SALVIA & the ART OF DREAMING

In Carlos Castaneda's book The Art of Dreaming, Carlos is given a description of the universe which tallies well with the description of the Salvia Bardo given in the last post. This description is of the essence of the universe, that which is occluded or latent within reality.

They said that the essence of the universe resembles incandescent threads stretched to infinity in every conceivable direction, luminous filaments that are conscious of themselves in ways impossible for the human mind to comprehend.

From seeing the essence of the universe, the sorcerers of antiquity went on to see the energy essence of human beings. Don Juan stated that they depicted the human beings as bright shapes that resembled giant eggs and called them luminous eggs.

Within these eggs is a point known as the assemblage point that "is located on a place at the height of the shoulder blades, an arms length from a person's back." The assemblage point is accompanied by a glow, and both of these allow us to perceive the worlds contained within the luminous filaments.

... they saw that out of the millions of the universe's filaments passing through the entire luminous ball, only a hand full pass directly through the assemblage point...

None of this has too much to do with the Salvia Bardo experience, until Carlos attempts to understand the logistics of just such an environment.

Finally, after much pounding, I could follow the idea of energy filaments inside the ball and outside it. But if I thought of a multitude of luminous balls, the model broke down in my mind. In a multitude of luminous balls, I reasoned, the energy filaments that are outside one of them will perforce be inside the adjacent one. So, in a multitude there could not possibly be any filaments outside any luminous ball.

"To understand all this isn't an exercise for your reason," he replied after carefully listening to my argument. "I have no way of explaining what sorcerers mean by filaments inside and outside of the human shape. When seers see the human energy shape, they see one single ball of energy. If there is another ball next to it, the other ball is seen again as a single ball of energy. The idea of a multitude of luminous balls comes from your knowledge of human crowds. In a universe of energy, there are only single individuals alone, surrounded by the boundless."

Don Juan may not be able to explain what the sorcerers mean by 'filaments inside and outside of the human shape', but the rules of hyperbolic geometry can. This is because the curve of a Poincare Sphere allows for squares and other polyhedra to be constructed with angles of greater than 360 degrees. By focusing on a single vertex - or assemblage point - on a Poincare disk (below) we can achieve the same isolation that Don Juan speaks of in the above extract.

(1. Homogenous or general view (2. Zooming in on one vertex

effectively isolates it from the rest. 

Earlier on in the book, Don Juan explains how a sorcerer can manipulate the position of the assemblage point to perceive universes commonly outside the sphere of human perception. Furthermore;

Don Juan explained that the end result of a movement of the assemblage point is a total change in the energy body of a human being. Instead of a ball or an egg, he becomes something resembling a smoking pipe. The tip of the stem is the assemblage point, and the bowl of the pipe is what remains of the luminous ball. If the assemblage point keeps on moving, a moment comes when the luminous ball becomes a thin line of energy.

A similar thing occurs in the Salvia Bardo, the energy body is divided into an infinite number of energy strands, which are then stretched to infinity, around the edge of the Poincare Sphere. Thus the mind of man is stretched like a rope, or a thin line of energy;

Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman - a rope over an abyss.

Friedrich Nietzche     

Hitler said; I have seen the Superman, and he is terrible.

The Superman is the man behind the curtain, that in Hitler's case was no doubt the bent figure of the Wizard of Oz; Dietrich Eckhart.

The stereographic projection of a dodecahedron is behind the curtain. Wrapped around a Poincare sphere. Infinitely bounded, and bounded by infinity. Each line represents a world, each vertex a Christmas time (a time of coming together), and between all of these, the dark depths of the abyss. The abyss is warm and fuzzy, it plays lounge music to those it keeps.

Stereographic image of a 24 cell polytope.

The stereographic polytopes behind the curtain are responsible for the mandorle of esoteric wisdom; the brands of Audi and Chanel.

Disclaimer: Neither Salvia, nor this post, has anything to do with dreaming.