Castaneda and the Fourth Way

[scifiscriptwriter]

Are you familiar with the work of Boris Mouravieff?

Yes---I am studing Gnosis:Book One-Exoteric Cycle today. I ordered and read Mouravieff's
trilogy a year ago. For the last two months I have read and studied Book One. It takes me a
while and repeated reading to grasp the concepts. Everytime I look at a page again, I see more.[/[/quote]-

- presently at this stage - explains ssoooooo much more than Cast. did for me.

 

[GregoryMurray]

Judging by what I've just read in this thread, compared with what I read a few minutes ago in the thread entitled 'Don Juan & "The Enemies of a Man of Knowledge"', it seems like Castaneda may have succumbed to the third enemy: power.

"Power is the strongest of all enemies. And naturally the easiest thing to do is to give in; after all, the man is truly invincible. He commands; he begins by taking calculated risks, and ends in making rules, because he is a master.

"A man at this stage hardly notices his third enemy closing in on him. And suddenly, without knowing, he will certainly have lost the battle. His enemy will have turned him into a cruel, capricious man."

--------

"A man who is defeated by power dies without really knowing how to handle it. Power is only a burden upon his fate. Such a man has no command over himself, and cannot tell when or how to use his power."

 

[~melissa]

Judging by what I've just read in this thread, compared with what I read a few minutes ago in the thread entitled 'Don Juan & "The Enemies of a Man of Knowledge"', it seems like Castaneda may have succumbed to the third enemy: power.

"Power is the strongest of all enemies. And naturally the easiest thing to do is to give in; after all, the man is truly invincible. He commands; he begins by taking calculated risks, and ends in making rules, because he is a master.

"A man at this stage hardly notices his third enemy closing in on him. And suddenly, without knowing, he will certainly have lost the battle. His enemy will have turned him into a cruel, capricious man."

--------

"A man who is defeated by power dies without really knowing how to handle it. Power is only a burden upon his fate. Such a man has no command over himself, and cannot tell when or how to use his power."

My thoughts exactly about 2/3 through this thread, thx Gregory Murray!
& What a powerful object lesson. I just finished The Active Side of Infinity and it helped me really strengthen my commitment to working at inner silence as an MO as much as I can. The rewards I find to be phenomenal.

When I was a kid my dad was in a cult for awhile, and from what I've heard about Carlos' behavior towards the end of his life, combined with the visceral episodes he related in The Active Side of Infinity (pool-sharking as a 9-year-old, grabbing a vulture by the neck while hiding in a dead donkey), even though I owe a debt of gratitude to the guy for helping me open up faculties that are REALLY helping me cope with the mind-numbing insanity of this place, the world, it still needs to be remembered that it's fiction, and he can say whatever he wants. He can sew that plot up like a pretzel to make it all fit.

Interpersonal powertripping, leading others to their demise - that's cult-like behavior. But the people that fall into it *seem* to prefer to abnegate their free will. Do they have free will to begin with if they are so emotionally crippled by god-knows-what incomprehensible histories they may have survived when they arrived at his tutelage?

I mean, I know Gurdjieff (Ouspensky) says that we are machines and automatons and that we have no will to effect anything not prescribed by our environment, unless we develop a magnetic center but aren't we ultimately responsible either way?

Idk, this stuff boggles me. The domination scenario is played out in so many permutations. It would be comforting to actually understand what is going on, to pull the common threads and label them.

 

[Mike]

Interpersonal powertripping, leading others to their demise - that's cult-like behavior. But the people that fall into it *seem* to prefer to abnegate their free will. Do they have free will to begin with if they are so emotionally crippled by god-knows-what incomprehensible histories they may have survived when they arrived at his tutelage?

I think they have free will, but have given over the will to choose when they decide to follow such a path or person. It really should make a person sit up and take notice of who the person is and what they are really made of before giving a person such influence, but that can be problematic because they in all likelihood don’t have the experience or perspective to make such a judgment. It is like we are in a box of a certain size that is formed from all our programs, habits, reactions etc that limits our future or possible courses of actions. We are free to move within the box, but it keeps us turning around in circles until we find a way to escape the box – most likely through finding a group of people realizing they are in a box and together working to try to escape.

If you follow the cognitive science stuff on the forum that helps explain what Gurdjieff, etc were explaining, it becomes evident that we need someone or group outside of ourselves to help us to see ourselves in order to make progress or really change. That can be a problem and end badly if you choose to follow a person or path such as what Castaneda ended up doing.

I mean, I know Gurdjieff (Ouspensky) says that we are machines and automatons and that we have no will to effect anything not prescribed by our environment, unless we develop a magnetic center but aren't we ultimately responsible either way?

I think we are responsible, but someone working on themselves and realizing the level of someone still trapped in their box should or will see it differently then someone that has never questioned themselves or tried to understand why people act the way they do.

Idk, this stuff boggles me. The domination scenario is played out in so many permutations. It would be comforting to actually understand what is going on, to pull the common threads and label them.

I think the cognitive science threads and psychology threads are a good place to start.

 

[~melissa]

Ok will do.

 

[shijing]

I ran across a site yesterday which attempts to collect the main quotes of Don Juan from all of Castaneda's books. The format is a bit user-unfriendly (I found it's helpful to copy from the site, paste into a document and add spaces myself), but otherwise it's a good way to get a condensed version of Don Juan's teachings. The site author also has links to MP3 files where he reads the collected quotes:

http://www.prismagems.com/castaneda/

 

[Mrs.Tigersoap]

I ran across a site yesterday which attempts to collect the main quotes of Don Juan from all of Castaneda's books. The format is a bit user-unfriendly (I found it's helpful to copy from the site, paste into a document and add spaces myself), but otherwise it's a good way to get a condensed version of Don Juan's teachings. The site author also has links to MP3 files where he reads the collected quotes:

http://www.prismagems.com/castaneda/

Interesting find! I find it especially useful since I read most of Castaneda's books a long time ago (and way before I was on this forum, so many concepts went totally over my head) and translated into French. Thanks for sharing, Shijing! :)