Theos-Talk Archives (July 1996 Message tl00614)

On Tue, 23 Jul 1996, Macnev Uri wrote:

> Maxim Osinovsky writes:
> 
> > theosophists it's immensely more important to ask what's their
> > importance for the planetary evolution.
> 
> I agree with you.
> For this reason I want to know a opinion about books:
> "The fire from within" and "The power of silence".
> Moreover I think that planetary evolution require evolution of everyone man.
> We must begin from oneself.

	
I hold Castaneda'c books in high regard. I did not try to practice the 
techniques described by Castaneda, but his  
(or don Juan's) teachings put a definite mark on my perception. The 
teachings deserve some attention on the part of theosophists as they 
belong to essentially same category--teachings of LIBERATION. I find much 
in common between Castaneda and e.g. Vivekananda--both offer a way 
leading to freedom. Moreover, I know people who assimilated basic ideas 
of the way of liberation from Castaneda books, so it looks they offer 
another window of opportunity, hence their significance for planetary 
evolution. It remains to be seen if particulars of C.'s teachings are of 
great value, too.    

I also know people who tried to practice Castaneda's techniques on their 
own; to my knowledge, there was no evidence of substantial success, 
although of course many were able to pick scattered fragment of the 
teaching and implement them. However, new developments (Tensegrity etc.) 
may take the whole thing closer to real life--will see...

It's true that we shall do our own howework. However, Castaneda's books 
show the way of spiritual development in a GROUP setting, which is a very 
interesting aspect of the teachings. 


Max