sustained re action

[Mr X]

hello you,

to combine two threads i have thinking about, i am curious about two things, like an cat.

is there anything at all to suggest that carlos castaneda was anything other than an fraud who ended up being an cultie.

i like the train of thought of "so he was an fraud but why did he gather those particular concepts, what was the system he tried to make from other peoples stuff, what was the point trying to be achieved".

although generally speaking, i also do like the shallow approach - if you want to debunk carlos castaneda, just read his books. do you really think it is possible for people to do the magical things in those books, do you really belief an ancient shaman can dissapear into an inorganic dimension then return and become an nazgul vampire. can an car be moved by magic. for anyone who is reasonable it is easy to just say no.

the other thing i wonder aboot, and am combining with this thread to avoid making 2 useless threads, is - what did sustained reaction do wrong, how did it go so bad.

this is purely for wonder. i only have minor problems with how sustained reaction debunked castaneda, but otherwise i think they successfully did debunker castaneda. there does however seem to be and schizm.

i think there is something to be found in the examination of beliefers and non beliefers discussing things. something that sustained reaction had for an time. but then they lost it, and it seems "it" will never be recovered. not there, not here, not anywhere else.

what went wrong ? exactly.

that are my questions for this thread, born of curiously,

is there any value in castaneda, at all ? is there any value in the systems castaneda stole from, or any new age system ?

what went wrong at sustained reaction that made beliefers choose to stop interacting with skeptics ?

mr x .

[ju4o]

Hmmm... no replies to this entertainingly provocative post.  I think that talking in terms of an ancient shaman disappearing into an inorganic dimension then returning and becoming a "nazgul vampire" could tend to put believers off from replying.

[Mr X]

was there anything i said that was wrong.

i think i describe the situation to be accurate.

if you are to belief in doctor castaneda stories of cliff jumpers, you are to acknowledge the story of the interdimensonal nazpire.

if you are to think there is no such thing as an nazpire, you must explain the criteria of youre cherry picking.

there is also the questions of where did sustained reactions go wrong. i would say treating people as unworthy of voicing their voice is one of them.

mr x.

[ju4o]

Well you say "cherry picking" but there is a good rationale for treating Castaneda's first three books differently from the subsequent ones.

In his interview with Time (March 1973) shortly after he had published his third book,

"Now I'm at the edge, and I have to change my whole format.  Writing to get my Ph.D. was my accomplishment, my sorcery, and now I am at the apex of a cycle that includes the notoriety.  But this is the last thing I will ever write about Don Juan."

The "whole format" did indeed change after that ... not sharply and suddenly, since the first half of his fourth book is fairly similar in tone to his third ... but increasingly and definitely.

You mention "interdimensional nazpire" and I think that tracking occurrences of the word "dimension" in the books, and the increasingly odd ways in which it is used, would be a good marker for how Castaneda's change of format developed.

If we grep through the online versions of the books for the character string 'dimension':

in the first book TTodJ it does not occur at all;

in the second book ASR it occurs once, but in a reasonably ordinary sense: "When I moved my eyes away from his face and looked at it with the corner of my eye, so to speak, I could perceive his solidity; that is to say, I could perceive a three-dimensional person; without really looking at him I could, in fact, perceive his whole body, but when I focused my gaze, the face became at once the luminous object."

in the third book J2I it does not occur at all;

in the fourth book ToP it occurs twice; first, early in the book, in the ordinary sense, "Although I had no criteria to judge dimensions, I had had the feeling that it was about a foot long"; but the second time, near the end of the book, we have "Don Juan's voice brought forth another dimension to my state of being at that moment."

After that, dimensionality takes wing.

In TEG for example, "The sound of her voice seemed to act for me as a conduit into another dimension, another kind of time" and "Through the exercise of the third not-doing, Silvio Manuel gave a new dimension to our perception of the world around us" and even, "She said that a part of her last-minute instruction was to make me enter into the second attention as stalkers do, and that dona Soledad was more capable than she herself was to usher me into the stalker's dimension."

In TAoD, "the total mood of the dream changed and I would find myself in a dimension unknown to me" ... "the bluish blob of energy was from a dimension entirely different from ours" ... "He and his party were going to fulfill the sorcerers' dream of leaving this world and entering into inconceivable dimensions".

My guess would be that don Juan never actually used the word 'dimension' or its Spanish equivalent, and that where it occurs, it is Castaneda's invention.

[ju4o]

Also consider, (Castaneda interview in Uno Mismo, 1997)

As far as I know, nothing of what don Juan taught us seems to have a counterpart in Western knowledge. Once, when don Juan was still here, I spent a whole year in search of gurus, teachers and wise men to give me an inkling of what they were doing. I wanted to know if there was something in the world of that time similar to what don Juan said and did. My resources were very limited and they only took me to meet the established masters who had millions of followers and, unfortunately, I couldn't find any similarity.

