The Death of Carlos Castaneda: Fact or Fiction?

"REALITY IS A PROGRESSIVE BELIEF"

The words above come to me as I am trying to fall asleep on the summer solstice of 1998.  We had just learned of the death of Carlos Castaneda, though just as his life was a mystery, so is his reputed “death”.  It happened on April 27 at his home in LA.  According to the LA TIMES, the body was cremated immediately & the ashes taken to Mexico.  No funeral, no body.  Just the word of the doctor & his agent.  Did he really die at all, or has he merely broken ties with this world completely in order to be utterly “free” of consensual constraints?

We don’t realize how bound we are to this society just by virtue of being alive, being human.  We are expected to behave in certain ways because we are human, & so we do.  If we live, we are expected to age, to become sick & finally die – and so we do.  Merely by virtue of being alive we are already condemned to death by the programmed belief system of the entire world – a belief system that has nothing to do with religion or culture, but the belief system which is the foundation of Man himself. If one person knows you are alive, you are then bound to this belief system through all 7 billion people on earth – i.e., you do not need to be seen as Jack or Jill or Carlos, but only as human to be trapped & condemned by the energetic constructs of those (false) belief systems.

I see this as a higher truth that can’t be ignored if we really do intend to evolve beyond the social hive, beyond human, beyond the eagle's reach.

If I see a man on the street, a stranger – I automatically make certain assumptions that do not even require conscious thought, that are literally a part of the foundational belief system of the entire human race.  For example, I automatically assume that the man is human, going thru a life that is “normal” to him.  I assume he was once a baby, then a boy, then a man – and all of these assumptions lead to the belief that he is a creature living inside of time – he was born, he grew up, he will grow old, & he will one day die.  Without knowing anything at all about this stranger, I know his entire history, his entire future.  And just as I believe these things about this man, so does everyone else who sees him. Indeed, the man believes these things about himself, and even accepts the beliefs as irrefutably valid, so no attempt can be made to even try to refute what is seen, known & accepted as irrefutable.  This stranger on the street is a victim of all of mankind’s belief system just by virtue of being human & recognized as such by me when I see him passing by me on the street.

Perhaps the only way to be truly free of such belief systems is to be already dead – or at least to be perceived by your fellow man as already dead.  If I see a man on the street who looks like Carlos, but it has already been “irrefutably written” that Carlos is dead, then I automatically assume that the man is not Carlos, but a different man who might look like him.  I “condemn” that man, perhaps, but at the same instant, I free Carlos, allowing him to be “dead”, & therefore automatically consigned to those realms of thought & speculations which exist beyond human consciousness.  IOW, I “trap” the stranger on the street in the web of consensual beliefs, but at the same exact moment, I say to myself, “It’s not Carlos, for he is already dead, and I hope he made it past the eagle.”  In short, because I do not know what happens to a man after death, I cannot trap him into any consensual belief system.  Only after the man is perceived as “already dead” do we stop making automatic assumptions as to his past, present & future.

Throughout his books, don Juan teaches Carlos about the damage done to a man merely by virtue of existing inside the hive of any social structure.  But how can any man be truly free of it.

Point is… if Carlos found himself in a position to program the hive to already believe him “dead”, perhaps he has truly slipped past the eagle – that strange & inexplicable “entity” which seems to exist merely to devour human consciousness at the moment of death. If the eagle believes/accepts/knows that it’s already devoured a man, then it believes/accepts/knows it can’t devour that same man a second time.  But if the eagle has been tricked by a master shaman, is the shaman not then free even of death itself, or at the very least, free of the expectations placed upon all mortal men?

Whatever his ultimate fate, whether he is dead or alive or both simultaneously, I have to congratulate Carlos for making even his supposed “death” an ongoing part of the story, fodder for speculation, mulch for mystery & mysticism.  In the tradition of the true shaman, he has made us wonder about ourselves and the nature of reality, right down to the question of Death itself.

"Reality is a progressive belief."

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Copyright 2014, by Della Van Hise
All Rights Reserved

NAGUALS AND DOUBLE BEINGS - Why Do They Exist?

The following ramble is a compilation of several posts made to my old group, The Sorcerer's World, and explored to some extent on my website, www.quantumshaman.com .  I realize some of it is complex and repetitive, but rather than try to distill it down to 50 words or less, it seems reasonable to present it more or less as it was written – in fits and starts of passion, and long nights in the womb of silent knowing. (DVH)

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Though it has been said by don Juan that no one really knows why Naguals are born with 4 compartments of energy rather than the traditional two, I think I might have a vague inkling of why this is so.  As a warrior creates her double and projects that energetic self into the infinite, it is given the agenda (at least in the case of my own double – who calls himself "Orlando") of teaching us how to live, but even more so, it teaches us how to EVOLVE,  how to reconjoin with the double so that the warrior may inhabit the totality of OneSelf.  Literally One. Self.

My double has always said that the only way he can leave me is if I were to turn my back on the path and fragment myself back into phantomhood.  Should that happen, the result would be that when I face the eagle, the "Della-self" would not survive, and would fragment back into the component parts of energy of which all things are made.  I would return to the "all", but not in any cohesive manner.  BUT... as I have come to understand it, the energy body which is the cohesive double would continue...  (because it is already Whole within the indestructible hologram). IOW, what would be lost would be my mortal self with all her life-experiences, not necessarily the part of me that is already whole outside of time.  But the whole purpose of this two-part migration of the soul is to bring the mortal self and the double into cohesion, so as to inhabit a single assemblage point into the infinite.  The double has been given the agenda to teach/create/make the warrior an integrated Whole being through an ongoing series of lessons, information, Knowledge & experience.  There is no limit to this, and that agenda is an eternal one, perhaps expressed in the words:  “I give you the will & the wisdom to be whatever you need to be in order to teach me how to be Whole.”   (For "whole" you could substitute the words "evolved," "cohesive," "eternal," or even "im-mortal" (i.e., not-mortal).

