Tensegrity Seminars

Los Angeles (7) - August 1995 [ 1995 Index | Previous | Next ] To:   The Ixtlan Mailing List Date:   Thu, 24 Aug 95 17:05 EDT Los Angeles Intensive Tensegrity Workshop, August 20, 1995 Combined Groups - Sunday Afternoon Lecture - Carlos Castaneda [Carlos entered about 10 minutes late, dressed in his "favorite suit". As usual the front row was filled with members of the party, including the two "alleged" scouts. It was never confirmed by the Chac Mools that these beings were in fact the scouts.] Today is our last day. Can you hear me? [Adjusts his wireless mike.] So we are down to the end of our three week road. Lots of people are unhappy because we didn't answer your needs personally. This was impossible. I told you at the beginning that I'd say disturbing things. You need to suspend judgement. It's an agreement between your energy body and the "it" that's going to take it. We can't be investors, can't think about "me". Don't give me this fucking crap about ego! You question what ego does. No, you haven't come away with nothing. You've been tapped at a very weird level, believe me. You'll remember what I've said; I've bypassed my mind, therefore bypassing yours. It's a sorcerer's maneuver. We don't practice this in the everyday world due to "me". Don't feel cheated. Don't ask accusations. Like, "Where'd you put those scissors?!", or, "Can't you see I LOVE you?!!" [Asked angrily/accusitorily.] I was in the office of a lawyer (also Groucho Marx' lawyer, at the time). He was an exquisite guy. A young woman was there who wanted to take her account away [Stop doing business with him.] "Don't you love me?", he asked. "Of course I do dammit!!", she replied, angrily. But that's what we do. In the question is the complaint. Most questions I've gotten have to with lust or sensuality. "What do I do with my lust?" I'd say to don Juan, in this tone of voice, [weak, whining, kind of like Peter Lorre], "don Juan, what do I do, I can't live without having a woman every day." don Juan would always reply, "Well, if the tone of your voice is any indication of the level of your lust, you've got nothing to worry about..." [laughs]. If we were really that lusty, we'd have 3 wives. "Is it right to look at someone's butt?" It's the mind, it's all mental. If you'd quiet yourself, you wouldn't be like this. Some mention my "complaining" about certain things. I describe a phenomenological process, I don't complain. One complaining guy asked me what the difference between his complaining and my own was. I'm describing a process. I asked him how he felt. "Awful!", he said. But I feel fine... Just like to my lawyer, whom I had to concoct stories about how my life is shit. Boy did he love me!. My right eye...can't see very well. Something takes me everyday [into my left side - the place of 360 degree vision, where I spin wildly, affecting the eyes]. How do I feel? People ask me how I feed my body when I'm away for a long time. You take it with you! Shoes and all. They ask me, "Well, why do you have to go?" But the more I try to put things to explanations, the worse I feel, like everyone else. Don Juan was abstract. We are exploding, we are the last link. Yes, we have all had long apprenticeships. But this is not the case anymore. We can't hold your hand. We give you the best of the explosion. We must have fluidity to face something new. At a spur of the moment (one woman called it "spurd moment", so I sometimes borrow that), so, at the "spurd moment" we must enter it, and quickly establish the inherent order. That's the agility I wanted to describe. It sounds stupid, but let your energy body digest it. I am a social scientist by definition, and choice. I wanted to write ethnobotony papers, so I looked for an indian. One anthropologist was like an usher. The reason that don Juan looked at me is that Bill, who'd introduced us, was going to die of a heart attack. One year later he died. (don Juan saw something in him that showed him he was going to die; when asked, he told me that once I learned to "see", I'd be able to do this too, but I still can't. I don't know what don Juan did.) So, I was introduced to don Juan by death itself. This was an important omen to don Juan, meaning the death of the lineage after myself. So, don Juan HAD to pay attention to me. Since sorcerers function only in the terms "it" dictates, he had to give me all the aid he could. He deviated the direction of my interest. I was student of ethno_____(?), a subset of ethnomethodology, and phenomenology. Alfred Shultz(?), author in this feild, which takes the world of everyday life as a serious topic of philosophical discourse. In his terms we are all stupendous sociologists of our own daily culture, so why not treat us as the experts which the sociologist can ask. [Not sure I got this last sentence correct.] There was a statistician in 1883. He measured the amount of horseshit left by carriages in Manhatten, and concluded that by 1923, all of Manhatten would be covered 2 1/2" thick of it. Of course, horseless carriages were invented, so his projection was thrown out the window. We