CARLOS CASTANEDA CLAIMED TO HAVE JUMPED INTO AN ABYSS

 

The first time Castaneda mentioned this event was in his fourth book "Tales of Power" (1974) where in the third part of this book he put a long story describing how first Don Juan and Don Genaro (Don Juan's colleague) were preparing him and Pablito (Don Genaro's apprentice) to make this leap.

A few days later Castaneda saw Pablito being thrown into the abyss by Don Juan and Don Genaro.

And then Castaneda recounts the sensations he had when Don Juan and Don Genaro also made him jump into the abyss:

« I had a fully conscious sensation of spinning or floating for a moment. Then I fell through the air, plummeting to the ground at tremendous speed. I felt my clothes tearing away, my flesh peeling off, and finally only my head remained.

I distinctly felt that, as my body dismembered, I was losing superfluous weight, and so the fall lost momentum and my speed slowed. The descent was no longer a dizzying experience. I began to oscillate in the air like a leaf. Then my head was stripped of its weight, and all that remained of "me" was a cubic centimeter, a nugget, a tiny residue like a pebble.

All my feelings were concentrated there; then the nugget seemed to burst and I became a thousand pieces. I knew, or something somewhere knew, that I was conscious of all a thousand pieces at once. I was consciousness itself.

Then, some part of that consciousness began to stir; it rose up, it grew. It acquired a location, and little by little I regained a sense of boundaries, understanding, or whatever it was, and suddenly the "self" that I knew and was familiar to me burst forth into a spectacular vision of every imaginable combination of "beautiful" scenes; it was as if I were looking at thousands of images of the world, of people, of things.

Then the scenes blurred. I had the sensation that they were passing before my eyes at increasing speed, until it was no longer possible to examine any of them separately. Finally, it was as if I were witnessing the organization of the world rolling before my eyes in an endless, continuous chain.

Suddenly I found myself standing on the cliff with Don Juan and Don Genaro. »

And then Castaneda wrote:

« When I woke up at dusk, Don Juan and I sat down by the door of the house, and then Don Juan said to me:

. . .

"Last night, your bubble of perception opened and its wings unfurled. There's nothing more to say about it. It's impossible to explain what happened to you, so I won't try, and neither should you. Suffice it to say that the wings of your perception touched your wholeness. Last night you went back and forth from nagual to tonal, again and again. You were thrown into the abyss twice to leave no room for error. The second time you experienced the full impact of the journey into the unknown. And your perception unfurled its wings when something within you realized your true nature. You are a cluster. »

Much of his book 'The Second Ring of Power' (1977) is dedicated to this leap; it would be too long to transcribe everything, so I will only give you the beginning of the preface:

« My last encounter with Don Juan, Don Genaro, and their two other apprentices, Pablito and Néstor, took place on a flat, arid summit on the western slopes of the Sierra Madre in Central Mexico. The solemnity and significance of the events that unfolded there left no doubt in my mind that our apprenticeship had come to an end and that I was, in fact, seeing Don Juan and Don Genaro for the last time. Toward the end, we said our goodbyes, and then Pablito and I leaped from the mountaintop, plunging into an abyss. »

In his book "The Eagle's Gift" (1981) Castaneda wrote:

« Don Juan made me jump at the precise moment when he and all his warriors had ignited their consciences. »

In his book 'The Active Side of Infinity' (1998) Castaneda dedicated an entire chapter to this topic; I transcribe the most relevant parts:

« After seeing Don Juan and his companions transform into luminous orbs, ascend into the sky, and finally disappear.] I knew what I had to do. My time was up. I sprinted at full speed toward the precipice and leaped into the abyss. I felt the wind on my face for a moment, and then the most merciful blackness swallowed me like a peaceful underground river.

[Later, when I returned to the United States, I exclaimed]

I had jumped into an abyss in Mexico!

My next thought was a quasi-logical deduction: since I had deliberately jumped into the abyss to die, 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 having 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? »

FROM WHAT HEIGHT DID HE JUMP?

In his book 'The Active Side of Infinity,' Castaneda specified that it was 200 m:

« A single path led up to the flat plateau. After arriving, I realized that it was not as extensive as it had appeared from a distance. The vegetation on the plateau was no different from that below; greenish, woody-stemmed shrubs that had the ambiguous appearance of trees.

At first I didn't see the abyss. Only when Don Juan led me there did I realize that the plateau ended in a precipice; in truth, it wasn't a plateau, but the flat summit of a mountain. It was round, and the slopes to the east and south were worn away; however, the sides facing west and north looked as if they had been sliced ​​open by a knife.

From the edge of the precipice, I could see the bottom of the abyss, perhaps two hundred meters [219 yards] away. It was covered with the same woody plants that grew everywhere. »

INCONSISTENCIES

There are contradictions in the different accounts Castaneda gave, because:

In his book 'Tales of Power,' Castaneda stated that Don Juan and Don Genaro made him jump into the abyss, and they continued with him the next day.

In his book 'The Eagle's Gift,' Castaneda said that Don Juan was the one who made him jump into the abyss at the precise moment when Don Juan and his sorcerers had ignited their consciousness and transformed into luminous globes. Genaro and the others were in the sky waiting for Don Juan. And while Castaneda was jumping, he saw Don Juan and his group ascend through the sky until they finally disappeared.

But in 'The Active Side of Infinity,' Castaneda says that he first saw Don Juan and his sorcerers ignite their consciousness, become balls of light, and it was only after they disappeared into the sky that he decided to jump into the abyss.

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

HOW TRUE IS THIS?

Master Pasteur explained that when humans reach a high level of development, they can tune into the divine world and consequently be able to transcend physical laws, which among other things will allow them to levitate.

That's what Jesus did when he walked on water, and that's probably what the people throughout history who levitated did (when those events were real and not faked).

But to achieve this, one needs to have reached a very high degree of spirituality, something that Castaneda was far from achieving.

But it seems there are other ways to levitate, since spiritualism mentions cases where "spirits" (actually astral entities) made objects and even people float. And after investigating this matter, I believe that a few of those cases may have actually been true.

But in the two techniques I mentioned above, it is only stated that the people floated (in the most surprising cases) a few meters off the ground, not that they survived a jump made from 200 meters high.

And the explanation that Don Juan supposedly gave, that Castaneda was saved because he was going from the nagual to the tonal (that is, from the physical world to the subtle world) over and over again, which allowed "his bubble of perception to open and his wings to unfold," I haven't heard this assertion anywhere else.

And since no other teaching mentions this method, nor did Castaneda ever perform this leap again, nor has any shaman been able to demonstrate that with his shamanic powers he can survive something like this, it is most likely that this leap into the abyss is yet another lie invented by Castaneda.

And I find it truly inconceivable that Castaneda was so reckless as to put that story in his books, claiming it was true, without worrying about what that might cause.

Unfortunately, that lie caused at least one tragedy (although there were possibly more) because a woman  named Janice Emery, who  was a big fan of Castaneda, decided to follow in the footsteps of the "Nahual" and she jumped off a bridge "to also open her wings of perception" but all she managed to do was kill herself.