Twenty-fifth Session
Sunday, May 26, 1996, at Dance Home in Santa Monica (1 - 3 PM PDT)
by Corey Donovan

[Kylie, Talia, Reni, Nyei, Erin, Darien, Ellis, Grant and Phillipe (later Brandon) were on hand. Most of the Energy Trackers, except Kylie, were wearing long necklaces made of amber beads.]

Castaneda began by saying that the group "looked good." He told us that he had been "spending time" over the past few days "with someone who has not only read all of my books multiple times, but who has essentially memorized them." This person kept correcting Castaneda on statements he made where they differed from the books. Castaneda joked that, "I didn’t know how far I’d fallen" from the "pure" explanations in the books, "especially the first three," according to this guy.

The guy had told Castaneda that he had gotten further away from the "correct statements" in those original books with his later books, and even further with his "contradictory" current statements. Castaneda asked the guy whether he thought Castaneda "should recapitulate." The man responded, "Yes, starting from ?5. No, I think you should start from ?8." Castaneda dutifully told him he would "start on it in the morning."

Castaneda told us that he used to do the same thing with don Juan, pointing out his contradictions to him. Don Juan responded that "such things don’t matter; the only thing that matters is a sorcerer’s promise." Don Juan apparently commented that most men get terribly concerned about words and inconsistencies, but their own word means nothing. "They have to get it in writing," as though having it in writing makes any difference. "For a sorcerer, their promise and word is what matters. They can’t alter a promise," Castaneda claimed.

Castaneda talked at length about sex and sensuality. The guy he had been talking with that week had claimed that Castaneda was "much clearer on this subject in the books." Castaneda repeated that he himself was a "bored fuck," and went through an amusing explanation as to how, when there is true excitation, the sperm go nuts, and "go counterclockwise." Then he acted out the kind of sperm that result from a "bored fuck" -- how one of them just barely makes it to the egg, and then falls -- and told us that that is just how those of us who result from such worn-down sperm continue to be. He commented that Julian and "Big Florinda" -- "not bored fucks" -- had "energy to burn." He claimed that Julian "fucked whole towns, and beyond!" But Castaneda jokingly explained that "it wasn’t that Julian was licentious, just exuberant."

Castaneda reminded us about the swan’s neck shape of a man’s energy configuration, and how easily broken and disturbed it can be. He told us again about the man who had read all of Castaneda’s books who, when he had gotten married, had tried to "program" all his meals and entertainment for himself and his new wife, via the computer. That worked for a year or so, until his wife suddenly told him that she had "had her I.U.D. removed" and that she wanted a baby, "Now!" He described how the couple "screwed" for "fifteen minutes . . . half an hour . . . up to two hours," until they were "sweating and bleeding," and that the man still an erection that would not go away. He explained that the man was so afraid of "losing his edge," and therefor not wanting to ejaculate, that he had somehow become "paralyzed" into a permanent state of erection. This was the same guy to whom Castaneda referred at another session as having had to "cover his erection with an overcoat." Castaneda claimed they had to wheel the man out of his office at the end of the day, and that "the doctor had to give him a shot" to get his erection to relax. As a result, the man did not have the "swan’s beak" anymore; his male energy configuration only went "so far."

Women have this "nice, thick tube," not a "funny, thin thing like a man," but nonetheless there is a chunk removed in most cases. If it has not been broken or had a piece removed, it looks to sorcerers like it is extending a bit outside the luminous egg, "which is impossible," Castaneda claimed. He explained that it is "the glow from the end of it" that makes it look like it is extending beyond. Don Juan would ask Castaneda why, out of so many women, this chunk (which he explained was the indicator of frigidity), has so consistently been removed. Castaneda speculated that maybe the Flyers "have some kind of tool" that takes out that particular length. He also mentioned that the broken male energy configuration -- the swan’s beak -- could be regrown, but that it "takes time and energy" to regrow it. He also said that when sorcerers see the section where women are broken, in many cases it looks like it has been "chewed" or "frayed" at the break point.

Castaneda remarked that priests claim they are totally celibate, "But when nobody’s looking, they masturbate." He indicated that there is a "non-pornographic" way of using that energy. He said we should use that energy to "move the point of fixation," which is usually at toe level, "over to the side or out to the front a bit, to one of the 600 complete worlds" that the sorcerers believe are accessible within our luminous sphere.

