Mark > Mark's Quotes

“We had effectively been living parallel lives, interacting with this world during the daylight hours and interacting with this alien world when we were asleep during darkness.”
― Rory Spowers, DMT Dialogues: Encounters with the Spirit Molecule

“How do I know if a person is my guru?" a devotee asked Maharajji. "Do you feel he can free you from all desires, attachments, and so forth? DO you feel he can lead you to final liberation?”
― Ram Dass, Miracle of Love

“Seers can see, for instance, the light of the scarabs' emanations expanding to great size.”
― Carlos Castañeda, The Fire from Within

“That is no metaphorical statement," he said. "I mean what I say. Big animals like that have the capacity to read thoughts. And I don't mean guess. I mean they know everything directly.”
― Carlos Castañeda, The Power of Silence: Further Lessons of don Juan

“If you are mindful, Asclepius, these things should seem true to you, but they will be beyond belief if you have no knowledge. To understand is to believe, and not to believe is not to understand. Reasoned discourse does [not] get to the truth, but mind is powerful, and, when it has been guided by reason up to a point, it has the means to get [as far as] the truth. After mind had considered all this carefully and had discovered that all of it is in harmony with the discoveries of reason, it came to believe, and in this beautiful belief it found rest. By an act of god, then, those who have understood find what I have been saying believable, but those who have not understood do not find it believable. Let this much be told about understanding and sensation.”
― Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius

“This hollow of the world, round like a sphere, cannot itself, become of its quality or shape, be wholly visible. Choose any place high on the sphere from which to look down, and you cannot see bottom from there. Because of this, many believe it has the same quality as place. They believe it is visible after a fashion, but only through shapes of the forms whose images seem to be imprinted when one shows a picture of it. In itself, however, the real thing remains always invisible. Hence, the bottom - {if it is a part or a place} in the sphere - is called Haides in Greek because in Greek 'to see' is idein, and there is no-seeing the bottom of a sphere. And the forms are called 'ideas' because they are visible forms. The (regions) called Haides in Greek because they are deprived of visibility are called 'infernal' in Latin because they are at the bottom of the sphere.

Such, then, are the original things, the primeval things, the sources or beginnings of all, as it were, for all are in them or from them or through them.”
― Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius

“I really felt I had lost my body, don Juan."
"You did."
"You mean, I really didn't have a body?"
"What do you think yourself?"
"well, I don't know. All I can tell you is what I felt."
That is all there is in reality - what you felt.”
― Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge

“How appropriate," he said, and chuckled with delight. "The only commentary I can make is that warrior-travelers roll with the punches. They go wherever the impulse may take them. The power of warrior-travelers is to be alert, to get maximum effect from minimal impulse. And above all, their power lies in not interfering. Events have a force, a gravity of their own, and travelers are just travelers. Everything around them is for their eyes alone. In this fashion, travelers construct the meaning of every situation, without ever asking how it happened this way or that way.”
― Carlos Castaneda, The Active Side of Infinity

“Perhaps you're right," I said. "But how can one avoid the desire the genuine desire to help our fellow men?"
"How do you think one can help them?"
"By alleviating their burden. The lease one can do for our fellow men is to try to change them. You yourself are involved in doing that. Aren't you?"
"No. I'm not. I don't know what to change or why to change anything in my fellow men."
"What about me, don Juan? Weren't you teaching me so I could change?"
"No. I'm not trying to change you. It may happen that one day you may become a man of knowledge--there's no way to know that--but that will not change you. Some day perhaps you'll be able to 'see' me in another mode and then you'll realize that there's no way to change anything about them.”
― Carlos Castaneda, A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan

“Perhaps it's not possible to explain," he said. "Certain things in your life matter to you because they're important; your acts are certainly important to you, but for me, not a single thin is important any longer neither my acts nor the acts of any of my fellow men. I go on living though. because I have my will. Because I have tempered my will throughout my life until it's neat and wholesome and now it doesn't matter to me that nothing matters. My will controls the folly of my life.”
― Carlos Castaneda, A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan