If you would like to understand sorcery at a deep level then I have also created a complementary guide Autobiography of a Sorcerer: A Study of Toltec Shamanism, Castaneda's Sorcery, Yoga & Zen Philosophy, click the above button for details.

An Encounter With Spirit

When He broke the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, "Come." And another, a red horse, went out; and to him who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from Earth, and that men would slay one another; and a great sword was given to him. — Revelation 6:3

Self-importance in its guise as Clarity is now humbled, but it is a false humility, a false surrender. Social conditioning is never defeated through meekness. Humility is what you learnt as a child through reward and punishment, but you are no longer a child, now you must choose freedom or servitude to humanity.

Hello and welcome to the Ancient wisdom modern mind podcast and today I would like to describe “Losing the Human Form” and this will be in two parts. Part 1 is a metaphysical description of the experience, while part 2 will be a personal accounting of the event.

Also if this blog resonates with you, both part 1 and part 2 of this blog are extracts from the book Autobiography of a Sorcerer which is available from the links in the description.

And to provide a brief background, the idea of “Losing the Human Form” comes from the books of Carlos Castaneda, an anthropology student who seeks out a Native American sorcerer (“Don Juan”) in order to learn about the Native American Yaqui wisdom traditions.

Don Juan explained to Carlos in Journey to Ixtlan, that stopping the world was a technique practiced by those who were hunting for power, a technique by virtue of which the world as we know it was made to collapse.

Since Stopping the World is outside of the first attention, I can only give a description of the experience from an esoteric perspective, which is part 1 of this podcast. Part 2 will be in the form of a personal accounting of the experience from within self’s imagined grandeur.

And a quick note of reference about the quotes I have used, as I am sure that many of my readers would find references to the Christian bible irrelevant, but I like to use the passages from the book of Revelation because it so accurately describes the experience from within the moment, one could say that the book of Revelations is a narrative of consciousness’s reaction to the First and Second Attention.

Also in the above Revelation 6:3, the red horse and he who sat on it. This would be at Clarities level of perception in relation to the sorcerer’s intent.

Part 1: An esoteric description of an Encounter with Spirit

Piercing the veil of perception between self and the Spirit means becoming aware of the Assemblage Point, yet the Assemblage Point cannot be discussed without also including awareness of Spirit, since awareness of the Assemblage Point is awakened through an encounter with Spirit. In Carlos Castaneda’s work this would be a “Knock of the Spirit” or the “Manifestation of the Spirit”.

This is a borderland at the edge of the First Attention and in the kabbalah this is Da'at (knowledge); a state of awareness beyond self’s comprehension. For how can self-comprehend that the nature of asceticism is simultaneously fully permissive. The Sorcerer at this stage needs only close humanities door and open the door to the Unknown. Yet in doing this the self is also in danger of becoming lost within the Unknowns Eternal Ocean of emptiness, a simple surrender and the sorcerer could become lost in eternity, unable to find again the world of humanity.

Awareness at this level is beyond intellectual understanding or even mindfulness. It is not a dictionary definition of faultlessness or virtue, or even a version of religious belief. One can say that it is a transcendental awareness that encapsulates awareness and Divinity into a single unknown reality, a perspective where one abdicates from abdication in total passion to the pure abstract nature of the moment. The sorcerer unconditionally submits to the discrimination’s of the Spirit and every deed one performs is an act of emptiness.

Such a state of impeccable intent could be described as a passionate detachment or a state of complete indifference to our own self-pity, a letting go of our humanity as awareness enters fully into the Unknown world of the second attention.

Yet this is beyond the thinking comprehension of the intellect; it is a state of being that can only be experienced by individuals with sufficient Personal Power to reach. Awareness shifts to a center, a point between the knowns First Attention and the Unknowns Second Attention.

From the sorcerer’s perspective, this state is experienced as a passionate detachment from self, and thus creates a shifting of alignments as the sorcerer hovers in mid-flight between humanity’s reflective self and the Nagual’s harmonic chaos; and if the sorcerer embraces this emptiness, they will willingly shed their humanity. Meaning that the focus is no longer on the concepts or ideas of the action, but instead is an observing of the inward and outward coming and goings of the mind, with silence, stability and detachment. This movement of the Assemblage Point is what Castaneda called “Losing the Human Form”, the Assemblage Point for awareness is now balanced between the right and left attentions, between the Tonal and the Nagual realities.

