Secrecy and silence

[Guest]

Hello Bob, and all
I trust the Holidays were good to everyone.
I found myself in an unusual conversation this past week on an oscure facet of Christian theology. I was explaining the political hierarchy of the Christian trinity to someone who wondered if Christians should pray to Jesus, or only to the Fathe.
At this point in my life, I'm not particuarly impressed with Christian theology, and the political structure I was outlining was entirely theoretical.
Bob, how would you characterize your explanation of don Juan's teachings above? Is it a matter of crystalizing the tenets as a matter of discussion, as opposed to, say, a matter of personal conviction?

[seeitall]

Quote:"... when we fall asleep, the dialog is stopped naturally."
No, the AP might move but the internal dialog does not stop.
In fact, any dialog you have while dreaming IS internal dialog. Unless, of course you talk in your sleep, then it is also external dialog.
What I meant was that in order to fall asleep the internal dialog
pauses for a moment to allow the AP movement. then the dialog is usually
restarted again.
Quote:But there are plenty of inmates in institutions for the mentally insane
who have stopped the world but who have never and will never "see." Not
in the way Don Juan meant. The eggs of luminous fibers and the lines of
the earth, etc.
every movement of AP from it's usual position (a position that
is quite the same across the society) is considered by society
like not normal, or if the movements are larger and uncontroled, the
person is taken as insane.
From what you wrote I would say that every substantial AP movement is
stopping the world. when I take LSD or DMT
and have totally chaotic experience, is it stopping the world ?
I think the inmates in institutions for the mentally insane never
stopped the world or skimming/interpreting of the eagle's emanations,
they just happen to do (interpret) it out of the society norm.
Here is an interesting article called The Six Explanatory
Propositions. I seems that the term "stopping the first ring of power" used there
is equal to "stopping the world".
www.oldnagualnet.com/imag...itions.htm
-----------------
THIS IS WAR

[Bob May]

"I was explaining the political hierarchy of the Christian trinity to someone who wondered if Christians should pray to Jesus, or only to the Fathe."
I believe Jesus said the night of Passover that his disciples were to pray directly to the Father because he went to the Father.
I don't bother myself with the three in one problem. They are One. Beyond that I think maybe it is above our heads.
Another related controversy is whether you pray in Jesus' name. But, who knows what that means? Some think you have to say the words "I pray in Jesus' name" after every prayer.
I just talk to God. He knows where I'm coming from.
"Bob, how would you characterize your explanation of don Juan's teachings above? Is it a matter of crystalizing the tenets as a matter of discussion, as opposed to, say, a matter of personal conviction?"
Both. Whenever you get into a discussion, especially a technical discussion, you have to have your terms defined or you will not be communicating. That was apparent when we were discussing stopping the internal dialog vs. stopping the world. Being that we are discussing abstract principles makes no difference. The concepts are no less real for being abstract.
As far as personal conviction goes, that sounds a bit like "belief" in something unseen or not yet experienced. That is not the case. I am 53 years old, I will be 54 in a few days. That seems and is "abstract" to someone who is in there early 20's. But it is a fact. You can relate to it cause you've been there and know it is an actual thing. And you could probably almost tell I was not a young kid before I even let my age be known to you. Just as I could guess you were also a bit older than 20 before you actually said how old you were.
It is the same with spiritual experience. Stopping the world is only an abstract thing before it happens. And you can tell by the way a person describes it whether they have been through it or not.
So, it is not a conviction, it is a fact. Though it is a "subjective" fact, and so cannot be fully shared with someone who has not gone through it.
Probably akin to having been in combat. People who have, even though they may not have been in the same battles or even the same wars, share a kinship for having had the experience.
Bob

[Bob May]

"What I meant was that in order to fall asleep the internal dialog
pauses for a moment to allow the AP movement. then the dialog is usually
restarted again."
Yeah, you may have something there. I have had some amazing experiences on that "cusp" between awake and asleep. I never quite related it to the stopping of the dialog, but you may be correct.
"From what you wrote I would say that every substantial AP movement is
stopping the world. when I take LSD or DMT
and have totally chaotic experience, is it stopping the world ?"
Yes, I think it is, but with some important differences.
A person on drugs knows that they are coming back as soon as the drugs leave their system. When my world stopped, though helped along by mushrooms, I heard a snapping sound at the nape of my neck and at that moment knew that I would not be "coming down" the next day or in days or weeks. It took months and all of the discipline I had to endure it.
The other difference is that you can always "write it off" to the drugs. when you have taken them. In other words call it halucinations., ie. not real.
A person on a mission to find another world and finds it, finds something beyond their imagination. Beyond their ability to imagine. They know it is real.

