“Awakening is not something that can be said: this one is awake, this one is not,” said a Precious Lama in saffron dress, in Ladakh or in Burgundy, on a spring day. That Buddhist monk must have had some shit in his third eye. At least that’s what I thought when I heard that. But one meeting made me change my mind. There are awakened people who have mastered the art of stalking …
In order not to recognize an awakened person, it is necessary to be well blocked. Without antennas, deprived of seeing, walled in the mind. I had read Castaneda, I had laughed while reading the words of Juan Matus. His apprentice Carlos Castaneda asks him what he thinks of the Lamas. Does he believe that the Lamaists know awakening, they who keep talking about it? Matus’ answer is not long in coming: if they know anything about it, these people hide their game well. Matus read some of their statements, and it went over his head and over his heart.
I was in perfect agreement with the words of Juan Matus, the benefactor of Castaneda. Impossible not to recognize an awakened person. If we do not succeed, it means that we have no view. A sensitive sees the auras. He is immediately informed about the state of awakening of the person. The aura of an awakened person has little to do with that of a sleeper. And when, in Voir or Ixtlan, I come across this line of Juan Matus, I am thrilled: “Don’t talk to me about the Tibetans anymore, he says to Carlos. If they knew anything about it, they wouldn’t be talking so much nonsense about this infinity out there”. A writer who thinks like me, it’s always a pleasure.
But when you’re very young and full of respect for the dress, you say, “I’m the one screwing around,” and you take the orange man at his word. Many awake people trust those who are still asleep. I was thinking that if some llamas woke up, they followed the example of Leonardo da Vinci.
And there was this meeting. Someone very bright, very awake, whom I took for a sleeper. I was wrong, and I beg him to forgive me. I bow down. He showed me how many awake people can hide their game. The opposite is true: the return of a prophet, the tulku of a great lama, of the Son of Man, of Rama himself? Everything is possible. Including this statement: “Awakening is not something to be said: this one is awake, this one is not.” Awakening develops the art of stalking to such an extent that a well-trained awakener can make believe what he wants. Even if we are clairvoyant.
Nevertheless, Castaneda made me aware of facts and behaviours more in keeping with my nature and my sensitivity. Nagualism nourishes the soul and the spirit, strengthens the body, opens the heart and the other chakras, which the Tibetans in exile show themselves incapable of. So let us forget them to evoke awakening and its seven levels. The Western tradition, especially through the initiatory tarot, nourishes my soul much more. Here is what it teaches us.
There are seven degrees of awakening described by the Tarot arcanes XVI to XXI + The Fool
Three degrees of openness: to oneself, to others, to invisible worlds
ie XVI The Tower, XVII The Star, XVIII The Moon
Four degrees of ascension: giving, losing, burning + silence.
ie XVIIII The Sun, XX The Judgment, XXI The World, + The Fool
Here is the awakening of the friend Stef Kervor, alas disappeared there is little strict observer of the philosophy of nagual. If by chance my readers relive their own experience, so much the better.
1 – Opening up to oneself: The Tower
Kervor made a first exit of body in adolescence. A conscious exit of body is the signature of awakening. It involves the opening of the crown chakra. Stef Kervor had probably been awake for a while. But he knew nothing about it. The notion of awakening was quite foreign to him. He had everything of an awakened, including the aura, but his behavior remained that of a 16-year-old. He spent his time chasing girls or behind a ball. Spirituality? What spirituality? Awake without knowing it, he was only an idiot Buddha.
This is a little-known feature: awakening has several stages. In the early stages, there are long moments when an awakened person is not. Nothing is acquired, nothing is stable, nor anything engraved in marble: life, therefore awakening, are in perpetual motion. This is what the strange man in an orange undress meant. (source)
From the first stage of awakening, one is connected to infinity, one can leave one’s body in consciousness. But one does not have control of it. The body exits arrive without warning. For years friend Stef did not pay attention. He was much more interested in going to the movies and playing football.
To open oneself to oneself is also to open oneself to the Self. First step. In the tarot of Marseilles, it is the arcana XVI, The House of God. The God inside him at last, in your body. Until then, he hovered above you. You could only meet him in your dreams, in the astral. And there, patiently, he showed you your way. He suggested you drive. He made you understand what was waiting for you, and where was the best interest.
Now he is incarnate. The God is in the House of your body, your heart, your spirit. Your double has merged with you. The self and the self walk hand in hand, to charge for the new tandem to keep the ego at reasonable distance.
2 – Opening up to the world: The Star
Yet he knew that his intuitions were right. From that time on, he learned to understand without thinking. Everything came to him effortlessly. Very quickly, he could answer the questions of his teachers without having studied the course. And when a teacher took an affection for him, he threw himself into the study of lost body so that the esteem of the teacher comes to strengthen this precious link.