Now here's where it gets into an area Orlando calls "the ghost train”. If we look at our mortal lives like a train trip, and we get to the end of the line (the eagle, death, transformation), our Intent is to step off the train, embrace the energetic double, and conjoin into our Totality (literally the combined assemblage points of every experience the self and double have ever experienced – both in and outside of "time").  BUT... if for some reason the mortal self fails in its bid for cohesion, my theory is that the double actually goes "back in time" (as it were) to within the time-frame of the mortal lifespan... and begins the whole procedure again.  Orlando says he and I have ridden the ghost train a few times (not a pleasant idea), but not surprising, considering everything I now know.  It's like that scene in THE MATRIX where Neo first jumps off the building.  One of the others remarks, "Everybody falls the first time."  I think that's true here, too, which may account for why the idea of "past lives" is so popular.  Some of those "past lives" may well be our individual journeys on the ghost train.  It is the double’s journey toward Totality, toward fulfilling the agenda with which the mortal created it through free will.

What it boils down to is that the universe is holographic in nature.  So once something is created as "real", it can never be destroyed.  If your double is real NOW, even if you develop Alzheimer's, go insane, or simply fail to get past the eagle, the double is nonetheless real within the hologram... and because its agenda is its own evolution and conjoining with its mortal self, it will continue to slip back into that small segment of eternity known as the mortal lifespan  in an attempt to teach the mortal self how to SUCCEED in getting past the eagle "next time". This may also account for some instances of deja vu.  We think we've done this before because we HAVE done this before.

With that bit of background, I have begun to seriously wonder if so-called "Naguals" or double beings are born that way because they are the ones who HAVE ridden that ghost train at least once or twice, and so they essentially come into THIS life with the energetic double more or less already fully formed – lying dormant until such time as there is an opening, or window of opportunity for the teachings to begin again – or more precisely, until such time as the mortal’s free will awakens and issues the command.  In my case, that command is remembered as an 11-year-old girl shaking her fist at the sky and proclaiming, “If I can’t come to you, I’ll bring you to me."

Point is, because the double is an eternal part of the hologram once created, even when/if the mortal self fails in her bid for evolution past the eagle, that which is eternal within the hologram (the double) has the ability to essentially step back inside the finite span of that mortal lifespan – because the double is not constrained or limited to a linear-experience of time, and exists ubiquitously throughout the space-time continuum.  So, it begins to appear  that those who have created their double, but for whatever reason perhaps do not fulfill their evolution “the first time around”, may be those who are born double-beings, or naguals.  What is happening in actuality is that the agenda given to the double kicks in if the mortal self fails in her bid for evolution, and by virtue of re-entering the mortal timeframe (rather like stepping into a re-run on television), the being who is born Now is born with the double already “attached” – four energy compartments instead of only two.

***

Any warrior can create their double - though ultimately it isn't as much a matter of "choice" as it is a matter of Intent.  And there is definitely a difference.  I might choose to go light a candle as part of a ritual, for example, but that isn't what will create the double.  It is the ache/hurt/want/need in the pit of the stomach that provides the Intent that would make me feel a need to perform some meaningless ritual in the first place.  The ritual has no real power and is a choice; but the intent behind the ritual has ultimate power in creation, and the ritual is only a tool for focus.  Over a period of time (no one can say how long), the double is brought into being by the intent of the warrior - not the intent to create the double, but the intent to seek knowledge, the intent to create, the intent to find the answer to that gnawing ache/hurt/want/need in the pit of the stomach.  In short, the double is created through dreaming in the sense that the energy of that ache/hurt/want/need goes into manifesting the "cure" - and that cure is the double, which may be described as the vessel of the singularity of consciousness which emerges when all is said and done and the warrior leaves this earth.

Double beings are another matter - and yet, at the very heart and soul and source of WHY they are double beings, it may be exactly  the same thing, but something that is being seen from another point on the time-map.  I have a theory that Naguals such as myself are the fuck-ups of the sorcerer's equation.  The theory is perhaps slightly complicated, but I need to work through it on cyberpaper, so bear with me, or go smoke a joint and come back later.
If I start from point A, and take the premise - I am an ordinary warrior who has now managed to create my double.  The double is now the indestructible vessel of energy which will become the assemblage point of my Totality beyond this physical life.  Because it appears that the universe is holographic in nature, what this means is that both the double and the immortal self are part of that hologram.  And as most already know, the nature of a hologram is that as long as one has even a tiny piece, one possesses the whole.  In other words, the whole of the hologram exists within each component of itself, so even if it is fragmented, as long as one piece can be recovered, the hologram can be reconstructed in its entirety.

Okay... so I've created my double and I'm bopping along through life, and get hit on the head by a meteor one day, and kaputz, I'm a goner.  The eagle grabs my Della-awareness, and I am absorbed back into the black velvet fabric of the Nothing - obliterated.  But let's further say that because I was an impeccable warrior (except for failing to note the meteor coming), I had given my double the agenda:  "Go out into the All and bring back whatever knowledge is required to teach me everything I need to know in order to become a singularity.  Dream me as I have Dreamed you - no matter what.  And do not stop until the singularity is manifested."

In giving the double such an agenda, one is acting in the realm of sorcery to defeat the eagle, at least at a certain level.  Because of the holographic nature of the universe, once the double is created as an independent component with free will, it cannot be destroyed even if the awareness of the mortal self is eaten by the eagle.  Now - an aside - this would require an extremely cohesive double, so this would probably only happen if a warrior were extremely advanced on the path when s/he was hit by that meteor - but for whatever reason, the component that is the mortal self "failed" in her bid to get past the eagle in order to conjoin with the double.  So, let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that the eagle stands "between" self and double.  May or may not be true, but works for the sake of this explanation.

So - here's the game plan so far.  Warrior created her double, gave that double the agenda to teach her "no matter what it takes" (a matter of intent); and then gets splattered by a meteor and eaten by the eagle.  It's a shitty day, to be sure. 