are doing away with the rainforests... but we haven't taken into account the virus which will take us into extinction. I knew a woman activist who took out a 2 page add in the NY Times(?) blaming George Bush, etc, for deforestation. She herself has 5 kids, but...that's not bad. That's the flaw. She asked me to contribute. No! She's caught up in repeating a slogan. It sounds good, but has little meaning. The population keeps increasing. How do we solve this problem, by protesting? Where will we get our toilet paper? There are different levels of sophistication in how we argue and explain things, I told her. Most just go on repeating "slogans", mindlessly. This is not thought, it's just rhetoric. But it sounds good at first... So, I've digressed again... [Laughs a bit with front row, who seemed to be signaling him when he digressed too much]. So, I go to a tailor, and learn to look like an ethnomethodologist. Learned to say one word, and chew on lip like this [demonstrates, look of serious thinker, audience laughs]. I encountered, and was greeted by this man - the opitomy of everything I didn't want to find, but the ultimate experience for me. I was well prepared to take him seriously once I passed my barriers...ego. I was prepared to take him dead seriously, but he had to work on me. My resistance was like yours. We purport to be adventurers, but we freeze at any real newness. I asked don Juan obscene questions, just like you. I complained, "I drove 1500 miles to come see you, and you tell me nothing, except to make fun of everything sacred." He was just pointing out the flaws. But, he loved to laugh, so he was aggressive in pointing them out... He'd whack me - one blow and I "moved". Then, he presented an extraordinary way of relating to the universe, infinitely more inclusive than that of my grandfather. All he did was to teach me to be an egomaniac, to live a useless life and to die a useless death. Cancel it! Kick yourself! They "bang" you in to this state, so "bang" yourself out. They made you like that! Don Juan gives me a format, the "Warrior's Way". It defines what sorcery is. No incantations... I refrain speaking of the Catholic Church, but that's easier than speaking of the American Indians - a very touchy subject these days. But they deforested plains, and burned U.S. land. There's nothing sacred, nothing spiritual. Ritual. We fall prey to all those things. Something is dictating our beliefs. Why the anguish? They are merely placebos which keeps us in line, and prevents us from examining. We see the flaw in someone else, not in ourselves. I've seen Mexican Americans collect $3000 in parking tickets. Professionals. But what's the definition of the problem? One of the most difficult things in the world is to get Argentineans to see the truth. Why? They are the best in explanations. The joke is that there's one psychoanalyst for every Argentinean [laughs]. I had a friend, whom I tried to help. But there's a limit to what one can do without your cooperation. [gives strange look, stands back, starts laughing, again, with the front row]. Now I really lost the thread! The first law of sorcery. The ego...causes "stiffness". Then comes the explanation. We are capable of seeing energy as it flows, therefore to see humans as a conglomerate of energy fields, held by a mysterious cohesive force, the result of which is the luminous egg. We describe the phenomena of "aperceiving" energy as "seeing", although it's not ruled by the eyes, but rather every bit of your awareness. Since we are predominantly visual in our perceptions of the daily world, hearing is minimal, and smell and taste don't exist, everything is funneled to visual expression. So, for the purposes of explanation, we say it's, "visual, and then some". Sorcerers have been doing this for thousands of years. It's the only way to see a human. We can't see us as an aura, or as a "cerulean light", those are just explanations/interpretations. There is only one way to walk, bipedally. But, how long does it take us to learn? Years. So it takes years to gain...or regain actually, the capacity to see energy as it flows, without interpretation. The moment we interpret, we have the world of everyday life. We gloss agglutination of detail into single units of endless glosses. It took us forever to learn to agglutinate "room". Within "room" we can take a "wall", etc, as smaller and smaller units of glosses, ad infinitum. This is the way we've learned to interpret sensory data as perceptual solicitation and come up with the world of everyday life. For sorcerers, the world of everyday life has no meaning, except as an agreement we were forced to adopt. Look what we do to autistic children, who can't make "room", who can't gloss. We put them into institutions, drug them, shock them, etc. I almost became a lay-analyst. But it was too overwhelming. Just think - I could now be analyzing your sexual dreams! I'd be "Dr. Katz". [laughs] Now I've REALLY lost the thread. Where WAS I?! [laughs] We construct glosses of meaning, perception, and intentionality. We intend a room before it becomes a room. Autistics