CARLOS CASTANEDA CLAIMED THAT DON GENARO MADE HIS CAR DISAPPEAR SUPERNATURALLY

In his book 'Journey to Ixtlan' Carlos Castaneda told the following story:

« "Do you remember the time I jammed your car?" Don Juan asked.

His question was abrupt and unrelated to the conversation. He was referring to a time when I couldn't start my car until he told me I could. I said that no one would forget such an event.

"That was nothing," said Don Juan in a serene tone.

"How can you say that?" I said in a protesting tone . "What you did that day is something I will truly never understand."

"Genaro can do much better. Right, Genaro?"

"That's right," Don Genaro replied.

"What can you do?" I asked.

"You'll see it next," he replied.

They stood up, and for a moment I didn't know what to do, but Don Juan told me to follow suit. We started climbing the small hill in front of Don Juan's house.

Don Juan moved his hands as if weaving an invisible thread, Don Genaro did the same and repeated: "Let's examine your car."

We reached the top the hill and I looked towards where I had parked my car. My stomach lurched. The car was gone! I ran down the hill. My car was nowhere to be seen. I experienced a moment of great confusion. I had locked the car as usual. »

(Chapter 18, extracts)

Castaneda then began to investigate how Don Genaro managed to do that:

« As always when Don Juan confronted me with inexplicable phenomena, the idea occurred to me that I was being deceived by ordinary means.

I started calculating how many accomplices Don Juan and Don Genaro would have needed to lift my car and take it away, but we were alone.

Another possibility was that an accomplice had forced the door and connected the ignition wire to take the car, but this action implied specialized knowledge beyond his means.

The last possible explanation was that perhaps I had been hypnotized, since their movements seemed very new and suspicious to me. »

(Ibid)

Then Castaneda recounts how Don Genero makes him look for his car in absurd places: under a rock, among the bushes, until finally Castaneda falls into a trance-like state.

Don Juan then explained to Castaneda what had happened:

« The other day, Genaro never moved your car from the world of ordinary people. He merely forced you to see the world like sorcerers do, and your car wasn't in that world. Genaro wanted to soften your certainty. His antics spoke to your body about how absurd it is to try to understand everything. And when he flew his kite, you almost managed to see [like a sorcerer]. You found your car, and you were in both worlds.

"But how did he force me to see the world like the sorcerers?" Castaneda asked.

"I was with him. We both know that world. Now that we know it, all that's needed to produce it is to use that other ring of power I told you the sorcerers have. Genaro can do it as easily as he moves his fingers. He kept you busy turning stones to distract your thoughts and allow your body to see." »

(Chapter 19)

Shortly after the publication of this book, the philosopher Sam Keen interviewed Castaneda, and they had the following conversation about this matter:

Keen: When you told how Don Juan and his friend Don Genero made your car disappear in broad daylight I could only scratch my head. I know that a hypnotist can create an illusion of the presence or absence of an object. Do you think you were hypnotized?

Castaneda: Perhaps, something like that. But we have to begin by realizing, as don Juan says, that there is much more to the world than we usually acknowledge. Our normal expectations about reality are created by a social consensus. We are taught how to see and understand the world.

The trick of socialization is to convince us that the descriptions we agree upon define the limits of the real world. What we call reality is only one way of seeing the world, a way that is supported by a social consensus.

Keen: Then a sorcerer, like a hypnotist, creates an alternative world by building up different expectations and manipulating cues to produce a social consensus.

Castaneda: Exactly.

OBSERVATIONS

Theosophical instructors explained that ancient sorcerers were able to hypnotize people without their knowledge and thus make them believe that they were experiencing whatever those sorcerers wanted: that they were transforming into animals, or that things were disappearing and appearing in front of them, etc.

But Don Juan gave another explanation, saying that Don Genaro  forced Castaneda to see the world as sorcerers do, which I interpret as Genaro  transferring Castaneda's consciousness to another reality.

But esotericism explains that the only other reality that resembles the physical world is the densest subplane of the astral plane. However, Castaneda would have continued to see his car there, because that subplane is the mold of the physical world, and therefore what appears in the physical world also appears in that subplane.

Therefore, Don Juan's answer is incorrect, and if that story is true, the most tangible explanation is that Castaneda was indeed hypnotized, although  I suspect that this story was actually invented by that writer.

CARLOS CASTANEDA CLAIMED TO HAVE SPOKEN WITH A COYOTE

 

Castaneda, in his book "Journey to Ixtlan," mentioned that he was camping alone on a mountain near Don Juan's house when suddenly:

« I saw a coyote trotting calmly across the field. It was near the spot where I thought I had seen a man. It traveled about fifty meters south and then stopped, turned around, and started walking toward me.

I yelled to scare him, but he kept coming closer. I was apprehensive for a moment. I thought maybe he was rabid, and I even considered gathering stones to defend myself in case of an attack.

