"When the Guru fails what happens depends on each disciple’s merits." --Sri Ramana Maharshi
In days of yore (not quite fully aware of what I was doing, I must confess) I left everything behind in search of The Eye of the Dragon. At the beginning of my journey, I came across the teachings of the ancient Toltecs of Mexico through the works of Carlos Castaneda. The wisdom of don Juan, a Mexican Yaqui Indian shaman, was a beacon, but in 2001 I came across derogatory information about Castaneda, which cast a shadow on his credibility and proved conclusively that many of his claims, (and to a great extent his work with don Juan) were fraudulent. At the time, I had verified a lot of what he had written about as fact, and the new and discrediting facts greatly puzzled me. They also forced me to question my findings and convictions, and to look in other directions to corroborate further.
Furthermore, it had been claimed that Castaneda had left this world in full consciousness taking his body with him, and the turmoil and utter disappointment that Castaneda’s ordinary death (due to cancer of the liver) caused in many of his closest followers, made me realize how blind human beings can be and how ready we are to miss a point and become either judges or victims. I am writing these notes with a double purpose: to help me get a better perspective and a new direction, and to maybe help a few others do the same.
Introduction
“We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness, which no one can make for us”—Marcel Proust
The intent behind Castaneda’s shamanic books was to help us become warriors who conquered themselves; warriors who developed an awareness of their full potential as human beings. Apprentices were grouped as ‘dreamers’ or ‘stalkers’ in an effort to classify them according to their abilities and energy configuration, but in fact they had to be both; ‘stalking’ helped ‘dreaming’ and vice versa. ‘Stalking’ was the art of developing a strategy to deal with the world as a spiritual warrior; ‘dreaming’ was the art of controlling your dreams to develop your ‘other’ self or the ‘dreaming body’. Stalking also helped in fixing the new position of the ‘assemblage point’ while “dreaming”.
According to Castaneda, dreams occurred due to the movement of the ‘assemblage point’ or ‘the point where perception is assembled’. This point (supposedly located behind us at arms length behind the shoulder blades) moves naturally while we sleep, causing our dreams. If we volitionally hold a new position while we sleep we are also stalking that dream and doing “dreaming”—the same thing we unwittingly do with this “dream” called life. Some call this process of controlling a dream “lucid dreaming”.
In Castaneda’s “world” I was a dreamer. And the “dreaming” experience that I am about to relate in the following paragraphs is an example of a ‘dreaming’ technique that I arrived at after years of practice, please follow me…
It was a quiet night in Southern CA; my neighbors were away and there was not a sound in their apartment. I could hear the branches overhanging my porch rustling in the cool summer breeze. I lay on my back, closed my eyes and, after the usual effort to overcome the barrage of meaningless, random thoughts, my mind drifted into silence. Keeping my eyes closed, I looked for the color orange. Soon an orange circle appeared. It expanded into nothing, appearing again to expand once more and once more and once more… Suddenly, a scene appeared! In front of me there was a building and a road. I noticed that the building had an architectural style that I had never seen before.
I thought that the vision would soon vanish due to my inability to hold it, as was usually the case. But to my surprise the scene stayed. I decided to try to hold it for as long as I could in an effort to train (using Castaneda’s terminology) my ‘dreaming attention’. Soon, it startled me to realize that the building and the dirt road in front of me were staying. I also understood that through that vision I could enter another world...a world perhaps as ‘real’ as my day-to-day ‘reality.'
As soon as the realization struck me I felt my consciousness being pulled into the vision. "I" was no longer in my bed or in my physical body, but in the covered back of a two-and-a-half-ton truck. I climbed down while disentangling my pants that had stuck somewhere--probably a trick of my mind to distract me since our reason will always feel threatened when unable to explain an event. I looked around. It was obvious that I was not in the United States; in fact, I was nowhere that I could recognize. The brick buildings were long and unfamiliar constructions. I walked down the dirt road trying to figure out where I was. It seemed hot, maybe tropical. I saw then a group of teenagers stripped to the waist, tobogganing down the slope of a dirt hill on pieces of cardboard. I approached them.
"Where am I." After I asked I realized that the young man I had addressed the question seemed to be mentally retarded, or perhaps suffered a speech impediment of some sort. His closest companion answered:
"Morocco!"
"Morocco" I thought.
After thanking them I walked on. I wanted to verify that my experience was actually taking place in Morocco; it is seldom that I am able to verify where I have been when "dreaming"; the places that I visit seem to be usually phantom worlds of my own making. It was a nice clear day. I seemed to be close to the ocean, although I couldn't see it. I saw some black men dressed in white garments, wearing little white round hats that covered only the crown of their heads. I walked uphill toward the park where they were talking around a long wooden bench sans a backrest.
As I approached them I surveyed my surroundings once more. The park ahead had grass that obviously had been recently mowed. I don't remember any trees although I saw long winding walkways through extensive terrain. I looked back to make sure I could retrace my steps to the 'truck', as if there was an entrance there to my everyday world. But I didn't need an entrance; shortly after I continued walking my "dreaming attention" left me and I found myself back on my bed.
I was baffled. Never before had I entered the dreaming attention in this manner. It was a new, exciting and unexpected development. I figured that "I" had gone somewhere...Morocco? And it had happened while I was awake; "I" had entered that vision, that 'somewhere'...awake!
Next morning I looked for Morocco in the World Wide Web; and there they were--the long brick buildings! And people wearing long white garments and little white hats. I couldn't be certain, of course, maybe the place I 'visited' wasn't Morocco. But that was irrelevant. What was relevant as a new development was my entrance into that world while fully awake. That meant to me at the time that by merely stilling my mind, I had been able to hold a vision (stalk it) and enter Morocco in my "other" self.
Hitherto, I had always entered "dreaming" by looking at my hands while having a regular dream. According to Castaneda, the volitional act of looking at our hands (or whatever) gives us the control of the dream and from then on it becomes "dreaming", a controlled experience as linear and real as in your everyday life but without the physical body, so nothing limits your movements. Therefore, the "dreaming attention" or "second attention" is a door to infinity, a door to the inner Self in you that is connected to Spirit, that is one with that Unmanifest.
According to the Upanishads, "As a great fish swims between the banks of a river as it likes, so does the shinning "Self" moves between the states of dreaming and waking." And also, "If you awake in dreamless sleep you awake onto the "Self." In other words that is who you really are, the Mind-Essence. Or, in Toltec terminology, we are being dreamed! That Mind-Essence projects everything!
The Upanishads chronicle the inspired teachings of men and women for whom the trascendent reality called Spirit was more real than the world perceived through their senses. They are an ancient part of Hinduism--around five thousand years old. In India they still have enlightened teachers, living in ashrams along the north shores of the Ganges River. In due course I'll tell you more about what I have found in The Upanishads, and other sources, that is parallel to the Toltec teachings. But now, please bear with me while I continue with my narration.
The "dreaming" experience mentioned before was indeed a new experience for me, and it opened doors that I didn't know existed; it gave me a new perspective. It took place for the first time a few years ago.
But since then I have come to understand that "dreaming," or any other psychic powers that we may develop, are irrelevant and even hindering at times. I have come to understand that there is nothing to accomplish, nothing to become; everything is here in front of us, now! This dream is for us to enjoy, and the 'path' to inner knowledge seems to be a difficult winding road because of the ego. To follow that 'path' has been compared by ancient sages to walking the edge of a razor because of our pernicious habit of self-reflection, which clouds our vision and turns our dream into a nightmare, or into sheer hell... In fact, the path and the goal are both here, now!
But let me start from the beginning...
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