I'M READING ...

BROKEN PLEA   The Explosive Search For Truth Behind the Idaho Murders

by Christopher Whitcomb

AMERICAN TRICKSTER   The Hidden Lives of Carlos Castaneda 

by Ru Marshall

INTERVIEW WITH CARLOS CASTANEDA

https://youtu.be/ymylx-nrldc?si=Wyiw5M_4TN4zz5uI  

Carlos Castaneda Interview with Theodore Roszak 1969

DON JUAN THE SORCERER - Carlos Castaneda interviewed by Theodore Roszak. Author of "The Teachings of Don Juan" discusses his experiences with hallucinogenic substances used under the guidance of his Yaqui Indian teacher, don Juan Matus. BROADCAST: KPFA, 30 Jan. 1969.(37 min.) BB2038 Pacifica Radio Archives.

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This interview is about shamans and hallucinogens.

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I met a woman who studied Anthropology at UCLA and was in his lecture class during the brief time that Carlos Castaneda was teaching there. I regret not quizzing her about it. She became an PhD. anthropologist studying and recording the music of the a certain ethnic tribal group in Mexico and Central America.

I'm sure that - through the years - I read most of his books beginning with The Teachings of Don Juan though I remember only a couple scenes from those books. I felt confused about what I was reading. I noticed that my local libraries seem to no longer have these books as if they haven't bothered to reorder them when old copies were stolen or fell apart from popularity.

Years later, years ago, I met a woman who was studying to be a hypnotherapist (not a hypnotist) and we had a brief conversation about Castaneda.  Very basically, she said, ..." but he was right."

I've read some criticism of Castaneda. I read some books by women who were called "witches" who we might call devotees or students or members of a cult. I also read  Amy Wallace's Sorcerer's Apprentice.  (July 3, 1955 – August 10, 2013 : Amy Wallace.) This book came out in 2003.

I thought of these things today because my Taisha Abelar posts have always gotten a lot of interest.  Years ago a woman who worked at a favored coffee house loaned me her copy and said "You have to read this," so I did. I found it fascinating...

 

Because I fear cults.

Because I once honed an interest in Native American cultures. Because I still think anthropology is more interesting that sociology or psychology. (And I know the distrust of anthropologists that many tribal people felt. Which, forgive me, might explain why Don Juan might have been playing with Carlos Castaneda.)

Because I used to walk in the Hollywood Hills and Santa Monica Mountains and learned enough to identify many native plants including ones that were used by the Tongva and Chumash for hallucinogens. I believe such experiences should only be part of a spiritual adventure and while closely attended to by others more experienced; this is not about a party or addiction.

Because I've heard people dismiss all creative writers as "liars." I hate that.

Should his books (besides this one) be considered Fiction?

Because I've read Castaneda's memoir three times, years apart, and I think that even if he wrote nothing else, there is valuable advice for writers in it. 

And it is a whole lot about Los Angeles.

Because the "missing"  four of the five "witches" are still missing - since 1998, But here's the thing: for various reasons their disappearances might not have been suicide as is hinted at in Amy Wallace's book. (Amy Wallace also suggested that she had seen evidence of Castaneda's field notes and travel in pursuit of the wisdom of Don Juan and other Shamans.) (I think the terms witches or sorcerers used to describe these women is in error because those terms bring up notions of women who are conjuring, doing magic for personal gain or to revenge enemies. Rather they worked on themselves.)

******

https://youtu.be/J6_5LAstxHE?si=BfXaK1ob1ZwUmYDF

What Happened to the "Witches" of Carlos Castaneda? Sean Munger

Because many people just wish they could drop off the grid. It's possible these women are still alive. Erasing personal history being part of Castaneda's belief system.

