I am reading Castaneda “Arts OF Dreaming” along with trying to experience my first LD. I am just curious what public think on Castaneda’s vision of dreaming. To him and many other authors I have read dream is a gate to different parallel world or to space of possibilities and variations. Many scientists and other more materialistic people view dream as just a product of your subconscious and conscious mind along with information gathering wile being conscious. I take neither side yet. What about you, lets discuss it.
Castaneda’s view is how I see it too. However the idea that our dreams are made up of our subconcious is not false, I mean, how I see it is, Dreams are a different world we enter, and yes there are many possibilities from this world, and our subconcious is also apart of it.
Anything that happens physically, if percieved by human concsiousness (or sub-conciousness) in any way, it will be automatically be drawn into the dream world.
So for example, I might be going through a time where I am very much involved in writing poems on nature and also going and seeing nature, trees, etc.
All this is drawn into my mind…
Then in dreams, we enter a world where it is ALL there, but in a different language.
We will see the trees, the nature, the poems, but all in a different symbolic way.
We will see it all, in this new world we are in.
So both sides, are correct, as I see it.
You don’t think it’s part of your subconscious? I think there is a definite connection, considering how many things we see and hear in our lives appear in our dreams… as interesting as it is to think of it as a portal to another realm, it’s not logical.
In the psychology world, there are two schools of thought–
Contemporary Thought: Dreams are made up of the sights, sounds, smells, feelings we experience throughout the day. We are sifting, sorting, reviewing the activities we have engaged.
The Freud School: Freud believes our dreams are symbolic; they represent our deep wishes, infanitle urges, and emotional and neurotic needs. Sometimes we have the opportunity to “live out” our deep-seated issues. Things we also unconsciously or consciously repress find their way into our dreams, thus “nightmares.” It would appear as manifest content. Like, if we are afraid of death (and we all are, no matter how we might deny it), it would appear in our dream in the form of a snake that tries to eat us.
All of that sounds very plausible to me. Did you ever have a dream before of something you knew you were afraid of? I’d say a lot of us have.
However, if shared dreaming is indeed possible, then perhaps there does exist some sort of collective unconscious. That’s my only explanation.
Lina how can it be not logical?
If its possible to foresee the future, in your dreams, which is 100% possible (yes ive done it many times and we do it symbolically probably every night),
and if its possible to see things in the dream world (or astral world) that you have never seen before, for example, to go to a place you never been before, in your dream, then to go there physically for the first time and see tha its the same as you saw it in your dream,
then there is obviously more than dreams than you thought possible, and not just made up of everything we have already percived subconciously, which is what most people think.
Believe it or not, I do believe in deja vu and the possibility to see our future in our dreams. If I had to assume a reason, I wouldn’t go with a futuristic world but (like I’ve said) some sort of collective unconscious unless you’d like to explain to me how this certain dream world could represent the future. But it’s not logical because we cannot prove it. If we could, then we’d test someone to foresee the lottery numbers and win it 6 times in a row. 
It is possible, and its been proven too.
Before I say anything, it doesn’t bother me who believes or not, to me, i know its possible with myself so thats all I need.
But ive proven it before, a few times.
For example, while I was overseas living at my aunty’s house with my sister, I dreamt one night that my sister and I, and with my aunty and her family, were walking on a rocky mountain all together… The road was very rocky and was a dirt road, but with small rocks, and like a forest all around.
That morning when I woke up I told my sister about the dream I had.
To our amazement, my aunty walked into our bedroom soon after and told us that she has thought of something we can do today, she said lets go to the mountains for a picnic. We thought it was quite funny how she said this and wondered if its the same as in my dream.
When we got to the mountain, we started to walk and walk on a dirt road, it had rocks everywhere (was rocky) exactly how I described already in my dream, and there was foresty stuff all around, trees etc. up on this rocky mountain, and I was walking with everyone who I dreamt I was walking with in my dream.
