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The hypothesis in question is '...that "You", your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules."
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Francis Crick
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The most profound story I’ve ever read comes one from one of Carlos Castaneda’s books, I can’t recall which one, but it was like many of his “tales of eternity” they always hint at more than they actually say .
This one starts with the old shaman Don Juan and his apprentice the anthropology student Carlos observing some desert creatures as they scurried about in the desert chaparral.
Don Juan commented that a man could survive in the dessert by hunting those animals, But first you would need to study them and know their habits.
He explain how they followed a pattern that could be mapped as a circle around a burrow. Once these feeding cycles are learned snares could be set and escape routes could be routed, so the animals own cyclical behavior became its venerability.
But he warned his apprentice, as you follow these behaviors and set your snares every day in the same way, you also make yourself venerable because you too are being observed.
He said there were predators even more attuned to theses circular patterns of the dessert, so some day something could be waiting for you along one of your well worn paths.
He went on to say that there existed in nature an ultimate balance between awareness of these cyclical movements in the world and a spontaneity of action in ones self, an unpredictability that wells up from the spirit.
Once this balance is achieved the hunter becomes a “magical warrior.”
“A magical warrior can never be trapped” don Juan said or “be caught without an escape route,” because he can never be reduced to behaviors .
This “warrior’s path” are no longer connected to cycles of the world, but of the spirit, thus he can always “see” what is coming without being seen himself.
Also, he said there existed in the world animals “magical creatures.” that have achieved this balance.
Don Juan recounted that he himself had achieved this state as a young man and became a magical warrior, and seemed to always know instinctively what to do in any situation, until one day he was hunting on a heavily forested ridge top. He remembered hearing a strange sound that sent shivers though his body.
He knew instinctively that he was to about to have an encounter with a magical creature, and for the first time since he had reached this state he had no clue what to do.
So he did the most illogical thing. He stood on his head and began to cry, after some time he felt something breathing in his ear, he fell over in a sitting position and looked up at the most beautiful deer that he had ever seen, and then it spoke “ Why are you crying ?” the deer inquired “ Because I'm sad ” Don Juan heard himself reply, then he remembered the deer lowered his head and said very clearly “ Don’t be sad ” and ambled away.
After listening to Don Juan’s story, Carlos, being an anthropologist and a man of logic and science, replied that the story was ridicules “deer’s do not talk !” he said “I know I know” the old shaman replied “It was the damndest thing.”
