Aeran

I have no idea how much he does or doesn't charge for his herbal treatments (anyone able to cite specific numbers?), but he's not forcing anyone to buy them and the guy hardly looks like he's rolling in money. Gary Clyman sells books/dvd's for several grand and personal training for even more, JAJ teaches for $800/hour, etc. but nobody uses that to suggest that they're frauds. Teachers have to eat like everyone else, and he's not only teaching but running a hospital, the money for that has to come from somewhere.

I think this says a lot more about the deep-seated drive people in modern societies have for escapism than it does about the internet itself.

^Is any of that confirmed in any way? Because it just sounds like the usual pseudo-skeptic speculative "debunking" BS with nothing to back it up to me. Gotta remember that Western materialistic reductionism has spread over the Scientific community in most of the East as well, so a source isn't somehow more or less valid just because it's written in Chinese (especially given we know nothing about the author, etc). Granted I don't know anything about Jiang Feng beyond what's been posted here, but I find it hard to believe that he would have so many people traveling to meet him (and often receiving major healings, years of training, etc) and coming away with a positive experience if he was a fraud. Not to mention that he's given demonstrations which I can't imagine any kind of "Tesla Coil" could achieve. Realistically, for him to be a fraud (in the sense of possessing no preterhuman abilities) would involve a huge number of people being in on the con, including people who have no motivation that I can see. The problem with these demonstrations of energetic abilities is that effectively any of them can be replicated easily by sleight of hand, and even more easily through video editing. Just because something "can" be mimicked, doesn't automatically make it fake. I think when someone has as many positive testimonials as Jiang, they at least deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Historically speaking, that isn't the case. Back to it's earliest days, alchemy has always had literal, physical components. It's only in in the 19th century the idea emerged that Alchemical texts were a metaphor for internal spiritual processes - and although it's a very apt metaphor, it's historically incorrect to purport that a metaphor is all it is. Whatever spiritual components Western alchemy had, it was always first and foremost an art involving the combination of physical ingredients within a laboratory.

Start by stopping the intake of all drugs (except for those which are prescribed for you to take on a daily basis, which should be discussed with a doctor). This includes caffeine, nicotine and alcohol. You've already said they're setting off the symptoms, so by taking them you're just perpetuating your problem. I would definitely recommend seeing a doctor - if you really did just drink out of the wrong water bottle at a festival (I'm trying to figure out why someone would lace a water bottle with a hallucinogenic, but stranger things have happened) then you could have taken pretty much anything, so the doctor is unlikely to be able to offer any specific advice, but it can't hurt. If it's brought up specific anxieties about certain subjects, maybe seek out a psychotherapist and talk to them, try work through whatever it is that was brought up. daobums is great, but probably not the best place for this kind of advice Try somewhere like http://www.bluelight.org/vb/forum.php I would also avoid any intensive meditation or energy work type practices for a while, until you've had time to stabilize a bit.

Fair enough.

I'm curious about why you feel that the alchemical knowledge was channeled? Plenty of texts on the subject went over to the Islamic world with the rest of the lot.

No reason to not name them. Even though I acknowledge the limitations of the written word as a means of transmitting esoteric knowledge, I'm always looking for more good authors to read.

I don't want to derail this discussion, but does anyone have a link to an article or thread or anything which sums up what went on with the whole Kunlun thing? It was before my time (so to speak), but I'm always interested in hearing about different people's experiences with different systems (positive and negative).

As I said, it was a metaphor, not an attempt to lay out any kind of color-based cosmological schema and claim it was based on any kind of Hermetic doctrine. Your language, "mainstream occult bs" for starters, and people tend to not throw around the phrase "no offense" unless they feel like what they're going to say is offensive. Yup, it's called the internet But the question is "how old?" There are people who claim that "True Hermeticism" lies solely in the teachings of the classical Mystery Schools and the texts they left behind, and that if it came in after the burning of the Library of Alexandria, it doesn't qualify. There are also people who claim that any mystical practice in the Western world which draws vaguely from the Graeco-Egyptian tradition or uses some of the terminology stemming from from it qualifies as Hermetic. And of course people claiming anything in between. In your case, the focus seems to be on the Medieval/Renaissance/Enlightenment era practitioners of Europe in general and the Rosicrucians in particular, correct? ps: didn't expect you to reply so fast, I editted my last post to respond to the comments you made in your second reply to my query.

