GuyCrittenden

I recently listened to Leo Gura's talk on Aztec nondual philosophy, which I think is one of his best. I enjoyed the striking parallels with Buddhism and Tantra and Advaita. As I listened I had trouble reconciling in my mind their advanced metaphysical understanding and the industrial-scale human sacrifice operation in place when Cortez arrived. I'd be interested in people's insights into this seeming dichotomy. It seems that when some cultures grok ultimate reality and that this is all Brahma's dream, a human life can be viewed as dispensable. I know there were cultural reasons that the Aztecs favoured human sacrifice (and war/empire), but I also want to tease out why this flourished in view of their profound understanding, whereas in, say, Tibet, the culture was/is peace loving.

I notice there is another thread on this topic. I suggest we move the conversation over there. The most recent post (as I type this) is from Gura himself who I think answers my question. It would have been ideal for Gura to mention this in the video itself, as many people will wonder about this. But that doesn’t detract from the excellence of the video. Here’s the copy/paste of Gura’s comment in the other thread: @Angelo John Gage The mistake you're making is conflating the Aztec state with their highest shamanic wisdom. Let's apply your logic to the USA. How come Donald Trump is putting children in cages and bombing the Midde East when we have people like Eckhart Tolle, Adyashanti, and Peter Ralston teaching nonduality? How come we have Catholic priests molesting children when the truth of nonduality is readily available in thousands of YT videos? Every culture has vast diversity, from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high. The wisest people are never in charge, never in politics, never mainstream. And don't forget stages of development. Although the Aztec shamans accessed nondual states they were not high on the Spiral. They were mostly Purple, Red, and a bit of Blue. A stage Red person may access a mystical state and then cut out your heart and eat it.

I'm inclined to agree with you. My hope is that some kind of authentic neo-shamanism will emerge to serve people well from industrialized societies, as they move forward with what Terence McKenna called the Archaic Revival. We must approach true shamanism with caution, and any claims of an authentic shamanism brought into the industrialized world. Ergo my original post.