can't fix their assemblage point long enough to matter. I made an autistic talk once. But my professor flunked me, as I didn't follow methodology. We can lend them the position of our assemblage points. But we can't do it with "processes". We do it with a "channel of affection". The child hooks and rides on your assemblage point position. What is the assemblage point? The assemblage point is a point of intense luminosity, visible without eyes. We "sense" it or "see" (underlined) it in the luminous egg. The egg is the size of me, extended an arms length in all directions. The art of sorcerers is to tap you from below and make you float, as we are encrusted in the matrix of the earth. Duty is affection, exquisite, for sorcerers. It has nothing to do with the ego. It comes from the abstract, unknown, eternal. Irrefutable. They tap, you float as an energetic bubble. The assemblage point is there [holds arm out, pointing to spot between shoulder blades, at arms length back, directly behind the body], Perception is "assembled", hence the name assemblage point. It's not a "theory". It's a conclusion made by sorcerers based on observation. Billions of energy fields at large converge and go through the assemblage point, producing the world by indescribable means. This position produces the world of everyday life [indicates same position, between shoulers]. But out "there" [points to another spot], there are other sets of energy fields/filaments, coming from every conceivable direction. When the assemblage point moves, and the filaments converge there, we have a different world completely. It's still within the luminous egg, or the realm of man. These worlds can be obscure and bizarre, but they are still a part of us. I read LaBarre(?), Schlotke(?), experts on peyote. Big texts, thick books. Three of them I read, then I was an "expert" [laughs]. I told don Juan, I can be very convenient to you, due to my knowledge of peyote. Don Juan didn't read, he saw direct, no mind processing. Don Juan said that the luminous egg is the epicenter or core of the sorcerer's tradition. Sorcery is not [performs funny indian chant/dance, "hiya hiya hiya hiya"... laughs]. People hate me for doing that! But I'm not making fun, that's not the answer. When we face our death, we will not be alone, dying of cancer. There are horrible things in store for us. It's a choice. It's our choice not to be offended. You get out what you put in. What sorcerers get is a moment of despair. Don Juan gave me hallucinogens to get me to this despair. If we are not desperate, we don't get enough--we are cheated. Why would we try, if we are happy in our daily lives? So far, I've been incapable of creating this sense of desperation in others. You either have it or you don't. How do I disentangle people's love of ego/daily life? I like to give you all the treatment of a final being. Like the 10-year old girl. I can't conceive that she doesn't know what she's doing. She does, even if it's at a different level. I respect that. Sorcery is the art of cancelling the system of interpretation which renders the world as we see it. Cancel it, and energy flows to you. The sorcerer cancels long enough to see this. It's what makes us sorcerers. What's a shaman? He contacts his spirits, drinking Coke with his tobacco... This cancellation takes immense effort and despair. If daily life is OK, then why would you bother? We get complacent. It's impossible for me to break the "line of complacency". But not for you. Don Juan said to me, "You have to do something extremely nihilistic, or else you'd just put it in your bag of notes, and become a professor, dazzling your students with all your research. He said, "You have to leave your friends; they know you so well, you've never been alone in your life. Go rent a room by yourself, and stay there until you die". I asked him, "What is your criteria for being 'dead'?" He said when being in company, or being alone doesn't mean anything to you. Think of it as only "temporary", he said. "Then you won't fret. Think '50 years temporary'". So, that day, I got rid of them. I was happy, but when I got to highway 365, it hit me. What will I do? Go back to what I know...routines. It took me three months to come to understanding/peace. Don Juan had succeeded in creating a sense of despair. I was morbid, not desperate. I had the despair needed to jump over the fence. People ask if they need to move to L.A. to become part of the group. We are not a group. We are navigators. We are each responsible for our navigation schedule, and chart. These groups get us together, but we are not "friends". I think that we like each other, but I am not so nice - my "Latin" comes out, at least when I'm not in my suit. We follow the line of duty. It turns into the most static affection, but not that of the "investor". We don't work together doing exercises of sorcery - sitting every night, naked! Dreaming with a different...dreamer...every night! [laughs] We don't do that. The explosion I offer you is an expression of the "last link", a world to be discovered. No more tradition. This world is