Okay - so the awareness of the mortal self is swallowed up by the eagle, but because the double was created already BEYOND the eagle, that energy still exists as part of the hologram.  But, it  recognizes that even it is not "complete" because the component which was the mortal self (its own source) was just eaten by the eagle.  So the double is having a bad day, too.  What to do?  Without the awareness of the mortal self, the double knows it is not "whole" - not a singularity, but only a component, no matter how powerful.  And as such, it knows it is vulnerable to the ravages of infinity.  Without both halves, the dis-integration is not only inevitable, but has already begun.

Since the double is not limited to the confines of the linear human lifetime, and moves freely outside the box of time itself, the double can just as easily step back inside the framework of the mortal self.  I've used the analogy in the past that the double could very easily "climb inside" the mortal self while that mortal self was still in the womb of her mother - and, indeed, this would make a lot of sense, because only then would the double-being exist in the first place.  Why do this?  Because the double is fighting for his/her own survival, too.  And the only way to be sure it will survive would be to exist in such a position as to be able to exert influence over its mortal source from before the moment of birth.   So, the double wriggles down comfortably inside his mortal self who is still in the womb, and when the infant is born, it would appear to a seer as having 4 compartments of energy instead of only two.

But - the problem is that the seer is still a being of linear time, and may think - "Oh, my, what a special child!"  Er - not really.  Sure, the nagual has extra energy and all of that seemingly fun stuff, but we're the fuck-ups who got hit on the head with the meteor in the moebius loop of the time/space continuum, and so the double has had to take control and "re-dream" its way into mortal existence so the whole process can be redone, this time with the double having more influence from the start.

"To the eye of the seer, a Nagual man or Nagual woman appears as a luminous egg with four compartments.  Unlike the average human being, who has two sides only, a left and a right, the Nagual has a left side divided into two long sections, and a right side equally divided in two."  (Carlos Castsaneda)

The reason it is seen in this manner is because the seer is seeing only the object, and not the outside-of-time retroactive enchantment[1] which created that object as it exists.  And so - ultimately - Naguals may be just another warrior who created their double, got hit on the head with a meteor, and had a double who was smart enough to operate outside of time so as to salvage his own pathway to the Infinite by climbing back into his "source" so as to better guide the play the second time around.

The upside to all of this is that it does tend to give a Nagual that extra reserve of energy, and it certainly provides one with a sense of urgency and focus and sheer determination to make it to freedom that is unparalleled.  I am going to make it, no matter what - because if I don't, not only do I "lose" Orlando, but I will have to go through Gretta Young's fourth grade class again.  That alone is a powerful medicine of motivation.

Okay - with everything I've just said, it's important to note that NONE of this frees the Nagual from the responsibility of "creating the double through dreaming" in the first place, in the Now.   Because even though the double may come into this life with the mortal infant, with the ability to exert powerful influence over that child from even before the moment of birth, it is still the mortal self who must exert free will and force the double to go through the motions of actually occurring.[2]

I've known a couple of naguals who felt they were somehow "special" just by virtue of being born a double being, and even felt that they didn't have to create their double because s/he already existed.  One even referred to it as "a waste of energy to create what already exists."

That, again, is a case of a seer seeing only the finished product and failing to take into account that something had to happen to create that reality in the first place.  IOW, the conclusions are erroneous, just as it would be an erroneous conclusion to stand in front of a city dump and proclaim, "Flies caused all this garbage!"

So - lest anyone should think Naguals have it easier or are in any way special - please allow me to disabuse you of that notion. :)  I haven't found it to be any different for myself than for any of the other warriors I've known and worked with over the years.  We still have to create our double and go through the hard work of the path, so that the double will exist in the first place.

Nothing is a given.  Not one thing.  No one is going to do it for me - not even my double, Orlando. At best, he is a safety net of sorts - but only because that is what I created him to be.

And so it goes...
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Copyright 2014, by Della Van Hise
All Rights Reserved

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1 Retroactive Enchantment – a term used by Peter J. Carroll and defined as an action in the Now which may be seen to also significantly alter the past.

[2] Quantum theory: All things exist within the realm of possibility, but only some things will be forced to go through the motions of actually occurring.

Meeting the Brujo

Sometime in the past, circa 2003...

It began as a meditation. I often sit on the bed at night and gaze out through the open door. Since we live on a 5 acre parcel in the desert, I have a magnificent view of distant mountains covered by snow, and a closer vista of Joshua trees, pinon pines and yucca plants. The desert is not the barren wasteland so many envision. Instead, it is full of life in all its many manifestations.

So I sat on the bed and leaned back, enjoying the last vestiges of light splashed along the horizon. It had rained in the morning, and the scent of wet chaparral brush lay heavy in the air. A cold breeze was blowing in. The sky was a pale shade of winter night.

I drifted. And then I slept. Just sitting there at the edge of the desert, on the edge of the nagual. Last thing I recalled, I had glanced at the clock to see that it was about 5:45. Quite some time later, I awakened to the sound of footsteps, and a man's voice. Very clearly, he said, "It's time to get up."

Opening my eyes, I discovered a naked man standing just inside my door, less than 5 feet from me. Silhouetted against the open door, there was no mistake, and yet I was completely without fear. It isn't that I am fearless. It was simply that there was nothing to fear, and in that state between sleep and waking, I Knew this on a level of awareness that transcends all logic.

I gazed at this man for approximately 5 seconds - quite a long time if one is holding one's hand in flame or looking at a naked man standing next to one's bed. As I gazed at him, he began to morph much like a special effect in a movie, and as I watched with utter fascination, he turned into a large golden dog who has been frequenting our land for several weeks - a stray whom we've fed from time to time, but who has always shied away from physical contact.

