The Fire From Within

[quantumshaman]

It's come to my attention in recent months that there is a vast misperception of what is really meant by "burning with the fire from within."  Though Carlos Castaneda talked about this concept at some length in his books, I have wondered if he truly grokked the depth of it himself, or if perhaps it was something of a mystery even to him - perhaps

Comments

[anonymous]

I am not trying to be critical here, but I believe you to be wrong regarding "burning with the fire from within." You see, our spirit is a fire, just as the burning bush, just as is the center of the atom. Everything of energy is centered by a "fire", not as we know it within the concepts of this life on earth, you must go outside of this context to see what a simple clarity it truly is. When we leave this body, the body stays behind, but the soul/spirit removes itself through this fire and leaves none of itself behind. The body was only a container of the pure reality, once that reality no longer needs the vessel, it leaves without any trace.

[quantumshaman]

Not sure what your point is, since you seem to be saying pretty much the same thing I just said. "When we leave this body, the body stays behind, but the soul/spirit removes itself through this fire and leaves none of itself behind." That's more or less what I said, isn't it? :)

Where you lost me is in your subsequent statement: "The body was only a container of the pure reality, once that reality no longer needs the vessel, it leaves without any trace." What is your reference to "it" - the body or the spirit? If you are saying spirit leaves without a trace, then there's no disagreement. If you're saying the body leaves without a trace, that can occur, but most likely not in the implied "instantaneous vanishing" contained in the works of CC.

Spirit is what burns with the fire from within, and that may occur at the time of death, or even long before if that is the will of the sorcerer. What remains is the body, whether dead or alive. So at what level do you perceive I am wrong, and on what do you base your assertion?

[anonymous]

"Instantaneous vanishing" is a very interesting concept, which is devisable according to content of perceptions. For example: in the life of an ant, our 24 hour days may seem more like an eternity to them. So when our body no longer inhabits the energy source it had once contained, who is to say that the body is not instantaniously also removed. Within our perceptions, the body remains a very long time before it disintegrates, but in another perception this time is only momentarily fleeting. Another example would be out of a sci-fi movie, where the body automatically dissolves once the life force has left it. Many people could argue over sci-fi within our world, but there are many many truths hidden there, so that the truths won't be as automatically dismissed and is absorbed by humans until it is able to root and grow. So in the writings of CC, is he so terribly wrong, or is he only as wrong as our perceptions can concieve??

[quantumshaman]

I have no problem with your analogy and the idea that our body may take awhile to "vanish", but that wasn't what was said or even implied in CC. The implication was that the sorcerer vanishes into thin air to the perception of himself & others. CC even reported watching DJM & his party burn with the fire from within - and again the inference was that nothing was left behind.

That aspect doesn't concern me one way or the other. The misconception I was hoping to clear up has to do with the common idea among many so-called Toltec warriors that CC was a "failure" because he died a common human death of liver cancer. My personal contention is that his spirit bwtffw long before his body finally stopped functioning.

I'm not really saying he was "wrong" in his accounts of bwtffw, only that the accounts themselves were misleading and may have resulted in a lot of angst & discontent among his followers. *LOL* Once the idea of bwtffw is understood, the issues themselves tend to vanish. Into thin air...