I think a year's immersion would have had a marked and difficult-to-undo effect on the vocabulary he used for talking about things.

*edit* I mean, regardless of if he actually found any correlations.

[Mr X]

hello there mr ju4o,

"My guess would be that don Juan never actually used the word 'dimension' ' - j40

suggests dong juan exists, if you want to get caught up on words. you guess he didnt' use the word, or you guess he existes and didnt use the word. interested. cudos on use of the word grep.

i did with greatness enjoy the analysis you gave to the words, i have not seen such nice and easy castanalysis before, very well done, modern style.

when i said cherry pickings, i did not mean seperating the books. but i am aware that that is and thing people do. i can understand that some people prefer the shaman
side of things rather than the assembly point and nazpire cosmology.
shamans are cool, being part of the world but not part of it, looking inwards at the world and judging it
, looking outwards from the world to find solutions or anything, trying to communicate with the world in order to be part of it.
i already have an angle on some black market chinese peyote buttons incase i decide shamanisim to be the optimal path.

i wouldnt say picking the first few books from the other few books to be cherry picking. that is an different story. i would say modern total belifers do however cherry pick from all the books. it has been some time since i have tracked modern online toltecism, but i do remember the nazpire is part of the modern culture. even that ultra-douche, lujan, made it part of his shtick.

i can understand that you are saying as castanedas started making it up, he started using words his supposed intial informant would not of used. if the intial informant existed.

what happens if we change the word dimension to "other worlds, realms, perceptions, assembly positions".

if an nazpire were to be from an different dimension, or and different world, or an inorganic realm, does it make any difference ? it is still an nazpire. if total belifers belif in the total story, the nazpire is part of it. if that part is silly, but the rest is right, cherry picking is taking place. that requires to be explain.the explanation will always fall short due to the cherrys being from an tree that also grew nazpires.

explain to me how i am wrong. how can the branches of a tree not be bound by the trunk. how is the trunk not bound by the  branches.

mr x.

ps.
regarding the second post. i like that. but i strongly disagree about the difficult to undo thing. try it for yourself, it is not hard in infiltrate any number of cults without buying into it in any significant way. if, however, and person bought into whatever, then yes that would strongly infuence their speaking words, no doubt.

[ju4o]

"if ... part is silly, but the rest is right, cherry picking is taking place. that requires to be explain.the explanation will always fall short due to the cherrys being from an tree that also grew nazpires."

Why will the explanation always fall short?  I think sometimes the explanation can hit the mark exactly.

For example, here is an explanation of why Castaneda went off the rails soon after don Juan died.

The explanation is that he went off the rails because don Juan died.

Succinct and compelling.  In my opinion of course.  And, as you say, that is if don Juan existed in the first place.

[ju4o]

"there is also the questions of where did sustained reactions go wrong."

I have been thinking about that.  I think a key thing which made SR special was when there were a good number of people who hadn't made their minds up.  That isn't the only thing required for a forum to be good, but it is one of the main things.

[Mr X]

part 1 -

in the realm where dong guam is real and existed, in the realm where he exisited, every statement of 'don juan said this' can logically be followed by "and he belifed nazpires are real'

that is why the explanation always fall short, assuming belief is being done by total beliefers. if the total beliefers say one thing is true, they are also saying the rest of it is true. does even the most liberal middle grounder think all carlos storys are true, no.

in anti toltec lore, the nazpire is an central part of it, the central way of controlling other toltecs. i find it easiest to debunk the existance of the such and incredibly outlandish idea in order to dismiss the rest of the argument. =you think nazpire is real = everything else you say is invalid=

i find there to be nothing succuicnt or compelling about what you said. did he lose his rails because don juan died and left him alone and scared, did he lose his rails because don juan died when he wasnt meant to die but to instead achieve total freedom, breaking the ilusion in the way casta did when he himself died, did he lose his rails because the figure he made up was no more and now he had to compensate with newly fake storys to keep his career going, forcing him to branch off into made up crazy storys such as the assembly position. if we remove the idea that don juan was real, we need to restart the converstation.

i could go on. that does not suggest succinctness.

part 2

that does do seem to be an problem with the modern world. you think of something you dont know, you google on your phone, you now know, the world ends there.

when you and others started at sustained rection, it was still fresh, new, exciting. these days, i thinks, the true  beliefers wouldnt possible care to interact. the enhancers, the ones who who use casta to add to their life, dont want to hear why they are wrong. the non beliefer dont care because they have all the info from wiki, it would be like joining an forum to discuss why orange is the worst of the colours.

those that have not made up their minds, as intersteresring as they might be, i imagine they would be hard to find, and hard to entice. i do agree that they would be essential.

i do not think it is unreasoable to say - we cant recreate what made sr special.

however histroy does repeat it self.

who knows.

i dont know.

mr x.

