I've followed Toltec traditions (amongst various other things) for maybe 30 years, and it has helped me a lot, but now I realise there is also an unexpected unhealthy side to it. During one particular Ayahuasca ceremony, finally I saw what was behind it, and that is a type of pterosaur-like creature which looks something like an oversized dinosaur bat, probably something very roughly along the lines of those pictured below (I couldn't find a picture of exactly what I saw), although I guess it might even be non-terrestrial in origin:

Let me describe them from the impressions I received after that ceremony. (It is probably safest to regard this as an illuminating myth until you are able to verify it yourself, e.g. by finding supporting evidence in your own dreaming.)

These are scavenger feeders -- so they feed on dead or dying animals. They have a very strong psychic sensitivity to an animal in pain. As soon as they sense an animal in pain within a few kilometers of their location, it is a race to be the first there. Pushing right to the limit, they fly, racing against each other, and on arrival tear the prey to bits and consume it. It is a violent world and these are brutal creatures. Sex is also a brutal thing -- when an individual has sexual desire, he/she tries to entrap one of the opposite sex to accept copulation, and being psychic creatures, psychic manipulation is a big part of that.

Survival forces these creatures to constantly monitor the surrounding landscape for psychic cries of pain, so their psychic and dreaming abilities are immense. Evolution takes care of that. Whilst resting they are constantly in the dreaming world, the physical world is not interesting to them until it is necessary to chase down the prey. So they are fantastic dreamers, and in their resting time they explore the dreaming worlds. And there is a lot of resting time for a scavenger feeder who hunts psychically rather than by actually flying around looking for things.

I believe that these strongly evolved psychic hunters and dream navigators could be the source of at least part of Toltec knowledge. Their bodies are long gone, but their ghosts remain in contact with this earth. Humans found they could attract them by recreating the cries of prey. The stronger the psychic cries of the prey, the more likely to attract them. Human sacrifice is not about killing humans, it is about causing as much pain as possible, to create a psychic cry great enough to cut through the layers of reality and attract the ghosts of these long-dead hunters. The more intense the cry the better, so this means aiming to create the maximum fear and anguish in the shortest time. Not very nice at all. But any pterosaur scavengers out there still listening would hear it and come as if to feed. Naturally they cannot feed any more but old habits die hard.

After initially attracting them and then setting up communication and cooperation, the Toltec (or pre-Toltec) human practitioners were able to learn from them. I believe that this is the source of at least some of the Toltec knowledge. After establishing the relationship, sacrifices were perhaps no longer necessary -- but I suppose a little spilt blood now and then always brightened their spirits. (Actually an unresolved question for me is whether the later Toltecs maintained a relationship with these creatures with no form of sacrifice at all, or whether there was some form of energetic payment, similar to what was explicitly mentioned with the Death Defier.)

So that is what I understood from the impressions that I received after that Ayahuasca ceremony. The lessons and knowledge gained from these creatures are very powerful -- and genuinely positive and useful -- but if you are not aware of the source of the knowledge then there is a significant risk. Because what was right for prehistoric scavengers is not always right for us. Not all the features of their behaviour, required to survive in their world, are appropriate for ours.

First of all is their attraction to creatures in pain. A creature in pain is beautiful to them, it is their food, it is life and survival to them. Just like a human might regard a delicious plate of food (a steak with all the trimmings, or a juicy pear, or whatever), so they would regard a creature in pain, and it is psychic pain in particular that interests them. There are just so many ways this can go wrong if humans appropriate this feeling, I don't even want to start on it. (I'll let you think it all through.) We may even become the predator and the prey all in one, the one crying out as well as the one finding that attractive. Then there is their hunter's approach to sex: personally, I'm not interested in psychically capturing females, even if they were.

So that is the downside, the risk of being pulled into patterns of non-human behaviour which are contrary to our genuine human interests. But we should also look at what aspects of their behaviour and knowledge are useful to us, as incorporated into the Toltec system of knowledge.