C 2026 Christine Trzyna

CARLOS CASTANEDA QUOTE from THE ACTIVE SIDE OF INFINITY

page 78-79 paperback

"I began my story, telling don Juan that the circumstances of my life have never permitted me to be introspective. As far back in my past as I can remember, my daily life has been filled to the brim with pragmatic problems that have clamored for immediate resolution. I remember my favorite uncle telling me that he was appalled at having found out that I had never received a gift for Christmas or my birthday.

I had come to live in my father's family home not too long before he made that statement. He (Don Juan) commiserated with me about the unfairness of my situation. He even apologized, although it had nothing to do with him.

.... He (my uncle) insisted over and over that I had to forgive the people who had wronged me. From what he said, I formed the impression that he wanted me to confront my father with his finding and accuse him of indolence and neglect, and then, of course, forgive him. He failed to see that I didn't feel wronged at all. Asking me to do required an introspective nature that would make me respond to the barbs of psychological mistreatment once they were pointed out to me....

I never had the opportunity to think about it, but my uncle must have talked to my father, because I got a gift from him, a package neatly wrapped up, with a ribbon and all, and a little card that said "Sorry."

I curiously and eagerly ripped the wrappings. There was a cardboard box, and inside it there was a beautiful toy, a tiny boat with a a winding key attached to the steam pipe. It could be used by children to play with while they took baths in the bathtub. My father had thoroughly forgotten that I was already fifteen years old and for all practical purposes, a man."

TAISHA ABELAR'S LOST BOOK - STALKING WITH THE DOUBLE (RESTORED VERSION)

As the rain poured down for hours circa March 14th, having given up my plans for the day because I did not want to be out in it, I returned to Carlos Castaneda for the first time in years, thinking I would listen to his memoir as an audiobook, leaving my eyes and hands free for other tasks.  But, perhaps it was meant to be, I was surprised to find instead that the TAISHA ABELAR (second) book that had been at a publishers forever, it seemed, WAS PUBLISHED and available to read online!

The back story on this is that many years ago a young friend, C.B. had read the first and till then only book Taisha Abelar had written, titled The Sorcerer's Crossing, and turned me onto it. After reading her copy, I got a copy of my own. If I recall, I got a copy at the old Bodhi Tree bookstore in West Hollywood. I did have that book for a long time. I loved the mysterious quality of the book and the experiences Abelar told of, her apprenticeship that eventually lead to her acceptance into a group of people who were not intent on being sorcerers or witches as popularly conjured by those terms but in working on developing their energy to become free of this earth. I especially liked the episode with Manfred, the big dog who was actually an old time sorcerer stuck in a dog body and sucking her energy.

But then I learned that, after Castaneda died in 1998, Taisha was one of the "witches" who had gone off somewhere and was either long time missing or dead. Her family, which she was not close with and had departed from, may have been the only family to actually file a missing persons report.  (Going to the mine area and finding a fire pit where five colors of broken glass exist, supposedly where five of these women had some sort of celebration before "committing suicide" has become a hiker-fan's local.  However, while one of the women's vehicle was found nearby and years later her bones, no bones, remains, or vehicles belonging to the others has ever been found.)

So much speculation about the fate of those women, why they left, what they did - Had they disappeared into rural life in Mexico? Or had they joined Carlos, who had the cancer death of a common human, in some esoteric way?  What about suicide in an abandoned mine in the desert? Well, back in that day it was a lot easier to disappear than it is today (with all the ID's required to board a plane, for example), though I suppose much depends on how much money you have and what part of the world you go to. Not outlaws, not on the run so to speak, but perhaps they could not live without him. Yet, some others did not go away but continued to live in obscurity or take charge of a new business, teaching the exercises called Tensegrity.  Not Yoga.  Not Tai Chi.  Yet, like those practices, intended to heal or balane the energy body.

Condemnation of Castaneda, or at least suspicion of him, prevailed. Had he faked his doctoral thesis at UCLA back in the day, in the anthropology department? If so, how could that have been allowed?