Castaneda told us that he saw us "moving," and that that was what was keeping him here. He claimed that he was "gone already," but that he would "scrounge time" to be with us. "What is it for just me and the other few to make the leap? That’s pitiful," he commented. If they could "share it" with more of us and get us to move, "that would be great!"

Castaneda told us that "if you see a shadow at night at about eye level," it is probably the energy body, since it is "a little more compact" than our physical bodies. Or "you may feel it coming up to your back, since it is attached there. When you feel the energy body at your back, then you can feel a lot of energy, and tend to jump around and do a lot," Castaneda explained.

When don Juan saw his energy body, he remarked that it was, "as frightening as ‘un Friar sin cabeza?[a headless friar]." Castaneda told us, "You feel it in the marrow of your bones." If it comes by to look at us, "that’s even more frightening." It happened to don Juan once and "scared him to death." Or we might hear this voice coming toward us really quickly saying, "You’re full of fucking shit!" If we hear that, we should let him know, he told us. He explained that he did not want to hear about our "personal lives," and warned us again that he does not keep secrets -- "I’ll tell people" -- so we should not tell him personal stuff. But if the "voice" is happening, he advised us to "let me know" because some "big guy" in their group was in his office and saw the shadow coming toward him and it "scared him to death." The man "still hasn’t recovered," Castaneda claimed. Castaneda told us he thought that was a sign that it could happen with our group.

Castaneda remarked that "when one has fully recapitulated, you will find something about yourself that is unchangeable, basic." He advised that, "All you can do," in that case is to "redress it." For him, he found that he was, at core, a "proletarian." He called his mother "a bombthrower" and "pamphleteer," and told us that he was like that too; "I just can’t change it." So he tries to redress it.

Castaneda also told us that he was, at core, "fructose intolerant," but since "I love fruit" -- when he would see an orange, for example -- "my lip starts quivering." Then, "I’ll start seeing four or five oranges." Therefore he could not have _any_ fruit around. [BTW, I was told that the fruit trees outside the "compound" that Castaneda shared with Florinda and Taisha in Westwood had grown from seedlings taken from the Witches?house in Sonora. These beautiful trees -- grapefruit, orange, lemon, lime, fig -- were often full of fruit.] Castaneda told us that if he went to a store that had organic produce, his tendency was to walk out with "armloads of fruit." Even though it would make him terribly sick, he told us that "somehow I just don’t care." Castaneda jokingly advised us, "So if you really want to drive Castaneda up the walls, why not bring me mangoes?" He told us if we brought mangoes to class, he would be "crawling across the floor," and that "Ellis would be on top of me trying to keep me down." Don Juan told him that "since that was something about myself that I couldn’t change, I had to avoid fruit." In other words, Castaneda told us that Don Juan had advised him, "If you see an orange, stomp on it."

Castaneda talked about "how crazy man is," and also about the French and Descartes. As part of this -- a typical "riff" -- Castaneda commented, "We insist on logic. And even stranger, there is Master Foucault. And nobody can tell you what he said!" He mimicked an "intellectual" attempting to explain, "Well, it’s the whole scheme, the whole context." Castaneda commented, like he often did, apparently echoing don Juan, "Humans could have been intelligent, but something happened; something keeps us back." Castaneda then segued into his imitation of the fundamentalist preacher, the Reverend Osgoode: "I see all the men and women, and the little men and little women. And they want to take your woman away from you, your sacred vessel! The one who holds your precious seed!"

Castaneda warned us that psychologists might think we were "dissociating," but claimed that that would not happen, "actually, because if you were really experiencing [the Nagual] the therapist would be sucked in and experience it as well."

Castaneda mentioned that he has problems with his left eye. He related that he had visited one ophthalmologist who had told him it was a cataract, but the strange thing was that "sometimes my vision is fine," whereas cataracts "don’t change like that." So he went to another ophthalmologist who said, "You tell Mike for me that he’s full of shit. You have a hemorrhage. Sometimes the hemorrhage reduces, so you can see O.K." The doctor told him the cause of the hemorrhage was Castaneda’s having "too much sex." He gave Castaneda the name of a "sexologist" to go to, so he could find some "alternative ways for making love that wouldn’t hurt my eyes." Otherwise, the ophthalmologist warned, "You’ll go blind!"