"I think the inmates in institutions for the mentally insane never
stopped the world or skimming/interpreting of the eagle's emanations,
they just happen to do (interpret) it out of the society norm."
I don't know what they are experiencing or seeing. But many of them they have stopped the world and are caught in the same place that Don Juan knew Carlos would experience upon stopping the world. They may never stumble across the exact AP that allows a person to see luminus eggs. I have only seen this a few times. And the Great emanations a few times. But they are (some of them not all of them) certainly witnessing the existence of inorganic beings. Real entities that the doctors and nurses around them have no clue exist. That is not just an interpretation, it is real.
Again, it is a gigantic step, but only a glimse of what lies beyond. It is only a peek at what lies just behind this plane we inhabit. It is not really going anywhere. It is just seeing the reality behing THIS PLANE.
There are many planes and worlds.
Once your world is stopped, if you survive, what will you attune to? Is your purpose to see the lines of the earth? You probably will if that is what your looking for. Is it to become one with God? That can be attained on many levels.
God exists on all levels. The levels ARE aspects of God.
I have worn the Coat of many colors. I have come to the conclusion over the years that that experience is synonymous with other things described in the Bible and out of it. It is also one of the clusters of great emanations that Don Juan spoke of. Read his description. He says it is the love of God. It is also Jacob's ladder upon which angels ascended and descended. It is also The baptism of Fire that came on the disciples at Pentacost and that John the Baptist foretold Jesus would bring.
A column of light fibers and multi colored tounges of flame that stretched upward to infinity and down through me and the earth. And down the middle the many shades of pink just as Don Juan described it. Just as the colors of the Tree of life. Pink as the color of Tipareth the Sephirah of Christ consciousness on the middle pillar of the Tree of Life.
It is also the Lightning Struck Tower of the Tarot deck. Look at the picture. The column of lightning from above knocking the king from his high place. That is our description of the world being displaced. The separate flames of fire or "cloven tongues", as it says came upon the disciples at Pentecost, dancing in the air around the falling king and his tower.
We are more than what we think we are. We have access to things we cannot begin to imagine.
Do we have to stop the world in order to experience some of these things? It would have stopped right there during that experience if it had not years before. And in fact, my description of world view was changed and expanded once again because of that experience.
All of the powers of the Tree of Life came down that day and held me fast. Wrapped around me like a coat.
Stopping the world may not have to be a negative frightening experience, I really don't know. It was for me, but that was the path I had chosen at the beginning of my spiritual journey. Bob

[Guest]

I can't believe that Carlos Castaneda ever stopped the world. He may have gotten to interfere with the world for a little bit, but the world always resumed for him.
Only the very abstract was different for Carlos. He carried that part with him.
Any significant leap of consciousness, in any direction is going to be self defined as a discontinuity. It's all leaps. It's the Art of Leaping.
Drugs are leaps. Leaps are leaps. I don't think we can get around it. Is there an ultimate leap? Can I look at the world and physically not see it as it is?
Is that an error my physical seeing is prone to? Does it make up things? Does my physical seeing skip things for psychological reasons?
How and why would I be able to seriously see something as something it wasn't? How could I turn a strange animal into a log?

[Guest]

How can stopping the world help us in daily life?

[Bob May]

"Any significant leap of consciousness, in any direction is going to be self defined as a discontinuity. It's all leaps. It's the Art of Leaping."
"There are leaps and there is a continual growing in awareness."
"Drugs are leaps. Leaps are leaps. I don't think we can get around it. Is there an ultimate leap?"
There is an experience that my teacher and Gopi Krishna went through that both described and tradition described as the highest experience a person in a body could attain. It was the result of certain meditations and both agreed it was as if seeing the earth as a grain of sand on an ocean of energy.
Never-the-less over the years my teacher continued going through more and more experiences that he would drop the comment now and again that "This is different", referring a new "phase" that he was experiencing.
If God is infinite, then becoming one with God is not a static condition but must be evolving into more.

"Can I look at the world and physically not see it as it is?"
You do that all of the time.
"Is that an error my physical seeing is prone to? Does it make up things? Does my physical seeing skip things for psychological reasons?"
Physical seeing is partial seeing. You/we make things up in a way that can be and has been agreed upon. It is not illusion, it is one description.
Yet even at a scientific/physical level this can be proven. In order to have depth perception, we must have two images for the brain to interpret into 3-D. A one-eyed person has no depth perception.
Yet, the third image, the one we believe is the "reality"
of all that we are surrounded by does not exist to our eyes at all. We are constantly living our lives according to an interpretation.
"How and why would I be able to seriously see something as something it wasn't?"
I just explained the how. The why is obviously so that we can function on this plane, in this world.
To become aware of another description would be necessary in order to allow you to function in another plane or world. If that is not your wish, it would do more harm than good.Bob

[Bob May]

In my experience, there was one thing that seemed to be prevalent. Knowing a person's inner purposes seemed to show in their faces. To avoid deception and read a person can be a valuable tool in daily life.
This perception seemed even to go beyond the person's own awareness of their motives. It was like layers that could be paged through. Layers of themselves of which they were only aware of only a few.Bob

[Bob Carr]

This is a very informative and important discussion. I have been uplifted in 5 minutes of reading
Thank you Bob M and Lightly.
Keep on
Bob CHawkeye and Crow

[Guest]

Quote:There is an experience that my teacher and Gopi Krishna went through that both described and tradition described as the highest experience a person in a body could attain. It was the result of certain meditations and both agreed it was as if seeing the earth as a grain of sand on an ocean of energy.
I've come to think of a hierarchy of spiritual experiences like this as something uniquely Vedic.
I don't know that seeing the world as a grain of sand in an ocean of energy is really better than chopping wood. Chopping wood is a fine experience.
Not that you have or haven't, it's just that the idea that a certain experience is somehow "higher" than another, seems arbitrary.
Is it correct that all you have to do is glow at a certain frequency, and you're done? Is there an experience that is somehow more holy than another?
What is the bigest leap we can possibly take?

[Bob May]

"I've come to think of a hierarchy of spiritual experiences like this as something uniquely Vedic."
It is also in both the Bible and Qabala. They are really one system of knowledge.
"I don't know that seeing the world as a grain of sand in an ocean of energy is really better than chopping wood. Chopping wood is a fine experience."
I tend to look at this phrase as pointing to not only the awareness that all that is is made up of energy, but also the comparative insignificance of "all that is manifest" or the earth and what lies normally hidden behind it.
"Not that you have or haven't, it's just that the idea that a certain experience is somehow "higher" than another, seems arbitrary."
I think "closer to the Source" or the "All" might be a better way of putting it.
"Is it correct that all you have to do is glow at a certain frequency, and you're done?"
I'm not sure what you mean.
"Is there an experience that is somehow more holy than another?"
In the study of the Qabala there is a thought that if you become "one with" one of the ten Sephiroth or "emanations", what you think of in mind becomes manifest as matter. But, if you become one with the first Sephirah, Kether, you will unmanifest.
As an example of this the old Testament character Enoch is used. "Enoch walked with God and was not, for God took him."
Some traditions hold that he became Metatron the archangel.
This would be a "permanent condition", so to speak.
This same unmanifesting, but apparently a temporary example is shown when Philip baptised the eunuch from Ethiopia. When the eunuch came up out of the water Philip was gone and was found in another place going about his business.
"What is the bigest leap we can possibly take?"
I would say what I described above.
But, I don't try to catagorise things from higher to lower.
I have had some spiritual experiences, visions etc., and have found that my understanding of them changes as time goes on. I keep learning more from them.
Just last year I read something in the Nag Hammadi scrolls, in the writings of a man of the first century named Valentinius, that I had experienced 20 years ago.
I had never before seen anything like it in print before and had never known of anything like it happening to anyone else. Furthermore, as far as I know, the Nag Hammadi scrolls had not been available to the public 20 years ago.
Valentinius was among those called Gnostics and was an "enemy" of a certain bishop who wanted the Gnostics done away with. His writing, of course were not included in the Bible.
The Gnostics believed men were supposed to have real experiential knowledge of spiritual things. And they pursued that.
Men who were striving to get the many factions of the church all "on the same page", so to speak, could not allow what they could not control. They could not control what they could not understand.
That mentality led to what we call the Catholic church to come to power and also led to so called "secret societies" to become necessary.
But, I am getting off the subject so I'll stop.
At a second glance, I actually have somehow gotten back ON the subject of Secrecy and Silence.Bob

