Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan’s Teachings

M: Wholly understood.

L: I will go back to sleep now. I will answer to the other mail later tomorrow after work.

————

Ed: Still chewing on the assemblage point post and have a draft letter in process. Very interesting subject. As mentioned previously, my experiences with “dreaming” have been limited. According to DJ, the “double” comes to one while in a dreaming state. To the best of my recollection, I don’t recall having experienced “the other” in dreaming. However, the following was quite an experience.

M: It might be useful to retain in cognizance that “the double” is only one of the components of yourself. It’s something like a matrix where components of self are not recognized per se and in that condition appear to be separate. The discussion on the assemblage point speaks to these matters.

Ed: My understanding of what you are saying is this: The ‘double” is just another emanation on the assemblage point and most of us are not aware of it. We probably have many such emanations that we are not aware of . The goal is to lose the human form and then we can gain “the totality of self” awareness.

M: Confirmed.

Ed: The year was 1979. I was working in Chicago. After I got off work one day I decided to replenish myself at my favorite watering hole. Before I went into the bar I saw a friend having a very animated discussion with someone across the street. However, I couldn’t make out who he was talking with. I yelled to him but couldn’t get his attention. Oh, well, I thought, it’s not really that important that I talk to him now. So I went into the bar.

Ed: I had been chewing the fat with the bartender for about a half hour when my friend walked in. I greeted him warmly and then noticed that his face was white as a sheet as he looked at me. He then turned around, went out the door and then right back in. “Ed, this is impossible, I’ve been across the street talking to you for the last half hour, so how did you get in here without me seeing you?” I assured him that I had not been across the street and had the bartender verify my presence here with him. But it was you, he insisted. At this time my assemblage point went to the place of no pity and I told him that was not really me, but my “double”, as if this explanation was the most natural thing in the world. I ordered another round of beer and then proposed two toasts: one for me and one for my double. We ended up having a big laugh over it. But deep inside I knew that we had both experienced something extraordinary.

M: There are two elements to this: your friend calling to you and forming your double, and yourself believing that this function is separate.

Ed: How could my friend form my double? Was he doing it through his intent? Was he hacilunitating ? I thought I was forming it on an unconcious basis.

M: Yes to all. He had a need, and summoned the component of you that you were not aware of. His need was probably quite intense, and contact with you was probably expressed as a dependency for him – you were a security blanket in a way of speaking. You, probably because of your relationship, probably unconsciousness, yielded to his need. His intent started the form by calling to you: you responded.

M: For reference, there have been many similar experiences in my own history that parallel your report above. At this point, though they are not inadvertent but intended.

Ed: Are you saying that your double does not form inadvertently but happens when you intend it to form? How is this accomplished, through intent, after losing the human form?

M: Yes, and yes. Since it requires energy to project and connect to, it must be used efficiently and sparingly.

———-

R: As for my last email about the assemblage point, etc., I’ve noticed today that much of what you said did sink in on just the, so far, one reading. Again, however, and not that it’s ever been called anything else, it is, as I see it, purely an intellectual exercise to discuss the transmission of individual attributes as DNA related.

M: No. That is not the case. It can be actually not just perceived, but “seen” as a component within the luminous cocoon. The explanation is primarily to describe what can be seen.

R: Wanting to add more such items as this last mentioned, and form a list (I’d already started numbering it and had to take out the first “1” as I didn’t have a “2”) I opened my compilation (in my real book edition) and was going to go to The Fire From Within where I know much of the “information about the universe” is located. But on opening the book, my eyes immediately fell on this (which did happen to be in The Fire From Within and right in the midst of exactly the stuff I was going looking for): “In order to corroborate the truths about awareness, you need energy.”

M: Yes. Said another way: ability. Ability always invokes some form of energy since intent invokes ability.

R: Let me search “truths” for a moment.

R: Well, this has taken an unexpected turn and I wish to copy the following which came up first with a search in the compilation of the word “truths” — again in The Fire From Within (where I’ve substituted “indescribable force” for Castaneda’s term “The Eagle,” as you may recall from the compilation’s “Forward” and, interestingly, my justification for doing that is in this section as well). Michael, I would very much like your comments on this as it includes parts about the unknowable which you have previously indicated disagreement with.

M: The disagreement is only from the point of what “can” be known. Anything, by definition that is not known is “unknown”, but to call something “unknowable” means literally that it can “never” be known and that is silly.

R: I would like to hear more about this as that part also strikes me as a contradiction in that — how could we know it was there if it was beyond our possibilities.

M: Limit the comment to “beyond an individual’s abilities at a given time” and it’s closer to the truth. There isn’t much limit to possibilities unless one chooses to direct self in that manner.

R: If there is something beyond our possibilities I would assume that we would never know it and therefore could only make statements about it such as, “there must be much beyond our possibilities.” So when don Juan says, as he does below, that “we must recognize the difference,” (between the unknown and the unknowable) how could that be. If we were able to recognize the difference, wouldn’t it necessarily be within our possibilities as otherwise, what would we be recognizing (as different)?

M: Anytime an individual simply accepts something as unknowable, then he/she sets a defensive boundary on their process because any boundary is a self-limiting exercise. Why not simply accept that anything can be known if there is sufficient ability and preparation to know it? This is a very simple concept.

R: Here is the section (below the ” ——-“), and I also want to note that the second half of this (following the “* * *”) is much the point I’ve been wanting to make these last two emails and which was, perhaps, is, — summed up in the above quote of, “In order to corroborate the truths about awareness, you need energy.” ———— “There are a series of truths about awareness that have been arranged in a specific sequence for purposes of comprehension. The mastery of awareness consists in internalizing the total sequence of such truths.

M: Yes.

R: “The first truth is that our familiarity with the world we perceive compels us to believe that we are surrounded by objects, existing by themselves and as themselves, just as we perceive them, whereas, in fact, there is no world of objects, but a universe of the Indescribable ForceÕs emanations.”

M: Yes, with the exception that it can be described in many ways, at least with analogies based upon experience.

R: “Before I can explain the Indescribable ForceÕs emanations, I have to talk about the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. The unknown is something that is veiled from man, shrouded perhaps by a terrifying context, but which, nonetheless, is within manÕs reach. The unknown becomes the known at a given time. The unknowable, on the other hand, is the indescribable, the unthinkable, the unrealizable. It is something that will never be known to us, and yet it is there, dazzling and at the same time horrifying in its vastness.”

M: There is an inherent conflict in the last of the above statement because what is said to be so terribly “unknowable” has the beginning of a description already stated within it. Therefore, when he said this, he described something for which he already HAD at least a partial description, and therefore there phenomena that was supposed to be so “unknowable” is being presented as partially known.