defined as it develops. It's becoming more and more aligned. I see energy, but I don't know why, so it balances me. So what? The advantage is knowing how to navigate, how to disentangle ideality for a moment. To use it elsewhere again. The discovery of the assemblage point is what made the ancient sorcerers powerful. But for generations they went bananas figuring where to place it and how to fix it there. Thus emerged the arts of dreaming and stalking. Dreaming is the art of using the natural process of sleep to displace the assemblage point to new locations, and stalking is the art of affixing the assemblage point in the new position in order to assemble bona fide, new, all inclusive worlds. They became so versed in fixing the position of the assemblage point that they ended up in the new positions, staying there, never coming back. It's like skins of an onion. There are billions of possible positions, but not all of these give us all inclusive worlds. Don Juan figured that about 600 of the positions were worlds, the rest were phantoms, they were "too fast", and didn't have enough "meat" for us to hold on to. Not that don Juan ever got to them, but the sorcerers of antiquity did. Even if I only enter the 6000 skins of the onion, it's infinitely better than dying of cancer. Give it to me... We get to a certain age, and there are no more mysteries. This is not new. This is not a platitude. I'm not like the guru I told you about, that I met that that, who was massaging the young man's balls... When I asked her what she sees in the mirror when she's alone at night, her response was, "the great secret is...not to be alone!". How absurd. But "what do I do with my lust?" If you are worrying about it, you don't have it. With that energy? It's a lie. Come to grips with what you are. Without our mother's having a huge orgasm when we were conceived, we are all "bored fucks". So, go ask your mommy. Lust is diminished with liquor or pot. They are not the ingredients for any kind of physicality. Doing that is fulfilling their bidding [flyers], not our bidding. The first art, Dreaming, is the art of using dreams as bona fide gates of perception. It's the condition of harnessing "dreaming attention", or art of fixing the attention in dreams on different objects in our dreams, systematically. It's a disciplined way of reminding that you must look at objects. Just a glance, staying on objects as long as possible until it starts to dissolve, then you switch, and repeat, until there is no more attention left, and you fall asleep. Something in us records our effort; we get better until we focus attention on anything we want - 100 objects... Dreams follow the natural movement of the assemblage point. It moves a great deal, or only slightly. When the assemblage point moves to "phantom" positions, we experience a regular dream. One day your assemblage point will be in a key position. By then you've harnessed your dreaming attention, and can focus on as many objects as you want. The energy body knows the threshold - how many objects you need to switch between. Suppose mine is 16 objects. I focus on 16, afterwhich I am in a different world, providing my assemblage point moved to one of the 6000 positions. Don't despair. One day it will move to one of these "meaty" positions. At that point you'll know your threshold. You'll hear, "16 objects". There are two choices; one is to explore the human unknown, the positions within the luminous eggs. The other is the unknowable, which can only be known partially. This is the realm of the new seers. The 2nd art, is the art of fixing the assemblage point at the new position. You've fixed at phantoms enough to have weird dreams. But by the time you get to the meat, you've become versed enough to know how to fix your assemblage point there. Then, off you go. The danger is in getting trapped. You move bodily, permanently. The old seers couldn't get back. But when travelling outside the egg, the abstract doesn't want you. "You" do. It's human indulgence which pulls and traps us at points within the human unknown. The sorcerers of antiquity, although lost, are "in heaven". Best of possible worlds. But, not for don Juan's mentality. Don Juan's purpose was total freedom. Freedom is defined as the capacity to let awareness grow to full length. The sorcerers of antiquity were still subjected to the flyers' devouring. [Makes a motion showing they had risen to about chest level, but were not complete] When you grow fully, it turns to fire; exquisite. Impossible to conceive. What did don Juan do? No possible idea. He was enhanced a million-fold. This is why it's called, "the great adventure". Dreaming and Stalking. Nothing to do with playing tricks. It has to do with YOU. There's no way to teach, just point. You do work, no exercises. You'll be guided by the "explosion" of the last link. THAT'S the proposition. So, if we can perceive energy, then possibilities are...I can't even say that. Each filament is eternal, extending into infinity. We can't sustain that view for more than several seconds, then we are back to interpreting. But this