[Bob Carr]

One of the attractions of Castaneda, for me, was that hierarchies, at least among beings, does not exist. You , me , a beetle, a rock; all are equal.
The other side of this is that among us human beings, there are leaders, not self appointed, bought, or inherited; IE; the Nagual.
In my psychedelic times, I met a few men, my age , my peers, like that.
Whether Power, or the powers of the world, removed me from that scene, is still an unknown.
For a long time I felt like a novice, still needing a teacher. I never found that teacher and surely became 'lost' .
--maybe like CC who had to recall his other self?
Bob C
a PS: I am scanning this rather quickly, but I did see the remarks about Stopping the World.
The people who first dosed me with LSD had a common phrase: There is no coming down. The idea being that such a conciousness experience is permanent. All experience is permanent, unless one tries to hide from it.
There are other issues of experience that I might ask (like War) but I really don't want to obscure this thread.
Am I on your line here?
Oh , and this:
The best insight I got from Castaneda is that Dreams are Real. It is Experience, even fantasies or our play-acting as children. That these things may not have material substance, but that they are part of our, what, psycologies maybe.
DJ said the dreams we remember are the real ones, and lately, mine are becoming more definite and informative.
And, I keep citing Edgar Cayce, because he was a Sleeping Seer, and recognizing the Seers' ability, which has comeupon me occasionally, seems to be the Teaching of don Juan.Hawkeye and Crow

[Guest]

Quote:"What is the bigest leap we can possibly take?"
I would say what I described above.I would say you are thinking way too small.

[Bob May]

"I would say you are thinking way too small."
I'm sure you are right about that.
Bob

[Bob May]

"One of the attractions of Castaneda, for me, was that hierarchies, at least among beings, does not exist. You , me , a beetle, a rock; all are equal.
The other side of this is that among us human beings, there are leaders, not self appointed, bought, or inherited; IE; the Nagual."
If you read the "Book of Enoch" you will find the idea of fallen angels bringing to earth much of the higher knowledge that men have today. Also the idea of the hierarchy of angelic and demonic realms.
Some think that that way of thinking was not meant to be. But you can see it in churches, business and even society/social interactions in schools and in the adult circles, also.
It is a mentality that divides people and was, in my opinion never meant to be indulged in by mankind.
It is a kind of "pissing contest" on a cosmic scale.
In one church I attended the pastor was young man and let it be known that it was always his life's desire to speak in front of people. That does not impress me at all. He got what he wanted, but what about the people in the congregation? I think some of the best teachers are reluctant teachers. What do they know and are they able to convey what they know to others? Those are more important questions.
"I am scanning this rather quickly, but I did see the remarks about Stopping the World.
The people who first dosed me with LSD had a common phrase: There is no coming down. The idea being that such a conciousness experience is permanent. All experience is permanent, unless one tries to hide from it.
There are other issues of experience that I might ask (like War) but I really don't want to obscure this thread.
Am I on your line here?"
In one sense, I agree that all experience is permanent in that once you go through something you can never go back.
But the example I gave about not coming down for from several weeks to two to three months was not in that vein. I mean I literally did not come down for that long a period of time. From that you not only can never go back, but you can bring it back into reality with comparatively very little effort. It took 1 1/2 years of concentrated effort doing the exercises layed out in Journey to Ixtlan to stop the world. It takes maybe a month of the same effort to bring the experience to the forefront again. And only a day or two of effort to bring it back partially.
"DJ said the dreams we remember are the real ones, and lately, mine are becoming more definite and informative."
I have noticed that as I grow older I am more rational in my dreams. The dream subject matter may be strange, but I approach problems/challenges within the dream much more rationally than when I was younger. There usually seems to be some kind of goal or purpose to what I am doing within the dream and I do not get side-tracked like I would have when younger. My dreams tend to be less chaotic and more like waking life as a result.
"And, I keep citing Edgar Cayce, because he was a Sleeping Seer, and recognizing the Seers' ability, which has comeupon me occasionally, seems to be the Teaching of don Juan."
I saw a show on Cayce a few weeks back. My teacher was very impressed with him, but I had never looked into his story. On the show they said he had done so many readings, (something like 10,000 or something) that it was like doing a reading a night for 45 years or some such number.
He was apparently very accurate too.
I think we grow in that which we pay attention to. What we aim our minds at. As long as you pay more attention to your dreaming you will grow in that ability. If you consider your dreams just nonsense or subconscious symbols, that is all you will get out of them.
The name Joseph in the Bible has to do with dreams. Joseph in the Old Testament was a dreamer and an interpreter of dreams and became the second in command of Egypt because he not only interpreted the Pharaoh's dreams, but told him what the dreams were before he began interpreted them. Joseph in the New Testament was visitaed by an angel in a dream at least twice. First warned of danger he went to egypt and then, years later, told it was safe, he came back home.
Bob

