hovers)



Memory on an energetic level is not limited by the biological form. It is the continuity of existence itself.
At some point don Juan put into as few of words as possible what the essential aspect of "sorcery" is. He said in so many words, don't have the quote at my fingertips, but

The average person sees reality as being first physical, then, if at all, as spiritual (or energetic). The sorcerer on the other hand sees the world as energetic first of all, and physical in a secondary way.

That is not the quote exactly I am sure, but what he said there also blends with my knowledge of the Quantum idea about the fundamental nature of reality. And that is that physical reality literally does not exist without and observer (attention-energy). It is attention energy which lies at the very fundamental basis of physical reality.

If the tree falls in the forest and nobody was there to hear it, then the tree did not exist, or the forest.

However I also feel that attention energy extends to so called "lower" life and all material, so the web of attention energy that maintains physical reality extends way beyond only that of humans.


edit - for "so-called", but don't expect me to explain all my edits, because I have the tendency to edit most all of my posts, in good conscience of course.

Last Edited by ehecatl on 08/31/2012 11:56 AM

I wonder how many of us have an original thought in our mind?

We are each a unique of accumulation and arrangement of memes acquired from others and our surroundings.

Definitely there is a pre-existing matrix of meme in which we exist. The memes have always existed, consciousness has always existed.

Our own unique personality is so fleeting in this eternal matrix that you should regard it as a mere focal point within the infinite consciousness of the NAGUAL.

Live in the NAGUAL is to walk with God. It works for me.

Castaneda may have invented a great work of fiction, but it was well researched from the anthropological perpspective, just as the Kolbrin Bible is an obvious hoax, yet a well researched and thought out dispensary of early Christian and Druid wisdom.

Would we be better off in our current life if every 10 years our memory was wiped clean and we started over ... learning language, mathematics, etc?

If we retained our memories or could at least gradually recall and incorporate them our language knowledge would be immense ... our recognition of mistakes and erroneous life "strategies" would be much greater. Our ability to comprehend the big picture would be much greater.

The disadvantages to constantly losing our knowledge are immense, IMHO. Far outweigh any "reset learning advantage" I can conceive. Perhaps for the heavy trauma situation? Maybe. But doubtful.

I think the Taoist are right when they say that immortality is simply the retention of memory from incarnation to incarnation ... and the Masters of Taoism seek this objective. A constant re-plunge into total ignorance and highly susceptible to faulty programming is a major impediment to enlightenment. I think the NEW AGE BS about every life carefully planned with individual life lessons to be learned is pure disinfo. Makes no sense when you really think about it.

Clearly, many, many creatures on this planet come into existence with far, far more active and useful memory from day one than we do. It dramatically improves their odds for survival on all levels.

Yet we come in completely and totally helpless and it lasts a long, long time relatively speaking.

And we interpret that as an "advantage" because of our "big brains" ... That just doesn't pass the smell test. It's justifying observation based on an erroneous assumption, that's all.

Ah, but that is different my friend.

Every 10 years in this life. This life is constrained by our unavoidable encounter with death. We recapitulate to get at the intent hidden behind the memories of our past experiences. We try to get back to remembering ourselves as straight fields of energy...un-contorted by a lifetime of abuse brought on by the conforming aspects of the internal dialogue.

So what would be the use of having access to memories that reached past birth/death?

The constraints of death are put in place at birth. Death exists because we intend it from birth.

Reaching beyond it to access memories of past lives may be completely unnecessary.

Look at me contradicting myself and defending a point. (sighs)

I appreciate your style and enjoy the exchange here ... You make a lot of great points. So, if we retained our memories before our incarnation, we would know for certain the following:

1. Life continues after death and there is much, much less to fear about death itself.
2. That life is eternal so we might as well get on with the work of learning useful stuff
3. We'd be far, far less vulnerable to predatory leadership
4. We'd, over incarnations, gain a much, much clearer picture of history

It would probably give us a radically improve leadership paradigm on the macro level.

More and more of the BS in our culture would be culled out and I can see a dramatic reduction of violence ... at least at the global war level.

1. Much, much clearer view of life and death, God, how it all works
2. Much less fear of death
3. Perhaps a clearer knowledge of the truly great mysteries
4. An understanding that we are all connected ... I was your brother of mother in past incarnations ... which reduces tendency for violence and division
5. Language!!!
6. The skills we had would be recalled
7. The big mistakes we made would be able to influence us positively ... and negatively perhaps
8. A much longer view on the human drama and situation ...

Think about how typically non-violent Buddhist countries are ... much of that comes from their views on life and death and the inter connectedness of us all.

True on all points. But considering that going to knowledge involves being wide-awake, with fear, respect, and absolute assurance....which co-inside with the three of the four natural enemies of mankind...fear, clarity, and power...

...perhaps that fear needs to be there. The lack of fear gives way to clarity. The lack of fear and clarity gives way to power.

So perhaps what we instead would have is a bunch of well-intentioned sorcerers that end up being consumed by the belief in their own brilliance as being the key to the accumulation of knowledge.

But then again we already have that so who can say for sure?

old age. The fourth enemy. If we knew for sure that we would be re-incarnated if we fail...

...old age wouldn't be an enemy.

Think of it this way...if we knew for certain we would be reincarnated...we wouldn't have to believe that the world is an endless mystery.

Death is an indispensable ingredient in having to believe.

What you're essentially saying is the "system" of incarnation is set up to "HELP" us ...

I hope you're right and I mean that sincerely.

Regardless, there is a way to win in this reality system. Thankfully.

The truth is that I have no idea what what I am saying. But I have to believe that I do.

I have pondered the re-incarnation idea myself. I wonder if the eagle's food actually comes from the eagles act of disentangling our awareness...or the consumption of the awareness after it is straightened out. Why does the eagle make the effort to straighten out awareness? Why doesn't it just consume it in its tangled form?

Or, perhaps, the sorcery "solution" is a response to a tediously difficult problem we all face that wouldn't even exist without the memory problem???

The argument that our species is simply not, as a whole, ready for a quantum leap in knowledge at the spirit level is interesting, to be sure. Of course, it's a great cover story as well.

Given the extraordinary manipulation and exploitation that has been going on for eons and the somewhat obvious "mystery knowledge" that has been handed down through the planetary leadership paradigm, I'm very suspicious.

Because we cannot peer beyond the "consume event" we have no idea whatsoever of what happens next. Sorcerers have turned it into a motivational event ... which is a clever way to handle it.

Consumption could just as easily lead to transformation as destruction, couldn't it?

But for a sorcerer, it's far more useful to fear and be motivated to never find out!

if you have any evidence to support your theory I would love to hear it, on the other hand I look at it more like a video game character having no knwowledge that they were created by developer included in the game that is the reality

Ain't that the terrible truth!?!?

If it took work to tangle up our awareness by compulsively and unwaveringly contorting our energetic spirit...and the act of re-capitulation releases the energy we spent on the contortion and makes it once again available to us...

...wouldn't it stand to reason that if we fail to do this while we are alive, the eagle would gain energy for itself by disentangling our contorted energetic beings? Wouldn't it gain energetic sustenance by dismantling the human form that we worked so hard to fix by a lifetime of energetic abuse?

A question well beyond my pay grade!

The answer is beyond mine...at the moment.

Reason is the problem here. I can't 'see' energy directly. I can feel it and intuit it at times, but I can't 'see' it as described in Castaneda's works.