I was interested in rock art and ethnobotany back in the day.  I was interested in shamanism. But I recall that when I took an anth class in college, I was warned to not consider any of his work. I gave up on rock art and the possible use of hallucinogens by the local Tongva and wrote only of the Tongva and their use of hallucinogens for initiation ceremonies for the boys entering manhood. ( The Tongva shamans intelligently brewed a Datura potion. The girls got smoked with tobacco and did not imbibe.) It was only a paper, not a book I needed to write. Castaneda had not spent any time with the Tongva... But why the warning in anth?

Because, although he had succeeded in academia, at UCLA, to the full extent possible, he was now regarded with suspicion. 

Had Castaneda's thesis, turned into a best seller, made him rich enough to never have to work again?  What I must say is that I would suspect that anyone granted a PhD. was and is put through a hell of a lot to earn it.  There are too many PhD's who end up driving taxis (or Uber or Lyft) and Anthropology, a subject I personally love, is not so easy to gain employment using outside of academia.

Casteneda's first book was first a thesis and then a best seller and because it was a best seller and embraced by then-hippies, it was said to have ushered in drug experimentation. But wait a minute.  This was 1968ish and drug use, including LSD, was already happening.

Castaneda had not been suggesting that people who were not apprenticed to shaman's take any datura, also called Jimson Weed or Loco Weed (which still blooms on the hillsides and roadsides in Southern California, where suburban expansion has not taken place) or peyote (the desert cactus) or any other botonical that produces hallucinations, and emphasized that the goal was to hone awareness without such potions.  (Though it is said he decided this after having taken Don Juan's potions possibly 22 times.)

I'm sure that I read all his books over time though I can only recall a couple incidents reported in them; certainly the story of the shamans leaping over the cliff - or the shaman who seemed to walk over the waterfall without his feet touching the water. (Which I think may appear in the book Tales of Power.) I'm not sure I understood his books fully and to this day I think that has to do with his unwillingness to call things what they might be called in other cultures - though a "luminous egg" is certainly just like the body of energy of the Yogis. I also recall being - annoyed - that the shamans and others he encountered seemed to break out in laughter at Carlos a whole lot, and I didn't get what was funny.

But his last book, his memoir, The Active Side of Infinity, written when he must have known he was headed to meet Death, the Informant, is perhaps my favorite.  He wrote about those moments in his life that turned the wheel. Over the years I've read that book three times. Over the years I've read Taisha Abelar's thrice also.

And, it seems to me there is some sort of resurgence of his work, as of late there are a number of audiobooks on YouTube, some which include discussions or explanations of the work, the old exercise videos are on there, and so on. It seems that his exercise system and workshops have especially been embraced in Russia, Ukraine, eastern Europe.

A look at the website that advertises seminars to learn energy work gave me the impression that it had all become highly pragmatic and worldly.

Taisha Abelar's second book, now entitled Stalking With the Double, which was supposed to be published by a real publishing house, got lost in some discussion. There were promises it would come out and delays. I posted about that years ago. Not sure who was negotiating for her - Cleargreen?  Her estate lawyer?  Her family?  YEARS WENT BY. How did INTERNET ARCHIVE ORG get a copy? What is meant by "restored version?"

About half way in, I've found two misspelled words and some missing punctuation, giving me the sense this was a manuscript copy rather than one that went through editing or was closely read for errors.  A little further and I found a note about a lost page and some skips. That's OK.  For sure it was a "scanned" manuscript or someone typed on up.

Here is the link where you can read it at no cost. https://archive.org/details/taisha-abelar-stalking-with-the-double/page/1/mode/1up?view=theater

Excerpt: page 260  I felt a jolt. I knew he was angry with me because of the luminous worm. I felt like a traitor, guilty of still being energetically attached to men that, by now, I didn’t give a fig about. I had one foot in the world of sorcery, the other gangrenous one, was immersed in the world of human affairs. Upon more soul searching, I realized I was still concerned with finding love, thinking of who will take care of me in times of need, and what will happen to me if I didn’t succeed in the sorcerer’s world. I was investing, expecting rewards for my efforts, and when no rewards were forthcoming, I tended to give up and revert back to my familiar pattern of behavior.

