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carlos castaneda

carlos castaneda
Answer
4/11/10 1:43 AM
http://www.prismagems.com/castaneda/

Lists of each of the salient points made in the books about Castaneda. Basically, all the useful stuff minus the story telling which links it all together.

Some nice points on getting over self-importance which were good for me. Detailed instructions on exactly how to shift the assemblage point are lacking but that doesn't make it useless.

RE: carlos castaneda
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4/14/10 10:47 AM as a reply to C C C.
So you like Castaneda and you're serious about it, C C C? That's rare. Usually people disrespect this author.

RE: carlos castaneda
Answer
4/14/10 5:31 PM as a reply to Velvet V..
Comes with the territory when one is caught having falsified so much anthropological data. However, not having one's morality trip together doesn't necessarily imply problems with one or both of the other two trainings. He certainly seems to have some valuable things to say about concentration, though I am not familiar enough with what he says about what we would call insight to have an opinion about his advice there.

Thank you for posting the link! It will be very interesting to go through when I have some time. I'll bookmark it until then. My mother loves the Don Juan series, and I may send this stuff to her.

RE: carlos castaneda
Answer
4/14/10 9:20 PM as a reply to Velvet V..
velvet, yes it's a very nice style of writing. Style of writing is very important to me - it tells me a lot about the author and where he is at. Sure, most of it is unusable, but those little exerpts, some of them, are like rare gems. It talks mainly of reducing self importance and self talk. Whether it is fiction or not doesn't bother me too much, Adam. Some of the best spiritually-inclined writings are fiction, IMO. Fiction talks directly to the subconscious. Story telling gets under the conscious minds rigid barriers. If the message is good, you will know because it will make you feel good. I don't know if I'm allowed to mention a pop-psychology dude on here (I'll probably get shot down for being soft-core mainstream!!!), but some of Deepak Chopra's fiction writing is very good.

RE: carlos castaneda
Answer
4/14/10 9:36 PM as a reply to C C C.
Castaneda was a well-known fraud. I'd steer well clear of him. You can go directly to the writings of actual tribal Shamans if you are so inclined. And considering Chopra claimed that he caused the recent earthquake in Mexico by meditating on the Shiva Mantra, that warning goes double for him.

Sorry if I'm stepping on any spiritual toes here, but I get no vibe but a big load of phony from either of those guys.

RE: carlos castaneda
Answer
4/15/10 4:35 AM as a reply to mjk 10 93.
Why not try reading that Castaneda stuff and make up your own mind? You'll find it quite sensible. If he fabricated certain parts, what's wrong with that? Bit of 'poetic license' to make it more readable and saleable would be quite the norm I would have thought. Doesn't detract at all from the underlying messages, which are very good.

I met Chopra once. He just seemed like an ordinary dude with an eye for pretty women and expensive clothing and jewelry. I don't think even he would say he has attained any great spiritual insights. I got no vibe, (good or bad) being in his presence, and I'm pretty good at reading people. The Twitter thing was a stupid comment, wasn't it? His fiction writing is very good. The non-fiction stuff I find a bit generic and dull, but I don't throw the baby out with the bath water. I take the good bits and leave the rest.

RE: carlos castaneda
Answer
4/15/10 7:16 AM as a reply to C C C.
I read his books and they're really nice. I like his idea that there are other objective worlds, rather than side-effects of your practice that you can observe as visions. And I like how he didn't put it to the extreme. Usually it's either about no objective realms at all, or about everything that you see being objective. Although Castaneda leant into the second direction, he tried to verify things, I like it. No matter if it worked out or not, I like the trend. It shows that he really saw the two extremes. And I like the idea of other objective realms, no matter how childish it might sound.

Apart from that, his books aren't much different from other stuff around, in my opinion. Stop being attached to yourself and the world, find your "original self" by stopping monkey mind, gain ability of direct knowledge of things. The only difference is that he did it all to gain access to the worlds he believed in, not to attain enlightenment. And some of his methods are really strange although creative, like lying about yourself to others in order to stop being attached to yourself.

RE: carlos castaneda
Answer
4/15/10 4:18 PM as a reply to C C C.
C C C:
Why not try reading that Castaneda stuff and make up your own mind?


I read a ton of Castaneda as a kid. My local library had the whole set (right next to the "Time Life Mysteries" series and the Eck books - loved those too.) Finding out that he - and the Eck guys - were frauds was a big blow to my 12-year-old self. I think I started thinking of myself as an atheist (a materialist atheist, not the Buddhist kind) soon after that.

The fact is Castaneda didn't just fabricate some of his stuff. That alone would be disturbing enough. But the truth is far worse: It was basically all made up. All of the more interesting stuff in his books, the Inorganic Beings, the Focal Point, the Universe being a (somewhat predatory) female in search of the rare male essence etc. bear little to no resemblance to the actual beliefs of the Indian tribe he supposedly lived with, when he was actually in LA writing science fiction for New Age suckers to buy as fact. Castaneda learned well from L. Ron Hubbard's example and I consider them of the same ilk.

It's hard to let go of all the fantastic horizons we probably all saw as kids reading these books. Very hard. I don't think I've ever fully let go of them even to this day. There's always the glimmer of hope that somewhere out there another dimension, another reality, really exists and that somehow we can find it and this will cure our suffering. But as this is a Buddhist board I will point out that in Buddhism no experience, no matter how fantastic, is a cure for suffering. Even if Castaneda's world was real, eventually you would get bored with it. Only the letting go of experience is a cure for suffering.

