[true]

Do you recall how we have to take the inventory, as a rule, as the Eagle's command, but then after we take it we can throw it away?

Well that's all I'm saying. Everyone in this portion of emanations has to acquire/develop a mind, but you don't have to worship it, or keep it. I'm saying it, and CC said it.

The inventory, as you'll recall, is the mind. DJ no longer had one. Recall also that the old inventory was replaced by the sorcerers' description, but that that too must eventually be thrown away. These are CC's teachings, not mine. But I realise them, so they're mine too. But they really belong to no one.

Anyway, if it makes you feel any better, we can say I'm prematurely insisting that your sorcerers' inventory is useless. But to say it's premature is to bow to time as if it's real.

I'm throwing all the rules out the window. This feels alright to me.

My best intent towards you, BratsheWarrior. Sincerely.

[true]

Why this concern over being free or not free?

Life is here, now.

Do we have any option but to live this present moment from right where we are, (wherever you place your feet, as DJ would say) whatever we call it? Why waste time naming the place where our feet are? Whatever we end up calling it, we're still going to have to take a step off of it eventually and plant our feet somewhere else. Then what will it matter what we named that old place?

It won't matter then, and it doesn't matter now. Life moves too fast for names.

[BratscheWarrior]

AHA! So you do agree that you aren't free according to Castaneda's view! You do tend to quote Don Juan Matus a lot so i assume you would take stock in what he says!!! So i am not squeezing you into a box, defined my reality. i am just using Castaneda's words to back up my puny ones.

You bring up the 'mind'. Which mind are you speaking of? If you are NOT free, you are still under flyer control. It is beinging a slave. Yes, we don't have to keep the flyer mind and yes it is desirable to rid oneself of it. But is that only a part of being free? Or is it the 3rd Attention? Or is it Seeing? Or all? But it definitely is not the flyer mind.

Why would you throw away the Sorcerer's Description? Isn't what we want to adopt for as long as we are here?

Why concern over being free? Because i want to experience the mysteries of this world. i am a perceiver. i am a traveler.

[true]

Actually, what I agreed to is that I'm not free according to ANY view. But you do not understand that views (partial) are not free (whole) by definition.

Castaneda is not my authority. I don't respect him any more than I do you. Your words are fine.

How many minds are you aware of? For me, as for CC, mind = inventory. There's just one. But if you want to describe several, I beieve I can adopt whatever syntax you'd like to use.


For a mind, freedom will always be in the future. It will always be something you're not. Drop the mind.

We would drop the sorcerers' description because it too is only a description. As long as there are descriptions or views, you miss the entirety, the totality. You are the totality. I suppose sorcerers do adopt it for as long as they're here. Do you want to be a sorcerer?

The mystery is right here. You don't have to fit into any conditions to perceive it. You're a perceiver, but you're busy thinking. Stop thinking and just perceive and the mystery will be apparent.

If you want to travel, that's fine. But you'll still be where you place your feet. The mystery isn't localized to just certain places or states of consciousness. Consciousness is the mystery - all of it. Right where you are is mystery. Isn't it a wonder that you can formulate thought? That you can operate a keyboard and interpret these symbols and give them meaning? Isn't that mysterious, or do you presume it to be ordinary?

[true]

In the introduction of Journey to Ixtlan, CC defines seeing as "responding to the perceptual solicitations of a world outside the description we have learned to call reality."

This is exactly how it is in non-duality. When the mind is not in the forefront and you are just perceiving the world without talking about it or describing any of it, your whole mode of functioning is purely sensory - what you see, hear, touch, smell and taste. That is the actual world. That is what CC calls "perceptual solicitations". They're solicitations because you're in silence until something engages one or more of your senses. Watch a dog - they respond to any noise or sound, they investigate any smells that hit their noses, they respond if you touch them... they're good teachers on responding to perceptual solicitations.

It's funny because in many spiritual circles or systems, the senses are looked upon as limitations. But if you just look at this, what else can there be when the mind has stopped?

The energy body? What is it? Could it be the hightened unified sensory input?

I'm not sure of the direct quote, but I recall somewhere else DJ saying that he never said seeing is done with the eyes alone. And something about engaging the entire body. When I find it, I'll post it.

Here's a quote from U.G. Krishnamurti:
"The natural state is not the state of a self-realized God-realized man, it is not a thing to be achieved or attained, it is not a thing to be willed into existence; it is there -- it is the living state. This state is just the functional activity of life. By 'life' I do not mean something abstract; it is the life of the senses, functioning naturally without the interference of thought. Thought is an interloper, which thrusts itself into the affairs of the senses. It has a profit motive: thought directs the activity of the senses to get something out of them, and uses them to give continuity to itself."

[true]

A bit more from U.G. Krishnamurti's "Mystique of Enlightenment", for those interested:

"Is there in you an entity which you call the 'I' or the 'mind' or the 'self'? Is there a co- ordinator who is co-ordinating what you are looking at with what you are listening to, what you are smelling with what you are tasting, and so on? Or is there anything which links together the various sensations originating from a single sense -- the flow of impulses from the eyes, for example? Actually, there is always a gap between any two sensations. The co-ordinator bridges that gap: he establishes himself as an illusion of continuity.