When the animal was three or four meters away, I noticed that it wasn't agitated in any way; on the contrary, it seemed calm and fearless. It slowed its pace, stopping a meter or a meter and a half away from me. We looked at each other, and the coyote came even closer. Its brown eyes were friendly and clear.

I sat down on the rocks, and the coyote stopped, almost touching me. I was astonished. I had never seen a wild coyote so close, and the only thing I could think to do was talk to it. I spoke to it as if I were talking to a friendly dog. And then it seemed to me that the coyote answered me. I was absolutely certain that it had said something. I felt confused, but there was no time to dwell on my feelings, because the coyote spoke again.

It wasn't that the animal was uttering words like the ones I usually hear in human voices; rather, I "felt" that it was speaking. But it wasn't the feeling one gets when a pet seems to communicate with its owner. The coyote was indeed saying something; it was conveying a thought, and that communication occurred through something very similar to a sentence.

I had said, "How are you, little coyote?" and I thought I heard the animal reply, "Very well, and you?"

Then the coyote repeated the phrase, and I jumped up. The animal didn't move a muscle. My sudden jump didn't even alarm him. His eyes remained clear and friendly. He lay down and, tilting his head, asked, "Why are you afraid?"

I sat down across from him and had the strangest conversation I'd ever had. Finally, he asked me what I was doing there, and I told him I'd come to "stop the world."

(Cid's note: By "stopping the world," Castaneda refers to halting the physical and usual way we perceive the world, in order to perceive it in its energetic aspect.)

The coyote said, "That's great!" and then I realized he was a bilingual coyote. The nouns and verbs in his sentences were in English, but the conjunctions and exclamations were in Spanish. The thought crossed my mind that I was in the presence of a Chicano coyote. I burst out laughing at the absurdity of it all, and I laughed so hard I almost became hysterical.

Then the impossibility of what was happening hit me full force, and my mind reeled. The coyote stood up, and our eyes met. I stared into its gaze. I felt a pull, and suddenly the animal became iridescent; it began to glow. It was as if my mind were replaying the memory of another event that had taken place ten years earlier, when, under the influence of peyote, I witnessed the metamorphosis of an ordinary dog ​​into an unforgettable, iridescent being.

It was as if the coyote had triggered the memory, and the image of that earlier event, invoked, was superimposed on the coyote's form; the coyote was a fluid, liquid, luminous being. Its luminosity was dazzling.

I tried to shield my eyes with my hands, but I couldn't move. The luminous being touched me somewhere deep within myself, and my body experienced an indescribable warmth and well-being, so exquisite that the touch seemed to have made me explode. I was transfigured. I couldn't feel my feet, my legs, or any part of my body, but something held me upright.

I have no idea how long I remained in that position. Meanwhile, the luminous coyote and the mountain where I was dissolved. There were no thoughts or feelings. Everything had disconnected, and I floated freely. »

(Chapter 18)

Shortly after the publication of this book, the philosopher Sam Keen interviewed Castaneda, and on this subject Castaneda commented:

« My conversation with the coyote is a good illustration of the different theories of embodiment. When he came up to me I said:

   -    “Hi, little coyote. How are you doing?”

And he answered back:

   -    “I am doing fine. How about you?”

Now, I didn’t hear the words in the normal way. But my body knew the coyote was saying something and I translated it into dialogue.

As an intellectual my relationship to dialogue is so profound that my body automatically translated into words the feeling that the animal was communicating with me. We always see the unknown in terms of the known.

We might be able to talk to any animal. For don Juan and the other sorcerers there wasn’t anything unusual about my conversation with the coyote. As a matter of fact they said I should have gotten a more reliable animal for a friend. Coyotes are tricksters and are not to be trusted. »

MY OPINION OF THIS EVENT

It could be that in a heightened state of consciousness one can converse with animals, and perhaps Carlos Castaneda did converse with this coyote (although it seems that in reality this coyote was another being that took the appearance of a coyote), but knowing how much of a liar Castaneda was, it is most likely that he invented this story.

CARLOS CASTANEDA CONTRADICTED HIMSELF IN THE WAY HE RECOVERED HIS MEMORIES

Carlos Castaneda wrote and published four books:

   -  "The Second Ring of Power" (1977)

   -  "The Eagle's Gift" (1981) 

   -  "The Fire from Within" (1984) 

   -  "Silent Knowledge" (1987) 

Whose plots revolve around his gradual recollection of things that Don Juan and his sorcerers supposedly taught him in a heightened state of consciousness, and also of the interactions he had with various members of Don Juan's group.

For example, Castaneda in the book "The Eagle's Gift" acts as if he were only then remembering what he did with several of the persons associated with Don Juan, such as the Fat Lady or Carol Tiggs (the nagual woman).

«The hazy memories I had of the Fat Lady, or the feeling of having lived in this house, in a way constituted threats to my survival, but all that was nothing compared to the act of remembering the nagual woman. »

(Chapter 6)

But in his book "The Active Side of Infinity" (1998) Castaneda claims that he remembered everything he had been taught and experienced in this heightened state of consciousness all at once in 1973, when he was sitting in the Ship restaurant, after having made his leap into the abyss.