First there is impeccability, or putting absolutely your all into everything, even if your all is not very much as yet. It really is about putting in 110% constantly. They had to be pushing out their psychic awareness as far as they possibly could at every possible moment in order to be the first to detect prey. And then they had to fly at the very limits of their endurance until they reached it.

Then there is ruthlessness and unbending intent. Survival means complete focus on the goal to the exclusion of all else, including any concern for the interests of your companions. What brings you together with your companions isn't cooperation. Rather it is kinship -- a strange kind of affection that doesn't for one moment depend on letting up the fight. Cooperation may happen but it happens because of an accidental alignment of interests, not as an instinctive response to a shared problem, as it is in humans.

In such an extreme competition for food, anything that holds you back is a survival risk. Recapitulation is like a bird cleaning its feathers. You need to be clear of psychic baggage when you are a psychic hunter. Are you stuck in mental loops when a prey creature cries out? Then you're the one who arrives last and goes hungry. This requires a purity of attention that is only available through clearing out all emotional history until you are so clean you ring like a bell. Breaking patterns (not-doing) is part of the same thing. Absolutely fluidity is the only way to survive as one of these creatures. Your body needs to be in absolutely peak fitness to leap off on a chase on a moment's intuition. Tensegrity encapsulates the brutal violence and extreme readiness of these scavenger hunters. (Actually I find that Tensegrity (e.g. Video 2), is the quickest way to find them now).

Regarding the weirder manipulations of reality apparently known to the Toltecs, could it be that these creatures found quicker ways to their prey than physical flight? It would certainly be a survival advantage and would go some way to explaining how even now they are able to cross realities to reach us.

So this text should be read as something of a warning. I have lived following Toltec ideas for 30 years paying a price I didn't realize that I was paying, because I didn't know what kind of creatures I had associated with. Now I understand better, I can better judge how to approach it. It is good that I have self-control and a sense of right that have consistently overridden any negative influences from these creatures on my physical behaviour -- even if I have wondered at times why it has been such a fight -- and it is also good that I have received help from so many known and unknown sources to find my way. Other people have been less fortunate. The Toltec world is littered with casualties. It appears that even Castaneda did not understand that the "flyers" he saw later in life may actually have been his (indirect) teachers and the source of his knowledge.

So, people, BEWARE! The Toltec path of knowledge is a test. There is knowledge here but it can turn into something that is a form of corruption in human terms if you are not strong enough. If you want to work with these creatures and traditions which connect with them -- well, it is your choice. It could all go horribly wrong. It's you versus them. Is your strength and determination to keep to a positive path comparable to their strength? If so you may survive. If not, you could become food, or a slave to their interests in this world. (Actually, don Juan says as much in the books, only using other words, so my warning should be redundant -- except that I had no idea he was warning me about this!)

A human teacher that knows these creatures might teach you how to take the useful parts and leave all the unhealthy parts, and I would count don Juan and don Genaro of the books amongst these people (although right now I'm cautious about even them, especially regarding any compromising interactions with other entities). Others might struggle successfully or unsuccessfully with the corruption (Carlos, Merilyn?). Others may simply be a nice face in front of a vector for everything unhealthy about predators with psychic powers that are attracted to the suffering of others. So watch out.

We should not see this in moral terms, however. They are not good nor bad -- they are what they are, like chickens are what they are. All the same brutality is present in the animal kingdom if you watch. We don't often stop to think how alien chickens are -- but they are. The creatures in question are pure at being ruthless psychic scavengers. It becomes corruption only when they have humans in their thrall who aren't strong enough to maintain human standards and human interests above all else.

It is interesting that other indigenous American traditions also work with large birds (the turkey dance, etc). I wonder whether the lessons from these modern birds are similar. However I think the prehistoric psychic dinosaur scavengers of the Toltecs are on quite another scale.

-- Jim Peters, 24-Nov-2012, edited 20-Apr-2013

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