It is a purity of awareness with unprecedented strength of concentration, a state that can become all-consuming under the influence of the Spirit. More consuming than self-denial, insidious in its alien-splendor, it fulfills the self and threatens to completely consume any sense of humanity. And shining with such passion in the eyes of the sorcerer that the sorcerer gleams with a ruthlessness that beckons even the Divine.

When Spirits manifestation is first experienced, the awakening is likened to an ocean-flooding awareness, illuminating the self, and stripping away any influence the self-deceits may have. It implants the sense that everything in the universe precisely at that moment “is”. This insight links perception with understanding, creating a silent knowledge and enabling a wider comprehension of awareness.

In the Christian book of Revelations a White Stone is the symbol of this stage and at the time the book of Revelations was written, a white stone was equated with innocence. If you were to be tried for a crime, a white stone signified acquittal, and a black stone signified guilt. To receive a white stone meant that you are free from condemnation. You have been tried and have been found worthy.

The white stone on the surface is a symbol of whom you have become through your authenticity and your determination to rule over the self. At a spiritual level it is the Holy Spirit that came upon the Apostles of Christ.

To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat. And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written that no one knows except him who receives it. (King James. Revelation. 2:17)

In many Christian traditions it is not uncommon for very devout individuals in times of great emotional highs to glimpse the Holy Spirit, and in the witnessing of this power, they believe that they have fulfilled the necessary requirements of salvation. This error is common in individuals who shelter the self within blind faith and gather stories about saints and illuminated beings, so that they can know the acts of illumination and indulge their need for Holiness, the face of clarity or what I call the Complex Deceit of Selflessness.

The idea of intense emotional stimulation through torture, self-mutilation and self-immolation to experience the Spirit is also found in the Plains Indians of North America in their practice of the Sun Dance, and also in Buddhist and Hindu religious festivals and is most likely a global phenomenon used in every religion by the ignorant zealot.

Crossing this veil or abyss therefore can be understood as a state where the mind transcends self or ego and forms a transcended consciousness. From this perspective you could say that the sorcerer is able to transcend the dualistic nature of the subject-object reality through a singular maneuvering of awareness’s flow.

In Carlos Castaneda’s works this is a movement of the Assemblage Point to a new position in the center of the energy field. This is different to a shift which is only temporary, the new position of the Assemblage Point still needs to be held or kept in focus until it becomes fixed and does not slip back to its old location on either the left or right side.

Losing the Human Form, a Movement of the Assemblage Point

For those that master the self, the center of one’s nature is known. Foundation is set and Spirit, like the morning star has merged with the sorcerer. Forces will now seek the sorcerer for power is the attraction.

Awakening the Spirit or what in the Christian understanding is the “Holy Spirit which descended upon the Apostles at Pentecost” is often portrayed as an entity that allies itself with the sorcerer when in reality this is a representation of power or intent expressed within a cultural context, just as the biblical account of Jacob wrestling with an angel until dawn is a metaphor for the Holy Spirit descending.

Yet paradoxically this is also a challenge between Spirit and the sorcerer, if the sorcerer triumphs then the Spirit and the sorcerer become one. The Assemblage Point is moved to its new position at the center. And in this, it can be said that the sorcerer has made an energetic alliance with the Spirit.

And it is this alliance that makes the sorcerer different from ordinary men. Yet the self is still present, still thinking in human terms and because of this the self tries to remake what is beyond its understanding into the familiar.

Nevertheless, regards of what fantasies self-imagines. Losing the Human Form in is in reality a partnership or alignment of intent with Spirit, and as Spirit remakes the man they become one. The sorcerer is no longer truly human, but of course the self is still deluded as to its own self-importance and may not even realize its own death.

The self, to cope with this new form, this new awareness begins to wrap the experience around an illusion created by self’s objective culture, and giving subjectivity to the sorcerer’s energetic reconfiguration. In more simple terms, you could say that self-attempts to create a subject-object justification to preserve its sanity, self is dying and this is its last gasp, its last attempt to control the narrative.