[Guest]

I wanted to peek in and express my regrets. It looks like I'm missing some good stuff.
It might be another day or two before I get to participate here.

[Bob Carr]

Well,I will try to be Coherent about this stuff.
First , there is an inner and an outer Spirit, and when they connect, Seeing, or in my thinking, Prophecy or ESP takes place.
The idea is that these abilities are inborn, but conditioning, which I believe don Juan called setting the Assemblage Point, makes us deny those possibilities.
As I have mentioned before, the Native Americans seemed to have known these things , grown from the very soil they stood upon, as if they were stalks of corn.
I often wonder if other aboriginals were the same, but Indians are all I know.
So, yes , what we give attention to is the source of reality. For me, very diffiult to control, as many forces demand my attention, against my Will.
That sounds like a Warrior's battle.
I am currently reading 'The Fire From Within"
The internal Dialogue-the flimsy position of our realities
Awarenes as a vague knowledge that gives confidence, a sense of a presence that is everything.
To me, not unlike cocepts of God or Christ.
Some years ago, as I was growing in my own spiritual knowledge, I concieved of God, or the Great Spirit as I prefer, as the ultimate gardener; ie: if God is Love, He is like one's Grandmother at her flower garden, feeding, tending, weeding , bringing forth the fruits of her efforts, exulting in the results. This analogy goes even deeper in that if one considers a garden, the miricle is in the fact that certain acts create certain results. Meaning , for instance, that we don't get beans when we plant corn seeds.
Perhaps I'm way off here, but at the time it seemed to me that there were 'laws' of creation that were observable
Oh hell, I can't say, now.
In don Juan's world, can we shift to another possibility?
Do we want to?
Now to go completely off topic, in reading this particular book, I perceived that what a SEER does is to read AURAS! The Luminous Egg.
This is an idea that always seemed so vague to me. Sure , I can understand Prophecy, but Auras?
Anyway, don Juan asserts that emanations are both inside and outside of us. an can be interpreted. This seems as basic as Genesis; created in the image of;



we have some of the infinite powers beyond the Rational. I am still impressed, for instance , to learn that Sioux War Chief Crazy Horse found battle tactics in his Dreaming (source: Dee Brown, "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee") And , that if you consider the odds, these tactics were quite successful.
I have always known that there were unspoken abilities within. Maybe I have been to diverted to get the energy to explore them. Knowledge of such things is Tin Hat stuff , of course.
Ah hell, I'm all over the map here , please accapt my apologies. It is a big issue; Castaneda wrote all these books, and he didn't get it all either. Again , I must cite the Indians. It was First Attention to many of them; and , their respect for the 'Grandfather' was the same as don Juan's.

Bob CHawkeye and Crow

[Guest]

Hello Bob C
I enjoyed reading your impressions of native spirituality.
It's been said, anywhere on the globe that people make their living directly from the natural world, we see that they incorporate animism and totemism into their spirituality.
Once farming begins, spirituality fundamentally changes. Once farming begins, you no longer need a spiritual life just to survive.
Even an atheist can be a farmer. Farming allows a person to eat, without being spiritually connected to things.

[Guest]

I have mused over your statement re: farming and atheism, or just having no need for Spirituality once there is a steady source of food, and I just don't agree.
If your conjecture were correct then we would all be atheists for at least the last 3,500 years. There is absolutely no evidence suggesting 'farming' leads to loss of spirituality. On the contrary, the level of spirituality had developed into increasing sophistication with the advent of agriculture.
The degree in which this is obvious is evidenced by the historical civilizations from thousands of years ago. Ancient Egypt, India, China, Mayan all grew in Spiritual sophistication as they advanced in their agricultural mastery. If anything, the aboriginal hunter gatherers remained spiritual but rather basic in their level of spiritual complexity.
There is not one society or historical group that wasn't associated with a religious practice until modern times and that would be the forced NON-belief by Communists led societies, such as USSR and China. And if one were to dig a little deeper into which group was behind Communism they would discover a common group of people who adhere to an ancient Babylonian doctrine as as written in the Talmud. These adherents find all religion a threat to their goal of subjugation.
So, I wholeheartedly disagree with your proposition.

[Guest]

I can't blame you for not agreeing with me. We are each of us, set up to come to our own conclusions.
My position that spirituality evolved in humans as a survival mechanism for our hunting/gathering ancestors has not been proven.
It's only been offered as a jumping off point for conversation.
This idea suggests that religious and spiritual activity in humans is a vestigal behavior. It is a disappearing set of genetic bahaviors that are like the whale's legs.
The legs of a whale are said to be "vestigal" to mean that the evolutionary process that gave a whale legs in the first place, is no longer a survival strategy for the whale.
The whale is carryig around adaptations that are no longer relevant to the evolution of the whale.
It is not that farmers are atheists.
It is that you do not need to have a spiritual life to be able to survive and reproduce in a modern society. A whale does not need legs, even though once, it did.
There may be advantages in native religion (from around the globe) where the native culture could not exist without its religion, even though a modern society can get along well without religion.
Or perhaps, as you say, the idea is wrong.
I'm unsure what your reference to 3500 years and athesits is about, but I appreciate the chance to clarify my position.

[Guest]

Quote:On the contrary, the level of spirituality had developed into increasing sophistication with the advent of agriculture.
I suspect that tribal religion is at least as complicated as Catholicism, but I wouldn't think that sophistication is one of the factors that distinguish post agricultural religion from tribal religion.
For instance, Catholicism has little, if any, advice for living directly from nature, and none is needed.
Catholics generally do not live directly from nature, but have human civilization as an insulating factor from nature.
Should a Catholic wish to live as a hunter gatherer, he may find himself in need of ideas he does not have.
I suggest that animism and totemism are examples of tools the Catholic would need to be able to live from nature.
I offer the idea that all tribal religions (pre agricultural) are animistic and totemic.
It could be that there is a reason these ideas occur spontaneously to peoples all over the globe and throughout history.
Perhaps they are a genetic predisposition.

[Guest]

You're posting on a Toltec site, for the most part at least, and the Toltec religion was honed over the centuries and improved from the morbid association with IB's to a more enlightened practice for obtaining total freedom. Even though this was an advanced society, with agriculture and buildings, they also held onto the spiritual practice of 'Spirits' or energy in all things; organic and inorganic. All living things are equal and imbued with their own unique energy signature. It was the increasing amount of leisure time, versus a hunter gather whom has less, that allowed the further refinement of their spiritual pursuits.
An aboriginal spiritual belief is not more or less than that of a modern Toltec; the paths are different.
Catholicism is not practiced as originally intended but was changed to exert more and more control over the masses for, mainly, economic expansion and crowd control. There are better examples of agricultural based religions that have not strayed far from the original path; Hinduism being but one of them.
My point about 3,500 years ago was when agrarian societies were first popping up and, no, they didn't drift towards atheism. I do see your point and I feel it was an attempt to show the necessity of a spiritual life for survival as a hunter-gatherer. On the other hand, one could easily learn basic survival skills without adhering to some sort of spiritual belief system; the two concepts together are not prerequisite. And this is why I disagree with your original premise, Sid.