Ok you might say, “But you didn’t prove this to everyone, only to yourself and your sister”
Well to that I say, I dont need to prove it to you, or to anyone else, I don’t care if anyone believes or not, I know it true to myself, and that is all I need:)
I’ll copy what i said in the other topic, i think it sums Castaneda’s book nicely :
Castaneda says, basically, there are your usual subconscious dreams, while staying lucid in them you collect energy for going one step further. When you have enough energy - you are like a TV, with most of your time you’re (and everyone else) are tuned to one channel only - this world, and while you’re sleeping your energy body can switch the channels with ease, since it doesnt have to lug your physical body around.
Stuff like that.
I’ve heard lots of plausible sounding things in dreams, only to wake up and be amazed that I ever believed it… At the very least, Castañeda is more enjoyable to read than most psychology textbooks… 
I personally think that a dream world explanation is better than anything scientists have to offer. I’ve had a few lucid dreams that were more vivid than waking reality - that alone is enough to make you wonder. Plus, there are “paranormal” events that do occur - things that scientists tend to ignore. I don’t think Castañeda has all the answers either, but it is useful for people to give an honest listen to a wide spectrum of ideas (and to not put scientists on pedestals)… That’s my opinion anyway… 
Thats true.
One more thing i might add - is that his books are more convincing than most religious dogmats i read, concerning the universe mechanics.
Thats a solid thinking.
If you have case studies based on this, then I’d be interested in seeing 'em.
Well, of course you’d think the things you hear in dreams sound plausible when you’re in them. You’re in a neurotic state, after all. And better than Psychology books? gasp I LOVE Pyschology! if you haven’t taken a class in it, I highly recommend it. It’s very interesting. 
I believe that Dreams are a mix of things we experience in the waking world, and they come to us in a spiritual sense. They can be interpreted to things we keep inside our minds, to reveal who we truely are. There are too many abnormal happenings in peoples dreams where they see someone die, and then they see that same person die in real life. And some dreams are just from what happened the day prior. It’s a very hard discussion to take sides on, in my opinion .
Maybe someday I’ll awaken from this reality 
, and someone will tell me the same thing… 
Does parapsychology count? Actually, I spend several hours in the library every Tuesday, and psychology books are some of the ones I pour over. Ever see the upside down Madonna Photo? Nifty stuff… I first saw that in a Psych book. What I meant is that Castañeda is a very talented writer - I devoured each of his books in a night or two.
I think over time, and with experience, people tend to polarize more and more in their views. But still, nobody knows the answers… 
Case studies? What do you mean.
I have written down my experiences, but I also remember them quite well so can re-write them without going back to my dream journal.
I’ve had many precognitive dreams, in fact my life is full of them.
Here is my point of view about Castaneda. Many things he says are true, that is, he certainly had an actual experience of LD’ing. His inductions techniques are good and they work. His prolonging technique is perfect. The sensations he describes in his books about LD’ing are correct. Now if you want to understand all the concepts, you probably have to read all his books from “Journey to Ixtlan” to “Power of Silence”. I don’t like the other books, it seems to me he lost the “power”.
Now I have some objections. I you know well his concepts, they look very like tibetan buddhism. I’ve read two tibetan books and you can find sentences that you could find in Castaneda. But in the whole tibetan texts or dream yoga texts, you’ll never find anything about inorganic beings. You can certainly meet wrathful deities or something like that, but they are said to be dreams, dream characters. Tibetan buddhists have exactly the same point of view about all this than modern lucid dreamers.
All this stuff about inorganic beings is embarrassing me. Yogis have centuries-long experience about LD’ing. So why don’t they meet inorganic beings, if they exist? Or said in another way, why haven’t they payed as much attention to frightening things in LD’s? Moreover, their practices are quite the same than so-called toltec ones so we can’t say that they haven’t the same techniques. And their ultimate goal, reaching the rainbow body by firing all the energy channels, is the same than reaching the castanedian “third attention”. So they should have known the same steps.
