Translation:To read Carlos Castaneda/14
XI. MAGICAL PASSES
The practical wisdom of the ancient Mexico shamans: TENSEGRITY.
First English edition, 1998
In early 1998 appeared the last Carlos Castaneda book, The Magical Passes. The ancient Mexico shamans practical wisdom: TENSEGRITY, because he died in April, in California, U.S. According to her legal representative, from liver cancer and notice to the media was given until July, because as stated by his lawyer to the press, Castaneda had lived away from the media, the news of his death would have not need to be provided to newspapers and newscasts. In any case, apparently this is the last book he will write, at least under this name, the renowned nagual.
It has been exactly 40 years since the publication of the first book (The Don Juan Teachings, a Yaqui knowledge way). Castaneda has been during this time, from "Underground" to "Best Seller" reading material —also forced reading for intellectuals, anthropologists, "aZoterics", initiated and people in search of another reality. The truth is that Castaneda works, rather than becoming unfashioned, has remained as a disturbing and menacing reading. To remain 40 years in the market, with incredible editions, in several generations and with the most acidic detractors, we assume that the work has some merit.
Many judgments of his work have been made and many more of his person, that is irrelevant to cite. However no essay known to me, including this one, has managed to "touch" the essence of the "silent knowledge". In part because it has to do with a different world and life perception, but so far it has proved very difficult to assimilate by the occidental culture.
Castaneda hints in "Magical Passes", that in the nine previous books he talked very little of the ancient Mexico shamans knowledge practical essence. Throughout the teachings, Castaneda saw don Juan making strange movements, and also asked him to practice and learn them. Castaneda mentions that, especially in the beginning, he was sure Don Juan was crazy and very "eccentric", hence he relatively paid little attention to these strange movements don Juan taught him.
In the tenth book Castaneda confesses that the most important part of the of the Toltecs knowledge, is deposited in these strange exercises. From this its concluded, as Don Juan had been repeating and Castaneda wrote down in his books several times. "Silent knowledge" is not learned through reason, nor books, but through the body.
It is based on the idea that human beings are energy charges; luminous egg as described by don Juan. These luminous eggs have a certain energy charge that may not increase on the one hand. On the other hand, the "luminous egg" in its life exercise, stop using large energy amounts that are being "deposited as energy sediment" in places not commonly accessible by the egg. These energy "deposits" must be activated and incorporated into the daily use energy stream, to thus provide the warrior "fresh" power, to be able to come into contact with "another reality", with the immeasurable.
Such that what don Juan taught Castaneda was to save energy in his everyday life. That is, "live as a warrior", this energy savings, along with the re-functionalization of accumulated energy and not used, are the silent knowledge gateway... to eternity.
These exercises were taught by Don Juan to Castaneda without further fanfare for many years, are now recognized as "The magical passes" and according to the author it is attributed to ancient Mexico Toltecs. However, in the book dedication, Castaneda left a cryptic thought:
"Each of the practitioners, when joining forces around it, have put me in contact with energy formulations which neither don Juan nor the shamans of his lineage ever had access to". C.C.
This is why, what Don Juan called "magical passes" or what Castaneda now calls "Tensegrity", is a more advanced "variant" than what the Anahuac Toltecs practiced for thousands of years. At least this is what Castaneda proposes.
Rationally it sounds coherent. We are energy charges and knowledge is nothing more than energy at the luminous egg, it cannot be created or transformed, it can only be "rechanneled". Then, the " Don Juan teachings", are nothing other more than luminous egg energy rechanneling, with which they can penetrate immeasurable and transcendent fields.
This rechanneling is done through Tensegrity, which is a series of magical passes or exercises in certain series, which are intended to stimulate certain energy which is accumulated at specific locations of the luminous egg, these "accumulations" are due to the irresponsible way in which we live or in other words, in the irresponsible way in which we use and we lose our energy.
Since the "luminous egg" cannot get more energy than it has, it is necessary to use what has accumulated by an incorrect way of living. This rechanneling of wasted energy is achieved through some exercises or magical passes, that the practitioner learn as routines in several series. This not used energy "stimulation", produces through long and rigorous practice, stunning effects in the luminous egg and translates into the practitioner mood and consciousness.
The text in question contains an introduction, an explanation of what the magical passes are, another of Tensegrity and finally what he calls "The six Tensegrity series".
He then divided the book in each of the six series with the following titles and subtitles:
FIRST SERIES
—Series for intent preparation—
First group: crush energy for the intent.
Second group: shake the intent energy.
Third group: accumulate energy for the intent.
Fourth Group: breathe intent energy.
SECOND SERIES
—Matrix Series—
First group: Taisha Abelar magical passes.
Second group: Florinda Donner-Grau magical pass.
Third group: Carol Tiggs specific magical passes.
Fourth Group: Blue Explorer Magical passes.
THIRD SERIES
—Five interests series of: the Westwood series.—
First group: the decision center.
Second group: Recapitulation
Third group: Reverie.
Fourth group: Internal silence
FOURTH SERIES
—Separation of the right body from the left body: heat series—
First group: remove energy the left and right bodies.
Second group: mixing the energy from the left and right bodies.
Third group: move energy from the left body and the right body by breathing.
Fourth Group: predilection of the left body and right body.
