Salka Wind Blog

Posts on the Andean Cosmovision

Tag: Carlos Castaneda

Podcast Episode 1: An Introduction to the Andean Cosmovision

A conceptual introduction to the Andean Cosmovision.  I recommend listening to this before moving on to the meditations.

To download the episode click on “Download“, if an audio player appears and begins to play the episode, right click on it and then select “Save Audio”.

Transcript (pdf)

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A Path of Heart

A Path of Heart

[There are] a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions. To have such clarity you must lead a disciplined life. Only then will you know that any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on the path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. I warn you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question….Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same: they lead nowhere…In my own life I could say I have traversed long, long paths, but I am not anywhere… Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn’t. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.”  Don Juan Matus .

The teachings of Don Juan: a Yaqui way of knowledge.  Carlos Castaneda. 1968.  Ballentine Books: New York.  pp 105-106.

I have been posting so rarely in the past year or more that I feel inclined to provide a context for this post so that it does not seem like a non sequitur.  As I move into my retirement (see the post Leaving the Village)  I find I have, at least for a while, turned from producing (e.g. writing posts) to Being (e.g. getting in touch with my own Presence).  I used to joke that I was afraid that I was turning into Bilbo Baggins in his later years, puttering around his study writing bits of what he called poetry.  Now I am rather relishing that.  Still, keep an eye out, if you would like, for more posts, ‘especially at unlikely times’ (Gandalf).

The quote above from don Juan has long been one of my favorites, it has shaped my life, and led me to the Andes.  Remember that the Path to the Other Side of Reality never reaches a destination, walking the path is all there is.  And there are millions of paths to choose from, I can’t recommend strongly enough that you explore until you find one that connects with your heart.

Muchos abrazos,

Oakley

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Thread A: Paths to the Other Side of Reality

This post is a continuation of Thread A and is pretty much what I have been working up to in that thread.  My goal is to shed further light on the Andean Cosmovision by viewing it within the larger context of various other paths that lead into the other side of reality.  I usually don’t step out of my path to compare it to others as I know them less well.  I would like to apologize ahead of time if I do not adequately or accurately portray the path you are on.  In any event I hope that you find this post interesting or useful or both.


In the post The Other Side of Reality I developed the idea that we do not consciously experience reality itself, we experience instead a neuronal representation of reality created by our mind, brain and sensory organs. This representation can be thought of as a map of reality, and like all maps it corresponds to the territory being mapped yet at the same time it is fundamentally different than, and much less than, the territory. The territory, reality itself, exists beyond all of our thoughts and concepts and perceptions. I refer to this essential “suchness” of reality as “the other side of reality”.

Our consciousness is the observer who experiences our representation of reality.  It is possible to turn off our mind/brain’s process of representing reality and when we do our consciousness becomes directly aware of reality itself. When we do this we turn our eyes away from the shadows cast by puppets on the wall (ala Plato’s Cave) and walk out into the ineffable, sacred, beauty of the Cosmos. Over the millenia many paths have been developed in many cultures for reaching that state.

In the post The Guardian of the Threshold I defined our “ego” as all of the thoughts, concepts, and beliefs we have about ourselves. Our ego is not who we are, it is our map or representation of who we are. We exist as Beings, however, beyond all of the thoughts and beliefs we have about ourselves. Just as the essential suchness of reality is ineffable, beyond all thought, and ultimately mysterious, the essential suchness of who we are is ineffable, beyond all thought, and ultimately mysterious.

A major challenge we face when we seek to experience the other side of reality is that when we endeavor to turn off our map of reality we are also turning off our ego. Our ego tends to respond to this as if it were facing death. In mystical approaches this is known as the little death, the (temporary) death of the ego, as compared to the big death (our actual physical death). Like the computer HAL in the movie 2001, the ego does not take the prospect of being turned off very well. The ego responds with everything it can think of to stop us. Its main weapon is fear. In this way the ego, in mythological terms, serves as the guardian at the threshold to the other side of reality.