In the natural state there is no entity who is co-ordinating the messages from the different senses. Each sense is functioning independently in its own way. When there is a demand from outside (perceptual solicitation - true) which makes it necessary to co-ordinate one or two or all of the senses and come up with a response, still there is no co-ordinator, but there is a temporary state of co- ordination. There is no continuity; when the demand has been met, again there is only the unco-ordinated, disconnected, disjointed functioning of the senses. This is always the case. Once the continuity is blown apart -- not that it was ever there; but the illusory continuity -- it's finished once and for all.

Can this make any sense to you? It cannot. All that you know lies within the framework of your experience, which is of thought. This state is not an experience. I am only trying to give you a 'feel' of it, which is, unfortunately, misleading.

When there is no co-ordinator, there is no linking of sensations, there is no translating of sensations; they stay pure and simple sensations. I do not even know that they are sensations. I may look at you as you are talking. The eyes will focus on your mouth because that is what is moving, and the ears will receive the sound vibrations. There is nothing inside which links up the two and says that it is you talking. I may be looking at a spring bubbling out of the earth and hear the water, but there is nothing to say that the noise being heard is the sound of water, or that that sound is in any way connected with what I am seeing. I may be looking at my foot, but nothing says that this is my foot. When I am walking, I see my feet moving -- it is such a funny thing: "What is that which is moving?"

What functions is a primordial consciousness, untouched by thought."



"There must be a living contact. If you walk out of the room, you disappear from my consciousness. Where you are, or why you are not here -- these questions do not arise. There are no images here -- there is no room for them -- the sensory apparatus is completely occupied with the things I am looking at now. There must be a living contact with those things that are in the room, not thoughts about things that are not here. And so, if you are totally 'tuned in' to the sensory activity, there is no room for fears about who will feed you tomorrow, or for speculation about God, Truth and Reality.

This is not a state of omniscience, wherein all of man's eternal questions are answered; rather it is a state in which the questioning has stopped. It has stopped because those questions have no relation to the way the organism is functioning, and the way the organism is functioning leaves no room for those questions (CC's 'inapplicability' - true)."

[true]

Uno mas! U.G. on the internal dialogue:

"You must always recognize what you are looking at, otherwise you are not there. The moment you translate, the 'you' is there. You look at something and recognize that it is a bag, a red bag. Thought interferes with the sensation by translating. Why does thought interfere? And can you do anything about it? The moment you look at a thing, what comes inside of you is the word 'bag', if not bag', then 'bench' or 'bannister', 'step', "that man sitting there, he has white hair." It goes on and on -- you are repeating to yourself all the time. If you don't do that, you are preoccupied with something else: "I'm getting late for the office." You are either thinking about something which is totally unrelated to the way the senses are functioning at this moment, or else you are looking and saying to yourself "That's a bag, that's a red bag," and so on and so on -- that is all that is there. The word 'bag' separates you from what you are looking at, thereby creating the 'you'; otherwise there is no space between the two.

Every time a thought is born, you are born. When the thought is gone, you are gone. But the 'you' does not let the thought go, and what gives continuity to this 'you' is the thinking. Actually there is no permanent entity in you, no totality of all your thoughts and experiences. You think that there is 'somebody' who is thinking your thoughts, 'somebody' who is feeling your feelings --- that's the illusion. I can say it is an illusion; but it is not an illusion to you.

Your emotions are more complex, but it is the same process. Why do you have to tell yourself that you are angry, that you are envious of someone else, or that sex is bothering you? I am not saying anything about fulfilling or not fulfilling. There is a sensation in you, and you say that you are depressed or unhappy or blissful, jealous, greedy, envious. This labelling brings into existence the one who is translating this sensation. What you call "I" is nothing but this word 'red bag', 'bench', 'steps', 'banister', 'light bulb', 'angry', 'blissful', 'jealous', or whatever. You are putting your brain cells to unnecessary activity making the memory cells operate all the time, destroying the energy that is there. This is only wearing you out.

This labelling is necessary when you must communicate with someone else or with yourself. But you communicate with yourself all the time. Why do you do this? The only difference between you and the person who talks aloud to himself is that you don't talk aloud. The moment you do begin to talk aloud, along comes the psychiatrist. That chap, of course, is doing the same thing that you are doing, communicating to himself all the time -- 'bag', 'red bag', 'obsessive', 'compulsive', 'Oedipus complex,' 'greedy', 'bench', 'banister', 'martini'. Then he says something is wrong with you and puts you on the couch and wants to change you, to help you.

Why can't you leave the sensations alone? Why do you translate? You do this because if you do not communicate to yourself, you are not there. The prospect of that is frightening to the 'you'."


You can read more by U.G. at http://www.well.com/user/jct/index.html

Many of his books are reproduced there. They are not his books. He didn't write them and said he had nothing to give to anyone, but people transcribed notes and compiled books of these talks.