The Best Explanations Available? Or, who would tell a person to throw away common sense?
Scientists know that everything is some form of energy. And anyone who has lived long knows that intricate and even mysterious “interactions” between beings are rather commonplace. We have been given hundreds of pages of “explanations” of that which is seemingly “inexplicable.” The question I’m exploring now is … are they the best explanations available?
Are you willing to act, and stake your life and death, on the basis of what “may be”? If so, then great–for so am I, but … it’s your responsibility, and your choice. So I also choose to notice that one hell of a lot of things “may be,” and whenever I can, I try to stake my life and death acting on things that are, or on at least on things that are “likely.”
It is this orientation which leads me to ask simple questions like: who would tell a person to completely throw away “common sense”? Either a revolutionary or a con-man, or … perhaps … a person who was a little of both.
And you see, such people are not that rare. In my life, I even briefly belonged to another “spiritual movement” led by such a man. His name was L. Ron Hubbard. That man wrote voluminously–in fact, he wrote enough to fill a small library–volumes and volumes of “technical notes” mapping out an explanation of all human consciousness and the nature of the universe in astonishing detail. That is, it would have been astonishing, had it been … real. He too was quite charismatic, and highly entertaining in person. And of course there are thousands of people who are totally convinced that it is real, and the main reason they do believe is what I would call “the catch”: some of it is real.
At root, Hubbard was working with … the same idea that Castaneda was working with … namely, a concept going back to Plato (perhaps before): the possibility that our usual sense perceptions may only be some kind of illusion or crude approximation of “reality.” This one idea leaves people with room to come up with all kinds of “structures” which are NOT readily observable which they can claim account for “expanded perception” and explain things which have not been explained before.
Yeah, there are certainly lots of things yet unexplained, and yet notice that such people can say almost anything, really. For example, I could say we all have invisible antennae which were implanted in us by aliens which control the range of our perception completely–brain, body, “astral body,” whatever… And I’ll bet you that if I go around saying this long enough, and write convincingly and eloquently about it that I can get some people to believe it, and some who’ll even swear that they’ve experienced it.
One of the main things that fooled me about Ron Hubbard (the reason it took me years to see through him–back more than fifteen years ago) was that he had created literally thousands of pages of “research” and lecture notes and policies on how to do things. He wrote at least ten times as much as Castaneda. Talk about a control freak! My reasoning had been: “geez, if he was a con man, he would only have written a few books, maybe a dozen at most, not this whole friggin’ massive library full of stuff!” I thought that he wouldn’t have just worked his ass to the bone over it. I came to see more clearly, that perhaps even unintentionally, it was a “con,” and yet … at the same time, it wasn’t. And so here’s what I say happened: Hubbard had discovered some of the benefits and some of the extraordinary possibilities that can occur when a human uses their memory to fully recall important experiences of the past. In experimenting with techniques of recalling the past, Hubbard had found real phenomena, but had then proceeded to mire those discoveries in eighteen metric tons of bullshit. He jumped to all kinds of wild and bizarre conclusions. The question I am now exploring is: is that also what Castaneda did?
Let me just ask you all, if a con man could have his dream come true, wouldn’t it be … to have all the ‘marks’ say: “sure, it’s okay to lie and hide the truth about what really happened in the past, lying and hiding the truth about the past are main principles of our way of life.” What a great set up… 🙂
The same questions remain. We have over a dozen whole books full of information and explanations. But how much of it is “accurate” or “useful,” and how can we tell which parts are and which parts aren’t? Do you have time to experiment with everything? Or is the free time life allows you really rather limited? Do you have time to experiment with everything said by people who tell you flat out that they lie, and have been shown to lie, just to find out which parts are real and which parts are not? And if your experiences don’t quite match anyone else’s exactly, then … couldn’t there easily be other “explanations” for some or all of them? Perhaps even better explanations? We have to “trust our own bodies and our own experiences” no matter what we do, and no matter whose teachings we choose to follow (or not follow), so to say that is really not saying much.
One good way to proceed is the way many of you are proceeding, which is just to DO the things that give you results, and not worry about the rest. While I respect that approach, I am more inquisitive than that.
I don’t think many would deny that human beings have hardly begun to tap their total potential, whatever it may be. But notice that this is likely to be recognized to be the case no matter what view of reality one holds. One of the possibilities I intend to explore more fully is the possibility that many of the extra-sensory and super-physical capacities you hint at could be built right into our bodies and brains.
People are quick to jump to conclusions. They are quick to systematize things. They uncover some phenomena, and immediately try to come up with some scheme that explains it all. In doing so, they often come up with all sorts of cock-eyed explanations. Not only that, but often they try to paste their explanations together, package it, and “sell” it, in one way or another. This is observable, time and time again.