« I had jumped into an abyss in Mexico! The next thought I had was a quasi-logical deduction: since I had deliberately jumped into the abyss, I must now be a ghost.

"How strange," I thought, "that I should return in ghostly form to my apartment on the corner of Westwood and Wilshire in Los Angeles after I'd died. No wonder my feelings weren't the same. But if I were a ghost," I reasoned, "why would I have felt the rush of cool air on my face or the ache in my calves?"

. . . .

My relationship with my companions had been an example of both consequences. I had companions, the other apprentices of Don Juan, companions on my ultimate journey. I interacted with them only with heightened awareness. The clarity and scope of our interaction were supreme.

The problem for me was that in my daily life, these were just vague, poignant memories that plunged me into despair, filled with anxiety and anticipation. I could say I lived my normal life constantly searching for someone who was going to suddenly appear before me, perhaps stepping out of an office building, perhaps turning a corner and bumping into me.

Wherever I went, my eyes moved incessantly all over the place, looking for people who did not exist and yet existed like no one else.

As I sat in Ship's restaurant this morning, everything that had happened to me with greater awareness, down to the smallest detail, during all the years I spent with Don Juan, returned as a continuous and uninterrupted memory. »

(This is at the end of the book)

NOTE

This is yet another example of the numerous contradictions that Carlos Castaneda stated.

DID ANNIE BESANT REGRET HAVING ANNOUNCED THE ARRIVAL OF LORD CHRIST-MAITREYA?

On this subject, researcher Gregory Tillett wrote:

On November 1st, 1925 Mrs Besant delivered a lecture in London on “The Coming of the World Teacher”. Shortly after this lecture, her certainty about the Coming and all the recent events received a serious and permanent shock which affected her psychological and physical health.

Krishnamurti rejected all the revelations about Initiates and Apostles, the World Religion and World University and such things, but was unwilling to tell Mrs Besant himself.  But he was determined that she must be told.  So he sent Professor Marcault, an official of the World University, to break the news whilst he, Krishnamurti, remained in the car outside Mrs Besant’s London residence.

Emile Marcault, MA, LLB, was Professor and Psychology and French Literature at the University of Claremont (1909-1917), the University of Grenoble, and the University of Pisa (1917-1924); and General Secretary of the Theosophical Society in France (1934-1945).

Marcault told Mrs Besant as simply as he could, and departed, leaving her deathly pale and severely shocked.  For some time afterwards she was physically ill, and thereafter showed signs of rapid aging, loss of memory and a tendency to focus on the past.  She was torn between a series of opposed loyalties and demands and remained in a state of uncertainty and conflict for the rest of her life.

On November 3rd, Krishnamurti, Mrs Besant, Wedgwood and Lady Emily departed for India, and in Rome were joined by the Arundales. 

[Krishnamurti's brother was very ill.]

Krishnamurti was told by the Mahachohan (via Arundale) that his brother, Nityananda, would die unless he, Krishnamurti, accepted the revelations given through Arundale and confirmed the occult status of the Apostles and Initiates. Krishnamurti refused.

As the party entered the Suez Canal on November 13th, a cable was received telling of Nityananda’s death.  Mrs Besant broke the news to Krishnamurti, and it had a shattering effect on him. 

Shiva Rao, who shared a cabin with Krishnamurti, wrote to Mary Lutyens that Nityananda’s death had broken Krishnamurti completely, changed his entire philosophy of life, and destroyed his implicit faith in the plans outlined by Leadbeater and Mrs Besant.

The effect of the continuing controversy, uncertainty and disappointment on Mrs Besant was considerable. 

According to one of her associates at the time, E.L. Gardner, Mrs Besant intended to make a statement of her realization that she had been misled about the Coming, and told Gardner of this when he had an interview with her in 1930.

Garner wrote:

« Mrs Besant broke down before making the declaration she intended and died. The shock of finding her fears (a two year build up) all confirmed, killed her. »

(From a letter from Gardner to Boris de Zirkoff, April 9, 1965, seen in the archives of Point Loma Publications, San Diego.)

Although Gardener would not commit the full details to writing, it seemed that Mrs Besant had decided that Leadbeater had merely been seeing the creations of his own mind; she was shattered to think that she had gone along with him, and horrified at the effect of her support.

(From a letter from Gardner to Boris de Zirkoff, May 22, 1965, seen in the archives of Point Loma Publications, San Diego.)

(https://cwleadbeater.wordpress.com/2016/06/08/did-annie-besant-regret/)

OBSERVATION

It may be that Annie Besant did eventually repent, but that doesn't absolve her of all the harm she caused, because many people warned her that Leadbeater was a fraud, and it is baffling that even until the end of her life she continued to defend him, considering that "Leadbeater had simply been seeing creations of his own mind," when in reality all the facts demonstrate that this individual was an immense charlatan who intentionally manipulated her to carry out all his misdeeds.