In this post I would like to take these two ideas–the nature of the other side of reality and the nature of the ego–and use them to differentiate three paths that lead to the other side of reality; the Path of Knowledge, the Path of Power, and the Path of Heart. While the Andean Cosmovision cannot be encompassed with words or understood through thought, my intellect (yachay) likes to have some idea of where that-which-is-beyond-thoughts might fit into the scheme of things.  It is with that in mind that I would like to share the following reflections.

1) Mystics and the Path of Knowledge. The goal of the mystic is to turn off the brain/mind’s interpretation (map) of reality. When this happens our consciousness gets to know (in a purely experiential, not intellectual, way) the other side of reality. The other side of reality cannot be put into words. “The Tao that can be talked about is not the Tao” (Tao Te Ching). When mystics do attempt to describe the mystical experience their words point at that which is beyond words. The concepts of time, and of the universe being made up of separate objects, are concepts, part of our brain/mind’s map of reality, rather than being a part of the essential suchness of reality that exits beyond our thoughts. Thus when mystics attempt to describe the mystical experience they speak of entering Eternity (a state outside of time) and they speak of being One with the Cosmos (of no longer being a separate entity). They also speak of experiencing the Sacred (which exists beyond any belief system).

Many mystical paths use meditation to achieve this special way of knowing reality. When I first entered the field of psychology there was a great deal of interest in the psychology of consciousness, altered states of consciousness, and meditation. The following was proposed as a way of understanding meditation. I am not sure it quite does meditation justice, but I have found it to be interesting at least.

Meditations generally fall into one of two categories; those that call for us to “focus in” and those call for us to “open up”. Focussing-in meditations involve attending to an unchanging stimulus, such as a mantra, or our breathing, or a flower. Opening-up meditations involve paying attention to all of the every-changing stimuli reaching our senses in the moment. In order to work properly our mental processes that create our representation (map) of reality rely upon a certain rate of information flowing into our minds. Focussing-in meditations (attending to an unchanging stimulus) underwhelm our map-making processes causing them to collapse, rather like a wind sock with no wind. Opening-up meditations (paying attention to everything at once), on the other hand, bring in so much information that they overwhelm our map making processes, also causing them to shut down. With either type of meditation, and extensive practice, we can learn to stop our process of creating a representation of reality and when that happens we become conscious of what is left, the essential, unprocessed suchness of reality itself. This is what I believe is pointed at by such terms as enlightenment, satori, buddhahood, etc.

It may take many years of dedicated practice to collapse our representation of reality. But along the way benefits arise. Our maps of reality tend to be self-reinforcing. Our map largely determines what we pay attention to and what meaning we assign to what we perceive, which then tends to reinforce our map, which then determines our experience of reality, and so on. My relatively limited experience on the path of the mystic is that when I am meditating, cracks (metaphorically) appear in my map of reality, light from the essential nature of the Cosmos leaks through, and my map of reality begins to change in ways that open me up to new ways of Being.

To touch the other side of reality requires that we temporarily put aside our ego. It is a challenge to put aside our concepts of reality and our concepts of ourselves when moving through our social world. Everyone we meet reinforces our concept of the world and our concept of self.  For this reason mystics often seek isolation, by going to meditation retreats, or even by becoming hermits. It is much easier to shed our society’s view of reality and of ourselves when we are outside of our society. The archetype of the wise old person living in a cave in the mountains comes from this path.

2) Shamans and the Path of Power. The term “shaman” comes from the indigenous culture of Siberia where it refers to people who have special powers that fall outside of our normal map of reality. The term has since been adopted by our Western culture and applied to people with similar powers in cultures across the globe. I am simply using the term here to refer to individuals who walk the path of power. The power might be used to gain information on the origins of a person’s health problems, or to retrieve lost pieces of a person’s soul, or to alter the energy of a person or a situation, or for other purposes that lie outside of our culture’s view of reality.

