Carlos Castaneda Quotes

No matter how intelligent a man is, he can't see what he doesn't know how to see.

Shamanism is about shape shifting. Shamanism is about doing phenomenology with a tool kit that works.

There's much more in any given moment than we usually perceive, and that we ourselves are much more than we usually perceive. When you know that, part of you can stand outside the drama of your life.

Of the Logos which is as I describe it men always prove to be uncomprehending, both before they have heard it and when once they have heard it. For although all things happen according to this Logos, they [men] are like people of no experience, even when they experience such words and deeds as I explain, when I distinguish each thing according to its constitution and declare how it is; but the rest of men fail to notice what they do after they wake up just as they forget what they do when asleep.

I am entitled to say, if I like, that awareness exists in all the individual creatures on the planet-worms, sea urchins, gnats, whales, subhuman primates, superprimate humans, the lot. I can say this because we do not know what we are talking about: consciousness is so much a total mystery for our own species that we cannot begin to guess about its existence in others.

Every man has to learn the points of the compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction.

pg 9, "The consciousness of life's unconsciousness is the oldest tax levied on the intelligence.

Intent is what sends a shaman through a wall, through space, to infinity.

Never forget that intelligence rules the world and ignorance carries the burden. Therefore, remove yourself as far as possible from ignorance and seek as far as possible to be intelligent.

Mind can never be intelligent - only no-mind is intelligent. Only no-mind is original and radical. Only no-mind is revolutionary - revolution in action. The mind gives you a sort of stupor. Burdened by the memories of the past, burdened by the projections of the future, you go on living - at the minimum. You dont live at the maximum. Your flame remains very dim. Once you start dropping thoughts, the dust that you have collected in the past, the flame arises - clean, clear, alive, young. Your whole life becomes a flame, and a flame without any smoke. That is what awareness is.

You take the senses away, and there is no consciousness. Consciousness comes from experience.

And more than once in the course of time, the same theme reappears: among the mystics of the fifteenth century, it has become the motif of the soul as a skiff, abandoned on the infinite sea of desires, in the sterile field of cares and ignorance, among the mirages of knowledge, amid the unreason of the world - a craft at the mercy of the sea's great madness, unless it throws out a solid anchor, faith, or raises its spiritual sails so that the breath of God may bring it to port.

Knowledge is porportionate to being... You know in virtue of what you are.

We both exist and know that we exist, and rejoice in this knowledge.

To perceive is to suffer.

Now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened.

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

We know to much to command ourselves very far.

We're very highly evolved, and we should be very responsible for what we've learned.

When I began to read, I began to exist

The word responsibility is right, and doing everything you can to educate yourself and learn and be aware.

The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance

The world is not a problem; the problem is your unawareness.

But if you can expand that consciousness, make it grow, then when you read about that book, you'll have more understanding; when you look out, more awareness; when you wake up, more wakefulness; as you go about your day, more inner happiness.

It is a great privilege to be conscious in this universe. Those who understand, shine like stars.