To quote from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Explanation of the Second Bardo,

“There is no reality behind any of the phenomena of the ego-less state, save the illusions stored up in your own mind either as acquisitions from Sangsāric experience or as a gift from organic physical nature and its billion-year-old past history. Recognition of this truth gives liberation.”

In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the spirit is referred to as our protective figure that is like the reflection of the moon in water: apparent yet non-existent. To the alchemist, it is the elusive Philosopher’s Stone, and for Lalla, mystic poetess, it was the digit of the moon that melted and descended unto her and became a void merged within the void.

For the Christian, it is the radiant Holy Spirit that descended upon Christ’s disciples at Pentecost. And In the Daoist tradition, it is the mysterious gem or pearl.

For the Toltec sorcerer, inner silence reaches its breaking point and the sorcerer becomes aware of the double or it may be better to say that the sorcerer becomes the double. For the yogi, this merged state is called “Asamprajñata-samādhi or Nirvitarka-samādhi” where self begins to merge into absolute consciousness and the Atman awakens or is freed. The ego shell is forever broken open and self is immersed in an endless ocean of Divine intent.

Whatever outward appearance this alignment takes, its physical form is that of a hot coal or flame that appears to burn into the center of one’s being and self’s human continuity is silenced. Alone and unbound, the sorcerer faces the emptiness of perpetuity; a wondrous paradise in an ocean of Divinity.

The merging of Spirit and self, awakens or creates this True-Self (Atman or sorcerers double), and this manifestation or awakening is due to the steady accumulation of Personal Power that has seeped into the emptiness created within mind by the sorcerer’s internal purge. This accumulation then creates a type of magnetic attraction, beckoning the Spirit. Which then manifests as a flame, the size of a thumb, that burns physically into ones center (above the area of the Solar Plexus), and yet it has no physical or mental aspect as such, other than as a mere reflection or an idea in the intelligence of the mind. However, unquestionably it exists, and is real.

For the sorcerer when the Spirit is awakened, self’s first attention is shown for the falsehood or illusion it is, and self will now begin to wither into the emptiness it truly is. Yet self does not lose its identity in this stage, but it is temporarily overwhelmed by the Nagual.

Self temporarily separated from the exterior world is over taken by the Nagual, and as the Nagual overwhelms the self and takes control of the sorcerer physically. Self simply fades out of awareness, there is no consciousness or thought attached to this change, one simply is the Nagual, one could not even say that consciousness now exists, it would be more accurate to say one is awareness without the handicap of thoughts, and yet it is awareness in physical form. A purity of intent.

Self because of its internal purge is at this stage is a shell, a faded memory of humanity lost.

So that’s part 1 of “Losing the Human Form”, and I hope that this has given you some insight, and that this also encourages you to explore and learn about yourself and prepares you in some way to face the second enemy “Clarity” or what is commonly called self-realization.

Part 2: Self’s Imagined Grandeur, Spirit & the Defeat of Clarity.

And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. – Revelation 8:1.

Part 2 of “Losing the Human Form” So part one was an esoteric description of the experience, and part two is where I give Self’s personal accounting of the experience.

I had been traveling around Australia, sometimes following the harvest work but mostly camping in isolated bush areas or sleeping rough in parks or under bridges. Slowly and deliberately, I had been systematically reducing the self’s dependence on external stimuli, and I was able to focus obsessively on my meditations day and night, and even in my sleep, I began to develop a measure of control. My breathing was deliberate, focused, and controlled in all my actions, and as I slowly began to bring my body, emotions, and intellect into a synchronous harmony; my awareness also began to develop a presence or independence from self.

But now it is mid-winter and I was camping rough in the public parks of Melbourne, rain had forced me to shelter under a picnic area; it was so bitterly cold that my fingers, toes, and face were numb and sharp pins of pain stabbed deep into the bone. My body convulsively shivered, and I was seriously regretting being so impulsive as to travel in winter. I could not light a fire to warm myself and as it was too cold to sleep, I decided to try and enter a meditative trance and rise above the cold.

After settling into my meditation, I allowed the cold to pass in and through me, and as each chill slammed through my body, my awareness rose in union with it. Reaching out with my awareness, I would caress the cold; freeing awareness, not in distraction but in immersion—immersing awareness in a complete oneness, a complete delight.

