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Stopping the World

On a day forever etched in my memory I unexpectedly discovered the extraordinary teachings of the Yaqui Indian seer, don Juan. While looking for something new and interesting to read, I had unknowingly stumbled upon a treasure trove of mystic lore and esoteric knowledge. After a few weeks of studying don Juan's teachings I became mesmerized by the wise old Indian's words. I slowly began to discover that don Juan was a magnificent warrior and man of knowledge. His mysterious teachings revealed a path to the mastery of awareness. I had been completely unaware that man had access to higher states of consciousness or that a path through the mastery of awareness to enlightened being existed. Having had little or no interest in the subject of altered states of awareness, it seemed unlikely that my personal world and interests were about to profoundly change. During the next few years as I studied don Juan's teachings, as brilliantly expounded in the writings of his disciple Carlos Castaneda, a number of exceptional experiences in non-ordinary reality occurred.

The first of these events involved a radical shift and permanent change in my perception of the nature of time. The significance of this had far reaching effects, and was an incredible impetus for the metamorphosis in consciousness that was about to occur. For if time was not the regular linear expansion that I had always taken for granted, then belief in the absolute nature of my perceived world and personal self was in jeopardy. My experience can best be described as an implosion of awareness wherein the world had stopped. As my awareness came to an absolute standstill I noticed that as long as my focus did not move off of absolute center that time had no duration, memory was barely a sliver, and that the universe was arising solely and uniquely as a function of my perception. A tiny shift in the assemblage point of awareness brought with it an expansion of both a perceived historical world and personal self, as well as a heightened realization that the unfolding of these worlds were synchronous with movements away from the absolute center of awareness. The world and self could be seen to be arising as modifications in consciousness. Once this witness-position is attained in meditative absorption, or heightened awareness, these movements of the assemblage point of awareness are seen to be non-binding modifications in consciousness, and without duration or lasting relationship to the "I" at the center of perception. A seer, or don Juan would see this as being the time of the double.

Once it has learned to dream the double, the self arrives at this weird crossroad and a moment comes when he realizes that it is the double who dreams the self.
Tales Of Power, Carlos Castaneda

Later, I learned that this event was a glimpse at the first of the four yogas, the one-pointed yoga or cosmic consciousness. This was followed during subsequent years by a series of alterations and expansions running through the range of all of my senses, and a journey in consciousness through each of the four yogas and the psychological formation and integration of the self. My internship in the meditative exploration of time, self, and the very nature of reality itself had begun in earnest.

The various teachings presented in this book have been accessed and assimilated while in meditative absorption, or in don Juan's terminology heightened awareness. Learning to stop the world, bringing cohesiveness to movements of the assemblage point through discerning wisdom, and specifically the transformation from egoic-self to enlightened Being through the mastery of nondual awareness are the dominant themes of The Four Yogas Of Enlightenment.

"What happens to the persons whose assemblage points loses rigidity?" I asked. "If they're not warriors, they think they're losing their minds."
The Fire From Within, Carlos Castaneda

Meditative Synergies

Meditating on the teachings of different masters and traditions can synergistically enhance heightened awareness. With understanding achieved in more than one tradition, cross verification of terms and states of consciousness can be correlated. Without correlation, progress is exceedingly difficult because there is no contrasting point of view with which one can glean the intended meaning, nor a deeper understanding. The Four Yogas Of Enlightenment guides the reader along the meditative path to enlightenment through transcendence of the ego, spiritual awakening, and the stabilization and mastery of transcendental awareness. This book explores enlightenment, the spiritual path to radical sanity and infinite love, in an informal but informed and accessible manner.

While every effort has been made to make The Four Yogas both introductory and progressive, these teachings can be best accessed by average to advanced students of consciousness exploration and expansion. Adi Da, a supremely enlightened Western born avatar, discusses the issue of exercising the discriminative mind in order to realize the transcendental position of awareness in the introduction to Self-Realization Of Noble Wisdom: The Lankavatara Sutra:

It is a kind of "Catch 22" literature. You know that the Truth is ultimate transcendence of the discriminative mind, but in order to realize the transcendence of the discriminative mind, you must already have realized the transcendence of the discriminative mind!

Nevertheless, let us assume that we have experienced sufficient transcendence and continue our quest. The undertaking of the transcendence of egoic mind is an awesome but not impossible task. The beginning of enlightenment and the end of self-inflicted neurotic thinking is within the grasp of anyone willing to learn how to still the discursive mind and then study the resultant state with full awareness. In fact, it is not until one has gained sufficient meditative distance from the verbal dimensions of consciousness through meditative silence that one can begin to gauge the neurotic dimensions of egoic mind.

The ideal state to study consciousness is found at the juncture of meditative absorption and discerning awareness, the equivalent to don Juan's heightened awareness. The journey towards the mastery of awareness begins by stilling the mind, while single-pointedly stabilizing the assemblage point in heightened awareness, thereby stopping the world. At this position in awareness consciousness studies consciousness itself, revealing the hidden and ultimate nature of time, self, and reality. The apprentice sorcerer while in heightened awareness and having stopped the world clearly sees the inner luminous path to becoming a seer and man or woman of knowledge.

Inner silence works from the moment you begin to accrue it. The desired result is what the old sorcerers called stopping the world, the moment when everything around us ceases to be what it's been.
It is this moment when man the slave becomes man the free being, capable of feats of perception that defy our linear imagination.
The Active Side Of Infinity, Carlos Castaneda

Reconstructing Enlightenment

The Four Yogas Of Enlightenment presents a reconstruction of the stages of awareness leading to enlightenment and leads the reader progressively away from neurotic self-construction through the union of meditative absorption and discerning awareness. The union of meditative absorption and discerning awareness is a special state of heightened awareness that is explored and clarified in the pages of this book and can be viewed as an achievement in consciousness arrived at and stabilized through continued practice in meditative absorption and simultaneous study of the teachings of master seers.

Although the terminology of various masters may be difficult to access at first, with continued practice clarity is enhanced, and discerning awareness flowers. Many of the passages mentioned herein at first seemed to me to be impenetrable. However, when assimilated over time, magnificent teachings and wondrous states of awareness arced across the sky of mind, and my progress was immeasurably enhanced.

Perhaps those who do not meditate, or have never experienced altered states of reality, may find it difficult to believe that extraordinary states of awareness and the seed of transformative growth are available within consciousness. However not believing, or never having had the experience does not alter the hidden truth. For example, if you do not speak French you would have to study for some time before you could assimilate unfamiliar sounds. However, prior to your understanding, it would not be accurate to deny the existence of meaning within the French language simply because it was not within your current understanding. There are newfound states of consciousness to be grasped, practiced and finally mastered in meditative absorption, and their existence can only be discovered and mastered through our own effort.

I've said that the new seers believed that the assemblage point can be moved from within. They went one step further and maintained that impeccable men need no one to guide them, that by themselves, through saving their energy, they can do everything seers do.
The Fire From Within, Carlos Castaneda

Transcending the Dust of Time and Knowledge

One of the major difficulties the student of heightened awareness has is to bring a degree of cohesiveness to the newly found factors in consciousness. For the skilled meditator the requisite cohesiveness can be provided by means of consciousness studying consciousness from the perspective of a variety of meditation languages. The next stage is completed when the tonal and the nagual, or the egoic and transcendental aspects of awareness are brought into balance and harmony. Unbending intent coupled with an open and flexible approach to acquiring and assimilating seemingly disparate teachings are key factors in maintaining progress along the inner path to transcendental wisdom.

It is in the final stages of yogic awareness that the egoic mind continues to function and serve the needs of the self in the world, however the egoic mind is no longer in absolute control. The emergent man or woman of knowledge establishes a new way of being as the giver of knowledge, not the keeper; the source of love, not the seeker. The inconceivable transformation-death of old mind, with its endless labyrinth-like soliloquies and false projections, is replaced by transcendental mind. The seed from within has flowered and the path to Self mastery is in view. The guru within, obscured until now by egoic mind, can proceed along the stages of yogic awareness and development.

My recognition of the necessity of a book organizing and clarifying these teachings came about as I wrestled with understanding yogic knowledge and altered states of awareness. However, it soon became apparent that not only is progress slow and difficult to achieve, it is perhaps even more difficult to speak or write about states of consciousness that are beyond the ordinary realms of language. I realized that I required either a personal guru or a means of enhancing my understanding through expanded effort. A relationship with a guru never materialized and other and perhaps more powerful means of continuing my education appeared. In retrospect it seems that when each stage of my development in consciousness exploration stabilized a new and more powerful teaching became available.

During the mid-eighties the exiled Tibetans began to disseminate the written teachings of the great sages of Tibetan Buddhism. The translation of these extraordinary teachings into English was another serendipitous occurrence for me. Just as I had reached some major impasses in my studies of don Juan's lessons many marvelous Tibetan Buddhist teachings texts became available. Of particular interest were texts illuminating both the gradual and instantaneous path instructions of realized sages. These teachings revealed a cohesive knowledge and systematic path leading to the attainment of a radically quiescent mind, and instructive guidance for seeing and analyzing the true and apparent nature of consciousness and reality. I could see striking parallels with the teachings of don Juan, and realized that I had once again found lessons in the way of the warrior embodying Self-realized qualities such as fearlessness, serenity, wisdom, and compassion.

Contemplate the three planes of existence [past, present, and future] as being of mental origin, since they are designated by the mind. By analyzing the mind, the meditator examines the essence of things.
The first Bhavanakrama

"Was it something I will see in the future?" I asked. "There's no future!" he exclaimed cuttingly. "The future is only a way of talking. For a sorcerer there is only the here and now."
Tales Of Power, Carlos Castaneda

The Mastery of Transcendental Awareness

The Four Yogas Of Enlightenment illuminates the sublimely transcendental stages of awareness of Tibetan Buddhism. In contrast with Buddhism, I examine the way of the warrior, and the mastery of luminous awareness as elaborated in the writings of Carlos Castaneda. I have also drawn upon and revealed the mystic teachings of the nondual awareness school of Kashmir Shaivism. In my final chapters I correlate the most advanced, esoteric, and incomparable states of samadhic awareness of the Western avatar and living Buddhist master, Adi Da, with the quintessence of don Juan's Nagualism and Chinese and Tibetan Buddhism.

Until The Ajna Door Is Fully Opened (or Otherwise Fully Transcended By Native Identification With The Witness-Position Of Consciousness), It Is Truly, the Ajna Knot.
The Dawn Horse Testament, Adi Da
The Discipline In the First Stage Of Perfect Practice Is To Stand As Witness-Consciousness. Second Deep Contemplation Consciousness and Identification With Itself.
The Dawn Horse Testament, Adi Da

That which we in the West consider to be completed adult development, is considered by both Eastern and Western masters in consciousness to be a state of arrested development. This samadhi in four yogas illuminates the stages of awareness leading to enlightenment through comparative analysis and progressive meditative exploration. The transformation in consciousness which occurs is nothing less than a mystical encounter with the spirit, relinquishment of the traditional egoic self, and metamorphosis into a flexible, highly adapted man or woman of knowledge and numinous being. In the final part of Carlos Castaneda's Tales Of Power, don Juan, just prior to revealing the sorcerers' explanation to his disciple Carlos, prefaces his discussion with these sage comments:

Personal power decides who can or cannot profit by a revelation; my experiences with my fellow men have proven to me that very, very few of them would be willing to listen; and of those few who listen even fewer would be willing to act on what they have listened to; and of those who are willing to act even fewer have enough personal power to profit by their acts.

Seize your cubic centimeter of chance with The Four Yogas Of Enlightenment. Continue the journey towards incomparable knowledge and Self mastery.

The Four Yogas Of Enlightenment, the next step in learning to stop the world. Table of contents, bibliography, recommended reading list, fully indexed.

The Four Yogas Of Enlightenment, the next step in learning to
stop the world.

Table of contents, bibliography, recommended reading list, fully indexed.