*** 

I don't want to ruin the read for you but it does hold some surprises;  Taisha did meet Don Juan Matus. ....  Or did she meet his energetic double?

C 2023  Christine Trzyna

NOTES:  This statement appears at the end of the scan:

this text is a best effort to produce a “finished” version of Taisha Abelar’s unpublished manuscript, that can currently be found at https://archive.org/details/taisha-book. Any and all changes made, were intended to further enhance the manuscript and, as such, changes from the original scan have been minimized and focused on giving this book the same professional demeanor of the published works of Carlos Castaneda, Taisha Abelar, and Florinda Donner-Grau. No ownership or recognition for helping Taisha get this puppy across the finish line is needed or desired. Thank you, Taisha!

........  This is unsigned

* just to verify, by sorcerer or witch, they are not saying High magic, witchcraft, Wicca, putting curses or vexes on other people, conjuring the Devil or Demons.  Such doings were supposed to be what the Old Shamans of long ago were up to but not these people, who were moving forwards to developing and traveling with the energy body.  No doubt there were other magical brews used for healing and other purposes among those in Mexico - as well as many - perhaps most -  so called primative cultures. The Americans in the United States who became those closest to Castaneda seemed to be on a departure from that wordly engagement.

If interested you may also want to read the book Sorcerer's Apprentice by Amy Wallace.  Wallace did not change her name as many did when the joined the Castaneda Cult.  She has died.  In her book she mentions that at the Westwood address she saw things that belonged to Castaneda such as tickets to Mexico being burned in the fireplace, as if people here were attempted to further obscure the man. Her book gives an account of what was happening around his death. She first met Carlos when he came to a party at her parent's.  The writer Irving Wallace was her father and she and her brother both published books.

*** Re the search for the witches in old abandoned mines in the desert.  One woman's skeleton was found, and her car had been found abandoned near a mine in the desert, but here are the reasons why the whole suicide in a mine theory might be wrong.

Each of the five women who went missing purposefully shut their phones off with the phone company before they went wherever. They all had vehicles and were supposed to have been seen driving around Los Angeles after Castaneda's death as if they had a lot of errands to do.  While it would only take one vehicle to take all of them to the location where one car and one skeleton were found, none of these vehicles that also went missing have been found nor have more skeletons. Numerous hikers through the years have looked around, including one who posted on YouTube about going into the mine herself. While I get it that five women and five colors of glass broken around a firepit, as if they raised glasses of poison there, might be a clue, by now it's unlikely that the contents of said glasses is long gone, destroyed in the heat. Perhaps at one time DNA was present. As well, any other group of persons might have made the fire pit and done some sort of ritual or ceremony there, without it having anything to do with these missing women.

As well, there has long been talk that they knew they had to go away and/or die after he did, yet my understanding that inheritances were left for them - which were never collected.  If that is true, well, it seems to me that the money would have come into good use if they purposefully wanted to disappear into Mexico. 

Although I don't know how thorough the search, for instance the DMV might have records of the vehicles being sold to other owners, these vehicles were not found abandoned anywhere, such as in the desert. 

Because these women legally changed their names and were supposed to, as a sorcerer's practice, take on other identities so as to remove themselves from their past, it is assumed also that they might have gone to Mexico and taken on other identities there.One of them, then called Carol TIggs, possibly Castaneda's true partner in the occult sense of the word. is said to have inherited his estate and decided to stay.

DEATH ON THE MIND - DEATH AS THE INFORMANT - DEATH AS A REALITY

Is it the effect of a modern plague called Covid-19, or perhaps the famous people who have died since the beginning of the year ---  broadcast journalist Barbara Walters,  musicians Jeff Beck, David Crosby, Lisa Marie Presley,  Burt Bacharach ....  ?   Death is a reality of Life.  However, I don't recall the public count being what it is now  -  starting at the beginning of the year instead of the end.  (I checked a list of famous people who had died so far and admit I had not heard of most of them.)