My body tried to resist by focusing on the object of its suffering, but my mind was conditioned and no longer limited by the body’s demands. I extended my senses, reaching out and fully accepting in an almost sensual oneness the wind and ice cold air, and as my awareness gently extended itself, feeling, caressing, and penetrating, deeper and deeper; suddenly I am violently drawn back as a piercing chill stabs deep into my bones.

I opened my eyes as a cry escaped my numb lips, and as I looked down at my now blue fingers, I could almost see waves of excruciating pain digging deep into my hands and racing up my arms into my shoulders. Forcing myself, I focused again on my breathing. I drew my focus into the pain and mentally massaged the throbbing, spreading it out across my entire body and as the chilling pain relentlessly pierced my flesh. I breathe in the pain, caressing each sting, each lancing bite, accepting and loving the pain and then using it as an anchor to penetrate deeper into the trance.

At first I only seem to sense a chilling emphatic cry with each painful lash, and then as it grows, a whisper begins to rise in an empathic release as the cold surrenders its sweet scent. And as the whisper pulsed into my awareness we become one, caressing each other in mutual delight. Many times, my meditations had merged into an empathic union, but never before had they achieved such total depth, such complete union. We are one, we are the lancing cold pressing into the wind, stabbing the earth with an icy chill, and piercing my flesh in such an ascetic delight.

Then slowly, a dull vehemence seems to breach my awareness, filling the atmosphere and rolling over me like a wave from an untiring ocean; it pierces my trance with a lancing shiver that inspires a nagging certainty of a terrible wrongness. Whispers rush by fleetingly, images ghostly pale in their transparency. I could hear pain echoing in the whispers, pleading for comfort. Louder and louder it became as the crushing confusion forces itself into reality, manifesting as a dreadful, closed, and barren malevolence, a malevolence that presses itself into my presence.

Phantoms began to appear, pleading and wailing their damnation. There was a pale, broad-faced woman speaking of muddled memories and pleading for judgment. A man, heavyset in stature, spoke in a jumble of Spanish and English, lamenting the chains upon his arms; he fell to his knees in front of me, weeping for forgiveness. I rubbed my eyes. I must have been dreaming or hallucinating. Yet my mind seemed so clear, and I wondered if I had fallen into unconsciousness.

Was I dying from exposure? Was this my last gasp of awareness? Endless columns of ghostly shapes manifested, crushing forward, crying and wailing. Cascading waves of torment seemed too ebb and flow like the sounds of weeping children echoing all around. Their voices tired and worn as they wept with each swelling breath of torment, as if each gasp would be their last.

Then I felt the unsettling malevolence and my very soul seemed to quiver. If I could have fled, I would have run screaming, but my body was not responding. The oppressive malevolent presence hovered everywhere, and I was lost in a barren world of despair.

I struggled to speak and yell a vain threat, but my words were an empty cry in such a barren realm. Then I was alone, gone were the ghostly phantoms. Gone were their screams and pleadings, gone was the public park. Yet still the unseen presence pressed toward me, breathing ripples of comforting sensuality upon the back of my neck, and the whole atmosphere seemingly wavered in a preening-like motion. A voice whispered soothingly into my ear. “Do not fear, I will not harm you.” A form moved in the shadows and appeared almost as though it had emerged from the darkness to hover over my shoulder.

I felt completely transfixed, unable to move or speak. Laughing quietly a voice whispers into my ear and a hand strokes the back of my neck and for what seemed an eternity, I could only think of the touch upon my neck and being unable to focus on anything else, then the scene shifted and a small gathering of people seemed to appear. Slowly, I began to notice my surroundings. I was in a chamber with several others, seemingly like myself. The shadowy voice was a woman and she introduced the group. “Welcome Jason, we are the Brotherhood of Light.” I was silent, unsure of how to respond. One of the women in the group guided me around to meet other members.

A man was addressing the group, saying how his followers were privileged to have his guidance, and that without the influence and guidance of his purity of being, they would never have advanced civilization. He also said that lesser beings needed his greater light. Another person was saying how she was responsible for the advancement of the new age of enlightenment and how her superior energy was responsible for the salvation of such and such a lost soul.