An important characteristic of power is that it is not inherently good or bad. Technology, for example, is a path of power and technology can be used to heal someone (e.g. medicine) or to kill them (e.g. nuclear weapons). How power is wielded, for good or bad, depends not upon an inherent characteristic of power but upon the values of the person wielding it. Shamanism is a path of power. Some people become shamans in order to have the power to heal others, to do good, to serve humanity. Other people become shamans to boost their ego, to feed their own self-importance, and to manipulate the world to their own advantage. In observing people who follow this path I note that some are loving and humble, some are creepy and have huge egos, and others are somewhere in between. Power is power, it doesn’t care.

How is it possible for someone to enter into the other side of reality and at the same time maintain a big ego? How is it possible to have the mystical experience of immersion in the essential suchness of reality and still maintain a materialistic and selfish approach to reality? The answer is that it is not possible. The path of power is not a path into the essential nature of reality that lies beyond all maps of reality. It is, instead, the development of a different map of reality, one that includes aspects of reality that fall outside of the map provided by Western culture. It is still a map of reality, just a different map, one that opens up new abilities and power.

My understanding of this has been shaped by don Juan Matus (a Yaqui spiritual guide) in the writings of Carlos Castaneda. Don Juan used the term “sorcerer” to refer to people who are on the path of power. To gain power a sorcerer needs to experience a completely different way of perceiving, being in, and interacting with reality. This is no easy task, and to survive the challenges that arise a person needs to have the impeccability of a warrior. Much of the earlier work of don Juan with Carlos was to help Carlos develop a sorcerer’s map of reality.

In don Juan’s worldview there is also a step beyond becoming a sorcerer, and that is to become a “man of knowledge”. Having two completely different maps of reality (our every-day map and the sorcerer’s map) makes it possible, for a sorcerer who so wishes, to transcend all maps and know the ineffable suchness of reality itself. Thus the path of power can eventually become a path of knowledge. For this to happen the ego would need to be dropped to get past the guardian at the threshold of the other side of reality.  According to don Juan, relatively few sorcerers choose to move on to become people of knowledge.  Those who take the path of power to feed their ego and sense of self-importance, or to gain advantage in the material world, would be actively moving away from what it would take to reach the other side of reality.

I often see references to the Andean Cosmovision as a path of power. Peru is a land of many paths and some are paths of power. I have heard don Americo refer to shamans/sorcerers in Peru as “brujas” (witches) but without the negative connotation the word carries in English. On several occasions he has arranged for brujas he respects to work on my energy. I have noticed that he hangs around as they do, I assume that he is monitoring the work to make sure it is beneficial, and I have indeed benefited from their beautiful work. I have also heard many stories of shaman/sorcerers (in Peru and in the West) who do great harm, either on purpose or through ignorance. Power doesn’t care whether it is used for good or harm, only the people on the path of power care (and some do not).

Another term I have heard applied to people on the path of power in the Andes is “layqa”. I believe layqas are the people that don Americo refers to as brujas and brujos. I have searched the anthropological literature to see if this is a correct use of the term layqa, particularly when compared to “paq’os” (described below). I view the academic literature with ambivalence. On the one hand it seems more reliable to me than second-hand information coming through Westerners, particularly as that information is often translated from Quechua to Spanish and then to English. On the other hand, academicians can be completely ensconced in the Western worldview and utterly and stubbornly oblivious to how the Andean Cosmovision may differ from the Western worldview. The bottom line of my research is that it seems layqa is more connected with power, power over nature and power over people, while paq’o has a different, more beneficent, connotation. We will consider paq’os next.

3) Paq’os and the Path of Heart. “Paq’o” is a quechua term that is usually translated into English as either “mystic” or “shaman”. Both terms apply a little and neither exactly fits (see the post Paq’os:  Shamans or Mystics). “Paq’os” and a “path of heart” go together and the latter defines the former, and so I will hold off on a definition of paq’o and develop instead the essential nature of the path of heart.