For me, there is enough out of whack around here to call into serious question “the sorcerer’s explanation.” And BTW, I don’t need anyone to agree with me on this. It is what I am going to do, regardless. The man who proposed this explanation died in a rather horrible manner. Castaneda was fond of comparing himself to “your father” in a favorable fashion, but actually, my father outlived him by five years.
Yes, I’ve encountered an amazing force that could be called “the spirit.” I’ve had weird experiences related to that, of various kinds. But so what? Half of the disciplines on the planet have some conception of a “great spirit.” I’ve had a lot of dreaming experiences and possible “out of body experiences” as well. But so what? Lots of people in lots of disciplines and religions have. I’ve already mentioned that many disciplines include a systematic review of the past. Many systems also utilize the principles of curtailing the ego and being aware of one’s impending death. I keep myself in good “energetic” shape using a system of physical movement. So what? So do lots of people. It is almost universally agreed that inner silence is a key prerequisite to “altered consciousness.” Sure, these things are real and valuable. Millions would attest to that.
But I have never seen anyone “burn,” you see. Nor have I ever seen the assemblage point. If those people wanted to create a “mass” that would have fervently followed them into the jaws of hell itself, ALL they had to do was show us that ONE person could burn. Just one. That’s all it would take. Castaneda said he saw it happen. Florinda said she saw it happen. So WHY don’t they just show us? Castaneda even said they’d all been ready to go for a long time. Great. So why not just SHOW some of us that it is possible then? (Please make sure that no one like David Copperfield is anywhere near the building when they do 🙂 ) At this point, I’ll admit to being skeptical; I don’t think we’ll ever see it.
Even what we call “the daily world” is a awesome, mysterious universe of millions of galaxies, and we are one species still pretty much trapped on our own world. Sure, life is an endless mystery, there are millions of people who would fully agree with that. We undoubtedly have a lot to learn, you bet. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to swallow the first “explanation” you hear of what it’s all about, especially when it’s coming from people who have proven they will outright lie at the drop of a hat.
I’m also saying you should verify your experiences whenever possible. There could be a lot of reasons a person might “hear voices” or “see unusual things.” There could be lots of explanations for the feelings of “connectedness” that many people experience. This will sound weird, but I am pretty sure that under certain conditions I can already read people’s minds and project my thoughts into the minds of others to a certain extent. Furthermore, I’m pretty sure I’ve been doing this on some level most of my life, so it makes sense that it is merely a natural phenomenon rather than any extraordinary capacity I’ve developed. But just recently it has occurred to me that the sorcerers have never given us any very good explanation of just how that happens. Yes, inner silence is a prerequisite to it, but … that really explains very little.
One of the things I’m no longer so willing to easily accept is the idea that “some things just cannot be explained.” That just seems like too good a way to cut people off when they start asking questions that are too difficult or point toward some of the bullshit. For example, no decent model of “interaction” between beings has ever been given, IMO, and all they will say is: “when seers see beings, they see single beings surrounded by the boundless.” Yeah, and that could easily just be a necessary copout if you happened to be pushing a model of perception that will not stand up to the demands of fully explaining the intricacy of our shared perceptions.
I’m dissatisfied with the stories we’ve been told, dissatisfied with the life-style, dissatisfied with the “non-moral morality” (LOL), and dissatisfied with many of the “explanations.” Frankly, I think a lot of the people associated with this path act like automatons, whose behavior is virtually indistinguishable from that of people who think they are immortal. I AM going to die, and before I do I want to LIVE (if I still can). And I will do my best to do it, even if I have to leave every one of these freakin’ “warriors” behind in order to do so.
I am still experiencing “non-ordinary” things in my life. I am still dreaming, recapping, moving physically, etc. I will do things like these in some way even if I never have anything to do with any “warriors” again. Please at least realize that these people do not in any way own such practices. 🙂
It is obvious that my dreaming experiences are not a “hoax.” They are real experiences. The only question is how those experiences are to be interpreted. In Castaneda’s system, seeing energy and dreaming are both said to come simply from “moving the assemblage point.” Have you clearly seen the assemblage point? If so, then you are in a position to act that I could honestly envy. If not–and, unfortunately, it just occurs to me, perhaps even if you have–then you must fully consider what we discussed the other day, that dreaming tends to conform to one’s expectations and beliefs. The more I contemplate it, the more I realize that this apparent “malleability” of the “dreaming attention” has the potential to be a fact of utmost significance.
Asking questions is often preliminary to going and looking for answers, which of course is itself preliminary to finding them. Perhaps the best thing that a con man could convince a group of people of is that they cannot even trust their own minds–that their very minds are not even their own, and are in fact against them, and will always trick them and destroy them. That way, you see, they can’t even rely on their ability to think for themselves, and if they DO find out about all sorts of things that clearly don’t stack up at all, well, it’s just the evil alien mind after all, so they must simply ignore it and just keep doing what they’re told … doing what they’re told. Yeah, that one is too good.
©️ 2000 by David Worrell, all rights reserved
Related Links:
