When we explore the probability that the Death Defier, Xoxonapo, is one and the same as Guru Rinpoche Padma Sambhava of Old Tibet, there are some outstanding factors in His/Her ancient background that are rather extreme and difficult to understand.  Chögyam Trungpa, for instance, had a tough time in his book, Crazy Wisdom, explaining the meaning of an incident where Padma Sambhava as a young prince playing around on the palace roof accidentally let drop a trident and a club which killed two people and caused him to be banished from the kingdom.  Since students of Vajrayana are not encouraged to spontaneously hurl dangerous objects, it is then challenging to see what was the real point of what happened.  On the surface it is to be condemned, which was the natural reaction of the kingdom and the king who sent him away, even though they greatly admired him.

The moral tension and possible horror of all this get even better when we read another account from the ancient life of Padma Sambhava the Death Defier from the book, The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation by W.Y. Evans-Wentz:

The Overthrow of the Irreligious

Indrarāja, a petty king of the Urgyān country, having become inimical to religion, and his subjects, following his example, likewise, Padma went there in the guise of one of the Wrathful Deities and deprived the king and all the men among the unbelievers of their bodies, or means of sowing further evil karma; and, magically transmuting the bodies, he drank the blood and ate the flesh.  Their consciousness-principles he liberated and prevented from falling into the hells.  Every woman whom he met he took to himself, in order to purify her spiritually and fit her to become the mother of religiously minded offspring.

The first natural reaction for many contemporary people-of-the-Occult could very well be that it would be a wonderful thing if Padma Sambhava as the Death Defier would do His/Her ancient thing with the present evil leaders of the world, for the entire planet is now in the condition of that wretched little kingdom in ancient Pakistan.  Strangely, it is virtually the same location where the C.I.A. and Musharaf sequester their joint “Al-Qaeda” operation (as if they can’t “find it” or “destroy it” of course).  So even now there is still an undying reverberation of Padma Sambhava’s acting out with violent magic toward evil government on Earth.  This thus makes in itself a profound meditation on how the world and the Universe as a whole really work.  As for the implications for Personal Power, who would even want to acquire the Transmutational Power of the Aghoras (the Fearless Ones) who can turn flesh into bread and blood into wine?  And who can develop such vast causal perception of the Third Attention that they can see when causal bodies (human souls of the Third Attention) are deteriorating through outward evil behavior to the point that it would be an act of Mercy to slay them and transmute their bodies?  Then, when we note that Mercy for the causal souls of the women does not require the killing or the transmuting of the bodies, but simply being fucked a lot by a superhuman transmuter type Crazy Wisdom Being of Extreme Personal Power, the whole thing borders on cosmic humor. 

As we contemplate this obviously extreme background of the Death Defier as Padma Sambhava, it does not make all occult seekers desperate to meet that being or learn how to do all the really heavy stuff even if there has been a promising transcendence of superficial morality.  But we may be getting a whiff of why Don Juan Matus, himself an advanced Nagual and no silly Christian or other outer religious moralist, found the Tenant, the Death Defier, rather difficult to cope with, which obviously included “giving his lifeforce to the Death Defier”, meaning far-out sexual intercourse, “in exchange for occult gifts in return.”

The Death Defier Padma Sambhava is clearly an immortal Superhuman, a Demi-God, and not merely a long-lived basic human being.  That His/Her connecting endlessly with developed Naguals accelerates their development even farther is rather obvious, which happens almost in spite of their own natural reluctance.  Of course, Carlos Castaneda would not himself go into the full implications of the Death Defier other than describing part of what happened to him in his own encounter in the church in Tula in conjunction with his massive fucking of Carol Tiggs and subsequent connected higher Energy Body experiences.  Carol Tiggs and the Death Defier became a sexually blended phantasmagoria for Castaneda, so he got a “gift” in return for his lifeforce whether he wanted one or not!  For him, just getting heavily into Carol Tiggs was a very welcome “gift”.  And though Juan Matus was a mere bystander witness for the whole transaction of Carlos Castaneda and Carols Tiggs with the Death Defier, he knew clearly what was going on.  Three-way sex with an immortal Demi-God is no minor event, but heavy with strange activations of weird potential.  Exciting and maddening stuff even for trained Naguals!  Then when we add the Extreme Background in the field of Transmutation capacities and activities from the Padma Sambhava era, the ordinary, everyday human psychology is beginning to crack around the seams.  The Tonal, the mechanically conditioned Social Self, cannot of itself handle all that.

It is precisely at this point that we can begin to ask any avid Castaneda books reader who has tried to follow-through and develop something as to exactly what is the purpose of studying and practicing something somehow like the Nagual Path?  Is it indeed for a long-term transcendence of ordinary birth and death of a causal bodied human individual of the Third Attention?  Is it to acquire far-out “miraculous powers” with which to impress followers?  Is it to keep something “interesting” in one’s life to prevent boredom?  Or is it that one senses an ultimate potential in oneself to somehow blossom into a new Death Defier Superhuman with an unknown agenda that has not yet been comprehended, but somehow calls out from beyond and within?

Not all are called to all this for the same reason.  What is yours?