Going off the video someone posted lately, Verdesi seems to have gone down the (to paraphrase) "chi doesn't matter, internal alchemy doesn't matter, etc etc. it's all about expressing divine love" philosophical road, including citing a video of Mother Theresa hugging a child as a superior example of healing than any he had seen with the various Qigong/Neigong masters he studied under. So I suspect what he means by "scam" (if indeed he said that - and English isn't his first language, you have to remember) isn't necessarily to say that the man is a fraud in terms of his attainments or his healing ability, but rather that he feels that teaching people to work with internal energy, cultivate Qi, etc. is an inferior path compared to whatever it is he's currently doing to "express boundless love" or however he worded it. I get the impression that he became very, very emotionally invested in his whole "Thunderbolt Path" shtick, then became disillusioned with it (I believe I remember reading something he wrote saying as much - that he had reached a certain level of attainment in the internal alchemy he was working on but still felt spiritually dissatisfied, and abandoned it). Quite frankly he comes off as at least a little loopy in the video footage, but it could just be that his English isn't perfect (when I first read his website I thought he suffered from a degree of mental illness, until I realized that English was his second language). Or maybe he really did hit a higher state of consciousness and I'm just not capable of appreciating his message. Who knows. But I wouldn't go basing any decisions or opinions on anything he says, personally.

Agree to disagree, I guess. I'm sorry you were misled for many years, what language do you feel clarifies the concept most fully? Perhaps better then to say "transfer the majority of your conscious awareness, for the purpose of using this portion of your being to interact with it's associated environment," as of course some degree of subconscious (for lack of a better word) awareness remains within all portions of an individual's being at all times. I would only disagree with you here in your use of the word "built," as it implies that the thing being built had no prior existence before the active process of building was taken up. In my own experience (granted, not as extensive as many), and in every explanation of the concept I've ever heard or read, the astral body (or whatever terminology you prefer) is something which exists for the whole of one's life, necessarily, as without it one cannot live, it is just that most people have no conscious awareness of it and it maintains a state of semi-dormancy, functioning just enough to allow the individual to operate on a physical and mental level. It does, however, have to be developed and strengthened through use and conscious effort. - like someone who had been quadriplegic their whole life, then suddenly regained use of their body. They would have to put great effort into developing awareness of their body, learning to move their limbs, build muscular strength and so on, but the body existed even when they couldn't feel or control it (again, by definition, if it had not, they would have been dead). I used the color wheel/spectrum metaphor as an easy, universal way of explaining the concept, I never claimed it originated in Hermetic thought. Although I'm not sure why you're getting worked up about the distinction, I'm curious, what exactly would you call "True Hermeticism"? Because everyone seems to have a different definition.

In what sense specifically? Genuinely interested.

I found this one excellent as well - I've been doing a lot of work lately on opening up the hips and straightening the spine, and this exercise (and his book in general) helped enormously.

Could you clarify what you mean by "dead guy among friends" and so on? And what kind of meditation are you practicing? I've found that my practices, if anything, have made me more outgoing, confident and social. But they've also changed my social life in that I'm less interested in the random junk people do to fill their time (eating/drinking/casual sex/parties/clubs/etc), which has precipitated some big changes in how I spend my time and who I spend it with. That adjustment just comes as part of realizing the wider nature of the spiritual universe.

It's impossible for anyone to diagnose this kind of thing over the internet (believe me, I know), I'd recommend finding a good acupuncturist/TCM practitioner who can look at you in person.