In recent days the Turkey-Syria Earthquake - their Big One - has taken thousands of lives.Thousands more are injured and in need of medical care.  Thousands more survived but lost everything and are homeless. The smell of death hangs over in the air, while others die beneath the rubble awaiting rescue that may never come. Teams from all over the world have sent help, including a group called Samaritan's Purse, a Protestant Christian group known more for sending shoe boxes with this and that and promoting Jesus - to poor children all over the world. They sent a plane containing all that it takes to set up a field hospital.  Teams from Russia as well as China are there.  Teams with sniffer dogs from Germany. Teams from our United States... With hundreds of buildings down, every rescue is greeted with joy and often thanks to Allah.  *But Allah or whatever It's Name Is, allows these things to happen, too busy to care.  I say that humans need to stop associating natural disasters as punishment from God. Who wants to worship or live their life around such a character?

It also seems the Idaho Four murders, with Bryan Kohberger the only suspect, has not been forgotten by the media.  Of 35,000 murders in the U.S. every year, you can delete all too common gang warfare and domestic violence as interesting unless it's truly bizarre or includes a famous person.  Only a few murders are taken up by the True Crime Internet community as worthy of their every suspicion. Finally a few posters are posting why they do not believe he did it or did it alone, or do not believe he will be Found Guilty are coming up.  (I hope the Gag Order remains. I really do not want to hear from Kaylee's family lawyer. I note that while other murder victim's familys public records of arrests and divorces have been publicized no one seems to know how her family has money. It's clear that of the Four, it is her parents who do have it.)

We are obsessed with Death.

My recall may be a little fuzzy regarding Carlos Castaneda's reveals in his books, likely read by me years ago, one here and one there, but was there not some wisdom relayed to him via Don Juan or some other shaman, about Death being an Informant?  Well, if one keeps in mind that time alive is limited, it might influence one to stay focused on what one wants to accomplish. But, likely like you, I too can be interrupted by hunger, and distracted by all the things one does to stay alive, and a certain poverty of advantage. For instance, I got up and made myself a peanut butter on whole wheat bread toast sandwich just now, but rushed to eat it so I wouldn't loose my focus for this article. 

I'm writing this on Sunday morning - that is to say yesterday morning - because I'm truly beginning to think I'm starting to be aware on some level when people have passed.  I'll clarify in a moment.

I mentioned my friend who has been in stage four lung cancer for about five years, defying all predictions.  I mentioned he does not want me to be involved.  I should have clarified that he does not want me to be involved in his care not that he doesn't want me to care about him.  What happens is that most of the time when I catch up with him or see him, such as at the Christmas potluck we both attended, he says he does not want to talk and I respect that. Yet once in a while he will blurt the latest such as that his doctors said he had a month to six months, which was actually about nine months ago. I feel he does not want to feel himself to be a burden but needs to vent. When he told me that I said, "You have outlived the predictions again and again."  Based on his symptoms I did some research about lung cancer and what happens to the body in the last days.  He has those symptoms and has had them, a lack of oxygen giving his skin a mottled appearance. So what is keeping him going?  Is it Fate? Stubborness?  That he has had very strong heart ?  Fear of Death?  Something more that he was meant to do when he took on the Assignment?  Well, something is going on that is not explainable.

This is an example of my trying to use science to predict and prediction as a way of being prepared.   

On perhaps the best of the true crime podcasts, Surviving the Survivor, the host, whose mother is a Holocaust survivor, mentions this Jewish saying.  MAY THEIR MEMORY BE A BLESSING.  Just the other day I was thinking that the memories of my dog, who passed in July, are all a blessing.  She was a blessing to me from the day I got her to that last day and so often some memory of something that happened or something that she did, showing how perceptive she was, comes to me and puts a smile on my face. I can rarely say that about others I've encountered in this life who have passed or even many of those who have left my life who are still alive.