[ju4o]

did he lose his rails because don juan died and left him alone and scared, did he lose his rails because don juan died when he wasnt meant to die but to instead achieve total freedom, breaking the ilusion in the way casta did when he himself died, did he lose his rails because the figure he made up was no more and now he had to compensate with newly fake storys to keep his career going, forcing him to branch off into made up crazy storys such as the assembly position ... i could go on. that does not suggest succinctness.

Well yes that makes it less succinct but those are alternative amplifications of the same basic idea.

It's only the basic idea (that CC went off the rails because dJ died) which is succinct.  As for which amplification is right, my guess is that he fell prey to the second enemy of the man of knowledge (clarity) but that is only a guess.

That clarity of mind, which is so hard to obtain, dispels fear, but also blinds.

'It forces the man never to doubt himself. It gives him the assurance he can do anything he pleases, for he sees clearly into everything. And he is courageous because he is clear, and he stops at nothing because he is clear. But all that is a mistake; it is like something incomplete. If the man yields to this make-believe power, he has succumbed to his second enemy and will fumble with learning. He will rush when he should be patient, or he will be patient when he should rush. And he will fumble with learning until he winds up incapable of learning anything more.'

'What becomes of a man who is defeated in that way, don Juan? Does he die as a result?'

'No, he doesn't die. His second enemy has just stopped him cold from trying to become a man of knowledge; instead, the man may turn into a buoyant warrior, or a clown. Yet the clarity for which he has paid so dearly will never change to darkness and fear again. He will be clear as long as he lives, but he will no longer learn, or yearn for, anything.'

That seems to describe pretty well the Carlos of the subsequent decades and dJ would never have allowed it.

[Mr G]

I'm still around, gents. I'm just not feeling very talky, I'll read your posts with interest.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI

[Mr X]

yes it does make it less succint. and yes i guess the basic idea is succinct. still does not seem very succinct though, but lets not get caught up in semetics.

you guess is, in translation, you belief there are enemys of mankind, as casta described, and casta fell prey to (because you guess the universe is predatorial). you guess don juan was real, and casta fell in one of the real pitfalls he did speak of.

you could also guess don juan wasnt real, casta got caught up in narcisistic culty behaviour, the end. no philospophy or extra thought required. but you guess man of knowing stuff is real. not that there is anything wrong with that, but in terms of people making their minds up can we say you are and somewhat beliefer, you lean towards it being real pre (im guessing) tales of power.

so that would mean you think don jian was real and casta went of the rails due to his death or dissappearance. he ran out of orginal source material and starterd fabrication ?

the fear clarity power knowledge things is interested. i do wonder, within his own context, if was not power that got him. its is commonly thought that that system stacks isnt it ? like you dont lose fear and gain clarity, you gain clairity and conquer fear. it is not an clean cut transistion. it would be easy to argue casta gained power in the real world.

mr x.

hello mr g,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDAFivGsKX4

[ju4o]

"so that would mean you think don jian was real and casta went of the rails due to his death or dissappearance. he ran out of orginal source material and starterd fabrication ?"

No he went off the rails because without the guidance of dJ he fell prey to the second enemy of man of knowledge.  If dJ hadn't died then Casta would've had more of a chance.

Hi G.

[ju4o]

G your reappearance has again been synchronous with something curious in the forum.

Since yesterday something has been buzzing in the back of my mind and making me feel that there's been something in this thread I should have noticed and didn't notice.  This evening I re-read the thread and found where it says

"the fear clarity power knowledge things is interested."

and that brings up a curious memory.

Once in these forums somebody listed the four enemies of the man of knowledge as fear, clarity, power and knowledge.

Which was queried, since in the famous passage in TTodJ the fourth enemy is given as old age.

The poster replied that in the text of TTodJ which they had, and which they gave the publisher and date of, the four enemies are fear, clarity, power and knowledge.

I found that really surprising.  Had the publisher made a mistake?  It seemed unlikely.  But it seemed even more unlikely that the publisher, or even the author himself, would have lost courage and amended the text deliberately.

It wasn't at all easy to get hold of the particular edition which the poster specified, but eventually I did, and opened it at the passage which talks about the four enemies.

Well, the text was exactly the same as in all the other editions that I knew of.

[Mr X]

it is curious. could you give more details on the person who claim it was in the books and what edition ? some more context.

perhaps it becuase there is fear/not fear, clarity - acting or not acting at the right times, power - using or not using at right times, old age - man of knowledge or not man of knowledge.
there is an duality in both enemies, the last one is associated with the man of knowledge. for my use of it, thats just how i think of it, when i do think of it. it has been

claiming casta fell prey to the second enemy of the people on the path of the men of knowledge, is saying there are men of knowledge, there is an path, there is an don juan. that is an lot to add onto the idea that one single human being became corrupted.

shirley it is easier, more straightfoward, and more likely, that he went of the rails for other, more human flaw type of reasons.

if don juan was real for an time, who taught him, julian ? it is an lot to say.

mr x.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtrEN-YKLBM