Castaneda told us, "Some of you, in doing Tensegrity, start to see spots. But you decide it is just something in your eye. So you go to an ophthalmologist," and they find nothing there. "You still have an explanation: ‘It comes and goes.?Stop trying to be scientific! Just go with it -- the world is very mysterious."

Castaneda mentioned having had a professor who had managed to get rid of the tendency to stutter all the time, except on the word "thwarted." Castaneda claimed that, "every day, the professor’s whole lecture would funnel to the point of him having to use that word." The professor would get to that point "and start stamping around but just couldn’t get the word out." Finally the man learned to say the word "turkey" to help him get it out. So now he would get to the usual point, start jumping about and twitching and then say, "Turkey! Turkey!" Then he would be able to say "thwarted." Castaneda observed, "That kind of a solution is just too strange, it is better just to avoid the situation." It got so distracting for Castaneda that he could not listen to what the guy was saying anymore, and would just start to see, instead, "the shape of the lecture as a funnel, that would have to bring him to getting out the word ‘thwarted?or ‘the guy would die!?quot;

Victoria was moved to the back of the room because she had a cold. Castaneda ruefully claimed that he "compensates for being short by being mean."

Castaneda told us that the doctor who had discovered his glucose condition "saved my life by stopping the infection that was going to take me over." Castaneda told us that he "must repay that debt," but that he cannot. He could not repay it to this doctor -- because he is "a doctor, and he is so much a man of science," that he wanted to come over to Castaneda’s place and "look around to see if there was anything there that he could use to benefit mankind." In other words, he was not really interested in the things Castaneda was doing, and was not going to take their work seriously -- he was "just going to look around." So Castaneda told us that, since he could not repay his debt to the doctor himself, he would have to repay it "to someone else." He also said that he had to repay it "fully."

[We were taught seven or eight new warm ups, depending on how one counted them. Most will probably recognize the following (awkward) descriptions as similar to constituent movements of the Westwood Series, which was taught at the July ?6 Intensive Workshop, a little more than a month later.] The first warm up began with elbows down and close together in front of the body, with flat palms facing each other, hands straight the whole time, and bringing the arms all the way down. The second began with arms in front, elbows out, right fist above the left, and bringing the arms in and squeezing down. Then we swung our right arm all the way back, then the left, then the right all the way forward followed by the left all the way forward. We were then instructed to "g’ing forward" with a crooked right hand, and then to do the same thing with the left hand striking forward, left palm out, coming from the area under the armpit. Then we did a simple jumping movement with alternating feet, just touching down on each foot. The penultimate warm up involved making two circles with one hand in front of the body, and then skimming off "the cream" with the other. The last was with the fists up, elbows out at about shoulder level, pulling from the obliques.

Castaneda told us that he had asked Florinda if she ever wondered why women so universally have that "chunk" missing from their "tube," and why it was consistent "whether you go to Italy or England or wherever?" Florinda quickly responded, "No." He asked her again, "Doesn’t it make you wonder how that happens?" She responded, "Forty years ago I wondered about that but not now." He told us that he, however, remained curious.

Castaneda told us that "the energy body can assess things quickly, take sort of a cursory glance, and ‘know.?quot; He told us that he had written the April issue of the Journal of Hermeneutics, and that Cleargreen had "found some money," so they were going to put it out. Those of us who had gotten the first issue told him that we liked it a lot. He told us that when the Blue Scout showed him the layout, he did not have to examine it in detail; just "at a glance" his energy body "knew it was fine." He compared this with "the fart," who would "take it and examine every detail and comment on how things could be improved."

As far as the energy body goes, Castaneda told us he thought there was "something in the air," and that "others will follow." He mentioned again the idea of one of us "becoming silent," promising that the rest would then follow. One of us had "started moving from self awareness, focus on the self," he claimed, and it had caused the others to move. "Of course, Merilyn Tunneshende could come to another workshop and everyone would move back to self awareness again, if only for an hour," he predicted.