Hey Leo! I noticed you mentioned shamanism in a recent episode, as something you should "maybe do an episode on." You referenced Carlos Castaneda. Before you go down that path, I have a couple of suggestions. Apologies in advance if any of this sounds patronizing. It's not intended. Shamanism, as you know, is a huge topic. Seeing as you're turning this website into a kind of Sage University, I suggest you consider that shamanism is something you're going to come back to again and again. It's intertwined with spirituality, though in someways distinct. Terence McKenna was ultimately more drawn to a shamanic style of interpretation with entheogens than a spiritual path with meditation and gurus. Myself, I'm studying both and have written a forthcoming book from Apocryphile Press (San Francisco) on my experiences with Amazonian plant shamanism (particularly ayahuasca) although I've more recently embraced meditation and Kriya yoga, while continuing to work with entheogens such as toad sacrament, huachuma (San Pedro cactus) etc. (I recommend the latter to you.) Anyway, my point is that I support your idea of covering shamanism on Actualized.org but suggest you think of it as an ongoing major theme and not something to cover in one or two episodes (although an "Introduction to Shamanism" episode would be a great idea). In that regard, please invest in further learning about and sharing the work of real shamans and real students of shamanism, and not Carlos Castaneda. Of course you can refer to Castaneda, who wrote beautiful fiction and whose work contains wonderful moral and other teachings. But I suggest there are better sources. You can find a BBC documentary on YouTube that examines Castaneda "the man" as opposed to the myth. His books were based on his own imagination and not any real scholarship or understanding of the indigenous people whose culture he claimed to represent. The BBC program presents him as a fraud and leader of a cult that included somewhat zombified blonde interchangeable acolytes some of whom committed suicide in the desert after his death. You can draw your own conclusions about Castaneda of course. Maybe the BBC documentary is itself a piece of agitprop although it didn't strike me as such. In any case, i commend to you the writings of a real American shaman -- Bradford Keeney -- and especially his books about the bushmen of the Kalahari (e.g., Way of the Bushman) into whose secret and sacred methods of ecstatic dance, healing and N/om energy he was initiated years ago. That is only one of many authentic and existent shamanic or medicine holding traditions, of course, including the First Nations modalities, and the aforementioned Amazonian plant shamanism. There are many other wonderful writers and experts on shamanism. I have immensely enjoyed your shift in direction over the past year or so, and am myself walking a parallel path to yours, of the sage. I have worked with some of the same entheogens as yourself, and plan to try AL-LAD because of your video on that. One more thing, and sorry for being picky, but I shudder every time you use the word "trip" in regard to your experiments with different entheogens. In the psychedelic/shamanic culture some of us are making a deliberate effort to cultivate new language around these profound (and in some cases ancient) tools. Words like "trip" and "drug" are holdovers from the 1960s culture and bring to mind the excesses with LSD and so on. While it's a bit of a stretch to refer to substances such as AL-LAD as "medicines" my preferred word is "sacrament" and I refer to my experiences as "journeys" rather than "trips." (You can file this point under analism of editors.) I invite you to help us re-tool the language of altered states with similar innovations. You're doing great work Leo! I'm not one to be easily impressed, yet I'm devouring your recent videos and sharing them widely. Your interview with Martin Ball was superb, by the way, and I suggest you do more of those. Brad Keeney would be a good guest in that regard, for shamanism. (Note that he doesn't use entheogens.) I will recommend a few books and sources in another post. I've stumbled on some real gems in the past three or four years that you'd enjoy. I'll just mention one here, which is The Psychedelic Gospels,co-authored by Dr. Jerry B. Brown (not the California governor!) who was interviewed about his book by my friend Dan Cleland on an excellent episode of the Dan Cleland Experience Podcast (DCEP). That book makes a slam dunk argument that Christianity and Paganism co-existed more or less harmoniously up until the time of the Inquisition, and that therefore the use of Amanita Muscaria and Psilocybin mushrooms was widespread among church elders. Because Brown is a mycologist (among other things) he was able to detect overlooked depictions of both mushroom strains throughout the paintings and stained glass art and iconography of the church throughout Europe. Brown has kicked open the door on what could be a whole new field of understanding Judeo-Christian mysticism. And I won't even get into the acacia species whose DMT-rich bark is found throughout the Middle East, with one example being the Acacia Nilotica that, interestingly, was depicted by the Egyptians as the Tree of Life in wall paintings.

I recently received initiation into Kriya Yoga and spent a weekend learning the technique. Initiation is not joining a cult, by the way. I found it non-creepy and all I was basically agreeing to was (a) to accept the Kriya yoga organization as my teacher of Kriya yoga (you see the limited restriction) and (b) not to teach the technique to others, i.e., they don't want people to get the training and then set up Kriya yoga studios on every street corner. Kriya is very much the spiritual, meditative non-workout side of yoga. I recommend it to anyone who wants to add a yoga dimension to their meditation practice, or a meditation dimension to their yoga practice. I paid Canadian $200 for the whole training and will never have to pay another cent to the organization, unless I want to make small donations at certain special events. You can get cheap copies of the instructions or method but I recommend you pony up for the real training from the organization if this appeals to you as there's a lot of devil in the details.

Well, whether that is the case or not, I have other reasons for distrusting Castaneda, including that the indigenous people whose traditions he claims to represent don't see their beliefs represented in his writings. Furthermore, being involved in shamanism directly myself, his writings are more like fanciful science fiction versions of authentic shamanism rather than the real thing. Anyway, my point in the post is not to focus on Castaneda, but just to give Leo Gura a heads up that there are many other people upon whom he can rely that don't come with Castaneda's baggage. One could certainly quote something interesting from one of his books, and at the same time acknowledge there is controversy about how much of his writings is just made up. There is no evidence that Castaneda spent time with the shaman he claims to have met, which meeting was apparently brief. Okay, that is all I want to say about Castaneda -- I have been drawn into long back and forth debates about him in the past and leave it to people to make up their own minds. I'll acknowledge that he at least popularized awareness of shamanism among Americans who had never even heard of the practice before.