pause allows us to change. I am not a believer/follower/teacher/guru. I have come here everyday to talk to you. It is my duty. My duty to explain. But to do this without gain. There's nothing you can do for me. Don Juan was the first being I've ever met, who needed absolutely nothing from me. That's the beauty. People come here trying to debunk me. They are compelled. How tragic... Six thousand skins of the onion is one side of the fence. The other side is the world of the beings which are possessors of awareness, but not organism; the inorganic being's world. These are twin forces that make up a whole; a holistic unit. We have not been reared to notice the inorganic being side. If we do, there is more energy available to us, just like the demonstration I showed you, where one push moves the energy to different sides. Where's the guy I did this to? [guy raises hand, he scans audience for a second, until he sees him] THERE! You felt weak, then strong, right? [The man answers, "Yes, I did - not only that, you half-cured my cold!"] I may have pushed more energy back than you had... We are in a constant fight to agglutinate our energy to the center, to our adrenals, where it is most useful, but something is constantly fighting to diffuse it to the periphery. Sorcerers have said to avoid an overemphasis in the inorganic beings. So why do I believe the opposite? I am forced to conclude the fact that we are drawn to indulge is accident, or decision of flyers. It's not possible to avoid parts of the universe that is indispensable. That's denial. To deny is to injure. Something keeps me from making this contact. If I did, I wouldn't be so weak. Looking at the body, sorcerers see a counterpart/twin. Where is this counterpart? For some it is close, but others don't have it. Why? If this is truly a twin universe, why is this counterpart in Japan? Something has connived to push it away. The more disciplined you are, the closer your energy body is to you. The contact is via your assemblage point. The "dreaming body", or energy body (they mean the same, but I like to call it energy body; dreaming body assumes we make it in dreaming, while energy body is more abstract) has an assemblage point, too. Via dreaming, one can get close to the energy body, but not via lucid dreaming. The energy body gets closer by practicing dreaming, or exercising your dreaming attention. Twin universes are not excluded. We are holders of dualisms. Body and mind is not a dualism to sorcerers. The body and the energy body is a dualism. It's important to bring an entity to bear witness on everything you do. This entity is your death. It reduces pettiness. We shy away from this. To use the totality of our possibilities we need to define the problem. So, unless we incorporate the twin universe, we are merely limping, not walking. This doesn't mean that tonight the inorganic beings will grab you in your gonads.... [laughs] "What to do? You told me they were feminine..." Some of you are going to navigate...there is beautiful energy here. Some won't be satisfied with any of this. There is nothing that I, or anything outside of you can do to help. That's why we are giving "diplomas". The Chac Mools think these will be valuable someday, so they even numbered them! So, when you send me questions, send me your code, 1 in 178 for example, I know who you are. I'd love to include everybody, but it depends on absurd lines -- choice. So why not make our choice freedom? Don Juan's theories are not theories. They are conclusions, final to them. We like to include mankind in the totality, so I guess you could say we are "Catholic" in this regard. Our perceptions are limited by culture, and history. Don Juan said there's infinitely more. But, you have to do it yourself. Don Juan gave me pointers. He said, "Don't take my word, DO IT!" Use this seminar as a beginning. If you are desperate, the desperation will find an opening. Don Juan said, "don't believe, just do it!" Do the passes, adjust as much as you can, remember them kinesthetically. Then, whatever premises I've spread directly to your energy body will come to the surface. Then, we'll do more, much more. [At his point he paused, at which point one person from the audience asked him about the Death Defier, the proposed topic of this lecture] As part of don Juan's lore, the "Death Defier" was...is...there was one person who appeared in 1725, who went to see the nagual Sebastian, who was a sexton for a church in Tula. The nagual could work in the church and was safe there. He took care of bells, and other property at the church. One day an old indian came to him and said, "I need your energy, or else I will denounce you as a practitioner of the black arts..." Of course with this, Sebastian was compelled to listen. The indian wanted energy from only the nagual. We all have an umbilical, the belly button. We all die from here, it's a deadly place, a hole in the energy body from which life force escapes upon death. A nagual has twice the energy of a normal man, so the indian said that to give a minimal amount would do him no harm. This indian was