Despite the little interest he carried there, the state of awake brings small talents of society that do the business of friends. When a friend was injured, Stef just had to pass his hand over the torn skin so that it stitches immediately, without leaving a visible trace. In case of a burn, he would remove the fire in the same way.
And no one was moved. Miracles are the lot of teenagers, who willingly accept them. It was always a win, not a joy. After a brief “thank you” they went back to their dadas. Only miracle or not, nobody talked about it. To evoke such things in front of adults, not really it would not have occurred to them. The miracle is a living thing. If we talk about it, it becomes a story. A small inner voice told Kervor to shut his mouth.
The second degree of awakening sees the first, most spectacular gifts, such as the gift of healing, or the gifts of hyper-sensitivity, meta-perception. Thought transmission or telepathy, third ear or clear-hearing, third eye or clairvoyance, etc.
To open oneself to the world is what one sees on the arcane XVII of the tarot, the Star. A young woman, pure and naked, pours her water in the water of the Living. The truth and the light that inhabit it make it as pure as nature. Also true. Also luminous. The Star does not keep its awakening for it. It pours its water, becoming for others a new source of light and truth.
This is the stage where the companion becomes master. The stage where he realizes his masterpiece that the Living will respect.
3 – Opening up to the invisible: The Moon
Later, much later, Stef Kervor began to travel, in consciousness, in the infinite worlds of the astral. Then he knew that he was awake, and he understood at the same time that there are several degrees in awakening. In the same way that no one is ever completely asleep, not even the worst idiot, nor does anyone stay permanently in the perfection of awakening. Like a popular song, it goes away and it comes back. The friend Stef waited until the age of 40 to do what is done at 21 in traditional societies: initiation to small mysteries. Deep trance, rebirth or relive of birth, intrauterine life and previous lives. From there, the astral plane became his garden.
At least, a certain astral. Because there are so many planes in the astral. In each of these planes, an infinity of worlds. The world of white light, gwenwed for the Celts, is the one that attracts the most neophytes. It includes the Hierarchies, the whole barnum of angels, archangels, thrones, powers and so on, having no taste for this Judeo-Islamic-Christian folklore.
There are so many other worlds, why settle for the one that shines the strongest? Especially since, as they say, all that shines is not gold.
The third degree of awakening is the learning of the multiple levels of the astral, their recognition, their exploration. It corresponds to the arcane XVIII The Moon. At this stage, the powers will be revealed to the awakened. It is a waiting phase that requires patience and observation, because the changes will be numerous, and often imperceptible. We discover them when an unknown power seems to emerge from nothingness, always at the right time.
4 – Giving Oneself: The Sun
Two years later, Kervor began passing work. Like him, without realizing it, I had become a smuggler — the real title is passing. We each worked in our corner, but we had the chance to meet around Jean-Claude Flornoy, our common benefactor. In the jargon of nagual, the benefactor is the one who makes you know the other world, which opens to the heart of it. For about fifteen years, Stef and I passed arcana XIII to those who asked for it.
The fourth degree is the gift of oneself to a just cause: the best is that which has enabled your own awakening. This five-day process that we called the arcanum XIII was aimed at this sole purpose, to allow awakening to the first degree. For fifteen years, we helped Buddhas hatch. Sometimes idiots, but Buddhas anyway. To them to get rid of the idiocy of the neophyte. Those who have received awakening by lightning or by a short juice, without being prepared for it, are likely to remain idiots until death. Their ego attributes to itself the merits of awakening, they will never admit that it is a gift from elsewhere, and that they have nothing to do with it.
Arcanum XVIIII (or XIX) The Sun is in my opinion the nicest of all the tarot. It was a real treat of sharing and free donation. I used to take neophytes on magical journeys: so did my benefactor, I imitated him for that as for many other things. The magical journey is an opportunity to take a few steps into the other world. On the arcana, we see two naked twins under a great sun. It is the being and its double, finally united. When the god who watches over us becomes our inner god, we feel a great trust. A delectable state that we hope will last forever. But judgment will challenge us. And believe me, it’s useful!
5 – Getting Lost
Now Kervor has hung up. So have I. We no longer do this particular initiation called the arcana XIII, or the little mysteries of Isis. This work no longer makes sense. Things are different, the time is not the same. The beginnings of the 2000s became poems and symphonies. The birth of souls is no longer in pain. Everyone becomes his own midwife. External help is superfluous, even embarrassing.
To lose oneself is to become another. Then the body of the initiate begins to change. In the Christian tradition, this corresponds to the moment when the mystic/mystic receives the holy stigmata. In the nagual tradition, this phase is described as the loss of the human form. For the mystic, his God becomes great over him. Jesus is called “my husband” by the trance nun.
Unlike Justice where one judged and condemned others, here, to the arcane XX The Judgment, one judges oneself. And we condemn ourselves, too, most of the time. It is much less fun than the astral delusions of the Sun…
For the sorcerer’s apprentice, “this immensity out there” bursts into his consciousness. Seized by the vertigo of infinity, he feels the human characteristics gradually leaving his physical body. He becomes other. Not an animal, not a god or a superman, not a demon or an alien, but another. Elsewhere and tomorrow take the place of the here and now. The last tenuous links that still connected him to the matter have broken. Where is he? I would say: “in astral“, but you know like me that this answer is just a good joke.
In fact his life stops unfolding. Fixed point. The moment comes to a standstill, only its facets that light up in turn still give the illusion of continuity. But there is no time or space for him.
6 – Burning
To light the fire from within is to leave the underworld on your own. The warrior of the nagual is transformed into a live torch, he burns out literally, he permanently disappears from the material plane. This way of leaving the world of matter should not be confused with suicide. In the 19th century in Europe, numerous testimonies mention these mysterious disappearances. The scenario is always the same. A single person fades out without a trace. Or rather, the person does leave a trace, that’s what makes the thing disturbing. On the tiles of the kitchen there is a burnt spot with ashes only, but nowhere else in the room are any trace of burn or smoke. Sometimes, on the edge of the calcined spot, two or three incompletely burned toes still remain, showing what happened to the missing person.
A wizard or a witch has stopped prolonging life. The most talented healers manage to heal themselves, they keep in good health despite the old age until the day when they stop fighting against an inescapable end. They choose the moment of their departure, like Juan Matus and Genaro. But they flew away. Lighting the inner fire is mentioned in the works of Castaneda, but not these disappearances by fire. Perhaps it is a misunderstanding of Castaneda? There are some in his books …
The arcane XXI The World is actually the last step of the path of awakening. The next one, The Fool, has no number. The Fool can intervene at any time on the road. He is no longer of this world, as you will understand in the next paragraph. This world over which reigns the being already detached from matter. He realized the androgyny of the gods before.
The four beings of the Tetramorph are at the four corners of the arcane. They represent the four elements, the four founders. Christianity has attached the four evangelists, but this is a late recovery. The Tetramorph draws its source long before Jesus and the popes.
7 – Keeping Silent
This is the very last stage. Or not? Does it intervene before, or after, the final departure? Nobody can say, those who know did not return to tell it. Who cares ? Silence is like snow: the great redeemer. It levels all, embellishing and hiding the hideous. Inner silence is the best way to perceive the music of the spheres. The long silence of the tombs …
Let’s live in the meantime. Let us enjoy and rejoice in the wonders we witness.
New auras have appeared. Indigo, crystal, rainbow … Wonderful children are left to their own devices, children kill and die as if they were virtual — maybe they are. Children sing, their laughter is my magical chariot, my swinging low mothership coming to take me away from this land of exile. Nautonier of brass on his black boat, Archangel Michael or another mute psychopomp will take me over river Jordan, or cross the Styx. There life is found, and love, all light, all good.
The Fool can intervene at any time on the road. He is no longer of this world. My benefactor said that he is the Magician of a new cycle, on which we have only speculation. The image shows an insane income of everything that walks through this world on which he no longer reigns. He made all the stages of the Camino de Compostela. He became the starry vault, symbol of the infinite that inhabits him. He has overcome fear, clarity, power, and even the warrior’s last enemy, old age, gives him some respite. So he walks. His little bundle on the back represents the little attachment he has for material goods. He hangs it not on a stick, but on a large wooden spoon. Because the one who knows how to cook goes everywhere, he is always received with pleasure…
I do not close any doors. There are probably other mysteries after the Mat. There are surely more than seven degrees of awakening. I speak of what I know, what I have experienced, experienced, gone through during the seventy-four years of my existence.
I am not sure that I have reached the seventh degree of awakening, the Mat. It is reserved for exceptional beings. I do not believe I am one of them. The door of the other world has already opened for me, but several visionaries have told me this: I would be, according to them, a Mat of birth.
It is true that I have always had talents of healing, double vision, ubiquity, decorporation to name a few. But I am only a little man who goes on the blue roads of the astral without the slightest bundle. This life that was mine led me to places that have disappeared. Concrete ate the jungle and bush of my youth. This world has shrunk.
For my first flight, at 22, I went to China. From Paris-Orly to Hong Kong, 28 hours flight with stops in Rome, Dubai, Bangkok and Phnom Penh. Then, for more than a decade, I travelled a still wild world. It has changed too much. I don’t move from my home in Erquy, Brittany. My earthly paradise. Why go elsewhere? The whole world visits me.
If I still travel, it is in the astral. I have so many memories that my dreams enchant me more than tourism. What else to look for? What more?
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