There are undoubtedly many paths of heart on the planet. I want to focus on the path of heart as I have experienced it during my twenty plus years of working with don Americo Yabar, don Gayle Yabar, and the paq’os of Peru. To what degree my experiences on this path correspond to other paths of heart I know not, but I suspect there are many similarities.

The Andean path of heart is the path of the munay. The munay is one of our three centers of being. It is located in the area of our heart and is the center of love. The love associated with the munay, however, is not an emotion. It has nothing to do with romance or sex or sentimentality or jealousy. It is, instead, the feeling that arises from experiencing our interconnectedness with the rest of the Cosmos, and this feeling is labelled with the closest word in English, which is “love”.

The path of heart is a path of interconnectedness, not as an ideal or a concept but as a process. As for how exactly to proceed along this path, well, I have written this blog and a whole book about it, and that is only part of what I could have said. I would, however, like to give a brief overview here, and perhaps that will be of interest even to those who have read my blog or book or both.

The main image or metaphor that comes to my mind for describing the path of heart is that it involves a certain way of dancing with the Cosmos. Dancing is an active process, something we do, and we are doing it in response to the Cosmos, which in turn is responding to our dance. The dance is, in other words, an active relationship with the Cosmos where we influence each other.

This dance with the Cosmos is made possible through a non-Western map of reality, the Andean Cosmovision. Within this way of experiencing reality the whole Cosmos is conscious. This includes, specifically and especially, the Pachamama (the great Being who is the planet Earth), Mama Tuta (the void, the night, who holds the stars in her embrace), the stars themselves, Tai Tai Inti (the sun), Mama Killa (the moon), the Apus (the Beings who are the majestic mountain peaks), the rivers that cascade down the mountains, Mama Cocha (the ocean), the trees, the stones, everything, including the Cosmos itself. They are all conscious, we can interact with them, we can dance with them, and if we make our dance with the Cosmos a work of art then our life begins to unfold in beauty.

Our steps in the dance are the “meditations” I have shared in this blog and in my book. They are not like the meditations of the path of the mystics, and I only call them meditations because I have no better term. These meditations provide a means for experientially exploring new and profound aspects of ourselves and of the Cosmos. While the meditations have value in themselves there are also beautiful effects that slowly emerge as we continue down this path. These effects arise naturally from the way the meditations allow us to connect to the consciousness of Nature and the Cosmos. This is beautifully stated in a quote from Eckhart Tolle (while not from an Andean perspective it fits nicely).

“There is a higher order, a higher purpose, a universal intelligence. We can never understand this higher order through thinking about it because whatever we think about is content while the higher order emanates from the formless realm of consciousness. But we can glimpse it, and more than that, align ourselves with it, which means be conscious participants in the unfolding of that higher purpose. In a forest, not a man-made garden, let go of thought, become still and alert, and don’t try to understand or explain. Only then can you be aware of the sacredness of the forest. And soon as you sense that hidden harmony, that sacredness, you realize you are not separate from it, and when you realize that, you become a conscious participant in it. In this way, nature can help you become realigned with the wholeness of life.” Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, pp 194-195.

The Andean meditations change our relationship with Nature and the Cosmos. When a relationship changes the relata (the entities in relationship) change as well. My experience is that as I have learned to dance with the Cosmos in this new way that subtle and beautiful changes have arisen within me unplanned and unexpected. Don Americo calls these “kamaskas”, small initiations into a new way of being that arise when we align ourselves with the Cosmos. This unfolding of a new way of experiencing reality takes us closer to the other side of reality which begins to inform our experience of who we are.