In the sorcerer's world, nothing is as it seems. All things are only transient manifestations of energy. After the man had become the dog, I got up and went out into the yard, where he was sitting on an old grass mat, gazing at me with one upright ear and one bent ear, and a funny smile that was far more human than not. Laughing at me, I suspect. So I laughed, too.

What does it mean? Who's to say? It is known in the shaman's world that brujos can take on the shape of animals if that is their Will, so I cannot possibly know if the dog is really a sorcerer in his own right, or if a sorcerer chose to manifest as the dog. All I know is that a brujo with a sense of humor wandered naked into my house while I lay sleeping, and told me it was time to get up.

Is this some allegorical tale? Nope. Every word of it is true. Such is life in the sorcerer's world. Trying to wrap human comprehension around it is like trying to contain the nagual in a teacup. The experience is the journey, and the journey is the cumulative experiences that go to form a foundation of Knowledge. I was honored by a visit from a brujo, and after we played together for awhile in the open desert, he simply disappeared into the night, a shadow running along the road.

The crack between the worlds stands open. Sometimes, if we are blessed, something from the other side slips through to remind us of our own limitless power, and the unbounded wonder that is Life.
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Excerpt from...
Quantum Shaman: Diary of a Nagual Woman (by Della Van Hise)

The Right Way To Live

THE RIGHT WAY TO LIVE
What does it really mean?

In the books of Carlos Castaneda, Don Juan said mescalito teaches "the right way to live," but what is really meant by those words? Many heated debates have ensued on my previous forums as a result of this simple question. What IS the right way to live? To start the ball rolling, here are some of my thoughts...

The whole idea of karma has never rung true with me - largely because it implies some sense of "fairness" within the universe which I simply have never observed. There is balance (impeccable balance, actually), but "fairness"? Nada. That's why, when I hear someone say of a murderer or a child molester, "Oh, his karma will catch up to him..." My instant reaction is more likely a private sigh rather than any nod of agreement - even though it would make me feel better to think karma is alive and well.

Because there is no "fairness", my feeling with regard to cruelty is that it is always an entirely human choice. In the animal kingdom, even when dealing with predator/prey situations, I don't sense any cruelty from it. The coyote doesn't hunt for sport, but for dinner. The serpent doesn't torture the mouse. The peregrin doesn't dull her talons to make the rat suffer before it dies. The mountain lion doesn't hunt the jackrabbit to extinction just to feel the power of killing. Only humans seem to torture one another and run rampant through their environment to the point that they begin to threaten even their own survival.

As a result, I can only surmise that humans are completely out of balance - not only out of balance with nature, but within themselves. Don Juan might say they have lost touch with "the right way to live", and so they have lost any sense of empathy. They have forgotten how to look out through the eyes of the other creatures on this planet, and so their world is narrow, limited, and altogether unjust.

In my experience, "the right way to live" has nothing to do with morality, social standards, religion, or even the law. It has to do with knowing right from wrong within yourself - which I personally believe is an attribute most humans are born with, or learn quickly.

Is there a "right way to live?" I believe there is.
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For additional reading on this subject...
Quantum Shaman: Diary of a Nagual Woman
Scrawls On the Walls of the Soul
Quantum Shaman Website

Carlos Castaneda: Truthsayer or Soothsayer?

The Ongoing Controversy: Does It Really Matter?

Recently at an online event I hosted, the inevitable discussion arose: did Castaneda invent the whole thing? Did he make it up? What is the Truth? This was my response.

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As for whether or not Castaneda "invented" the whole thing, it really doesn't matter in the least, for one simple reason. Whether or not don Juan existed, the truths being explored in the books of CC stand up. My personal suspicion is that Castaneda did indeed "invent" don Juan as a "vehicle" through which to dispense the Knowledge he himself had discovered through whatever method. In other words, Castaneda WAS don Juan - whether consciously, unconsciously, or even if don Juan may indeed have been Carlos's double.

Many people have been dissuaded from the path of heart when they come to this realization, but for me it makes no difference WHO said it as long as "IT" holds up. For myself, after many, many years of experimentation and exploration, the Knowledge reported in CC's books still holds up, and, indeed, I have been able to take most of it one-step-further -- which means that it is indeed a valid foundation that can be built upon by those with Intent.

So, in response to your statement that "only the truth can set us free" -- absolutely, 100% true. That's why I am a seeker of Truth and not a blind follower of Castaneda, who himself admitted to being a trickster. So the question then becomes - what is truth? Seems to me don Juan exists (present tense) as a living construct of energy and Knowledge, regardless of who breathed him into life. What is... simply IS.

During the course of this discussion, the comment was made that "Truth matters! If it's not true, how can it have any real power?"  Well... I know a lot of people who have had life-altering awakenings as a result of a movie - I'm thinking in particular of "Avatar." At least 2 people I know were profoundly changed after seeing the movie, and in essence it led them onto the path because there are elements of truth woven into the "fiction." Writers often call this technique "fact-ion." Part fact, part fiction. Obviously "Avatar" wasn't a true story, and don Juan may not be pure truth either. But if the truths contained WITHIN the fiction are sufficiently powerful to shake someone out of their human stupor, that's good enough (for a start). Truth is subjective anyway (at least IMO). Everything begins with a thought, and in quantum perspective, anything that can be imagined also exists. It's how reality is created.