What happens is that I start thinking about someone or something that happened in my life years ago, someone who was once important in some way but who I moved on from or who moved on from me, someone I have not thought about in years, and then I find out they recently died. Could it be that as a person approaches their death they are reviewing their life and thinking of me (as well as others) and that's what I (they) pick up on?  I have to emphasize these are not people like my friend with the stage four lung cancer, but people who I would consider to have been forgotten.

A couple months ago I started thinking about a friend I had whose mom was friends with my mom. Our episode of friendship ended because of her drinking, or to be more specific, I barely ever drink and after one of her cocktails I was drunk and did not want more. She openly ridiculed me for not being willing or able to keep up with her.  (This happened on a few Friday nights in her mom's kitchen. I suppose her mom felt that at least we were not in a bar or on the road.) I had figured her parents had probably long ago passed but I found out that both of them had just recently died. My mom's friend died a few days after her husband! 

And then, about a week or so ago I started thinking about an employer I had, a husband and wife who owned a business back in the day, and what it was to work for them. They were greedy people, cooking the books while underpaying and working their employees hard. We didn't get breaks or lunch which was not legal, so we could not leave the place to even go out and make a phone call. He had been a lawyer.  If they had no spiritually driven morals, one would think at least they could obey the law. Their children were spoiled brats. Their son at 12 years old started screaming at me one day, telling me how I worked for HIM. I finally quit without another job lined up, unable to find another job while so entrapped. They acted as if we owed them and were owned by them. Though paid an unlivable wage, they resented that I quit. 

I'd started writing about that experience, not for publication, and then what the hell, I put his name in the internet, as in my mind the man still looked as he had the day I quit, and it turned out he had been buried the day before. (The obituary mentioned his law school, the firm he had worked for, the business they owned. The rotten brat son went into public heath and might have been working selflessly while independently wealthy, to provide for the poor. Requests were made for donations to a food bank!) This means that he was dying while I was writing about what it was to work for people like that.  (Obits rarely have anything bad to say about a person.)

Geeze, I said to myself, I really need to talk to someone like James Van Praagh about this! In a video this psychic medium says that when a person has their life review after death they get to feel the happiness and pleasure they gave others as well as the sadness and pain they gave others. Better or Worse,  if someone has wronged you in a way where it effects the rest of your life, they get to feel that too. Every damn thing they set in motion.

At least Van Praagh is not in the "It's All Good" mentality.

 C 2023  Christine Trzyna

Note  Feb 13th.  I have no idea why the font on this blogger is not holding firm.  The problem seems to be when I use the medium font. I just went through this post and fixed the crazy font changes.

DOGS IN LITERATURE : TAISHA ABELAR'S MANFRED

Speaking of Taisha Abelar's new book (see past posts) that still hasn't come out (I just checked a popular book selling site on the net) one of my favorite characters in her first and only published book is the "dog" Manfred.

Come on - we know he is a sorcerer trapped in a dog body! But how that happened?

In this book Taisha encounters Manfred in the mysterious house in Mexico where she is in a spiritual apprenticeship. Manfred likes to lay on her, taking as much of her energy as he can. Manfred is a sensitive beast, who overreacts when anyone says he looks like a toad. So of course the word must be spelled out around him. T O A D! He calms down when you say that someone else looks like a toad or that he does not look like a toad!

Carlos Castaneda said that Taisha wrote this book while in dreaming. I wonder if Taisha ever had a dog or dogs in real life. I wonder if Manfred will make a reappearance in the long awaited new book?

TAISHA'S BOOK STILL NOT OUT : WILL IT EVER BE?

Guess what?  If you go to April 1 2023 and see the post TAISHA ABELAR'S LOST BOOK -   STALKING WITH THE DOUBLE (RESTORED VERSION)  you will be able to read a manuscript copy of the book.

************

By now this is becoming an "inside joke"...

A little background.