I see two solutions:
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Castaneda’s books are quite fictional. He practised yoga and dream yoga with indian or tibetan masters, then he mixed his experience with tex mex salsa to do best selling books. He explained that Don Juan’s teachings had to be dramatic to fully reach their effect and this allowed him to add some drama and fantastic freeky things into yoga teachings, which were too much cool and well known to attract new readers. In a first time, during the hippie epoch, he spoke about drugs cause it was the psychedelic fashion. Then when it was no more fashionable, he said drugs were a bad thing and he explained why he has to do them. And so on. This option is believable and it makes his books the best fantastic work ever.
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But we can say that he doesn’t explain the consistency of his books and that some concepts are entirely new (assemblage point, etc.) and can’t be found in other books or teachings. We can then suppose that Don Juan existed and that his teachings were faithfully reported. Hence Castaneda must have made a mistake somewhere. I found some things curious and it was when Castaneda had a shared dream with La Gorda. In this dream, they see a saber-tooth tiger, Castaneda is convinced it’s true and if it kill them, they’ll die for real. But La Gorda laugh and say it’s just a dream and there is no danger. This speaks in favour of the reality of such an experience, cause why would have Castaneda written this if his books were fictional? It just contradicts his point of view. But moreover, it show that La Gorda and Castaneda don’t have the same view about dreams, which is curious cause they had the same teachers. La Gorda has a modern LD’er point of view, Castaneda an ancient one.
This make us remember that Don Juan always told Castaneda that he was very close from the ancient sorcerers. And Castaneda never understood why. According to Don Juan, the fact that he was close to the ancient sorcerers culminates in his approach of dreams and inorganic beings and particularly the fact he was morbidly attracted by them. As all what we have from Don Juan’s teachings is what Castaneda could recall from second attention, if he made a mistake in his approach, he couldn’t recall the whole and he will just share his morbid point of view in his books.
As for me, I prefer the second version. But I’ve two say that both lead to the same conclusion: Castaneda payed too much attention to fear and morbidity. LD’ers who read his books are likely to be stopped in their way because of this. This happened to many people I know until they realized that there was something wrong in Castaneda’s books - something that we don’t find in yoga books for instance. That why I wouldn’t advice to read Castaneda’s books.
Basilus West, you’ve made a good point, but your view has a few inconsistencies.
La Gorda said to Carlos in another episode that the tiger like that didn’t exist anymore and called Carlos’ experience ghost-dreaming. At that moment she was more experienced that him and could tell him what was what. So in fact they never had different views on dreaming (and how could they, being taught by the same people?).
As for buddhist dreaming, I cannot see how it is exactly the same as toltec dreaming. I think that it’s a different approach that leads to different results.
To answer the question why buddhists don’t meet inogranic beings, do you remember how Carlos had to attract them? The crucial part here is that he had to do it, they didn’t just come on their own.
Ancient sorcers were ancient sorcerers from DJ’s point of view. He meant Mexican ancient sorcerers, not Tibetan buddhists 
Ancient Mexican sorcerers were abusing dreaming and used it to get power, they had aimed for power. It’s a difference of what they and modern shamans aimed at, has nothing to do with meeting or not meeting inorganic beings.
I’m not defending anything
Doesn’t it make you wonder what those ancient mexican sorcerors knew? Here are two images that I think are highly suggestive of out-of-body experiences being taught in their culture… Of course, nobody can actually read this stuff nowadays - and only a handful of their codices remain… But still…
Check out the top two panels…
Check out the top two panels…
I’m thinking of the stuff popping out of these people’s heads… In the one, it even turns into another hand. Plus, there seems to be a Master/Apprentice theme going on in 'em, with the Master touching the Apprentice on his back. I wonder if there’s some way to pass the vibrations from person to person like this… Might make make Castañeda’s story a little easier to swallow…
Hmmm… dunlar, as you said, nobody knows what it means exactly. We can imagine what we want. For instance, it’s perhaps a way of healing diarrhoea. Just look at what is under the buttocks of the little men. 