Ultimately, it comes down to this: we can hear the message or shoot the messengers. Most true shamans (seers) are not always saints and priests by human standards. Visionaries are not necessarily visions of virtue. This seems to be part of the riddle - that nature selects what some would call "frauds" to deliver the message about the path toward freedom (which may vary from culture to culture, but which is always the same at its core). Maybe it's because it's our various "cultures" are the real lie, and the so-called "liars" are the real truthsayers. The universe seems to appreciate irony like that.
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For more on this discussion, please visit the Quantum Shaman Discussion group on Facebook. 
Other source material (both by Della Van Hise)
Quantum Shaman: Diary of a Nagual Woman 
Scrawls On the Walls of the Soul

Spirits In the Material World

Something my mentor/double stressed repeatedly to me over the years: "This is a solitary path, and you will eventually lose everything and everyone." At the time these words were communicated, I altered between thinking they were meant literally as opposed to metaphorically. Over the years, I've come to realize it's a bit of both. I've watched others who started out on this path slowly but inevitably fall back into the allure of the consensus for one reason or another. Oh, some of them still give lip service to the path, but actions speak louder than words. So while these people aren't "lost" to me, they are, in effect, phantoms on the road to Nowhere, even when they might appear to be walking at my side. And lest someone hop in to say that is me being judgmental, let me assure you I have no judgment whatsoever. I am simply an observer, a scribe of random events, a being who long ago lost sight of "the world" when my assemblage point shifted permanently to the Infinite. Such is life. It can perhaps be argued in the form of semantics, but at the end of the day, it cannot be denied by anyone who truly *sees*.

As for losing every *thing*, that has turned out to be interesting as well. What's been lost isn't necessarily physical things, but absolutely ANY importance or value attached to physical things. Clearly, that's a good thing, right? No debate there. But it makes for an interesting journey through what Madonna called "the material world." Particularly here in the West, so much value is placed on status symbols and material gain - cars, houses, jewelry, clothes. And yet, to the warrior, these things are only tools, or even less than that. They are objects in an inventory. An inventory in a warehouse of Chaos.

As a result, part of a "warrior's sadness" comes from the Knowledge that s/he is essentially an island of awareness in a sea of madness. Looking at old friends, we see the shell of abandoned potential, the husk that has been drained of all Spirit, and now has reattached itself to the teat of that material world. And in the material world, the warrior sees the play in full swing, and realizes it is a paradoxically circular script written by madmen and madwomen, acted out by zombies who were once vibrant, beautiful children. And in many ways, it is that "sadness" which gives a warrior her strength - the long-term observations and unshakable Knowledge that she, too, runs the high risk of returning to phantom status if she doesn't remain awake and simply continue to put one foot in front of the other while the world and all its lost souls and meaningless trinkets lie in ruins in the rear-view mirror of time.

Mediocrity

Mediocrity is the destroyer of genius. If you want to travel the known roads while wallowing in your comfort zones, leave me out of it. Perhaps as a result of my near death experience in August of 2014, I've found that I have no patience for the mundane world and all its petty problems. Not knowing how long I have left on this planet has left me hungry for what lies BEYOND the horizon, not just sitting on the shore watching another pretty sunset. If we don't go FURTHER than where we started, we're going nowhere.

The Dark Side of the Light

An uncompromising look at the second enemy of a seeker on the road to enlightenment

Clarity shows us the world as it is, things as they are, problems as they exist... but it shows us almost nothing with regard to how to accept things as they are, reconcile our place within the schema of "the way things are," or fix the problems that exist. It DOES, however, reveal to us that there is nothing to fix and that, ultimately, nothing matters much within the consensual world. Maybe nothing matters at all. Not something we necessarily want to hear, definitely not something most want to believe, but there it is, staring us in the face when we agree to look beyond the programs instead of merely wearing them like a pair of cheap glasses. Put simply – clarity is a double-edged sword that cuts through the bullshit only to reveal more bullshit beneath.

And such is the enemy of clarity.

If you are looking for new age spiritual bliss ninnyisms, you have come to the wrong place – for a warrior/seeker who is engaged in her inevitable battle with clarity can hardly be bothered to pat you on the head and tell you "Everthang's gonna be awright." Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. There's that double-edged sword again.

Love: The Catalytic Force of Immortality

by Mikal Nyght(Author of DARKER TEACHINGS OF THE IMMORTALS)

Recently, someone asked... "Can you distill it all down to a single essay?  If a seeker could only take one concept with them for the rest of their lives, what would you want it to be?"

________________

I would start by saying it isn't up to me to decide what any seeker should take with them, and there is no single key to achieving the immortal condition.  It is a process of transformation and self-manifestation – what Aleister Crowley called The Great Work, and what I have come to call, simply, "the path."  How that path unfolds is going to depend on the seeker himself, his goals and aspirations, and his methods. Mostly, it is going to depend on the programs he carries with him, and how deeply he is embedded in the consensus reality.  The consensus may be referred to as the matrix, the dayshine world, the agreement or a host of other terms, all of which boil down to one thing:  the baseline "reality" with which we are all presented until such time as we open our eyes to the higher truth which tells us, whispering softly in the beginning... "All that we see or seem... is but a dream within a dream."

It is that awakening from the illusion which compels the seeker to embark on the path – from the realization that the world is nothing like we have been taught to believe. Where the path leads from there, who's to say? If the goal is enlightenment (whatever that may turn out to be), the path will lead in a particular direction.  If the goal is self-empowerment within the mortal world, the path will lead in an entirely different direction.

Ah, but if the goal is to attain the immortal condition (which might be understood best as the conjoining of the mortal self to the eternal Other), the path will lead down a series of rabbit holes, twists and turns, and somewhere along the way, the seeker will begin to realize – just a glimpse at first, shy and reluctant to be seen – that the reality with which we are presented is quite likely the reality we are creating on some vast quantum canvas which cannot be entirely assimilated from a purely humanform perspective. We may sense intuitively that there is more than meets the eye, but how does a blind man's eye taste the color of blood and midnight rainbows?

What to do?  To a being existing in a 2-dimensional world, it would be impossible to perceive a 3-dimensional object.  The 2-D being would see only height and width, but would not possess the sensory ability to perceive depth, even if s/he had been told and could intuit that a 3-dimensional universe did, in fact, exist.  Not in some otherworld.  Not "out there" in space somewhere.  But all around him.

