EDIT: I just started reading The Art of Dreaming, which contains a sort of recap in the beginning, so here's an edit for those who are interested. Some of these are included to clarify or correct some of what I stated above, while others are things that I found which further illustrate the similarities and differences between the two topics.
If anyone has more specific questions, you can PM me and I'll see what I can dig up. There's been talk about taking this post, once it's answered, and putting it into whatever forum is most relevant for further discussion. Based on conversations I have with other members via PMs, I can compile further points of interest and add them to this thread as needed (though my intuition tells me I should avoid making this thread even more complicated than it already is ), or if it's feasible, we can copy this post to another forum now and begin discussion immediately.
Let me know what you guys want to do.
1.) The "assemblage point" is not necessarily between the shoulderblades, but instead traditionally lay (on most people) about two feet directly behind the uppermost part of one's right shoulderblade.
2.) The sorcerer seems to "see" without seeing. I'm not sure yet if it's an image in one's mind's eye, or if it's a very specific tactile sensation, or some kind of imperceptable knowing. There's a ton of very visual imagery used, but it may just be a metaphor used to explain otherwise unknowable concepts.
3.) A person's energy self is described as a globe, an egg shape, or a tombstone shape, which, for whatever reason, seems to have slowly changed from the former to the latter over the course of thousands of generations. What the sorcerer "sees" is this shape surrounding the human body, with the tennis ball-sized assemblage point flush on the surface in the aforementioned position, collecting a certain number of the infinite "filaments" of energy of which the universe is made and assembling them into a coherent set of data for the individual's mind to interpret.
4.) However, the sorcerer does not "see" auras. I'm not sure how, or even if, this works in real time, but it's made clear that when they view huge crowds of people, they are not seeing a bunch of egg shapes passing through each other. Instead, according to the description, they "see" only one globe of energy collecting filaments at the assemblage point, hanging alone in the universe, for each individual.
5.) The first step on this journey down the path of the sorcerer (referred to as the Art of Dreaming), according to Don Juan's instructions to Castaneda, is to look at one's hands during a dream. Here lay some startling similarities to things I've read in Astral Dynamics. Castaneda even goes into detailed explanation about how, when he finally began becoming aware of the fact that he was dreaming and could regularly remember to look at his hands, they often did not appear to be his. In fact, he mentions that sometimes they would look "nightmarish."
6.) Much of these early stages of the sorcerer's process deal with developing lucidity in dreaming, and Don Juan even says that the instructions for Castaneda to look for his hands was not because his hands were important, but because the activity of looking would stimulate his awareness that he was dreaming.
7.) Don Juan goes on to instruct Castaneda to find an object in his dreams and fixate on it as soon as he became lucid, and then using that object as an anchor to provide a boost to his awareness when he noticed it was slipping and he was falling back into normal dream consciousness. Don Juan tells him to take his field of vision on small but increasing forays away from the focal object, taking quick glances around at everything surrounding him in the dream environment, and then returning his gaze to it to stabilize.
8.) Further interesting is that Don Juan mentions alien energies that pervade one's dreams like scouts from other dimensions of existence, manifesting as objects or people that the aware dreamer can identify by a sense of familiary or unfamiliarity, and that the dreamer can follow these energies to other dimensions of experience.
9.) There is a point where Castaneda explains to Don Juan that as he became aware of his dreams, and began following Don Juan's instructions, he found his obsessive nature greatly magnified, going so far as to describe the incessant inner monologue that was constantly reminding him of the tasks he needed to complete, the objects he needed to look at, etc. Don Juan asked Castaneda if it felt like it was coming from inside himself and he replied that it did not. Don Juan then instructs him to wait until it happens again, and then to get very angry and yell, "Stop it!" Castaneda reports that he does this, and the inner voice immediately stopped, never to return.
10.) Don Juan talks about everyone being born with a finite quantity of energy, and that in order to have enough energy available to begin walking the sorcerer's path, one must abandon unneccessary things. His discussion about how many people waste energy worrying about their appearance to others and about possible futures where things might go wrong, the problems they might have, etc., and how these things need to be cleared from the sorcerer's life in order to proceed down the path, sounds a lot to me like the death of ego.
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