Castaneda mentioned that he one time asked don Juan where was the specific point -- of "self reflection" -- on the floor, that we focus our assemblage points on. Don Juan responded, "For a man, it’s where your penis points. If it points to the left, it’s over in this area, if it’s to the right, it’s over here." Castaneda mimicked taking off his pants to figure out which way his penis hung. He indicated that it pointed "over here" to his right toe. He said that, because he was a social scientist, he "mapped it."

When he was "in school" [presumably at UCLA], eating in the cafeteria with a young woman, the woman told him that her husband or boyfriend had suggested that she and Castaneda "could be intimate." Castaneda, stunned, asked her, "What about your boyfriend?" The woman explained that, although the man was only 18 or 19, he was impotent, so they were "like brother and sister." She further volunteered that she was "a nineteen-year-old virgin." Carlos’s response, advancing excitedly toward her, was, "What! What! What!" Our energy bodies can function like that too, he joked, glancing at such things as the Journal and knowing what is in them, and not getting worried about the details.

Castaneda informed us that he was not going to add anyone else to the Sunday group, because we had "already advanced so much." He told us that he "watched" our feet all the time, and claimed that some of us had "moved": "Some of you are very talented." He told us that some of us had "moved a lot," and that everyone had "moved a bit." Then he joked, making a motion like an old man trying feebly to walk, remarking, "Hey, if you just keep on moving like this, in six months you’ll have gotten halfway across the room!"

Castaneda claimed, pointing to his head, that he had everyone’s energy body "stored in my files." So he reiterated that they were not going to add anyone else to Sunday. He mentioned that Taisha had told him about Teme, and that Carol had reached out and pulled in Barbara [later known as "the Moon Child," and now as "Thurney"], thinking the class would "help push them," but told us that he was not going to pull any more of the women in; because it would be "too disruptive" somehow.

Castaneda commented that as far as avoiding something like sex or fructose, "What are you going to rely on? Your head? There’s nothing there! It’s run by the Flyers anyway." Then he mimicked the Flyers saying, "That doesn’t have any logic; it’s not Cartesian." And then the mind "agrees" with itself, "Yes, that’s right, it’s not Cartesian; there’s no logic there." So that is not the source from which we can make changes or avoid things, he advised.

At some point Ellis motioned to Ralph to pull something out of his pocket: a cap he had made for himself after he had cut his long hair. He had sewn the hair to the back of this cap so that when he hung out with certain friends, he could wear it and they would not know "what he was up to." Sometimes, he said, he would have to grab it when he or his old friends were driving by. Castaneda commented that it was a great cap for "stalking," so as to keep supposed "friends" from knowing what you were doing.

The cap reminded Castaneda of his friend CJ. He warned us that we may meet people, or be bonded with them, and "want to share what you are doing," but that we are likely to have an experience like he did. Castaneda claimed that CJ had "saved my life six times." He claimed that he had "saved CJ’s life seven times," so CJ used to regularly remind him, "I owe you one," because he did not want to forget the debt. After Castaneda met don Juan "my life changed dramatically," and he wanted to share this with CJ. But CJ would only respond, "I’m CJ -- what is this horseshit?" CJ would then accuse Castaneda of getting "soft," and warned him, ominously, "A 19-year-old who slows down -- somebody’s going to ‘get him.?quot;

Castaneda told us that, in 1974, he suddenly felt that he had lost the "CJ" part of himself, that there was "just a black void there." He later found out that CJ had been shot and killed. "And CJ thought he knew so much and described what I tried to tell him about don Juan as ‘this horseshit.?quot;

Castaneda told us that he had tried to "push" people before -- when he saw that they were "close" -- and that "it doesn’t work." He claimed that, "I just don’t have the touch, the finesse to pull it off." Castaneda also mentioned that there are people who are "very talented," like one man he had known who had managed to raise his awareness to ankle or even knee level, which, Castaneda said, was "very good," especially since it was Castaneda’s understanding that the man had kept it there. Castaneda commented, "There are people who are talented enough to raise it to there," but he told us that he tried not to get "too excited about it," because they will "let it drop. When they raise it a second time, then they are likely to keep it," he told us, "because of all the work it takes to get it there again."

SustainedAction.org