At that point, the 2-D being has a choice to make. Will he simply accept, as he is being told by his peers, that such mysteries are not possible for him to solve? "God moves in mysterious ways, after all, and why would any blasphemer dare to question that divine plan – you don't want to be a blasphemer, do you, kid?" Will he go back to the comfort zones of his 2-D tv and leave his questions unanswered and unresolved because that is what his consensus tells him he must do if he is to be considered a normal and sane member of the 2-D herd? "If you keep on chasing after ghosts and handsome vampires and some crazy notion that you can change your fundamental nature, they're gonna call the men with the funny white coats and lock your sorry 2-D ass up for the rest of your life!  Get with the program, kid!"

The program...  Decision time. Succumb to the pressures of peers, or peer beyond the limitations of one's "fundamental nature" to see what might lie outside those self-imposed limits. In other words – surrender and die, or evolve and run the awe-inspiring risk of living forever?

Sound like an easy choice?  For most, it is.  The lure of social and familial acceptance, the promise of happiness, the comfort of those old comfort zones is usually sufficient to shut down those far-fetched ideas and silence that still, small voice that begs for evolution, but cannot force it if it is the free will of the individual to return to his 2-D place in the matrix.  Put simply, most choose to die because it's a lot easier than doing The Work of self-manifestation of the Other outside the box.

And yet...

There are a rare few who are compelled beyond all reason to listen to that little voice and to consort with it in dreams and visions.  There are those rare few who say to the higher self, "Teach me all you can," and then give it free will to project itself beyond the confines of the mortal self, and into the infinite.  That projection is the twin – the immortal Other (double or energy body, if you prefer) who has the ability to do and be things the mortal self cannot imagine, and to accumulate a lifetime of lifetimes, an infinitude of experience, myriad stories to tell... and all of them are anecdotes of the self as a vast and virtually incomprehensible being.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Before the seeker who has been compelled to evolve can even begin to create and project his Other, he has to have a reason.  Fundamental truth. Humans don't often undertake difficult tasks without a reason.  So we have to ask the question... What could possibly be so important that one would risk losing everything in order to have it? 

For, make no mistake, this path will cost you everything. It will cost you your gods and demons, your beliefs and comfort zones, and most of the time it will even cost you your family and friends. You will find yourself alone, a stranger in a strange land, and if you don't have something that compels you to keep going, I can virtually guarantee that you will return to the matrix and console yourself with some platitude along the lines of... "I had to regain my family! I missed my friends! I need my sanity in the real world!" That's okay. You've failed. Maybe spirit will give you another opportunity. Maybe not. Doesn't really matter.  ccept your failure and revel in whatever it was that called you back to that old program. It'll be over soon and you won't have to fret about it.

And yet...

If you are one of those madmen or madwomen who stubbornly stand your ground in the cyclone of social rejection and even the possibility that you are no longer sane by the definition of your peers... what is it you're holding onto that keeps you going?

And here the lesson really begins.

Love is the reason

• When you love something so much that you cannot envision a world in which your love is dead, that is the first moment you might begin to see the pathway to achieving the immortal condition. That is the moment you might even understand why it is a compulsion for you and not just a passing intellectual dalliance.

I've highlighted the paragraph above because it is really all that matters here, distilled down to 50 words or less  If you get it, or think you do, you're already ahead of the game, but don't fool yourself by thinking, "Well, duh, that's obvious!"  Yes, it's obvious, but so is that oncoming bus, and people walk in front of buses every day. 

The secret here is that you have to create and inhabit a world where Death himself does not and cannot exist – for another fundamental truth is that only when you evolve sufficiently to be beyond the reach of Death does it become possible to also perceive the immortal condition with regard to those you love.

Does this mean you can "save" them from Death? No. And yes. And no. What it means is that in order to even begin to comprehend the meaning of this statement, you would need to be already standing on the far side of the bridge between life and death, looking back to see how the bridge was built. It is not something that can be explained with words or pictures drawn in the sands of time. It is something that can be intuited at first, so I prey you will tickle the riddle rather than struggling to pick it apart.  For now, I will simply say this:  in a world where Death does not exist for the One, Death does not exist at All. 

Perhaps I have said too much.

Whether the "something" you love is another human being, or the thought of your eternal Other, or simply the idea of Be-ing alive, rest assured that the kind of love that is transformative is not love of a physical object or even another person, place or thing. 

What?  You just contradicted yourself!

Yes, I did.

Or did I?

When I am speaking of love at this level, I am not talking about the form in which the object of one's love appears, but the essence within the form itself. The energy of it. The spirit of it. The totality of it. The sheer and inexplicable awe of it. To an immortal, a lover's form may appear as an old woman, haggish and withered, but the essence of the lover is no less vibrant and alive than on the day they met. The essence is that which is eternal, and therefore it is the fundamental nature which the seeker truly loves, rather than the transient form. 

Love of the immortal/eternal twin is another barometer for some, while others would try to say the twin is merely a reflection of the self.  Listen to your internal dialog on this matter – because if it is telling you that your double is "only" this or that, if those pesky little voices are telling you the double is "only" the so-called higher self or the soul to which you may feel entitled... think again.  The double is the self in eternity – it is the totality of oneself, the cumulative experience of all lifetimes, past, present and future. It is not some ethereal or angelic woo-woo hanging in orbit over Uranus, but instead it is the vessel for the seeker's awareness beyond this life. Underestimate it at your own peril. Ignore it at the certainty of your obliteration.

Love it... and it will come to you in dreams and visions, it will speak to you through silent knowing (gnosis), it will infiltrate the past in ways that you cannot begin to wrap your mind around until you think it has been with you all along (and it has, once you as the mortal self create it in the Now); and ultimately it will become your best friend, perfect lover, eternal guardian, and temple of the singularity of consciousness which you yourself are in the process of becoming. 

I have written volumes on the subject of love, yet often someone will make a comment which reveals to me that it's all only dust in the wind, short verses of transient poetry scripted on the surface of water, quickly disappearing and losing all meaning. That in itself also reveals the power of the consensus reality, the agreement, the dayshine world.  That is the way of things, and if it were otherwise, we would live in a different world with a different consensus.