RE: carlos castaneda
Answer
4/18/10 12:41 AM as a reply to mjk 10 93.
But that's my point, story telling (fiction) can still be very useful. AND, if you read the links in that website you will see how applicable to the real World his message is. It's all about overcoming self- importance and attachment to 'the known'. If his terminology freaks you out, just substitute 'buddha' for 'sorceror' and 'soul/spirit' for 'nagual', etc.

You criticize Castaneda for story telling, and yet Buddhism has a few mythological stories of its own, doesn't it?....and I'm sure its fair share of cults and control freaks. Even so, you can still filter through all the garbage and come out with the really useful stuff. Luckily Daniel has done that for us in his book. I'm sure as hell I wouldn't have had the patience to do the same.

As for Hubbard, anyone can see from a distance he was a control freak and probably quite deluded as to his level of spiritual accomplishment. Once upon a time, he probably did some concentration practice, saw a few aliens and thought "oh my god, this is IT!". All you'd need to do is look at the people who follow him to know his path is useless, and probably dangerous. Totally different kettle of fish.

RE: carlos castaneda
Answer
4/18/10 9:09 PM as a reply to C C C.
Yes, Castaneda wrote fiction but not innocently. He passed it off not only as genuine spiritual experience but as scientific Anthropology. That's a big difference in my book from the legends about the Buddha that developed over time as Buddhism spread to different cultures.

I think anyone looking for a genuine spiritual experience is wasting their time with charlatans like Castaneda and his followers like Dwayne Dyer, he of the endless PBS specials and $400 DVD sets. You are right, Hubbard's followers show his stuff is bunk, but Castaneda's #1 disciple today is just a New Age version of a Televangelist, right down to bragging about his mansion and swank lifestyle that "the Source" gave to him. So that says something similar about Castaneda's path, no?

Anyway if you think there's some kind of spiritual truth encoded within his fiction, I hope you find it. I doubt that there is.

RE: carlos castaneda
Answer
4/20/10 10:19 AM as a reply to mjk 10 93.
You can find 'genuine spiritual truth' in anything. Don't waste your time compartmentalizing.

RE: carlos castaneda
Answer
4/25/10 9:40 PM as a reply to k eng.
I'm just bumping this thread because I happened to attend a Deepak Chopra lecture last night. Someone bought me a ticket for my birthday - nice huh?!

Boy, has he taken it up a few notches since I last saw him! Previous lectures had been little more than a rehash of his latest book, with a bit of a bored presentation manner. Last night's lecture was astonishingly good, and I'm very critical when it comes to such things. Perfectly pitched, lots of cutting edge science (I read a lot of health-related stuff and it was new to me), useful practical ideas about happiness. Just a masterful presentation.

Deepak's 'thing', his talent, has always been to take spiritual and scientific concepts and make them appealing to a mass audience. To do this properly is no easy task. Firstly, the subject matter must necessarily be watered down, otherwise the mass market won't even look at it, let alone digest it. Secondly, the mass market are pretty stooopid! It has to be easily understandable. I'm just stunned how elegantly he conveys his messages without losing too much of the gist. Again, masterful. Only a couple of times during the lecture did I think to myself "99% of the audience ain't gonna get this" and it was when he was explaining the concept of 'entanglement' (as a quantum weirdness phenomenon).

Don't be put off by the fact that he is popular, successful and wealthy. Don't be put off by the fact that he sells books and CDs. There's actually nothing wrong with that. There is certainly no hoo-haa, no pushing of his products during the talk or afterwards. If you cry out that everything popular is bad, you would have missed the Beatles, ACDC, the Rolling Stones....and you never have "got the Led out". Sometimes people are popular for very good reason.

One last thing: integration. Daniel if you're reading this, Deepak's stuff on integration is really fantastic, even though he doesn't use that word. I like it because it integrates form day 1 - not waiting for great spiritual breakthroughs before one starts. He links this in to creativity, having fun and enjoying work. He is also big on achievement as a way of overcoming 'psychological stuff'. Sometimes I see people who have great insights, but they still have their 'stuff', their baggage. Being able to stabilize in Equanimity but being offended when someone cuts you off in traffic???? That's total bullshit! Unbalanced living is what i would call that.

I have no alliance with Deepak, don't work for him, don't know him personally. None of that.

RE: carlos castaneda
Answer
6/2/10 4:53 AM as a reply to C C C.
We can and must break his discourse into pieces.

1. Big frame : Tonal and Nagual(twofold), three attentions(threefold), assemblage point

2. Some figures common to other teaching :
Stopping the world(the internal dialog) = zen to silence
Not doing = mui (Chuang-tzu, )

3. His idiosyncrasy and his most talented thought : Passivity and Activity
This is most amazing and intriguing thought that other could not make.

There is the eleventh volume which did not mention 3 above. That is, he hid his essence
from mere summary(11th).

True summary, <abstract> or <ricapituration> of his thought is this Passive-Active sense.

RE: carlos castaneda
Answer
7/14/10 5:33 AM as a reply to ixtlan eleutheria.
http://www.youtube.com/vineofthesoulfilm <-- DVD on Ayahuasca, includes a medical doctor's perspective.

ixtlan, I found your post a little cryptic, but would like to hear more from you on this. I'm sure there's more you could say on Castaneda's work.