The theme of the paq’os relationship with the Cosmos is service and the operating principle is ayni. To be a paq’o is to be of service, service to the community, service to the Pachamama, service to the Apus, service to the Cosmos. Ayni (the Andean principle of reciprocity…see the post Ayni) insures that the service is service and is neither servitude nor mastery. We neither dissolve and surrender ourselves to the Cosmos (the path of the mystic), nor do we attempt to coerce and manipulate the Cosmos (the path of power). We dance with the Cosmos and as we do we become realigned with the wholeness of life, and we find our salka.

 

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Thread A: The Guardian at the Threshold

I recommend that you read (or reread) the earlier post (Thread A: The Other Side of Reality) before reading this post.

This post was revised on May 1, 2016.

In our normal state of consciousness we do not experience reality directly, we experience instead a representation, an interpretation, of reality created by our nervous system. There is an irreducible and inevitable difference between reality and our experience of it, similar to the difference between a description of an object and the object itself, the difference between a photo of your loved one and the actual person, the difference between a map and the territory it represents. The essential “suchness” of reality, the “other side of reality”, is beyond all words, all concepts, and all beliefs.

Over millennia, and across the many cultures on the planet, various paths for exploring the other side of reality have emerged. They all involve suspending, usually through meditation or psychoactive drugs, our normal process of giving meaning to our experiences, leading to a more direct experience of reality. When we take these paths, however, an obstacle arises, what Joseph Campbell would refer to in mythological terms as “the guardian at the threshold to the other side of reality”.  The guardian is a fearsome beast, and in myth often takes on the form of a monster.  This “monster” arises from within ourselves, it is our ego.

The ego is a very powerful and important part of our normal, constructed, view of reality. It consists of all of the thoughts, concepts, and beliefs we have about our own existence, our identity, and our self-worth. Just like we mistake our interpretation of reality as being reality itself, we often mistake our thoughts about ourselves as being who we really are. Our being, however, has its roots in the other side of reality. We are more than all of the thoughts and beliefs we have about ourselves. We are the Being who has those thoughts. As reality itself is beyond all of our descriptions, thoughts, and belief, so are we. We are much more mysterious, magical, and unknowable (intellectually) than our culture has led us to believe. Our personality, which is a product of our ego, may be beautiful or ugly, loving or vengeful, smart or stupid, kind or cruel.  In my experience, our Being, however, the essence of who we are in the other side of reality, is beautiful. To walk the Andean path is to become more informed by the essence of who we each uniquely are, and when that happens we blossom.

Taking a path to the other side of reality requires that we suspend our constructed view of reality and this necessarily involves also suspending our constructed view of ourselves. In other words it involves temporarily turning off our ego. Like the computer HAL in the movie 2001, however, the ego usually doesn’t take kindly to the prospect of being turned off.  To the ego the prospect of being turned off seems like impending death.  In Asian traditions the suspension of the ego is called “the little death” (as compared to “the big death” when we die at the end of our lives).  A powerful weapon the ego has to protect itself when it feels threatened is fear. And even when we know that the suspension of the ego is only temporary (we must return from the other side of reality to live our lives)  there can still be the fear of change.  When the ego returns after the experience of touching the essence of reality, and the essence of who you really are, what will you be like?  Are you willing to initiate a process (walk a path) that may change your sense of identity? Here we face our trust, or lack of trust, in our path. I can only share my own experiences with this, they may or may not be relevant to you or your path.

First, I have a basic faith that any changes I go through in my own set of beliefs about myself are voluntary, they are under my control. I can always choose not to change those beliefs, I can choose to remain the same. The great danger of brainwashing is that it involves first ripping apart the ego and then dictating how it is reconstructed (to suit the purposes of the brainwasher). I personally would never trust any individual to make that decision for me. I do, however, trust the Cosmos.

And second, the path I am traveling into the Andean Cosmovision is a path of heart. Deep in my heart and soul, way beyond my thoughts, this path evokes a beautiful melody. It is giving my life more meaning, and my life is becoming more like a work of art. This path is nourishing what I most deeply desire to have nourished in my life. No path works for everyone, however, or even for most people. I recommend that whatever path you explore that  you rely upon yourself to determine whether the path fits your deepest values.