JustAnotherOne, thank you for your answer. I’ll develop my point of view.
The episode about La Gorda talking about ghost-dreaming is in the 3rd chapter of The Eagle’s Gift. The episode with the SD tiger is in the 8th chapter. After having re-read it, I see two explanations: Carlos had not the same view on LD’ing than La Gorda or he had a very poor lucidity.
Because their teachings weren’t the same, though they were teached by the same people. What was said to Carlos was not completely true, by the way Don Juan said he used the mask of reason. What was said was just the most efficient according to the people who was told to. Just a supposition though.
I was just talking about inorganic beings and about this thread with a friend. Then I wanted to prove him that buddhist dreaming was the same than toltec dreaming. I just had told him too I believed that what was called by Castaneda inorganic beings was the same that tibetans called wrathful deities. I opened haphazardly the “The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep” to search the passage where it’s told about recapitulation and calling intention (yes indeed). My eyes were immediatly attracted by this paragraph in the first page I opened the book to:
“The first part of the practice concerns the peaceful nature of dreams. If you work only partially, it’s easier to work on the peaceful aspect than with the terrible aspect of dreams. […] In the fourth nocturnal session, intrepidity is developped through stability, clarity and power. We have in ourselves the causes of frightening dreams and […] we activate them by focusing on […] the chakra which is related to wrathful karmic imprints.The practitionner is encouraged to follow this kind of dreams in order to transform even frightening karmic imprints along his path.”
Hence, I’ve the feeling that it’s the same thing but tibetans don’t emphasize as much as Castaneda about the terrible aspect of dreams. They just have the same point of view than the LD’ers on this forum. Moreover when Castaneda was confronted again and again with inorganic beings in dreams, Don Juan told him it was because he had not recapitulated enough and he had to start again his recapitulation.
Basilus West,
La Gorda was a better sorcerer than Carlos, that was emphasized in the book. So she had a right to explain to him what he didn’t yet understand. You can say he had a lower lucidity if you want. I prefer to think that he had less knowledge or less ability to understand knowledge correctly. He mentioned that he couldn’t stop fearing the tiger even though he knew it wasn’t real.
Thank you for quoting some of Tibetan stuff to me, though it still sounds like a completely different system. I cannot understand where you find similarities 
About wraithful deities summoned by concentrating on a certain chakra, that sounds to me like a subconcious fears and uneasiness called forth to battle them consciously. Much like psychoterapy Inorganic beings are claimed to be quite real, while Buddhism works with illusions a.k.a subconscious, like modern LDers do.
Btw just out of curiosity, is that place they concentrate on an abdomen, the lower part of it? You edited this out of your quotation.
Because he believed that he was no more real himself and that all his being was into the realm of dreams.
I’m sorry. 
It would be too long to explain. Every time I read a tibetan book, I find lots of obvious similarities.
And they are cause a LD is another reality. I can hardly explain my point of view. Let’s consider for instance that some people consider the SG to be real and external, and some other consider it’s a internal and subconscious part, though everybody agrees that he may give you very wise advices.
It’s a chakra located behind the genitals (I’m unsure but it’s perhaps Swadhisthana, my book doesn’t give any name). “It contains a black “tigle”, a sphere of black light. It’s the dark side of imagination. […] In this part of the practice, go into the luminous black tigle of the chakra and become it. Let then your mind relax and slightly focus on the black light which is everywhere, which impregnate your feelings and mind, and fall asleep”.
But it’s only one from four exercices about dream which have to be practiced all together. And I’m just discovering the book, I haven’t read the whole.
Excuse me but what is inorganic beings ?
I dont know nothing about buddhist dreaming…