FIFTH SERIES
—Masculinity Series—
First group: magical passes in which hands move in unison but remain separate.
Second group: magical passes to locate tendons energy.
Third group: magical passes to strengthen resistance.
SIXTH SERIES
—Devices used in combination with specific magical passes-—
First category.
Second category.
The book is constructed such that it is a practical guide to get started in these conscience exercises. With more or less applicable and supported explanation with pictures, the reader can penetrate by the everyday practice of the magical passes.
Perhaps the most important thing is the answer that the body or luminous egg will be receiving. Indeed, as these teachings are not rational but energetic, the body through exercise and practice, "teaches the mind" to exercise better, under the stimulus that receives or put another way, wellbeing experienced by doing exercise in certain ways.
This is, therefore, the final proposal delivered by the nagual Carlos Castaneda before retiring from this world. His work contains important contributions to the world of the ideas of our time. Either as the world conception or Don Juan and the ancient Anahuac Toltecs life or that of Carlos Castaneda, assuming the entire work was created from this "talented writer" imagination. However, the work is there and cannot be denied in these 40 years.
Among the most important contributions we fund in the Castaneda works, would be the addition of the shaman, or "indigenous knowledge man" figure, to the scientific world, intellectuals and occidental scholars. As Octavio Paz noted in the prologue of the first book edited by the Fondo de Cultura Económica in 1974.
"If the Castaneda books are literary fiction, this is in a very strange way: its theme is anthropology defeat and magic victory, if they are anthropology works, its theme at least is the revenge of the anthropological 'object' (a witch) over the anthropologist up to converting him into a wizard. Anti-Anthropology. "C.C. (don Juan teachings.)" (Page 11).
Anthropologists are who deny the most any value to the Carlos Castaneda works. Our admired friend Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, one of the brightest anthropologists Mexico has had, when I asked him to write the prologue to the first edition of the essay To Read Carlos Castaneda, he refused outright and literally told me; "namesake you can ask me for anything, except the prologue on Castaneda".
The second contribution would be exposing a body of very polished and complex ideas about the world and life, that an indigenous Yaqui called Don Juan names Toltequity and experts such as Miguel León Portilla recognize as Toltecáyotl. In fact, Castaneda presents a knowledge system, as was taught to him by his teacher Don Juan, as a millenary legacy from ancient Mexico, properly said of the Anahuac.
To talk and accept that in ancient Mexico existed a very complex and polished knowledge system, that not only explained the world and life (philosophy), but which gave them "power" to efficiently interact in the concrete world in which they lived. Thus the European settlers created myth collapses, used to permanently subjugate peoples and indigenous cultures, that the indians were wild and unable to create a well-defined and polished philosophy, that only possessed a diabolical polytheistic religion splattered by bloody human sacrifices.
But what is also important, it destroys the myth that "everything ancient is necessarily primitive". The energetic proposals of the world and human beings that Don Juan and his lineage manage according to Castaneda, are well advanced even for our times.
Toltequity, the Toltecáyotl or as it is called by Castaneda, "Tensegrity", is presented as a very advanced knowledge of the energy, that occident still fails to fully decipher. Allows us to overcome the idea that the archaeological vestiges of these daring researchers, were "ceremonial centers" to worship "gods" associated with natural phenomena such as wind, lightning, water and that built these impressive material works to “construct towns, fortifications, pantheons or palaces, for a supposed monarchy similar to the European", in which they performed bloody ritual ceremonies to their tutelary gods.
The third contribution was that Castaneda in 1968, long before Guillermo Bonfil (1987) and the Indian rebellion in Chiapas (1994), presents on national and global stage indigenous people. In fact, the Mexico indigenous people in the five century colonization represented the last rung on the social scale, were the ignorant, the incapable, the primitive. Writer José Austin, who in 1982 translated the Castaneda book The Eagle's Gift, once told me that in 1968 he unsuccessfully tried for the Fondo de Cultura Económica, to pubish Castaneda's first book. The don Juan teachings, a Yaqui form of knowledge. It is logical to understand, who in their right mind in Mexico of 1968, could suppose that an indigenous Yaqui could have any teachings for the dominant culture.
Time proved José Austin right and in 1974 the Fondo had to publish 7 years late, the first Castaneda book, as it had become a Super Best Seller, not only in the United States but around the world. For this purpose, the Fondo had to include a foreword by one of the most renowned Mexican intellectuals; Octavio Paz. With Paz "backing", the book began to sell like hot bread in Mexico, but more as a fashion, than consciousness awakening. To date, even though Castaneda books have sales exceeding that of great literates, remains relatively unknown in Mexico.
Thus, apparently we find ourselves with the last Carlos Castaneda book, we are "officially" informed that he died of cancer. We believe that human time of nagual Castaneda has probably ended. The task he had to fulfill in this world, after jumping off a cliff, back in the top of the Oaxaca North Sierra, has apparently ended.
He left a new lineage with their foreign female warriors and a new practice with Tensegrity. Carlos Castaneda sometime recognized that Don Juan never taught him to deal with the profane world, to whom (strangely) now he tries to convey the ancient legendary Toltec knowledge.
Tensegrity or the so-called "magical passes", is a new proposal of ancient Toltec knowledge, left by the nagual Castaneda in facing the new millennium.