actually a sorcerer from 7000 years ago, he lives today by placing his assemblage point on different points, getting a "mortgage" on life. He moves his assemblage point to a key position, which gives him an insect-like quality. He then draws energy from the belly-button of the nagual, and has a "sac" into which he pulls this energy. His assemblage point then returns to the habitual position, then he's like everyone else. He didn't need energy until 1725. Then, he became fixed to the lineage. He gave in exchange for the nagual's energy, gifts of positions of the assemblage point. Knowledge about how to attain these new positions, and what to expect. Sebastion was extraordinary. He received 8 new positions from this "death defier". Lujan got 52 positions! But this was not for don Juan, he was not interested in the death defier's gifts, nor was I. But he tapped me, he couldn't help it. Munched me to death, don Juan said. I was willing to half-believe what don Juan was saying about the existance of the death defier. Corn was found in Mexico which was carbon-14 dated to 34,000 years ago. The first migration into Mexico suposedly happened only 10,000 years ago, and were simple hunter/gatherers. But don Juan said this was not true. He said, "we both have ways of measuring time; you measure, while I...ask." One day don Juan said he'd take me to see the death defier. No problem, it's all horshshit, I thought. So he took me. Scared the living daylights out of me. I met this Indian with the weirdest accent. The accent was on all the wrong syllables. If a word had the accent on the first syllable, he'd put it on the second. But he did it so consistently as to convince me it was genuine. The man was thin, wiry. He drove me nuts talking like that. He told me, "My eyes have feasted themselves on the helmets of the Spanish conquerors. I saw them, how they moved. I felt their discomfort, and felt how they had to sleep with their helmets and armor on, I felt their pain. I've seen incredible things. What do you want?" "Nothing!", I replied. "But we have an agreement. With you, it will be difficult, for you are the last..." Of course, he somehow knew I was to be the last nagual in this line, yet I myself didn't know it at the time. We met in a town in Mexico, it was a Saturday. I ate cheese with him, seemed very normal. We took a walk. The next thing I knew I was waiting for don Juan to pick me up, and I'd had no idea what had transpired. I left with a sensation, tremendously old, musty, kind, foreign, unthreatening. This weird nostalgia. It's been as if I'd been involved in a fight that had no end. This is the first time I truly realized that there were things with no end... I woke up in a peculiar town. There was a paved road, which sloped high in the middle, a "1st gear" road. The first thing you see walking up this hill is the hats of the mexicans on the other side. It was a peculiar sensation, a "cinematic" one for me. So, I was watching that... (By the way, don Juan found this town to be the epicenter of "energetic convolutions".) I was waiting for don Juan with this sensation of nostalgia, but not for my life or past, it was foreign. So old, sad, yet charming, haunting. It's never left me, I'm always playing with that sensation, the neverending fight, with no possibility of looking for a lull. don Juan said it was poison that the death defier left me. It was like being prone, being ready, as if something is coming. A foreign feeling. The next time I found the death defier, was at nearly the end of don Juan's life. A small church in Tula - met a gorgeous woman. I had much fear at the prospect, don Juan had to literally drag me to the church. There were two women nearby, with 3 men coming out from the church. The 3 men went down the stairs, and the two women went inside. "Where is he", I wondered to don Juan, "the men left." don Juan responded, "Who told you that the death defier is a man?" He pointed to the woman in the last pew. don Juan emplored me to "cross" myself, to observe the customs, and not to make a spectacle. The woman turned and smiled. At this point I ran out of the church, falling prey to a bout of asthma. I'd had asthma when I was a child... don Juan asked me, "why this fear?" My family name is Carlos Arana (pronounced "Arania"), and in portugese, Arana means "spider". don Juan asked, "What's wrong, Mr. Spider?" The more I walked away, the more tachycardia (irregular heartbeat condition) acted up. Then I got insane and simply said to don Juan, "OK, lets go", and went back to the church and sat next to the woman. She had a raspy voice, as she greeted me and held my hand, "I like your energy...muy bien." She took me to dreams upon dreams - 9 days I was lost, although I thought it was one. don Juan told me that I'd came to agreements that I'd not be aware of until I was "fully grown". The death defier is as real as me or don Juan. Different, but bizarre possibility which is available to us all, not that we'll take it. The human unknown is as far away as anything, but it's still within our realm of possibilities. Wow! Who are we?! Are we just some travellers caught in some disgusting trap? Maybe. For me, I saw the death defier and don Juan as navigators. I navigate, therefore who are we? Why accept what's been handed down--nagging, senile, discontent, repetitive, with endless regrets--no desicions whatsoever. "I decided to come to this seminar--if it's chicken-shit, then so be it." That's the sorcerer's way. "Oh, I didn't get personal treatment..." People come, at the first twist, they tell us to go "blow our barracks". We've got to get rid of the ego, I say, but then it's, "Fuck you". We've got to be as sharp as a razor, go slowly at first, then you can jump. Don't give me this, "I volunteer for your group, take me, take me, I'll do whatever you want..." Stop being an egomaniac, I say. "Oh, I'm so disappointed, Carlos...no peyote in the desert?" Last night I invited for you to read up on your "heritage" (writings of the Bible, Jesus, Mohammed, etc), and look for the "me, me me". It's a man talking for God. It can't be personalized. The minute it is, we inject "me" into it. What is heaven? Humanness for eternity? We don't want it! What is the Pace of heaven? I'm in a toga, walking like this [walks torturously slow for several steps]... Then comes the death defier. An outstanding male of his time. The inorganic beings are also blasted by flyers. There's nothing they'd like to do more than to unite with us. But the only ones brave enough are the sorcerers, as beings wanting to enhance their wareness. You profess to be who you are in their realm, and they grab you! How else would they do it, as they have no way of making themselves known. We are being systematically separated [from the inorganic beings] by the flyers. don Juan said that the inorganic beings were dangerous. The death defier got grabbed by the inorganic beings, but he accepted the bidding. He spent thousands of years in that world. One day this ultimate freedom fighter discovered the way to escape. Turn into a woman! This is simple for a sorcerer. A woman has her assemblage point with its "shiny" side facing inward, while a man's assemblage point has its shiny side facing out. All one needs to do is to turn the assemblage point around, and your whole body turns into something else. It's not merely an illusion. As a woman the inorganic beings didn't know he existed, and he simply slipped by without notice. In making a deal with the inorganic beings, he lost his possibilities. But now hes' caput. I'm the last of the line, so what will the death defier do? He'll go with me, I'm his last chance. It gives me the goose bumps. Infinitely more exciting... So, this death defier has escaped twice! First death itself, then the inorganic being world. I get emotional. What beauty/elegance. He chose not to be human, but is still a being who's going to die. He knows only fighting, it's a story, but NOT a story. He's everyone of us, but enhanced by his thirst for freedom. I don't think the death defier truly knows what freedom is, but so what? He goes to something not defined. That's why I try to sneak out of it [talking about the death defier]. I would weep like an imbucile. Don't you dare believe that I wouldn't... I had a chance to do this with my father, an awful man. He hunted with my grandfather, he had all these whistles, bird calls, that he hung around his shoulder. One time he shot a duck, and he later made me go cut it down from a eucalyptus tree. But by then it was old, and had lice all over it. I hated my father. At one point, don Juan told me that I had to go see him. I went. I was greated at door, but didn't speak the language. "Piloto Arana". He answered the door. He was older, elegant. "I came to see you", I said. He was civilized, exqusite. "Would you like some tea, coffee? Now you tell me who you are, and where we've met...", he said cordially. "OK, but once I tell you who I am, I won't have to tell you were we met..." [chuckles] "I'm Carlos, your sone, and I've come here to bury the hatchet, lest I despise you all my life." "You've been involved in a unilateral fight. You've fought, I've forgot", he said. He invited me in, but made me agree to keep my true identity secret.. I truly liked the man. He was a great reader. He even had Carlos Castaneda's books as part of his collection. An exquisite man, kind, diplomatic. But his cognitive system "knew" the reason I'd come, it had to be to ask for money. I grabbed him by the arms to express my most profound affection for the man. His daughter came in, and saw this, and must've been surprised, no man had touched her father like this. I then looked into his daughters eye's and said, "I wish I could have had a father like you, growing up..." [By now Carlos, and half the audience was nearly in tears, it was a very emotional story] But...stop it there. Freeze the moment, and you'll have the moment forever. As beings who are going to die. Goodbye, kisses to you all. [Standing ovation, as the party joins him, quickly departed through exit on the left side of the auditorium.] Carl Johnson [ 1995 Index | Previous | Next ]

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