For all of my adult life I have striven to be the James T. Kirk of my exploration into the other side of reality.  I have boldly gone where I have never been before, I have put myself in a situation where I might discover new things about the Cosmos and about my own existence.  And even though I have often gone through a great deal of time, effort, and energy to get to that exact situation, fear sometime still arises as I stand on the threshold.   Then I proceed anyway.  This is a warrior’s path.

While I have framed the ego as being the monster that guards the threshold to the other side of reality, our ego is actually a valuable and cherished part of who we are. We can’t get by in the world without ideas and beliefs about who we are. It does take a special quality of ego to be shaken to its core and then return in a healthy state. There is so much that can be said about this, but there is one point on which I would like to focus. I have found this to be massively useful on my own path, and it ties so beautifully into other aspects of walking the Andean Cosmovision. It is very simple, and it came into my life through the writings of Carlos Castaneda.

Don Juan Matus, a Yaqui spiritual teacher, was talking to Carlos about the type of ego that can survive a walk to the other side of reality. Don Juan recommended that the ego adopt the “humbleness of a warrior”, which he describe as:

“Bow your head to no one, and let no one bow their head to you.”

Simple, but powerful, the ego of a warrior of the heart.  It fits the many paq’os with whom I have worked in the Andes.

The next, and last, part of this thread of thought can be found in the post Thread A: Paths to the Other Side of Reality

 

© Oakley Gordon at date of posting. Contents licensed under a Creative Commons License — some rights reserved.

You might be interested in my book:  The Andean Cosmovision.

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Impeccability

Hi everyone. I haven’t been posting here a lot recently. My energy is going out to a rather diffuse number of outlets. I am presenting a three day workshop on the Andean Cosmovision in Grand Junction, Colorado this coming weekend. My web site www.SalkaWind.com has served as the hub of my internet efforts but had gotten of date and so I have rewritten it. I have created a Facebook page for my book, The Andean Cosmovision, and I have been posting there recently to see if I can get the word out on my book to more people.

I have been waiting for something to come to me that I would like to share on this blog. And today it arrived. I would like to share some thoughts and energy about ‘impeccability’.

I first ran into the idea of walking through life with impeccability in the earlier books of Carlos Castaneda. My favorite way of expressing it is through the following story that don Juan told Carlos, which I paraphrase below

One day you will be walking down an arroyo and you will stop to tie your shoe. When you do, a huge boulder will crash to the ground right where you would have been if you hadn’t stopped to tie your shoe. Another day you will be walking down the arroyo and you will stop to tie your shoe and a boulder will land right on top of you and kill you because you stopped to tie your shoe. Given a world like this, the only thing you have control over is tying your shoelace with impeccability.

Acting with impeccability adds a great deal to life, exactly what I have a hard time putting into words. It can also be, in my experience, too stern a task master. The resolution I have arrived at is that my being impeccable includes not having to be impeccable all the time. I would like to share a story about that.

One time when I was in Peru by myself with don Americo he told me that the president of the Q’ero people was also in town and would like to meet me. He added that this was purely optional and I didn’t have to if I didn’t want to. When I paused, wondering why the president would possibly want to meet me, Americo added softly that it would be rather rude to say no. Of course I said yes.

When I went to meet him I didn’t know what to do or say, so I decided to just open my heart and interact with him. I ended up showing him a photo of my sons on my cell phone and asking him about his family. Afterwards Americo chuckled and said that was an interesting and rather refreshing way for me to act. He also said that he had watched me slip into my ‘impeccable mode’ right before I entered the room, and that he has seem me do this other times as well, he complicated me on my ability to be impeccable. I replied that in all honesty it was much easier for me to be impeccable after a couple of cups of coffee in the morning. Americo laughed and said that Carlos Castaneda might not approve, but that it was very salka of me.

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