The Assemblage Point and Flyers - A Critical AnalysisBy David Worrell

Castaneda and his cohorts have beat us over the head for years with the model of the assemblage point and the emanations it assembles, but IMO, without ever adequately addressing the question of "movement," both movement on the emanations at large, or movement within a given assembled reality. For example, their model of the assemblage point explains that the perception of the world I now hold is a consequence of the assemblage point being in a certain position, thus lighting up (aligning) certain fibers --- but it says nothing about how it is I "move around" all over the place within that assembled world. In other words, it explains how I assemble this particular world, but says next to nothing about just how it is that my perception of the world continually and dramatically changes. I am going to get up and go make a tuna sandwich now, and to do that, I get up and walk into another room. Maybe then I go and sit in the park. My entire field of perception keeps changing completely.

Yes, this is obvious, but just reflect on the fact that the model of the assemblage point itself really says nothing about how our perception moves from place to place within any given world.

In my opinion, it also says next to nothing about how we interact in such amazing detail. Fine, it tells us we are all assembling more or less the same basic world right now, but obviously only a few of us are in close proximity, actually sharing the same immediate perceived environment. Again, the assemblage point model says almost nothing about how we walk around together or separate, talk to each other, touch each other, share similar experiences, or simultaneously have completely dissimilar experiences in the same world, etc.

And that leads me to a question I've been wanting to ask: do any of you people have a brain?

Castaneda always said: "don't ask me about the brain." Well sure, that's just great --- he's got this model of perception and how it occurs, and then he just THROWS OUT or ignores the entire enormous body of research on how our central nervous system, senses and brain are directly related to our perceptions. Nice work.

I keep wanting to speculate on what the connection is between our central nervous system/brain and the assemblage point of the luminous sphere. But frankly, I can't get very far, and one major reason is that I've never actually seen the assemblage point. Another reason is that I have not kept up with all the research on the brain. I keep vowing to read up on all the most current research on the brain and nervous system, but then never get to it. I will do this in the near future. :-)

See, the thing that is weird about this model is . . . in Castaneda's model, the brain and nervous system, and our entire body, are themselves only perceptions. If the "real" nature of our being is "a luminous sphere of energy," then what we perceive as our body (including the brain) is . . . just a perception of one facet of that luminous sphere. One has a full range of perception, while dreaming, lying on the bed with one's eyes closed.

Scientists say that all of that is taking place in the brain, and they have mapped brain activity accordingly. In fact, it has been discovered that the brain is actually MORE active during REM sleep than it usually is when one is awake. Castaneda says it is taking place in a different position of the assemblage point, but says nothing about how it relates to all this measurable activity in the brain.

Castaneda "physical laws" at all. The energy body can just be a "ball of light."

It doesn't have to be a "body" at all, and so doesn't have to have a "brain" in order to perceive. So, it follows that the brain and nervous system are only the way humans perceive perception to be assembled within a particular range of emanations. Outside of that particular range of perceived emanations, things like brains and nervous systems are NOT part of the assembled picture, and have no bearing. Whatever world is currently being assembled always appears at the time to be final reality. Completely real. There could well be a different way of "accounting" for perception in each different world which can be assembled. In other words, there could be entirely different perceived "explanations" of perception in different assembled worlds -- different perceived "representations" of the actual agent of perception, entirely different "laws of nature," etc.

There are, of course, lots of other possibilities, including the possibility that Castaneda's model of perception is baloney, or is only very crudely described as of yet. I would feel indebted to anyone who could give me insight into how the assemblage point relates to the brain, or into how the brain could have SO much to do with perception WITHOUT being the actual agent of perception.

It has always seemed nothing short of bizarre that the fundamental form of a being might be a "luminous sphere," and yet, we all perceive each other, instead, as creatures with eyes, noses, arms, legs, etc. Why would the fundamental form of what we are be hidden, and why would it have remained unknown to all the millions who lived before Carlos Castaneda came here to tell us about it (can anyone find any coherent account of the luminous sphere and assemblage point that is pre-Castaneda?).

The "flyers" keep us from being aware of what we are --- that's their answer. So imagine that it is the job of humans to eat the awareness of every dog and cat in the world on a regular basis. Well, there are hundreds of millions of dogs and cats, and each one must be regularly caught and properly eaten down to it's toes. It seems that, to accomplish the task, and insure that each dog and cat was properly trimmed, it would certainly require hundreds of millions of humans, and fortunately, there are billions around. But . . . how would we make sure that none of the dogs and cats were ever "neglected"? Just at random, isn't it likely that some, out of those hundreds of millions, would be "neglected" for significant periods of time? In fact, even with billions of humans devoting themselves to this task, it still strikes me as odd that NO stray dogs and cats would EVER escape.

There are about six billion humans. Are there literally billions of flyers swarming this planet? If one flyer eats 6 people down to the toes, there would still need to be a billion of them flying around. And they do such an effective and organized job that no human ever goes untrimmed? Can you imagine humans trying to pull off a task on that scale? It'd be quite an achievement, in and of itself, no? Well, wait a second -- Castaneda said that awareness would grow back in as little as three days, if they were not "pruning" us. So, to keep us totally ignorant, they would have to be pruning about 2 billion people a day, every day, without fail, on and on, with NO slip-ups and NO escapees. Does this really seem likely? There are tens of thousands of people living in all sorts of weird remote locations, where it seems the predators would have to "dedicate personnel" to picking off these relative loners. Stations in Antarctica, people climbing the Himalayas, ranger stations in the Alaskan wilderness, little boats put out to sea, crews of submarines, pilots in jets that never land, workers in mines hundreds of feet down in the earth, etc. It just doesn't make sense that they would always get everyone.

It is said sorcerers used to hoist people up into trees to keep them safe. This is said to have stopped the predators, because they are great, hulking creatures, which can not "land" on flimsy structures like branches. But are there not lots of people in tribes in various jungles who actually live in tree-huts and thin

gs like that? Has anybody tried just staying way up off the ground in some kind of harness for days at a time? It seems like it'd be pretty simple to find out. If awareness grows back in three days, then one lousy week hanging in a harness somewhere should be more than enough to acquire positive proof. Then again, if they can jump so far like we were told, couldn't they just take a big lick of you on the fly and then land, and then jump again, over and over. Jump, slurp, jump, slurp. Man! What has he done to me? :-)

Yap yap yap.