blog 8

The entry written by Castaneda dated Saturday, April 10, 1965 begins with, “one element from the hallucinogenic experience with the mushrooms kept recurring in my thoughts: the soft, dark mass of pinholes. I continued to visualize it as a grease or an oil bubble which bean to draw me to its center.” While I read this, I couldn’t stop thinking about the line from The Beatles song “A Day in the Life.” “I read the news today oh, boy. Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire. And though the holes were rather small. They had to count them all. Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.” Granted, Lennon has stated that the lyrics he contributed to this song were taken directly from headlines he read in newspapers, but this period of The Beatles is when they were at the acme of LSD usage. If Lennon penned these words from an experience with LSD, what does the significance of holes mean? If we look at this from the perspective of The Field, it is possible to say that the holes could possess a direct linkage to the field itself.

The Teachings of Don Juan has been my favorite read thus far. I’m not sure how my experience with the book would have been if I had not read The Field or Altered States first. I found Don Juan to be a man of profound wisdom that presented his guidance in the form of snippets surrounded in ambiguity. I am curious as to whether he would have presented his spiritual guidance to a shaman-in-training in a different form. Would he have been more concrete and assertive with his answers? He reminded me of the Buddhist tale in which a monk asked his teacher what God looked like. The teacher’s response was something along the lines of “how would I know? I never saw it.”

I continued to think about the class discussion we had last week in regards to animals in religion. The final three chapters of the book thoroughly investigate the purpose of crows within Shamanistic visions. I discovered that shamans view crows as the seers of everything and it is not difficult to spiritually become a crow within a voyage. I also have been wondering why the rooster has not received the same damnation as the snake has from a Christian point of view. In the story of Peter’s denial against Jesus, a rooster crows to signify the completion of his betrayal. It is incredible to observe how cultures and religions have adopted various animals and either applaud or curse them. As was said in class last week, “religious use these metaphors as a sign of power.” It appears that truer words have never been spoken.