Now, to answer the question that was put to me... I would have to say that the real key to attaining the immortal condition is contained within this peculiar force humans call "love".  And yet, I would urge great caution here, for it is the erroneous conclusions and misconceptions humans have about "love" that will also prevent them from attaining that state. Tread carefully. Be always aware of every thought and every belief system, and always stop and take a moment to ask yourself, "What do I believe about love and why do I believe it?"

There is such a wide range of experience associated with the word love, it's unfortunate that other words have not been invented to more clearly distinguish the difference between romantic love, sexual love, parental love, familial love, spiritual love, emotional love, the creative force of love, unconditional love, and so on.  The word "love" is used for all of these states, and many more, so it's important for the seeker to have a firm grasp on his own understanding of what I have come to call "the creative force of love." 

This form of love is a quantifiable force – not a passive romantic thought, but a viable power similar in nature to a bolt of lightning, possessing the ability to destroy and create in a single strike.

And yet... again I would urge extreme caution – for words are only descriptions, tools to be used to aid the processes, but not to be mistaken for the process itself. As the old saying goes, do not mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself.


Why am I telling you this?  What does this have to do with the key to attaining the immortal condition? Nothing. And everything.

It is only when the seeker begins to truly understand and experience the creative force of love that s/he will have even the vaguest idea of what the immortal condition actually is, and why one is compelled to attain it. It isn't just the prospect of living forever. That's really quite a boring thought when you boil it down. Why?  Because a linear experience of eternity would consist of boredom and eventual madness, largely because the organic brain/mind is not designed to process such vast amounts of data as would accumulate from an extremely long and linear organic life. After all, who really wants to spend eternity in high school, over and over and over again? It's not the romantic adventure Hollywood likes to portray, so one of the first things the seeker needs to understand is that time is not linear and being a perpetual teenager is not a goal to which any rational being would aspire.

The love I am speaking of here is the love that is devastating in its intensity – for it is only when the world is destroyed that the new world can be built in its place. 

Love is the reason.

In clinical word association tests, humans also tend to most commonly reply with opposites.  If I say "dark," the first and most common response will be "light". Boy/girl.  Life/Death. Good/Evil. That being the case, it stands to reason that if I say "love," the most common response will be "hate."

And therein lies a clue to why most humans never even search for the key to the immortal condition.

Somewhere along the way, the human program got even more fucked up than it already is.  Somewhere in the depths of the human paradigm, "hate" came to be considered the opposite of love, when it is crystal clear to anyone outside the program that grief is the polar opposite of love. Hate isn't even in the same building.

Why is grief the polar opposite of love?

Because grief is the state of loss wherein the object and the essence of what one loves has been eliminated – permanently and irrevocably removed from the fabric of existence.  It is the state wherein one realizes (usually too late) that the things one loves (including and especially Oneself) comprise the elements of the answer to the first question:  Who Are You? 

Tread carefully. This is not to say that you are defined by the ones you love. And yet... the essence of who you are is woven with the energetic fabric of the essence of the things you love. This is the creative force of love – the catalytic element which causes the seeker to ultimately realize that without those things (or more precisely, without access to those things), the seeker is incomplete, left in a state of grief and loss, which can debilitate the spirit and even crush the will to live.

To those who would argue that love is therefore an attachment, I would say instead that love is an enhancement, an enrichment, an augmentation.  To those who would say that love is a dependency, I would say instead that it is the ultimate freedom – for within the creative force of love lies The Reason, which is the catalyst of all change and evolution.

These are only words tacked to the door of the infinite, hanging somewhere in the wasteland of cyberspace.  If it were easy (or even possible) to truly define what it is that is the key to the immortal condition, I'm quite certain someone would have done it by now.  I have no delusions that I will change the world, alter your perceptions, or even make a dent in the human condition.  And yet... what can be seen so clearly is often that which defies explanation utterly.

In the life of every true seeker, there is the capacity to love something so fiercely that the element of love becomes a duality.  In the same way light is both particle and wave, love is both the experience and the catalyst for the experience itself.  There is a legend that speaks of a man who fell in love with an immortal.  It goes something like this:

For many years, the man and the immortal shared all things any couple might share – a home together, a glass of wine by the hearth, the illusion of happiness and security, the belief that nothing could ever come between them.

But as the mortal man grew older and his lover remained untouched by the bastard of Time, he came to realize that soon they would both be alone again, and it would all be as if it never was at all. This was the curse of mortality. This was the meaning of Life: that it would always end, and in doing so it would end the world itself, for the world was contained in the perception and experience of the man.

He was beside himself for months, years. The mirror had turned to wrinkles and grey, and had dimmed in his sight. He could not bear to look upon himself, even though his immortal companion still held him with a love that had turned melancholy and sad, but was nonetheless as fierce and awe-inspiring as it had been when they first met. He had begged her to make him like herself, but She could only smile softly and tell him that was fiction.  She could not make him immortal.  Only he could do that.

Knowing he was dying, unable to bear the horrible burden of grief that would ultimately destroy both of them at world's end, the man went out into the night and shook his fist at the sky, cursing God and damning the human condition. But God didn't answer. In his frenzy, the man called upon the saints and the angels, the demons and the devils. But they had all flown away long ago.

He was alone. Time would not stand still and there would be no ever-after for either of them, only the silence, tombstone and gravedust. And he knew without knowing how he knew that even She who could not die would die, for at some level he could not begin to fathom, they were connected even beyond the normal bonds of love. He tried to reason it out and could not. He tried to Dream the answer, but dreamt instead of Apollo and Artemis entwined in the womb.  

The horror of it ripped a hole in his already broken heart, and scattered the remnants of his soul hither and yon, casting him asunder throughout the endless expanse of time and space, shredding even the molecular memory of his existence, until...

Out of the nothing that was all that remained of him, the man assembled himself as a cry in the madness, and shouted with the spontaneous parthenogenesis of his rebirth into the night that never ends...