I'd agree - it's easy to think of them as innocuous because they're "natural," but my recent experimentation has shown me that experimenting randomly with herbs can have nasty results.

I've always felt that Daoism and Hermeticism are very similar and complementary in a lot of respects. Of course that's a whole other discussion and I don't want to divert this one. As for the astral body - typically speaking, it's not something which one builds, but something which everyone possesses (some Hermetic systems do speak of constructing a body on the astral level and transferring your awareness into it to travel the astral realm without the risks of projecting your own astral body, but this is a temporary construct - kind of like a remote control android). The trick is developing awareness of it. In Daoist terminology, if I had to take a rough shot at it, I would roughly equate it to the portion of your being which exists between the less dense levels of Qi (the less tangible Qi which you need a bit of internal awareness to notice) up until somewhere into the denser levels of Shen (I don't have any kind of direct experience working with those kind of levels of Daoist practice, so I'm going off what I've read and been told here). I think the miscommunication is mainly in the way in which the different traditions divide up the dimension of vibratory energy that exists between the material world and the Divine. It's difficult to define the Astral Body in Daoist terminology because the Hermetic tradition divides the spectrum up into a different number of layers - it's kind of like asking where "mauve" is on a color wheel which only has 12 colors, or where purple starts and stops on a color wheel which lacks clear divisions.

Wouldn't that mess with the curvature of the spine?

And likewise. Perhaps what we simply have is a failure to communicate - I'd like to think so.

No I don't, which is why I was quite happy to let that trail of debate go quiet. But I also don't like having my perspective intentionally misrepresented, so I'll reply one last time. Actually you worded it in such a way as to imply that the conversion of jing into electric chi is the only form or goal of meditation, specifically: And so on. You're making a pretty big pile of assumptions. And here you're making more assumptions, though at least you acknowledge it. Quite frankly, I have no idea who you are and your opinion doesn't mean enough to me to influence how I feel - I'm quite happy with my practices and not personally upset by anything except this latest post you made which completely and intentionally misrepresents my viewpoint. I didn't say that at all. I said that there are many methods of meditation which have nothing at all to do with refining jing, and that refining jing isn't the only source of qi, and that qi isn't a reference to a specific energy produced specifically by refining jing, but is a universal term for vital energy. You even said yourself that you knowingly redefined it: You can prefer to call it whatever you want, but that doesn't mean that the rest of the world should conform to your personal definitions. And even your own definition is contradictory - compare the first and seconded bolded part of the quote. Again, you're putting words in my mouth. I said none of that. What I did say is that there are entire traditions of meditation going back thousands of years which don't even work with the dantien(s) - obviously their results are different, but that doesn't mean they don't achieve results. If I swim laps for an hour every day, my body is going to develop differently to the way it would if I lifted heavy weights every day, it doesn't mean it isn't developing, just that different changes are taking place as a result of different processes being undertaken. I also said that there are different varieties of Qi (or whatever the preferred term is in the relevant culture) in every system of meditation out there, I've never met, corresponded with or even heard or a teacher who claims that the term "Qi" refers to a single, specific energy. Does this mean that every system of training found from every teacher and book and DVD is valid? Of course not, that would be absurd, the degree of fraud out there in the field is well known and there are many well known individuals whom I believe are likely either frauds or self-deluded (of course having never met these individuals, I cannot say for sure). But that doesn't mean that what is real is limited to what you yourself have personally have experienced. There's a middle ground between "everyone who writes a book on qigong is a master with the secrets to the highest levels of attainment" and "everybody is a fraud unless they've personally farted a thunderbolt into my face." You're putting words in my mouth again, I certainly never swore at you. I do, however, think you're projecting - you come across as having argued your viewpoint on meditation so constantly that you assume that anyone who disagrees with you on any aspect of it holds the same viewpoints as all other people who've disagreed with you. I suggest you take a deep breath, count to ten, calm down, then read my post and take in what I actually said, and not what you're projecting onto the screen through a haze of anger. Or at least have the politeness to ignore what someone says if you dislike it instead of putting words in their mouth and misrepresenting them. Either way, I'm going to stop responding to this chain of discussion, as I don't see it leading anywhere productive.

