December 2, 2003
What I have "seen" of what Castaneda and other shaman/sorcerers have called "the Eagle" is that it is at the core level , the "dismantling-to-oblivion" of any consciousness which has not sufficiently evolved to be able to either 1)withstand the force of the eagle (which would seem virtually impossible); or 2) get past or around the eagle. Castaneda uses the term "fly past the eagle to be free".
The eagle is described in Toltec traditions as a great dark "force" which, to early Seers, appeared somewhat like a gigantic eagle. It is also said that the eagle's diet is awareness, and its function is to devour awareness when we die, rendering it back into its component parts. There are also legends that the eagle actually cultivates awareness in humans (and probably other animals as well) as a means of providing for its own sustenance. It is an impeccable farmer, in other words, and imho, it is the combined sentience/intelligence/awareness of All that has ever been or ever will be. Not "god", which would imply a single I-Am, but more like a singularity consisting of All components of awareness in all potential combinations. All information. All data. All Knowledge.
There are varying conclusions as to whether the eagle is sentient, or simply a force of nature. My personal experience would indicate that it is a force of nature in and of itself. Just as there are elements of creation (earth, air, fire, water, spirit), my take on the eagle is that it is an element of de-creation (not destruction, but "undoing") - the opposite side of creation, that which returns consciousness back to its elemental/molecular/component parts - without sentience, without mercy or malice. It just "is".
It seemingly performs its function so that those elemental components may re-combine into some new combination that will have the potential to "fly past the eagle to be free". I see the eagle as the ultimate force of the universe in many ways - that which creates AND destroys, and in doing so, forces all with awareness to attempt to evolve beyond the creator/uncreator. Again, just for the record, I do not believe this is a "sentient" force in the least, from what I have seen of it. It is simply the "nature" of the universe - I might even call it the generator/incinerator, and its purpose appears to be evolution - doing and undoing awareness endlessly, putting all those components together in their billions and billions of infinite possibilities, with the Intent of producing an awareness that transcends its source and actually slips BEYOND that source to be "free" - "flying past the eagle to be free".
As to how this correlates to those distorted truths in the Bible, I would say that the eagle probably isn't analogous to any "character" or even place in the bible - i.e., it doesn't appear to correlate to heaven, hell, god or devil. Moreso, it seems to correlate to some of the gnostic writings, which allude to a great "dark" force which essentially obliterates awareness. If I understand the Catholic concept of "purgatory" or "limbo", I might find some slight correlation with that, but the meaning has been distorted over time to the point that I fear any real "truth" has long since been obliterated - and probably quite intentionally.
The reason being, that once any human being comprehends the nature of "the eagle", it becomes VERY apparent that no external deity or demon can save or destroy us. It is simply a matter of each individual engaging the path of defragmentation and personal spiritual evolution to the point of being sufficiently cohesive to "fly past the eagle" as a Whole unit of consciousness. Quite obviously, there is nothing the church could gain from disseminating such knowledge, and in reality it would have everything to lose. We cannot tithe to the eagle, and so the church in general had everything to gain by promoting the idea of "forbidden Knowledge", and turning "the eagle" into a split personality of god/devil which must be either appeased through prayer, or condemned through the idea of "sin"... and so Man is left as the victim - not a victim of the Eagle, which has offered what Castaneda referred to as "The Eagle's Gift", but as a victim of his own so-called religious leaders. By denying Man the truth, the church essentially condemns the very soul it purports to be attempting to "save", and so in that way the church becomes the devil which it has created in its attempt to hold onto power.
So, in some ways, the correlation to the bible would be that the bible tries to tell us there is something we need to be saved from, but it has distilled & distorted the "enemy" into some extant devil - i.e., it has personified it and created through juxtaposition the concept that we can be "saved" from the enemy by alliance with "god", and "salvation through JC." Well... my take on that is simply that Jesus was a shaman who figured it out for himself, spent those 40 days & nights in the desert actually confronting the eagle, and came to understand a lot about dismantling the programs of his day - to the point that he allegedly became able to walk on water, produce unlimited food from limited food, cure the sick, and so on. He was manipulating energy and manifesting will - not through "god's divine intervention", but through his own Intent and - most importantly - his own deep-seated comprehension of the inner workings of the universe itself.
The very word "comprehension" brings me to another point I would like to attempt to make. Essentially, the difference between a belief system and a system of Knowledge, is that a belief system is dependent on faith, whereas ANY reliable system of Knowledge is dependent wholly on the experience of the individual. I mention this because until one really experiences and Knows within himself that "comprehension" of the workings of the universe, one is basically accepting on someone else's word that something is true. Clear as mud. I feel the nagual wriggling and giggling, defying all my feeble attempts at capturing it with a net of words.
But perhaps that is another lesson of the eagle. The eagle cannot be spoken of with any sense of accuracy, because it is truly the nagual itself in many ways. Not just unknown, but unknowable. And yet, as I have come to personally comprehend more of the workings of the eagle through my interaction with the double, through stopping the internal dialogue, through engaging the place of silent knowing... (all of which are manifested aspects of the eagle - rather like geting to know a man through his words, even when he is a reclusive hermit), I have come to realize on the level of experiential Knowledge that there IS a system of Knowledge at work here, and that system is infinitely vast, yet it is contained within each and every one of us as an "imprint" that I can only define as the eagle's map.
What is that map? Don Juan called it "the right way to live". And ultimately it is the junction of every technique, every ability, every bit of Knowledge we gain through gnosis. It is stopping the internal dialogue so that we might begin to See, and it is learning to See so that we might wholly comprehend the necessity for detachment, and it is becoming sufficiently detached so that our fears no longer own us and our passions no longer control us. And it is being sufficiently free of those attachments as to finally start to accept that the world is nothing like we have been taught to believe, and in undoing those belief systems (just programs put onto us by our parents, peers & teachers), it is beginning to confront the Realization that time itself is only a human construct, and the part of ourselves which is infinite and eternal has been spinning experiences for our learning benefit "outside of time" all along. And it is recognizing that it is the mortal self who craves the unknown, longing for it as a lover longs for his beloved, and it is that love affair between the mortal self and the immortal other which IS the force of creation that spins the double into existence, outside of time, so that s/he can whisper to us inside of our temporal cocoons the secrets of Wholeness, the techniques of gathering cohesion, so that when our time on this earth is finished, we will have gained sufficient Knowledge and comprehension to fly past the eagle to be free.