[Guest]

Yes, I'm posting on a site that is not specifically about my particular path. I feel I've been welcomed here.
It may not be true that surviving directly from nature is a matter of learning survival skills, or that agricultural societies have more leisure time than tribal societies.
As agricultural societies emerged, whenever that may have been, I agree it's unlikely that there was a tendency to atheism.
I'd think that religion would continue on, after it stopped having survival benefits.
I believe the tendency in religious thought was to abstraction.
There are not many elements in an aboriginal religion rightly called abstract. There are few elements of an industrial age religion (different than agricultural) that are not abstract.

[Bob May]

"Anyway, don Juan asserts that emanations are both inside and outside of us. an can be interpreted. This seems as basic as Genesis; created in the image of;"
That is what the Qabala is about. The Ten "Emanations", (same word as Don Juan uses) are a pattern that can be layed over both the Microcosm, US and the Macrocosm, the Created universe. It is the same pattern, same relationships, between those elements like a wiring diagram of all that is.
"Now to go completely off topic, in reading this particular book, I perceived that what a SEER does is to read AURAS! The Luminous Egg.
This is an idea that always seemed so vague to me. Sure , I can understand Prophecy, but Auras?"
There is a book from back in the 20's or 30's written by C.W. Leadbeader and Annie Besant about the subtle bodies of mankind. It has color plates of watercolor paintings depicting these various bodies in there various states of spiritual progression and psychological turmoil, etc.
If what they depict is correct. then Don Juan's luminus egg would seem to fit with the description of the "Causal body", not the Aura.
The Theosophical Society has reprints of their many books. They are not far from me, about 90 miles. I plan to take a ride up there one of these days. It's in wheaton IL. they are online also. I don't remember the exact name of the book. Something like the bodies of man or Subtle bodies of man.
Bob

[Bob May]

"As agricultural societies emerged, whenever that may have been, I agree it's unlikely that there was a tendency to atheism.
I'd think that religion would continue on, after it stopped having survival benefits.
I believe the tendency in religious thought was to abstraction.
There are not many elements in an aboriginal religion rightly called abstract. There are few elements of an industrial age religion (different than agricultural) that are not abstract."
I don't look at these things in terms of mankind evolving from hunters gatherers to farmers. There is an innate sense in mankind as a whole that there are invisible, intelligent beings that reside here.
Monotheists believe in one Creator. That does not mean they don't believe in spiritual beings more powerful than mankind that are in charge of and can control certain elements of nature.
Catholicism even absorbed the ideas of Seasonal Festivals into their system in order to gain more converts. Hebrew calenders are base upon both moon phases and the solar year. The Winter Solstice, (the appreciation and thanks that the days are going to begin getting longer) is an important Pagan and Catholic ceremony and festival. The Catholic church actually moved the celebration of the birth of Jesus from September to accomadate their Pagan converts belief systems.
A hunter may ask for the wind to be at his back when stalking prey, a farmer may wish for a mild spring and summer that his seeds aren't washed away or crops scorched.
And they will appeal to the spirit they believe is in control of those particular functions of nature. A Catholic has a whole pantheon of "Saints" he can choose to help him with these natural phenomena. Many of these so called "saints" have been overlayed on pagan gods just as Jesus' birth was overlayed on the Winter Solstice. This was done to win converts not to teach Christianity.
Just look at Catholic communities around the world. Fishermen in Ireland still appealing to the same gods of the sea. Down in Haiti and places like Yucatan using saints names in ceremonies that are from before the Spanish arrived. In Northern europe their Christmas celebrations reflect a much different pantheon with yule logs and such.
There is not much difference in our beliefs except in the West where we have come to believe in nothing.
Well, that is not quite true, As a society, we in the "Civilized West" believe in One God that is above all, (but that we really can't communicate with), and pretend as if all the lesser gods, nature spirits, seasonal spirits etc., do not exist.
Our science books have become our "Holy Books." Our school teachers have become our priests. The blind leading the blind. And that even when science admits that it's realm only extends to that which can be quantified, measured, repeated and proven using earthly tools to do so. In other words, we as a society, have allowed those who are admittedly blind to spiritual things to dictate what we can believe to be spiritually true.
Now I'm rambling.Bob