How could anyone possibly work so many different meditations into a decent training schedule? Not to mention the prices...

Likewise I don't think anything will be achieved by an extended debate, just wanted to put a different perspective on the matter out there.

According to whom? There are hundreds, if not thousands, of Daoist lineages/temples/schools/masters, all using these terms. Why does one particular individual have claim to the word "Qi" to refer to a specific energy produced by their practices? Why is your definition of Qi correct and nobody else's? Because you met someone who could do some pretty cool things and he said that that definition was the only true one? Well there are plenty of people out there who can do cool things who would give a different definition. What makes one right and another wrong? None of them have to right to lay exclusive claim to such a broad and historical term as "Qi." Again, according to some lineages. Others say that the dantien is filled in ways that don't involve the direct conversion of Jing. Others say that there are many different kinds of Qi. What makes one lineage correct in their use of the terminology and one incorrect? I think that's a flawed analogy because you're vastly oversimplifying the concept. There are, as I have said, hundreds/thousands of schools of Daoist meditation. All of them (I would guess) use the word Qi to refer to something - but this something is not necessarily the same from one school to the next. There is no universal consensus among Daoists that an energy must possess the properties you ascribe to it to be called Qi, this is just the specific terminology used by your specific teacher. Which is fine, but you can't take the terminology from one lineage and apply it to others, it doesn't work. Then what are all the Llama's and Yogi's and Tantrika's and Sufi's and Kabbalists and Hesychasts and Magicians and etc etc. doing when they meditate? Because for most of them it's not converting Jing to produce an electric-like Qi to fill the Dantien, so either meditation is a lot more complicated than your definition, or all of these traditions going back centuries/millennia have just been spinning their wheels and deluding themselves while the One True Lineage in China has been converting jing into electric-feeling Qi. I'm not debating with you because I'm offended .Personally, All I care about is that my practices do what they're supposed to do As long as that continues to be the case, then as far as I'm concerned all that matters is that the names for the energies involved remain internally consistent - beyond that it's semantics. What does bother me is your dogmatism - you met one man and decided that because the Qi he produced had certain properties, nobody else had the right to use the word unless the Qi involved in their practice also possessed those properties. Saying "Qi" is a bit like saying "gas." Yes, all forms of gas share certain qualities, but they also vary wildly depending on their molecular composition, density, etc. There is no one true Qi, speaking in purely linguistic terms - I don't speak Chinese, so someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but when used in the context of meditation, it's a word which refers to any vital energy associated with the breath. Anything which fits that definition can be called Qi. Now in the specific tradition you mention perhaps the internal alchemy involved produces a variety of Qi which possesses certain properties beyond this (in this case, giving a powerful electric sensation when projected), but just because this person claims that this is the only energy which can be called Qi does not make it so. Unlike Western science, there is no dictionary in the canon of meditative practices which provides exact terminology, exact definitions for each precise phenomenon. therefore they have to be accepted contextually. Maybe this will change one day, but that day isn't today.

I found acupuncture and especially cupping offer excellent short term relief from back pain (although my issues have mostly been with the upper back). Far superior to anything Western medicine had to offer short of powerful painkillers (and that's not a route you want to go down). Long term improvement seems to come from correcting posture and releasing tension - some resources I've found which have helped with this have included Sifu Dunn's Chi Kung for Health DVD's, Damo Mitchell's books (especially Nei Gong, which contains an amazing collection of exercises for returning your posture to it's natural, relaxed state, but also Heavenly Streams) and local classes in Tai Chi and meditation (especially the Tai Chi, since a teacher on hand can spot all sorts of problems with your posture which you won't notice yourself). Back pain sucks - good luck beating it