I lost interest in the conversations because they reminded me of the many arrogant religious and new age cult leaders I had met in my travels; they were egomaniacs whose only pleasure came from the power and domination that bolstered their ego’s or were fanatics bent on converting everyone to their narrow version of God.

I wanted to leave and wandered out of the chamber. Abruptly, I was transported to a garden orchard. I seemed to know where I was and after a short walk came upon a gate. A man was waiting; he seemed to have been waiting for me and held out his hand, and in his hand were three miniature pear-shaped fruits of a jade color.

He asked me to choose one. I asked which one I should choose. But he did not reply, so I chose the middle one and when I closed my hand around the jade pear, it began to glow and became a flame, a small, perfect flame that burned into my flesh and was gone. I stayed for what seemed like several weeks exploring and absorbing the garden.

Then thoughts of the park and where I had been sitting entered my mind, and the next moment I was sitting on my sleeping kit in the park and the sun was just beginning to rise above the horizon. It was as if I had never left.

Maybe it had been a dream after all. I was about to stand when I felt the presence of the shadowy woman. She whispered, “I will always be here.” I tried to ignore her, but her presence had an unsettling feeling of malevolence.

I was, it seemed powerless, and then as she reached out her hand toward me, a memory of the small flame entered my thoughts. I remembered the strange flame that had entered into my body and as she pressed forward, the flame flared bright. She staggered back. Howling in fury she again pressed forward and again the flame flared; and she was gone.

Was it a fading dream, a dream with the stigmata of a bright flame that now gently burns within?

Critique of this experience from a sorcerer’s perspective

I would also like to finish this telling with a short critique of this experience from a sorcerer’s perspective, and what this personal accounting shows is how Clarity attempts to deceive the sorcerer by weaving and ego based illusion of power and status.

Clarity is a devious adversary, and it will take on the guise of humility, but it is a false humility, a false surrender. Social conditioning is never defeated by acting meekly or saintly. Humility is what you learnt as a child through reward and punishment, but you are no longer a child, you have chosen the life of freedom and thus you must fight and challenge your very self.

But to be frank Clarity is foolish, it makes the mistake every predator makes, it assumes that what the sorcerer wants is a human desire, not ever realizing that by the time the sorcerer is ready to challenge Clarity they have already committed their life to Clarities defeat, and they are already beyond simple human temptation. Thus Clarity will at best only delay the inevitable, and Clarities fatal floor is that it is human and it can only understand human affairs.

Yet this is also why I say that if the sorcerer, mystic or yogi have not emptied the self and gathered their personal power, then spirit will not be attracted, and the sorcerer will be forced to again fill this emptiness with the false self, and clarity will drive them into nihilism, since all they will find is emptiness.

And finally I have a short poem by Lal Ded a Kashmiri mystic of the Kashmir Shaivism school of philosophy and creator of the style of mystic poetry called vatsun, literally meaning "speech” and it think this poem best describes this experience outside the influence of western culture.

With a rein did I hold back my thoughts. By ardent practice did I bring together the vital airs of my ten nadis. Therefore did the digit of the moon melt and descend unto me. And a void became merged within the void.

I locked the doors and windows of my body. I seized the thief of my vital airs and controlled my vital breath. I bound him tightly in the closet of my heart, and with the whip of the pravana did I flay him.

When by concentration of my thoughts I brought the pravana under control, I made my body like a blazing coal. The six paths I traversed and gained the seventh, and then did I, Lalla, reach the place of illumination.

So that’s part 2 of “Losing the Human Form”, and I hope that this post will give insight, and that this also encourages you to explore and learn about yourself and to continue your journey. And if you have the time then let me know in the comments about your understanding of this stage in the sorcerers development or how your journey has changed your life, and this is important not only to me but also in helping others in their personal journey.

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Here’s to you and your fulfilment and growth into every tomorrow to come.

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And if you would like to understand sorcery at a deep level then I have also created a complementary guide Autobiography of a Sorcerer: A Study of Toltec Shamanism, Castaneda's Sorcery, Yoga & Zen Philosophy, follow the link for details.

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References

// IMAGE S O U R C E:  Autobiography of a Sorcerer | Copyright © By Jason Cain. All rights reserved, Image is used under the fair use and other exceptions to copyright law