Presentation at the Berlin 2024 Conference of ISPDI (International Society of Psychology as a Discipline of Interiority)

—————-

In this paper I adopt a phenomenological approach, paralleling Giegerich (2018)  methodological approach to investigate the concept of consciousness. My exploration involves a comparative analysis between our Western intellectual tradition and the radically different worldview of Ancient Mexican shamanism as depicted in Carlos Castaneda’s anthropological works. This study transcends anthropological inquiry, delving into philosophical, epistemological, and psychological dimensions. I acknowledge the inherent difficulties in reconciling disparate cultural understandings of consciousness, a central theme of this investigation in a short paper like this one.

Castaneda’s testimony makes accessible the experiences of an ancient tradition of practitioners who discovered and managed dimensions of consciousness foreign to us, that question our conventional concepts and experiences of what we consider to be conscious. If consciousness is at stake, approaching this topic presupposes and implies necessarily a reflection on closely interconnected concepts such as “reality” and “knowledge”, without forgetting, as I hope to demonstrate, the all-important topic of “perception”.

It is important to clarify the differences between both traditions to consider how both approach the history of consciousness. A critical position regarding the validity of its historiographic sources and therefore of its conclusions will constitute one of the arguments of this essay. The idea will be defended that the real Otherness of our concept of soul as we think about it in PDI, lies in the type, scope, and form of consciousness that the tradition of the seers of Ancient Mexico cultivated. A form and status of consciousness that cannot be understood if we interpret it strictly within the parameters of our cultural tradition.

This work advocates for a needed appreciation of diverse cultural narratives suggesting that such an engagement could yield deeper insights into Consciousness. By challenging us to navigate the complexities of consciousness and its inalienable counterpart the Universe, the thesis underscores the need for a critical engagement with the logical life of the soul as thought in PDI, one that recognizes its illuminating potential while remaining vigilant against its possible limiting effects. This text approaches the topic with openness, seeking to raise concerns without definitive conclusions. While consciousness is often taken for granted, its nature remains a complex and enduring subject of study across various disciplines. A persistent debate in science, philosophy, and psychology continues to grapple with the question of what it truly means to be conscious.

In this paper, a methodological reductionist approach is intentionally adopted to examine the concept of consciousness that has shaped and continues to shape our entire tradition – psychological, philosophical, and scientific. Rather than delving into levels, stages, or logical transformations of consciousness (which have been admirably explored by Giegerich), this perspective centers on a fundamental structure of our consciousness: the reasoning, logical, and speaking consciousness. PDI has embraced the dialectical method, initially envisioned by Hegel, which traces a path from immediate consciousness (naive, sensible, naturalistic, and concrete) through various stages to reach its most sophisticated form: psychological consciousness. This represents the pinnacle of our culture. PDI apprehends this form of consciousness as emerging from a syntactic dimension that disregards semantics. While PDI’s exclusive focus on the syntactic constitution of consciousness is self-defined and unobjectionable, the use of certain concepts and expressions raises questions about the extent to which semantics can be truly excluded from the analysis. For instance, although our concept of truth eludes any reference to empirical reality and only pinpoints the inner coherence and logical syntaxes of the thinking process, its logical life, we can only speak of soul truths insofar as we can construct them cognitively, because the documents of the soul are dead until someone interprets them, therefore, a human mind comes unavoidably into play. Both at the beginning and end of the path we always encounter human consciousness, that is, a consciousness that perceives and interprets within parameters that depend on a community or cultural tradition. Besides, each time concepts and statements such as the following are used:

• • “the soul in the real”, or “the truth of our real situation…“ (Giegerich, 2012).

• • “Psychology must, rather, be comprehended as the conquest of an altogether new level of reflection beyond that of the sciences, as something like the «conscience» (in a non-moral sense) of the sciences, as the discipline whose business it is to reflect the changes brought about by the sciences to the psyche. ie. to our being-in-the-world, and to raise into consciousness, within the modern world, the gains and losses brought by this modern world as a whole.” (CEP, I, 222).

• • “The soul of the world in the sense of the soul of the Real or of actuality lived life” (WIS, 152, footnote 112).

• • “…the Concept of man, the logic of man’s self-definition and mode of being-in-the-world…Alchemically speaking, it is the freeing of the spirit Mercurius imprisoned in the matter. The move from implicit to explicit. (WIS, 311).

• • Psychological thinking can bring us home to our very nature and our actual lives…” (Caplan, 2024, 153).

• • “our approach must be ‘taught by the Real’…” (CEP, vol 1, 71).

• • “Psychology … is about the soul per se, consciousness as such.”

In this paper, I try to make some reflections aimed at clarifying and enriching some fundamental concepts that underpin our understanding of consciousness, while also establishing boundaries or frameworks for some of PDI implicit—and occasionally explicit—assertions, premises, and epistemological claims. It is hoped to foster a dialogue that can both enrich and unify our concepts and experiences regarding this topic. Simultaneously, I aim to stimulate a reconsideration of our lives, as our cognitive-existential routines may inadvertently hinder us from experiencing the full potential of being conscious.

 

Premises about Consciousness in Castaneda’s work

“I am trying to make a solid bridge- a bridge you can walk on, between the views of men of ancient times and those of modern men.” D. Juan

Carlos Castaneda was an anthropologist who encountered a lineage of shamans during his fieldwork. He became a renowned author known for his early works which explore ethnography and psychotropic plants. His influence on the modern fascination with «non-ordinary reality,» through his exploration of altered states of consciousness, reflects the deeper cultural and existential anxieties of our time, many followers and spiritual seekers find solace in a nihilistic or neurotic manner, but interpreting his work solely through that lens is a reductive oversimplification. Such an interpretation fails to capture the depth and complexity of his contribution. Castaneda’s later, more mature works, overshadowed by his early ethnographic writings, offer a more nuanced perspective. These works delve deeper into the exploration of consciousness and challenge conventional understandings of reality. Taken as a whole, Castaneda’s oeuvre defies easy classification within traditional shamanism or New Age movements. It stands as a unique and complex body of work that invites a more profound and comprehensive understanding.

This why the focus will be on the significant themes of his later writings, particularly those related to consciousness. In a conversation between Castaneda (1996) and his teacher, we read:

”… the whole of humanity has moved away from the abstract, although at one time we must have been close to it. It must have been our sustaining force. And then something happened and pulled us away from the abstract. Now we can’t get back to it… Don Juan repeated that the crux of our difficulty in going back to the abstract was our refusal to accept that we could know without words or even without thoughts.»

I was going to argue that he was talking nonsense when I got the strong feeling I was missing something and that his point was of crucial importance to me. He was trying to tell me something, something I either could not grasp or could not be told completely. «Knowledge and language are separate, he repeated softly”.

These statements undeniably challenge our conventional understanding. We typically use language and thought to describe experiences, yet according to Don Juan, there is knowledge beyond the confines of language and thought. The notion of knowledge existing without words or thoughts is, indeed, unconventional. Following the theoretical orientation of W. Giegerich, we operate under the fundamental epistemological assumption that knowledge, language, and thought are inextricably linked. This premise underpins not only the author’s methodological framework but also the broader epistemological current of Western philosophy and science. Could the notion of a separation between knowledge and language be a vestige of a bygone era? Or does it perhaps hint at an unexplored dimension of consciousness within our tradition? To explore this question further, we must examine some fundamental concepts upon which this Ancient Mexican tradition is built.

Perception

“The mastery of awareness is the riddle of the mind; the perplexity sorcerers experience when they recognize the astounding mystery and scope of awareness and perception.” (EG)

The concepts of consciousness and awareness are used here interchangeably, instead they have distinct meanings in different contexts, particularly in spirituality and philosophy. Also, the concepts of sorcerers, shamans, men of knowledge, seers are treated as synonyms, although they may offer different nuances. For sorcerers, perception is not a mental act that allows us to capture what there is (as Kant well suspected with his categories of understanding), it is a process that creates a world and encloses us in it (a perceptual “bubble”). It consists of both an “empirical” description of reality and of the parameters and/or logical rules of rationality and thought, its constituent parameters from which and within which, the description of reality takes place, so that said bubble constitutes a complete world, within which, we live and die. So, canceling the system of interpretation, or canceling the description of this “fabricated” reality, opens the doors, to what B W. Blake (1790) in»The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,» also suspected: “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern”.

According to sorcerers, whose opinion is in flagrant discrepancy to ours, “men of antiquity had a very realistic vision of perception and consciousness since this vision came from their observation of the universe that surrounded them. On the contrary, modern man has an absurdly unreal vision of perception and consciousness, since his vision comes from the observation of the social order and his dealings with it” (AD, 170). We are perceptors, organisms

“whose basic orientation is perceiving, human beings as organisms perform a stupendous manoeuvre which, unfortunately, gives perception a false front; they take the influx of sheer energy and turn it into sensory data, which they interpret following a strict system of interpretation which sorcerers call the human form. This magical act of interpreting pure energy gives rise to the false front: the peculiar conviction on our part that what emerges from our interpretations is all that exists.” (RI,1, p. 2).

The claim that sorcerers make is that energy can be perceived directly as it flows in the universe, we are the kind of organisms that need a minimal input of sheer perception to create their world or, that we perceive only enough to serve our interpretation system. To assert that we are perceptors is an attempt on the part of sorcerers to push us back to our origin; to push us back to what should be our original stand: “[t]he core of our being is the act of perceiving, and the magic of our being is the act of awareness. Perception and awareness are a single, functional, inextricable unit.” (WOT, p. 172).

Human beings can perceive energy directly as it flows in the universe, consequently seers judged the world from points of view which were indescribable to our conceptualization devices. For instance, they perceived energy free from the bindings of socialization and syntax… They called this act seeing.”(WT, p. 3-4)

“the act of transforming the inflow of pure energy into the perceivable world was attributed by those sorcerers to a system of interpretation” (RI 1, p. 4). By learning to see, thus breaking the parameters of ordinary perception, we perform an act of piercing through the commonplace interpretations of life to experience the essence that constitutes all of existence by broadening up our perception we aren’t just expanding our view of the world, we are unlocking doors to uncharted dimensions of consciousness…. they are also ready to perceive energy as it flows in the universe, and more important than anything else yet, they are capable of reinterpreting the flow of energy without the intervention of the mind.” (RI, 3, p. 3).

According to Hoffman (2019 p. xviii),

“the language of our perceptions—including space, time, shape…— cannot describe reality as it is when no one looks. It’s not simply that this or that perception is wrong. It’s that none of our perceptions, being couched in this language, could possibly be right… Space, time, and physical objects are not objective reality. They are simply the virtual world delivered by our senses to help us play the game of life… physicists admit that space, time, and objects are not fundamental; they’re rubbing their chins red trying to divine what might replace them… Perhaps the universe itself is a massive social network of conscious agents that experience, decide, and act. If so, consciousness does not arise from matter; this is a big claim… Instead, matter and spacetime arise from consciousness—as a perceptual interface.”

Castaneda avers “[w]hat in organisms we call senses are nothing more than degrees of consciousness… facing the world around us under the conditions we do is the result of humanity’s system of interpretation, with which every human being is provided..” (LAI, p. 210).

Cognitive system

The world of the sorcerers of ancient Mexico was different from ours; not in a shallow way, but different in the way in which the process of cognition was arranged. According to them, in our world, our cognition requires the interpretation of sensory data. For them “the universe is composed of an infinite number of energy fields that exist in the universe at large as luminous filaments. Those luminous filaments act on man as an organism. The response of the organism is to turn those energy fields into sensory data. Sensory data is then interpreted, and that interpretation becomes our cognitive system.” (ASI, pp 165-66).

By cognitive system, he meant the standard definition of cognition: the processes “responsible for the awareness of everyday life; processes which include memory, experience, perception, and the expert use of any given syntax. Don Juan claimed that the shamans of ancient Mexico had indeed a different cognitive system than the average man’s.” (WT, p. 2.) In the sorcerers’ world, the phenomenology of thinking implies the necessity of suspending judgment (Epoje or bracketing of meaning taken to the end) which for them is not the desired beginning of any philosophical-practical inquiry, but the necessity of every shamanistic practice. “Sorcerers expand the parameters of what they can perceive to the point that they systematically perceive the unknown… To realise this feat, they have to cancel their normal interpretation system”. (RI, # 3 p 2).

In their cognitive system, sorcerers do not feel very inclined to carry out classification systems understood as an arrangement of concepts. That should not be taken as sorcerers’ ‘theories’ under any conditions, because “it was an arrangement formulated by the shamans of ancient Mexico as a result of seeing energy directly as it flows in the universe…” (ASI, p 209).

“Human beings are two-sided. The right side encompasses everything the intellect can conceive of. The left side is a realm of indescribable features; a realm impossible to contain in words. The left side is perhaps comprehended if comprehension is what takes place, with the total body; thus its resistance to conceptualization.” (WT, p. 198)
In their vision, the Universe is perceived as constituted in three realms: the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. “The unknown is something that is veiled from man, shrouded perhaps by a terrifying context, but which, nonetheless, is within man’s reach. The unknown becomes the known at a given time. The unknowable, on the other hand, is the indescribable; the unthinkable; the unrealizable. It is something that will never be known to us, and yet it is there; dazzling and at the same time horrifying in its vastness.” (WT, p. 234). Another concept of paramount importance in their cognitive system is the assemblage point. To comprehend it we need to unfold some of its premises:

1. The universe is an infinite mass of energy fields resembling threads of light.
2. These energy fields, called the Eagle’s emanations, radiate from a source of inconceivable proportions metaphorically called The Eagle.
3. Human beings are composed of an incalculable number of the Eagle’s emanations in an encased mass. Seers perceive this mass as a ball of light, like a giant luminous egg, the size of the person’s body with the arms extended laterally.
4. Only a very small group of the emanations inside this luminous egg are lit up by a point of intense brilliance located near the egg’s surface. This point is where perception is assembled; ‘the assemblage point’.
5. Perception occurs when the emanations lit by the assemblage point extend their light to illuminate identical matching emanations outside the egg. Only the emanations lit by the assemblage point are perceived.
6. The assemblage point can move from its usual position to another on the surface or into the interior. It then lights up a new group of emanations making them perceivable and cancelling the former perceptions.
7. When the assemblage point shifts far enough, it makes possible the perception of entirely different worlds “as objective and factual as the one we normally perceive”.
8. The new seers aim to reach a state of total awareness to experience all the possibilities of perception and cognition available to man. (PS, pp. 22-23).

For them, the assemblage point is not only the point where perception takes place, it is also the point where the interpretation of sensory data takes place that it is our cognition, which is in essence an interpretation system, that curtails our resources. “Our cognitive interpretation system is what tells us what the parameters of our possibilities are. And since we have been using that system of interpretation all our lives, we cannot possibly dare to go against its dictums.” (ASI, p. 282).

Language and reason

Now, a very brief tour of authors who point out a critical turn in philosophical thought about the topic of language, a criticism of the belief that only through reason and language can the truth be reached. Nietzsche’s wake is the growing fight with Logos and rationality (argumentative understanding). Wittgenstein is convinced that the big problem is language, the way to face this problem is to make language implode, against itself, to use language as a ladder to climb to the top floor, once there we throw down the ladder. Silverman (2019) says “ as Wittgenstein tells us, in playing our language games, we always do more than merely ‘happen’ to choose a useful convention. Language-games have as their bedrock a form of life, a mode of existence”. Jacques Derrida (1995) analyses the complex interplay between language, philosophy, and the institutions that shape our understanding of the world. Derrida’s deconstructive approach challenges traditional assumptions about language and meaning, opening up new avenues for philosophical inquiry. Blanchot’s concept of «the outside» refers to what lies beyond the reach of language and conceptualization. For Blanchot (1997), language is not simply a tool for representing reality but a force that shapes and even distorts our understanding of the world… Derrida and Blanchot engage with the idea that language and philosophy have inherent limitations in their ability to represent reality fully. They both explore the tension between the particularity of language and the universal aspirations of philosophical thought. These thinkers criticize the naive idea that we speak a language, the truth being that we are spoken by it, and Castaneda’s opinion (1999), beautifully expressed in the following poem, aligns with them:

Syntax
A man staring at his equations
said that the universe had a beginning.
There had been an explosion, he said.
A bang of bangs, and the universe was born.
And it is expanding, he said.
He had even calculated the length of its life:
ten billion revolutions of the Earth around the sun.
The entire globe cheered:
They found his calculations to be science.
None thought that by proposing that the universe began,
the man had merely mirrored the syntax of his mother tongue;
a syntax which demands
beginnings, like birth,
and developments, like maturation,
and ends, like death,
as statements of facts.
The universe began,
and it is getting old, the man assured us,
and it will die, like all things die,
like himself died after confirming mathematically
the syntax of his mother tongue.

The Other Syntax
Did the universe really begin?
Is the theory of the big bang true?
These are not questions, though they sound like they are.
Is the syntax that requires beginnings, developments
and ends as statements of fact the only syntax that exists?
That’s the real question.
There are other syntaxes.
There is one, for example, which demands that varieties
of intensity be taken as facts.
In that syntax nothing begins and nothing ends;
thus birth is not a clean, clear-cut event,
but a specific type of intensity,
and so is maturation, and so is death.
A man of that syntax, looking over his equations, finds that
he has calculated enough varieties of intensity
to say with authority
that the universe never began
and will never end,
but that it has gone, and is going now, and will go
through endless fluctuations of intensity.
That man could very well conclude that the universe itself
is the chariot of intensity
and that one can board it
to journey through changes without end.
He will conclude all that, and much more,
perhaps without ever realizing
that he is merely confirming
the syntax of his mother tongue.”

Castaneda (1996) claims that “the syntax of any language refers only to the perceptual possibilities that are part of the world in which we live”,

“[a]ccording to sorcerers, the subjectivity of everyday life is dictated by the syntax of our language. It necessitates guidelines, and teachers, who, by means of well-placed traditional commands that seem to be the product of our historical growth, begin to direct us, from the instant of our birth, to perceive the world. Sorcerers maintain that the intersubjectivity resulting from this syntax-guided rearing is, naturally, ruled by syntactical description-commands… on the other hand, the subjectivity resulting from perceiving energy directly as it flows in the universe is not guided by syntax. It does not necessitate guidelines and teachers to point out this or that by commentary or command. The resulting intersubjectivity among sorcerers exists by means of something which they call power, which is the sum total of all the intending brought together by an individual. Since such intersubjectivity is not elicited through the aid of syntactical commands or solicitations.” (Rl,1 #4, p. 3).

There is a form of consciousness called silent knowledge “a state of human awareness in which everything pertinent to man is instantly revealed, not to the mind or the intellect, but to the entire being.” Through the cancellation of the interpretation system, they can achieve the silent knowledge in which sorcerers obtain knowledge directly without the distracting intervention of spoken language. By doing this, “they discombobulate our trust in the normal system of cognition that makes the world around us comprehensible to us”. ( WT. p. 5). This concept is intimately related to inner silence which requires one to go through an experience that they call canceling the interpretation system. 

“Don Juan defined internal silence as a natural state of human perception in which thoughts are blocked, and in which all of man’s faculties function from a level of consciousness that does not require the functioning of our daily cognitive system. The body functions as always, but consciousness becomes more acute. Decisions are made instantaneously, and these seem to arise from a special kind of knowledge in which thoughts are not verbalized.” (Castaneda, 1996).
“Whenever the internal dialogue stops, the world collapses, and extraordinary facets of ourselves surface as though they had been kept heavily guarded by our words.” (WOT, p 128).

This experience, which they also metaphorically call stopping the world, is the opening to the second attention and/or the silent knowledge. Castaneda (1996) following the conviction of the shamans is convinced that the inner silence is the necessary matrix to perform a gigantic evolutionary leap towards silent knowledge which is,

a state of human consciousness where knowing occurs automatically and instantaneously. In this state, knowledge is not a product of cogitations or logical inductions and deductions, or of generalizations based on similarities or differences. In silent knowledge there is nothing a priori, nothing that can constitute a body of knowledge… everything happens imminently now. Complex pieces of information can be grasped without any preamble. (my transl.).

Since we are trying to highlight the bridge between both concepts of consciousness and following their guidelines, I have to add, “the one-way bridge from silent knowledge to reason was called ‘concern’. That is, the concern that true men of silent knowledge had about the source of what they knew. And the other one-way bridge, from reason to silent knowledge, was called ‘pure understanding’. That is, the recognition that told the man of reason that reason was only one island in an endless sea of islands.” (PS, p. 292)

On the topic of reason, in a very brief tour of the Western tradition, we find authors who point out a critical turn in philosophical thought, a criticism of the belief that only through reason and language can the truth be reached. Both Derrida and Blanchot believe that language and philosophy have inherent limitations in their ability to account for reality fully. They both explore the tension between the particularity of language and the universal aspirations of philosophical thought.

Castaneda would agree with Nietzsche: in our Tradition, we have freed ourselves from God but we remain slaves to grammar. However, I have to fully assume Derrida’s criticism which exposes the limitations and contradictions encountered in any critique of language-based discipline (such as philosophy) insofar as the critiques by philosophers are dependent on concepts which belong to the very ideas being critiqued. “[W]e cannot utter a single destructive proposition the which has not already slipped into the form, the logic, and the implicit postulations of precisely what it seeks to contest” (Cited in Anderson D. (2024, p. 157). I also agree with Silverman, D. (2019), “…we feel trapped in a vicious circle. For our understandings of another way of knowledge can only be from within our way of knowledge. Our interrogation of the other way is already located within our way.”

Dreaming

“The woman who taught to dream could maintain two hundred dreams” F. Donner-Grau

A radical expression of the absolute strangeness of the shamanic cognitive system, is the conceptualization and pragmatic use of dreams. While for our tradition dreams are mere neurological byproducts (positivism), messages from the unconscious (psychoanalysis), or the soul speaking to itself (psychology), for the shamans, dreams are areas of experience as real as ordinary reality, they transform their dreams into areas of action, interaction, exploration and discovery of unfathomable worlds beyond our cognitive parameters, “…ordinary dreams are the honing devices used to train the assemblage point to reach the position that creates this energy-generating condition we call dreaming” (AD p. 338). Ancient sorcerers developed a series of practices designed to recondition our energetic abilities of perception. They called these series of practices, the art of dreaming. (A. E. p. 6) “which is the capacity to utilize one’s ordinary dreams and transform them into controlled awareness by virtue of a specialized form of attention called the dreaming attention.” (WT, p. 187). According to Castaneda (1996), the shamans of Ancient Mexico discovered that there are two kinds of dreams. One class is the dreams that we are familiar with, in which there are ghostly elements, something that we could categorize as the product of our mentality, our psyche; perhaps something that is related to our neurological structure. The other kind of dreams are what shamans call energy-generating dreams. Don Juan said that those shamans of ancient times had dreams that were not dreams, but true visits, made in a dream-like state, to genuine places that were not in this world.

The path from ordinary dreams, to lucid dreams to finally reach dreaming, leads to extraordinary discoveries for explorers of consciousness. The world of dreaming is a ‘two-way hatch’ between our world and other worlds.

Western Soul and its Others

In a very brief summary, two great ideas have presided over our cultural tradition, one is the idea that the ­human mind can grasp the universe; the other is the idea that the human mind can grasp itself. Hassel (2014,15) suggests these ideas historically align with distinct perspectives on the relationship between mind and world. The ancient Greeks bequeathed to us the vision of a rationally structured universe, a rationality inherent in both mind and cosmos. Descartes, at the dawn of modernity, posited thought as the fundamental basis of consciousness and existence. This primacy of consciousness, echoing Plato’s idealism later led to enduring dualisms such as mind/body and subject/object, occupying prominent thinkers in philosophy and science. These philosophical kind of dualisms are severely criticized by the shamans “[t]he dualism between body and mind, or spirit and flesh, he considered to be a mere concatenation of the mind, emanating from our minds without any energetic foundation.” (ASI p. 302). The advent of the scientific and technological revolution shifted focus towards the object, relegating the subject to the periphery of scientific inquiry. However, interest in consciousness reemerged, with figures like Bertrand Russell (2022) grappling with the relationship between mind and matter, echoing the concerns of Leibniz, Kant, and Schopenhauer. Today, we operate within the framework of PDI, assuming a self-referential dialogue of the soul accessible through an absolute interiority that excludes any external influence. This approach, we argue, transcends the dichotomous subject/object split of positivism, situating itself in a pre-existing «realm» beyond ontological considerations. It aligns with the Hegelian principle «the real is the rational”. One of the founding premises affirms that dialectical thought, psychological consciousness, represents the pinnacle, the apex of consciousness.

Giegerich (PIC, 93) criticizes Nakazawa’s advocacy for a «lemma science of mind, that suggests that understanding totality requires intuition rather than linear language. He also critiques the Buddhist concept of «Mind Suchness,» characterizing it as pre-modern and metaphysical, a mere belief rather than an empirical reality. This leads us to the foundational postulate of PDI, “In psychology… metaphysical ideas cannot have a place. Psychology can study metaphysical ideas, but not accept them as its own theory. Psychology cannot transcend the limits of the empirical or phenomenal world”. Giegerich says “We need to keep in mind the essential difference between a particular style of thinking, a methodology…or form of consciousness on the one hand and a special state of consciousness on the other” (PIC, 64) which is an empirical reality and we are in a naturalistic thinking. Giegerich further criticizes comparing the two traditions on the same level, arguing that the spatial metaphor is irrelevant for analysis, while the historical metaphor is crucial, “as realities in this world, they have their place not in nature, not in space, not on the map, but in time and history” (PIC,12). «The relationship between Eastern and Western thought is a temporal, historical one» (PIC,13). The author says, “[b]ut the modern way of thinking as a soul reality (and not a natural one) is not the property of the West in which it originated. As the modern forms of consciousness, it is an objective (suprapersonal) psychological reality and as such belongs to nobody and potentially to everybody” (PIC,13).

I fully agree that the Western psyche today dominates the world as “an objective (suprapersonal) psychological reality). My position starts from a different approach: all the various changes and developments that have historically taken place in our tradition and that Giegerich so lucidly envisions and conceptualizes belong to the same “world” dominated by a single form of consciousness that locks us in a ”hermetically self-enclosed linguistic consciousness” (PIC, 24), a limitation that hampers our consciousness.This topic is developed below.

In comparing the two traditions, I have opted to avoid geographical or historical assumptions. Time (History) and space (Geography) are categories that belong to the same form of consciousness that limits our understanding. Giegerich says, “[r]eal history is found in datable documented events, institutions and actual determinable epochs of cultural development” (CEP, III, 26). It is my stance that in his study of historical consciousness, he risks mistaking certain cultural artifacts («documents of the soul») for the pinnacle of that era’s awareness, he might be misinterpreting past eras by assuming that their documents fully capture their most advanced consciousness. To understand their contributions to consciousness, we need to look beyond those obtained by historians. The meaning of their temples, documents, buildings, and actions suffer from a fundamental flaw, they are speculative exercises despite their good theoretical intentions. Castaneda (1991, p. 18) claims that “[f]or the American Indian, perhaps for thousands of years, the vague phenomenon we call sorcery has been a serious bona fide practice, comparable to that of our science. Our difficulty in understanding it stems, no doubt, from the alien units of meaning with which it deals.” Giegerich contemplates two types of culture: ritualistic cultures versus religious cultures, and centers his analysis on the concept of sacrifice. The concept and description he develops of the ritualistic and mythological way of being-in-the-world are based on conjectures far removed from the complexities of consciousness, perception, and attention that dictated the behavior and achievements of human beings of those times. These achievements have reached us through various paths. Here, I highlight the one that came through the testimony of a lineage of modern practitioners who have been able to remain faithful to the accumulated teachings and experiences lived from ancient times to the present day. Through complex maneuvers of consciousness resulting from a perfected discipline, they were able to make unimaginable journeys (with their dream bodies and also, sometimes, with their physical bodies) to other worlds and historical epochs. Therefore, their concepts of the universe, life, and consciousness were of a sophistication that we today can barely intuit. Giegerich, based on academic historical accounts of those times, can reductively interpret the expression of the apex of consciousness of that time in statements such as,

• “[m]an was enwrapped in mythic garments, in narratives and images about a world animated by gods, spirits, fairies, and goblins as well as in concepts (roles, offices, statuses)” (WIS, p. 333).
• “The further back in history we go, the longer the phases of primary unity lasted because life stayed so close to nature and the changes did not make a fundamental difference” ( THEI, p. 30, footnote 7).
• “They lived psychologically as particles or integral parts in society, in family, in tribe, as well as group spirit.” (THEI, p. 179).
  “There is no room in it for this kind of ‘primitive awareness’ and ‘inferior state of being conscious’” (THEI, p. 304).

Just as we cannot understand the Christian project by observing the behaviour of Christians, nor the interpretations of its exegetes, nor the doctrines of the Church, the same criterion must be applied when trying to apprehend the meaning and “truth” of the work of Carlos Castaneda, the transmitter of the testimony of the seers who know about ancient times because they see it directly in their journeys of consciousness. According to these testimonies, the social, material, sacred, ritual, etc. functions of their practices are misunderstood by modern hermeneutical attempts. The Mexican and Egyptian pyramids, these funerary monuments in honor of gods and pharaohs and kings, attempted effects foreign to modern speculations. They alluded to practices provided with objectives that involved very sophisticated manoeuvres of a type of consciousness that has nothing to do with the naivety of concepts of contemporary historians.

Hegel conceives history as a progressive development, where peoples and historical epochs follow one another as phases of the absolute process of the spirit towards its goal. The Hegelian historical model is adopted by Giegerich’s theories and speculations, both are deeply embedded in the structure of language that inherently implies concepts of birth, growth, decay, and developmental phases. Such linearity seems unavoidable as our thoughts and theories are confined within the «perceptual bubble» of our world, a world defined by linear paradigms that we perceive as the sole reality. However, Castaneda’s insights challenge this notion of linear time and invite us to explore the possibility of non-linear temporality, prompting a reevaluation of our understanding of time and its connection to consciousness. Castaneda, on the other hand, warns us that

[a]nother stupendous unit of that strange cognitive system was the shamans’ understanding and usage of the concepts of time and space. For them, time and space were not the same phenomena that form part of our lives by virtue of being an integral part of our normal cognitive system…Time is the essence of attention. The Eagle’s emanations are made out of time, and properly speaking when a warrior enters into other aspects of the self, he is becoming acquainted with time.” (WOT, 216).

“The sorcerers of ancient Mexico didn’t think like you do in terms of space and time. They thought exclusively in terms of awareness… “The difficulty with your facing things in terms of time and space,» he continued, «is that you only notice if something has landed in the space and time at your disposal, which is very limited. (ASI, p. 269-70)

These statements raise some interesting questions to which I don’t have a well-thought-out answer precisely because I’m asking them from within our perceptual bubble. Can we imagine a time outside linear time? A divergent time that is not even implicit in the traditional concept of infinity (accumulation or endless succession of linear moments and its permutations?). Even scientific and positivist rationality seems in crisis with the concepts of time and space, from the most mature sciences to the foundations of formal logic (notions as fundamental as spatial ones, the difference between “here and there”, “now” and “then” are in question. For their part, sorcerers proclaim that these notions do not have the absolute validity that they still maintain. There is a form of consciousness that enables experiences in which here and there disappear which makes it possible to be consciously in two different places at the same time

Don Juan explained that normal perception had an axis. «Here and there» were the perimeters of that axis, and we were partial to the clarity of «here.» He said that in normal perception, only «here» was perceived completely, instantaneously, and directly. Its twin referent, «there,» lacked immediacy. It was inferred, deduced, expected, even assumed, but it was not apprehended directly with all the senses. When we perceived two places at once, total clarity was lost, but the immediate perception of «there» was gained.

«The world of daily life consists of two points of reference,» he said. «We have for example, here and there, in and out, up and down, good and evil, and so forth. So, properly speaking, our perception of our lives is two-dimensional. None of what we perceive ourselves doing has depth.»
«A sorcerer perceives his actions with depth,» he said. «His actions are tri-dimensional for him. They have a third point of reference.»
«In order to reach the third point of reference one must perceive two places at once.»
«The third point of reference is freedom of perception; it is intent; it is the spirit; the somersault of thought into the miraculous; the act of reaching beyond our boundaries and touching the inconceivable.” (POS).

Final reflections

“We need this sense of fundamental otherness so that psychology can come home to itself to a much higher degree than before.” (CEP, III, 270)

In this inquiry, the concept of consciousness has been analyzed and critiqued. This critique challenges the premise, sometimes explicit and often implicit, that our Western understanding of truth and consciousness encompasses all of reality. Our epoch has produced two unique flowerings of this topic: the works of Giegerich and Castaneda. Both are intended to be expressions of the most sophisticated forms of consciousness.
Castaneda’s revelations suggest that our entire Western tradition confines itself within a «perception bubble» limiting the possibilities of human consciousness. Our system of interpretation in which language and the type of knowledge inherent to it play a decisive role and illuminate a world also keeps us blind to its limits, imprisoning us in a kind of Plato’s cave. In this sense, the Opus Magnum of the soul must be considered both a power, a constitutive process of the cultural and psychological reality of each historical era, and a holding, limiting “command” by “enveloping” the human being in a psychological structure or form of consciousness that impoverishes compromising its emancipatory potential. The contradiction between emancipation and subjection is therefore the Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans.

Consciousness not only thinks and speaks to itself but also, and perhaps more primordially, perceives and is a medium for “navigation”. Their journeys were not merely physical, but expeditions of consciousness, utilizing awareness as a vessel to navigate the cosmos. Just as water carries us through the physical world, awareness served as their medium, facilitating encounters with scouts from distant corners of the universe. There is consciousness beyond Logos, and it is not a primitive, archaic, or obsolete consciousness, but a form with the potential for unfolding within our civilization, perhaps the only way to emancipate ourselves from and overcome, according to their view, the current human condition of the «suicidal egomaniac» that prevails globally and that may very well lead us to extinction. This potential is currently a topic of interest for a few, but its emancipatory possibilities are vitally significant. As Lauer (2010,176) says: “To prevent a system of reason from overstepping its bounds, we must allow reason’s self-certainty to come into question through its confrontation with something it genuinely cannot encompass”.

There are comparable basic postulates that we find both in PDI and in Castaneda’s statements, both point to the existence of a dimension that is neither empirical, metaphysical nor positivist. For the first we are faced with one inhabited by the pre-existing logic of the cultural process and its dialectical changes, for the second, it deals with the awareness of the energy as it flows directly in the universe from a type of consciousness that is also irreducible to the metaphysical, to the positivist.
Wittgenstein’s aphorism, «The limits of my language mean the limits of my world,» finds resonance in Castaneda’s accounts. If reason and language are but one «center of gravity» among many within the vast landscape of consciousness, then the call to silence, to the dismantling of interpretive systems, becomes an invitation to explore our full potential. We cannot forget that our discipline has to come to terms with ”a deeper principle”, “a more difficult subject matter” and a “material reacher in compass” (CEP, VI, p. 348).

Positivist Science, Philosophy, and Psychology are enclosed in tautologies that are both their strength and limitations. Physics, with its foundational motto (a physical phenomenon can only be explained by another physical phenomenon), and our discipline, founded on absolute interiority, share the linguistic-rational way of perceiving and interpreting phenomena, an unbroken identity with a form of consciousness in a particular way-of-being-in-a-world. The works of Giegerich and Castaneda stand out as unique anomalies -rara avis- in the landscape of contemporary culture. Giegerich’s psychological theory faces ongoing debate, whether the psychological theory defended by its author, Giegerich, is nothing more than a mere hobby, “[p]sychology has no higher status and collective significance than has a hobby or pastime. Just as hobby and pastime have their place in the private life of individuals, so psychology has its place only in the interiority… “ (WIS pp 307-308). Thesis that has been shrewdly criticized by M. Barretto, (2021). Similarly, Castaneda’s work remains controversial, sparking discussions about its status as either literary fiction or ethnography. Critics often dismiss it as catering to a niche audience neurotically seeking esoteric meaning. However, both Giegerich and Castaneda deviate significantly from mainstream ideas and challenge the prevailing doctrines and practices within their respective fields. They stand as pioneers (primus inter pares) in their areas, seeking to illuminate the nature, experience, and meaning of their central themes: soul and/or consciousness. In essence, both are carriers of revolutionary thought. To the extent that we learn from them, we feel an urgent need: the notion of consciousness needs to be thoroughly rethought.

According to Giegerich, the Christian kenosis is a soul’s historical project, apprehended and highlighted by PDI as metaphorically related to the aeon Pisces, which implies and assignment given to all future generations to be thought through and slowly comprehended and integrated into consciousness. I contend that this may be applied to the work of Castaneda that expresses revelations, and truths about consciousness that have to be integrated by future generations.

Giegerich claims that “[a] new stage of consciousness always seems to begin, in its first immediacy, by getting hold of only a selected few isolated minds and only in a special area. In the course of centuries it will have sunken down and permeated the lifeworld and have taken hold of the general mode of being-in-the-world of people…” (THEI, p. 307).

I equate the cognitive revolution implicit in the texts and testimony of Castaneda to that represented by the texts of the New Testament and the project of the Incarnation and kenosis that has enabled the historical emergence of the form of psychological consciousness. It is my conviction that Castaneda’s message requires a similarly long and complicated process to which we metaphorically allude as the aeon of Aquarius, the emergence of the waters, in which we are invited to leave all forms of containment, all inness, for using water as a means of navigation that can be experienced by human consciousness.

Sorcerers hold an unprecedented vision of consciousness: “the essence of the universe resembles incandescent threads stretched into infinity in every conceivable direction; luminous filaments that are conscious of themselves in ways impossible for the human mind to comprehend. (my emphasis)” (AD, p. 21). None of our traditional concepts can fit in this affirmation since it involves a non-ordinary act of consciousness: canceling the system of interpretation which means breaking the perceptual dispositions and biases that prevent us from entering other perceivable worlds, and accessing new forms of consciousness through silent knowledge. Castaneda’s work suggests a sublation of Western consciousness to a new form, accessible only after integrating its Too Terrible Other, the negation of the concept of linguistic and rational consciousness. This «logical» negation is already underway in the postmodern crisis of meta-narratives and the absence of truth in our contemporary psychological condition. The well-known expression being-in-the-world is, after the testimony of Castaneda, a call to revolutionary transform it to a being-in-a-world… because,

“all human beings are travelers of the dark sea of awareness whether they are aware of it or not, and this Earth can be considered as a station on their journey. And for extraneous reasons…the bulk of the travelers have interrupted their voyage. He said that human beings were caught in a sort of eddy; a current that went in circles, giving them the impression of moving while they were, in essence, stationary. He maintained that sorcerers were the only opponents of whatever force kept human beings prisoners, and that…sorcerers broke loose from its grip and continued their journey of awareness.” (ASI, p. 284).

I agree with Sibilia´s (2008) thought “[our tradition], despite all the grandeur with which it dazzles us…, perhaps has stumbled upon its own limits… The arts, sciences, and philosophy have an elusive task ahead of them: opening cracks in the security of what has already been thought and dare to ask new questions.” Castaneda writes:

“In infinity, sorcerers find few essential points. The permutations of those essential points are infinite, but as I hope you will find out someday, those permutations are not important. Energy is extremely precise. ‘But how can sorcerers differentiate the permutations from the essential points, Don Juan?
‘Sorcerers don’t focus on the permutations. By the time they are ready to travel into infinity, they are also ready to perceive energy as it flows in the universe, and more important than anything else yet, they are capable of reinterpreting the flow of energy without the intervention of the mind.
When don Juan voiced, for the first time, the possibility of interpreting sensory data without the aid of the mind, I found it impossible to conceive. Don Juan was definitely aware of my train of thought.
‘You are trying to understand all this in terms of your reason,’ he said, ‘and that’s an impossible task. Accept the simple premise that perception is perception, void of complexities and contradictions. The book of navigation I am telling you about consists of what sorcerers perceive when they are in a state of total internal silence.” (RI, vol. 1 # 3 p. 3).

Finally, I hope that this brief exploration of Western consciousness and its “Others” underscores the importance of engaging with alternative perspectives to achieve a comprehensive understanding of Consciousness in its Journey to Infinity. This engagement might help us to contribute also to Psychology, in “its necessary fundamental openness, which ought to be an openness that is capable of fearlessly embracing all prejudices. Nothing must be a priori excluded or avoided.”(WIS,17).

_______

Sources and Abbreviations

• CEP: Giegerich, W., Collected English Papers. 6 vols. New Orleans, LA, 2005 ff. (Spring Journal Books), now London and New York, 2020 (Routledge).
• Caplan, M.T., (2024). You are Here (Now) in Essays on The Soul’s Logical Life in the Work of Wolfgang Giegerich. NY: Routledge.
• WIS: Giegerich, W. (2012). What is soul? New Orleans: Spring Journal Books.
• PIC: Giegerich, W. (2018). Pitfalls in Comparing Buddhist and Western Psychology. A Contribution to Psychology’s Self-clarification. The International Society for Psychology as a Discipline of Interiority. Monograph series, vol. 2.
• PDI: Psychology as a Discipline of Interiority.
• THEI: Giegerich, W. (2020). The Historical Emergence of the I. Essays about One Chapter in the History of the Soul. London, Ont.: Dusk Owl Books.
• EG: Castaneda, C., The Eagles’s Gift.(1981), New York: Simon and Schuster.
• FW: The Fire from Within, (1984). New York: Simon and Schuster.
• PS: Castaneda, C., The Power of Silence (1987), New York: Simon and Schuster.
• AD: Castaneda, C., The Art of Dreaming (1993). New York: HarperCollins.
• WOT: Castaneda, C., (1998). The Wheel of Time: The Shamans of Mexico Their Thoughts About Life Death & the Universe. Los Angeles: La Eidolona Press.
• ASI: Castaneda, C., (1999). The Active Side of Infinity. HarperCollins.
• RI: Castaneda, C., (1996). Readers of Infinity, 3 vols. Los Angeles: Cleargreen.

References

• Anderson, D. (2024). Deconstruction and the Modern Self. In Essays on “The Soul’s Logical Life” in the Work of Wolfgang Giegerich» (pp. 177-192). Routledge.
• Barreto, M.H. (2021). Psychology and Metaphysics. On the Logical Status of Psychology as the Discipline of Interiority. London, Ontario, Canada: Dusk Owl Books.
• Blanchot, M. (1993).The Infinite Conversation. University of Minnesota Press.
• Bruns, Gerald . (1997). Maurice Blanchot. The Refusal of Philosophy. London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Castaneda, C. (1996). Silent Knowledge. Los Angeles: Cleargreen, Incorporated.
  – (1991). A separate reality: Further Conversations With Don Juan. Simon and Schuster.
  – (2009). The Wheel Of Time: The Shamans Of Mexico Their Thoughts About Life. Simon and Schuster..
• Derrida, J. (1995). The Language and the philosophical institutions. www.philosophia.cl / Escuela de Filosofía Universidad ARCIS.
• Donner, F. (1991). Being in Dreaming. An initiation into the Sorcerers’ World. NY: Harper and Collins.
• Gadamer, H.G. (1976). Hegel’s Dialectic Five Hermeneutical Studies. London: Yale University Press.
• Giegerich, W. (1988). The Soul’s logical life. Towards a Rigorous Notion of Psychology. New Orleans: Frankfurt am Main.
  – (2012). Soul and World. Conference of ISPDI.
  – (2020). Working With Dreams: Initiation into the Soul’s Speaking About Itself. Routledge.
• Hassel H. (2014). Panpsychism and Causation: A new argument and a solution to the Combination Problem. University of Oslo.
• Hoffman, D. (2019). The case against reality: Why evolution hid the truth from our eyes. WW Norton & Company.
• Lauer, C.(2010). The Suspension of Reason in Hegel and Schelling, 1-216.
• Eliade, M. (1965). Mefistopheles and the Androgyne. Studies in Religious Myth and Symbol. NY: Sheed and Ward
• Mogenson, G. (2010). Jungian Analysis Post Mortem Dei, Spring 84: A Journal of Archetype and Culture, New Orleans, LA, pp. 207-270.)
• Russell, B., & Slater, J. G. (2022). The analysis of matter. Routledge.
• Sibilia, P. (2008). El hombre postorgánico. Cuerpo, subjetividad y tecnologias digitales. Mexico: FCE.
• Silverman, D. (2019). Reading Castaneda. A Prologue to the Social Sciences. Routledge.
• Weber Salvi, L.A.(). A tradição tolteca, v. 1: A serpente emplumada, “A. Um moderno transmissor da tradição”, versão online, p. 7, in www.mensageirodoarcoiris.ubbihp.com.br.
• Wittgenstein, L. (2023). Tractatus logico-philosophicus. London: Routledge and