Oneness: the source code of life

25 March 2026

Oneness is such a gargantuan topic that I will obviously only be able to scratch the surface. I’ve recently started reading Carlos Castaneda again, this time one of his more practical books The Fire From Within. Part of this post’s inspiration will stem from his writings.

I’ll start from the bottom, more or less. Don Juan said that sorcerers of antiquity noticed something peculiar about human beings. He often talks about the luminous fibers contained in an egg-shaped cocoon, all of which have different characteristics in different people. Energetically, Don Juan said that humans had two streams of awareness which was different from other living beings. I guess to simplify this he would be referring to pure awareness (shared with other living things like animals) and the imposed mind (ego, the ‘foreign installation‘ as Don Juan calls it) which is only present in man. That is the idea of being a separate self, the internal dialogue, behavioral patterns and everything that creates the ‘me’. His key claim is that man is the only species (the shamans as seers saw this energetically) that has this predatory  part of awareness. The tension between these two things is probably the cause of our sense of separation hence giving rise to the notion of duality.

To further this point, I think if we consider that we are the soul playing an avatar/character with its own life path and story within the simulation it could align with Don Juan’s dual awareness philosophy. We project our own reality (a hologram rendered in the brain) so therefore we aren’t just players, we are the totality of the game itself in one localized costume. If consciousness is playing itself, maybe it can enrich its experience through different filters (egos/characters) to feel less lonely and give purpose to existence (soul evolution). Is this the ultimate truth? God’s solitary dance.

One of the key themes in the Castaneda books, and rightfully so, is that of perception. We can all relate to this, no two people see the world in exactly the same way. We have a consensus view of reality, something programmed into us from a very early age, but in truth reality is far deeper and stranger than most of us are willing to entertain. Human perception has serious limits. Most people are stuck in what Don Juan termed ‘the first attention’ which is the interface of day-to-day reality, one we are all familiar with. We can talk about the second and third attention in another post, but they represent deeper states of awareness that can only be achieved through discipline and the warrior’s path. Sorcerers divided reality into three parts: the known, the unknown and the unknowable. Most people are stuck in the known and don’t venture beyond. What we experience as separation may just be a perceptual limitation. This is evidenced by the use of ‘power plants’, altered states of consciousness and sincere spiritual practices which fundamentally shift perception and perhaps create a direct line of contact to one’s higher self.

A concept that has been introduced to me in The Fire from Within is that of the Eagle, basically the rendering engine of the simulation in modern terms. Don Juan talks about the Eagle’s emanations which to me would translate as the source code itself, lines of code perhaps. It could represent the underlying field. Even though we tend to describe reality in terms of objects, that could just be our perceptual render of a much deeper code beneath perception. Perhaps the first attention and what most of us end up perceiving could be linked to survival, an analogy used by Donald Hoffman that life is like playing Grand Theft Auto, optimized without us having to see the game’s source code.

As you become more spiritually oriented, I think you intrinsically tap in to the greater whole, even if your ego keeps trying to impose its grip over you (causing limitations). You consider your actions more and how they affect the greater whole, no longer acting for selfish reasons alone. As Michael Singer often says, the great masters were pulled into perceiving the totality of the universe, so much so that they were almost yanked completely out of their body. Yogananda, one of the greats, had a lot to say about this on cosmic consciousness. If you consider that life may be a simulator for consciousness development (a term coined by Jordan Crowder), for me a compelling take, the idea may be remembrance, to wake up to the fact that you embody the whole. That would align with the idea that we are here to lose personal spiritual baggage to eventually reintegrate into the whole. Ultimately I think we are a singular consciousness divided into individuated units of consciousness, functioning somewhat like a lattice (a spider’s web of consciousness).

There’s so much more to say about this, but I think that if all is one, maybe our job here is to put our trust into the greater plan (which has already been orchestrated for us as source players). It seems that the more we impose our will onto things, the messier everything become. Perhaps instead of trying to seek validation and extract as much as we can from life, remembering what we are beneath the illusion of separation is the true blueprint. Keep going warriors!