Thread: Art of dreaming by Carlos

Make no mistake, all his books are about dreaming. Although the art he terms "dreaming" (the counterpart to stalking) can be misleading.

My current understanding of his work is that life really is a dream. This may not be obvious from the way he describes it, but I believe what he terms the "tonal" is just the sum total of your personal archetypal structures.

While I do recommend all his books highly, I do have to admit that they messed me up for years. What they did was grant me lucid moments in my waking life, but they did not grant me control. Anyone who hasn't mastered dream control knows that sometime lucid dreams go good, and other times they can go very badly. You're always in control, but if you don't know what you're doing and don't have the discipline to keep your attention focused properly, you can really screw shit up. Imagine your worst lucid disaster in RL. This is what most spiritual traditions warn of when they say you need discipline.

Sure I could pull off some awesome control in RL, but just as often it would blow up in my face.

You know it is funny I spent much of the past 25 years chasing after Carlos Castaneda and "the myth he held in his hands." I didn't even know anything about lucid dreaming until 15 years ago and the first time I actually bothered looking into OBEs and Astral travel was last fall! The point is, I got CC's view first, then the whole lucid dream/OBE/Astral travel bit later on.

My conclusion is that CC was a lucid dreamer who also used a bunch of poetic license to spin his tales. They truly are "tales of power", but also they are all about trickery (something Castaneda himself would gladly admit). So basically he did everything that a lucid dreamer would do, but he (and of course his character Don Juan) maintained that these experiences could be actually manifested in reality, not just "in your head." The world view he spins cannot be understood by reading just one book, you have to digest them all from start to finish, and then a very complex world view (cognitive system) evolves. Is it real? Does it have power? Maybe. I was a practitioner for years, but now I've decided to branch off on my own. Especially towards the end of his life (he died in 1998) the group of people around him became decidedly cultish in character and 4 of the main women that surrounded him, Florinda Donner Grau, Taisha Abelar, Kylie Lundal, and Talia Bey almost instantly disappeared. Carol Tiggs (the Nagual Woman, CC's female counterpart) disappeared some months later. None of these people have been heard from since in public, but the bones of Patricia Partin, AKA The Blue Scout (a "being" you'll read about if you read this book) were found in Death Valley in 2003. If that doesn't sound like a cult, I'm not sure what does!

Concerning this book, it is one of his darkest IMO. It is almost wholly about dreaming, but again, it is something far beyond simple mind stuff. Worth a read, but don't expect to learn anything in terms of techniques per se. His best works include Journey to Ixlan, The Fire From Within, The Power of Silence, and his most recent work, published just before his death, The Active Side of Infinity.

Read and enjoy, but bring along a bag of salt for the ride!

I agree, Journey to Ixtlan is one of the best I've seen yet. It's the third in the series, and it basically re-states the material from the first two books but without the hallucinogenic drug aspect, which was very prevalent in the first two. He basically starts Journey by saying that he got too pulled into the hallucinogens and that it was a mistake, though it did open him up to the shaman's world.

It's an amazing read, and has a lot about lucid dreaming in it, though the only practical thing about LDing is the technique of looking at your hands in a dream to go lucid, and then shifting your attention from object to object in the dream so it doesn't destabilize as it will if you look at one thing too long. That said, while there isn't much of a practical technical value about how to achieve lucids... it's an amazing read!! And a great place to start reading Castaneda.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

though it did open him up to the shaman's world.

Please don't confuse Carlos Castaneda with a Shaman. He was a Sorcerer. Very different beastie altogether.

Castaneda used Power and Knowledge for his own benefit. A Shaman does so for The People.

The paths are the same, but the Paths are nearly antithetical.

Ah! Thanks, I didn't realize that. Now it makes a bit more sense.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

Ah! Thanks, I didn't realize that. Now it makes a bit more sense.