Many years ago when I was a regular at an independently owned coffee house on Ventura Boulevard and taking night classes at the local community college, one of the servers there, who I really liked, showed me her copy of Taisha Abelar's first and only book, and encouraged me to read it. This coffee house friend had recently gone on a vision quest which she believed had oriented her purpose in life and future career.

I read the book and was utterly mystified and intregued. Since then I've read the book twice more, each time years enough apart to not have remembered everything I read before, and each time having a different pov on it in the end, as my understanding or mystification of my own life changes me.

Since then I've also read around the whole Carlos Castaneda controversy; was Taisha one of his cult members? Did the various "witches," or devotees, or whatever they really were, who published books around the subject, all pass fiction off as nonfiction? Or did they really experience what some of them wrote about?

Castandeda died a human death of cancer, and soon after several of these people, including Taisha, disappeared. There was talk of a possible ritual suicide, maybe in an abandoned mine or cave in the desert. Taisha's family filed a missing person report but many people felt that these people had just staged a disappearance and gone off to Mexico or wherever, to continue their esoteric pursuits. Tellingly, money inherited was left behind as well.

One of the Castaneda "witches," who inherited the bulk of his fortune, continues to live and remains silent and protected by an attorney. She has not written anything.

Then, a couple years ago, it was reported that Taisha had a new book that would soon be published. Some people said this meant that all along she had been hiding out and writing and would soon reappear, possibly to take over leadership of the group. A few years have gone by and speculation is that she left behind an unfinished manuscript which, by now, has seen a number of ghost writers.

The publishing house has announced publication a number of times, and so the book became almost ready to order on Amazon. So far, no Taisha, no book.

C 2012 Christine Trzyna / Christine Trzyna Writerly Life All Rights Including Internet and International Rights Reserved.

CARLOS CASTANEDA Quote

"We're all nothing but bags of stories." 

Don Juan to Carlos Castaneda

TAISHA ABELAR NEW BOOK COMING OUT : UPDATE

Guess what?  If you go to April 1 2023 and see the post TAISHA ABELAR'S LOST BOOK -   STALKING WITH THE DOUBLE (RESTORED VERSION)  you will be able to read a manuscript copy of the book.

*******************

Linking to a French blog site that has videos of Interview of Taisha Abelar: still checking : Her book due out ANY MOMENT. (That's what they said in the spring too!)

According to http://www.nagualist.com/new-taisha-abelar-book it is due out July 30th 2011, published by Penguin.

You can use the search feature of this blog to read past posts on Taisha Abelar.

UPDATE JANUARY 5, 2011 I'M STILL WAITING....

CARLOS CASTANEDA quote

“Intent is not a thought, or an object, or a wish. Intent is what can make a man succeed when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated. It operates in spite of the warrior’s indulgence. Intent is what makes him invulnerable. Intent is what sends a shaman through a wall, through space, to infinity.” Carlos Castaneda

CARLOS CASTANEDA QUOTE from THE ACTIVE SIDE OF INFINITY

pages 125-126 paperback

"We are beings on our way to dying," he said. "We are not immortal, but we behave as if we were. This is the flaw that brings us down as individuals and will bring us down as a species someday."

Don Juan stated that the sorcerer's advantage over their average fellow men is that sorcerers know that they are beings on their way to dying and they don't let themselves deviate from that knowledge. He emphasized that an enormous effort must be employed in order to elicit and maintain this knowledge as a total certainty.

"Why is it so hard for us to admit something that is so truthful?" I asked, bewildered by the magnitude of our internal contradiction.

"It's really not man's fault," he said in a conciliatory tone. "Someday, I'll tell you more about the forces that drive a man to act like an ass."

CARLOS CASTANEDA QUOTE from THE ACTIVE SIDE OF INFINITY

page 106-107 paperback

"It's very very important, don Juan went on, "that you yourself deliberately arrive at that breaking point, or that you create it artificially and intelligently."

