Insights part 3

In an unusual morning, my mind came up with many interesting tidbits.

Almost 40 years ago I began to read Carlos Castaneda. He was an anthropologist who studied shamans in Mexico. According to the books, he was actually brought in as an apprentice who unwittingly learned the ways of his master. NOw, the first three books cover his time with his teacher Don Juan as a basic narrative. that's because Castaneda really didn't understand all that was going on. The remaining books were his attempts to break down, understand, remember, and reconstruct the teachings of his master, many of which were learned in altered states of Consciousness.

The main idea of all of this was explained in a book called "The Eagle's Gift". In it, he explains that the purpose of his practice was to "trick" the eagle. DOn Juan explained that when we die, A great Eagle eats our consciousnesses. His teachers, however, had discovered a way to, as Don Juan put it, sneak past the eagle so that we wold not lose our consciousness at death.

Don Juan's practices are very difficult and were never fully described in his books. Since Carlos was the last teacher, there is a real possibility that the knowledge has been lost forever.

That said, I suddenly realized something. In a book called "Awakening the Buddha within", by Lama Surya Das (see link), The lama explains that the real purpose that Buddhists struggle to remain awake in the moment is so that at the moment of death, they understand they are dying. At that point, they can use their wills to project their consciousness into the next dimension of space and break the reincarnation cycle.

If we don't do this, we remain trapped in a neither world for a while and then reincarnate-we retain some of our old consciousness, but obviously, we do not retain all of it.

What I realized was that Don Juan and Lama Surya Das were describing the same thing! In different ways people from totally different cultures had discovered a way to move on while retaining who we are and what we know.!

Carlos suggested that they had learned how to move bodies into the next realm, but I am no longer sure that that is completely true. Nevertheless, the important thing is that in both cases the consciousness was transferred intact. And that is the goal.