"I-Am!"

Words that claim the right to Be. Words that demand the capacity to Love beyond the rules of the human game. Words that deny the mortal illusion, the scythe of Time, the rape of Death. A cry of existence that created the man immortal and eternal, beyond the reach of himself to undo. 

I-Am.

It was then that he finally saw and sat on the rim of the abyss laughing into the Well of Reflections where all things were made clear. Her face was his mirror. Her laughter was his own. The immortal Other was the self and always had been. The thing that could not be sacrificed to time and grief was the essence of the man.

"You tricked me," he said to himself, to her, to the night.

She folded him into the fabric of herself, whispered in his ear with all the Knowledge of Silence itself. "You tricked yourself."

And he knew the truth of it. Knew he had loved her enough to throw off the chains and the bars of his mortal prison, enough to defy even the paradigm of his humanness, enough to take his first eternal breath, because turning himself rightsidewrong with the madness of love was the only cure for the fatal demon of grief. 

Love is the reason and the catalyst.

Do you love yourself enough?

___________________
Mikal Nyght
Teachings of the Immortals
Darker Teachings of the Immortals

Available on Amazon, digital or paperback

The Holy Trinity (and other things that go bump in the night)

(Written in response to a seeker who asked if a belief in God, religion, ETs and the holy trinity would negatively impact her path toward evolution...) ______________________

  To believe in Jesus, the Holy Trinity, ETs and so forth is not "wrong." All of those things exist at one level of reality or another - but not necessarily as humans have concluded as a consensus. What the spiritual seeker must consider is what SHE has concluded, as well as the amount of actual belief (and power) she attributes to the thing itself. It's false conclusions that usually lead to false belief systems. For example... consider the possibility that the Holy trinity is actually this:

 Mortal Self, Immortal Twin, Conjoined Singularity

 In Biblical terms, these attributes were assigned to "God" alone, but in reality this is the very "structure" of the human "soul" - it is a 3-part entity which begins with the mortal human, evolves to the projected/manifested Immortal Twin, and culminates in the (re)conjoining of the 2 (mortal self, immortal twin) at which point a transformation, transcendence or transmogrification is Willed into being, resulting in the infinite Singularity. THIS is the core nature of the "holy trinity" - it didn't come into being through religion. Quite the contrary. It is a facet of nature which has been adopted (and skewed) by religion, until it has left humans believing they are "wretches" who need to be saved through "amazing grace." In reality, Thou Art God - Create Yourself Accordingly. YOU are the trinity.

It's human CONCLUSIONS that lead to all sorts of false belief systems. So - I would say that the "holy trinity" exists, but not as religion would have you believe.

As for Jesus... whether he ever existed as a man, there is no way to know. What is certain is that he exists NOW as a quantifiable belief system - basically an allegory/tulpa that has taken on shape and form BECAUSE of so much energy and belief placed onto the IDEA of it. Put another way - man creates god in his own image. Nothing wrong with that - it could be said that man NEEDS his gods until such a time when man is ready to accept responsibility for his own existence, his own "salvation" and his own evolution into immortality. Religion takes the responsibility OUT of the hands of man, and asks only that man "believe upon the Lord and you will be saved." Ah, if only it were that SIMPLE!

The reality is that each and every human being CHOOSES whether s/he will take responsibility for herself or not. It's easy enough to believe that some metaphysical entity is going to somehow "save" one from the final oblivion of death, but when a seeker comes face to face with the Realization that the myths man has created are really only comfort zones to guard against his own AWARENESS of his mortality... the seeker stands at a crossroads where s/he must decide whether she will have "faith" or come to the further Realization that "the destruction of faith is the beginning of evolution." For it's only when we stop blindly believing in what we have been TOLD and start really *seeing* things as they ARE that we take back our own inherent metamagickal POWER and invoke the mantra that is our first step toward freedom.

What is that mantra? Simply this: I-AM! What is the I-Am? Put simply, it is the declaration of self-awareness – the identity of the self within the whole of the holographic universe, the indelible statement that One now exists as a vessel of awareness & consciousness that is ubiquitous, infinite, eternal and non-local. Not only in the Now, but in the All of all the Nows.

As for extraterrestrials, spirits and other entities... never forget that the universe is infinite and filled with mysteries. It would be foolish and self-indulgent to believe that what we perceive directly is all that exists. After all - we cannot directly see a virus or an amoeba, but our lack of vision doesn't mean they don[t exist. And in a universe that IS so vast, it would be pure arrogance to believe Earth is the only planet with sentient life.

Studies have been done with a substance called DMT (dimethyltriptamine) [[DMT: THE SPIRIT MOLECULE - Strassman]] which essentially indicate that there are entire other "universes" existing all around us - things we cannot see with our humanform eyes, but things which may be perceived with the "third eye" of silent knowing (aka: gnosis). When our so-called "reality filters" are taken away, we not only *see* but come to Know we are not alone in this vast and mysterious universe. It should also be considered that many "schizophrenics" and others suffering from so-called "delusional" states may well be *seeing* things which exist beyond the normal range of human perception - for reasons unknown, the "reality filters" of these individuals may be thin or non-existent. It is not my purpose here to get into a lengthy discussion about so-called "mental illness" (a term that has always seemed offensive and judgmental to me). Instead, I point these things out to remind seekers that "all that we see or seem... is but a dream within a dream." To clarify - what we CONCLUDE is a "dream" may well be the reality, and so we must always ask - are we the dreamed or the dreamer, or both or neither?

Remember this: the seeker's responsibility is to the Self (though the energy vampires all around you will tell you otherwise!) - the evolution of the mortal self into the immortal twin into the conjoined singularity. We are all just a chrysalis in the process of unfolding - and that unfolding is not always pleasant but often painful... and yet it is the journey that defines us and the destination that provides us with the foundation for the next evolution.

Be always unfolding,
Mikal Nyght
(Author of TEACHINGS OF THE IMMORTALS)