"What do you mean by that, don Juan, " I asked, caught in his intriguing reasoning.

"Your breaking point, " he said, "is to discontinue your life as you know it. You have done everything I told you, dutifully and accurately. If you are talented, you never show it. That seems to be your style. You're not slow, but you act as if you were. You're very sure of yourself, but you act as if you were insecure. You're not timid, and yet you act as if you were afraid of people. Everything you do points at one single spot; your need to break all that, ruthlessly."

"But in what way, don Juan? What do you have in mind?" I asked him, genuinely frantic,

"I think everything boils down to one act, " he said, "You must leave your friends. You must say goodbye to them, for good. It's not possible for you to continue on the warrior's path carrying your personal history with you, and unless you discontinue your way of life, I won't be able to go ahead with my instruction."

CHRISTINE TRZYNA MUSING on THE ACTIVE SIDE OF INFINITY by CARLOS CASTANEDA

I've been reading Carlos Castaneda's THE ACTIVE SIDE OF INFINITY, which is his "album of memories" (memoir) written in the year or so prior to his death from cancer and published in 1998. Carlos Castaneda is a controversial figure in the realms of literature, anthropology, academia, pop culture, and the new age - spiritual movements. I've read around him, reading the accusations and proofs he was merely a liar rather than a man taken on a journey into Yaqui shamanism in the early 1960's by a character named Don Juan and that he wasn't. But let's say I had never read anything else he'd written, had never read the controversy. I would still find THE ACTIVE SIDE OF INFINITY fascinating, a good read. (One book that pretty much accused him of being a liar on the basis that he had once the audacity to take a Creative Writing class at Los Angeles City Community College was just outrageous!)

Most importantly, I believe that the directive that Don Juan gave Carlos, that he write the album of memories as a series of story/events that had turning points in his personal development, to be an excellent one that any memoirist ought to consider. Thus Castaneda gives us stories large and small, each holding the realizations he had because of his experiences for the reader to consider. He is posed as the everyman in his memoir, humbled and awed, not as an egotist.

From all the Castaneda I have read, I have borrowed two concepts from him which may simply be a matter of word use. MOOD and MOMENT. In this moment I want to write my own album of memories. Both the mood and the moment at this time in my life are strange.

"MOODS" AND "MOMENTS"

"MOODS" AND "MOMENTS"

I was reading Carlos Castaneda. I realized that he was using the term "mood" to mean something other than moody or emotional. Rather, it seemed that a new "mood" could mean something such as a new trend, or instinct, or way of thinking, being, or doing. A mood implies a change, a way of perceiving that an old way is past. A mood could occur as a decision or a perception of having changed. It could register with impact or barely, though to be cognitive of a mood one must sense it. Sensing mood might suggest that the understanding of it is not exactly cognitive but instinctual or intuitive.

I've also heard people using the term "moment" to mean something other than a smidgen of time. For instance a couple who met, made love, and decided against a relationship, can be said to have had their "moment." (A moment is a more romantic notion than "hooking up" for sure.) People can have their "moment" in fame, career success (or failure), or on a night out that lasts beyond the five minutes of fame Andy Warhol saw as a guaranteed moment for everyone in the future. (Perhaps this is what SOCIAL NETWORKING is all about, a self propelled moment of fame!) It is understood that as you read my blog you are having a moment with me and certainly I hope you pick up on my mood and yours is a bit altered for the experience!


Christine Trzyna C 2008 - 2026 All Rights Reserved

Quote From THE ACTIVE SIDE OF INFINITY by CARLOS CASTANEDA

The Active Side of Infinity
By Carlos Castaneda C 1999


This was the last book he wrote before he died, and it is a memoir, or more correctly, "an album of memories."

Don Juan said: "The memorable events of a shaman's album are affairs that will stand the test of time because they have nothing to do with him and yet he is in the thick of them. He'll always be in the thick of them, for the duration of his life, and perhaps beyond, but not quite personally."