Banished from the Kingdom of the Flyers for posting this in reply to TBD post found here:
http://sustainedreaction.yuku.com/topic ... KL5E4UkzS0
I responded to the Post TBD wrote called: Evolution and the 'Assemblage Point' -
with this:
"Don Juan's explanation...was that human beings are perceived as conglomerates of energy fields; sealed energetic units that have definite boundaries which don't permit the entrance or the exit of energy. Therefore, the energy existing within that conglomerate of energy fields is all that each human individual can count on."
Well, the idea behind this is that Human Beings are each unto themselves the universe. That's why energy can't come in or go out. All the energy that was used in creating the universe is present in the luminous cocoon (and as a derivative in the human body). Of course, the only way to verify that is first-hand experience. Or you can use a textual comparison as a methodology to prove it. For instance, "Buddhism teaches that our physical bodies are not possessed of an intrinsic self, and our persistent sense of ourselves as separate from the rest of the universe is a delusion."
This is why Shamans say when they reach full awareness they become aware that they are the universe. And that our purpose as human beings is to realize that "We are the means by which the universe becomes aware of itself."
TBD says:
" the 'AP model' accounts for nothing related to our basic perceptions and physical existence"
Hmmm this statement certainly is true if your fundamental reference point is physical existence. And it's true of your physical existence is separate from rest of the universe. Getting a hold of a different reference point is all that is needed to verify the truths of Buddhism or Shamanism.
Lets not forget the grip the collective and consensual reference point has on each of us. "Don Juan pointed out that everyone who comes into contact with a child is a teacher who incessantly describes the world to him, until the moment when the child is capable of perceiving the world as it is described. According to don Juan, we have no memory of that portentous moment, simply because none of us could possibly have had any point of reference to compare it to anything else. From that moment on, however, the child is a member. . . . For don Juan, then, the reality of our day-to-day life consists of an endless flow of perceptual interpretations which we, the individuals who share a specific membership, have learned to make in common."-http://www.doyletics.com/art/ixtlan.htm
Many of us - pretty much billions of us experience this directly. It's easy to witness this behavior in anybody, anywhere: "An overwhelming sense of justice would out of necessity force one to hold only one particular world view. In this context, the tragedy would be that one would be constrained from witnessing and experiencing other modes of thought. Castaneda held this flexibility to be the inherent heritage of mankind." -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toltec_(Castaneda)
"Something out there is affecting our senses. This is the part that is real. The unreal part is what our senses tell us is there. Take a mountain, for instance. Our senses tell us that it is an object. It has size, color, form. We even have categories of mountains, and they are downright accurate. Nothing wrong with that; the flaw is simply that it has never occurred to us that our senses play only a superficial role. Our senses perceive the way they do because a specific feature of our awareness forces them to do so." -http://www.prismagems.com/castaneda/donjuan7.html
N Let's not forget that arguing-is-pointless, even the collective, common, consensual FoxNews Agrees: Must be Truth Then! :-)
http://www.foxbusiness.com/business-lea ... pointless/
This is why Shamans' say that "In order to arrive at seeing one first has to stop the world." -http://www.prismagems.com/castaneda/
Now stopping the world is the Shamanic equivalent to a 1 year old finally recognizing objects in the world as three-dimensional. This magical act for the child lays the foundational reference point for all of its endeavors.
"Stopping the world is indeed an appropriate rendition of certain states of awareness in which the reality of everyday life is altered because the flow of interpretation, which ordinarily runs uninterruptedly, has been stopped by a set of circumstances alien to that flow. In this case the set of circumstances alien to our normal flow of interpretations is the sorcery description of the world. The precondition for stopping the world is that one has to be convinced; in other words, one has to learn the new description in a total sense, for the purpose of pitting it against the old one, and in that way break the dogmatic certainty, which we all share, that the validity of our perceptions, or our reality of the world, is not to be questioned."
Sure we can take scientific findings (the holy grail of truth in our times) and use it to Justify our Interpretation of Castaneda's work, but we are still interpreting. We are not actually perceiving anything. We are merely doing what our Training has taught us to do. Which is totally fine if you dig looking at the world from only a single perspective. N what the heck everybody does it so no harm done right? :-)