Aeran

Well I'm sorry to hear about that, I know the whole Mo Pai issue has been a contentious one on the internet (it certainly has on other forums I read/contribute too), and I remember seeing on amazon various 'Learn Mo Pai!' books which, iirc, were all labelled as scams, if that kind of thing has carried over here I can understand why you'd be suspicious, but it would still be nice if you'd hold off and allow people a greater chance to prove themselves either way before throwing baseless accusations at them. I possibly could have put more thought into where I started posting, but I read Kosta's books a while back and found them rather interesting, and as I said in my other post, one of the reasons I've developed an interest in Taoism is the massive parralels it has with Hermetic philosophy, and so when something interesting occured to me that might help cast a bit of light on the debate taking place here, I thought I'd put it out there. You can make of that what you want, I don't particularly feel the need to allow myself to be quized in response to baseless accusations, but feel free to ban me should I ever offer anyone a Mo Pai Superpower Manual for the low low price of $999.99

The insinuating being what? That I'm a regular member posting under a different account? Why would someone bother? I mean I understand that it happens in general terms, but what would it achieve in this particular scenario? Especially since I'm coming in on the side of the majority. I've been at it for significantly less than 25, so the knowledge would probably be flowing the other way, but I'd love to talk about it if you'd drop the paranoid scrutiny.

I've been lurking here for a while actually (great forum). I decided to register the other day, read this thread while I was waiting for my account to be activated, and as I had recently reread the chapter in IIH on the magnetic and electric fluids, and noticed a lot of parralels to the discussion going on here, I decided to chime in once I could. I'm sorry if you feel that I should have to grovel for 50 or 100 posts and sufficiently establish my sincerity before I'm allowed to contribute to a discussion I find interesting. And it's uncharactaristically cold, actually, I even had my heating on the other night :/ Although I'll take that over the usual schorching sweatiness at this time of year.

I think you're making the mistake of assuming that what Chang says (or what Kosta says Chang says, which is an issue in itself, given the language barrier) about Mo Pai necessarily applies across other traditions. It could be a simple question of methodology, just because the Mo Pai system doesn't contain methods for drawing Yin chi without contact with the ground, doesn't mean they don't exist. Nowhere in the Kosta books, from what I remember, does Chang claim to have extensive knowledge of other energetic systems, nor of the nature of energy and metaphysics in general - he's simply making statements about Yin energy as it manifests in the practices of one tradition, and it isn't necessarily true that those can be extrapolated into an interpretation of it as it manifests into a completely different system. We really know far too little about the definitive nature of metaphysical energies to be deciding which traits are universal. Anyway, the reason I'm chiming in is that I thought it might be interesting to provide an example to how Yin Chi is utilized and experienced in western practices (where it is labelled the Magnetic Fluid, Yang chi being the Electric Fluid), to provide a comparison by which the debate about it's nature between SM and MP can be measured. What I found very relevant (and what originally sparked my interest when reading this debate) is that the experience of having this energy within the body is described more or less identically to the MP description given by Kosta, yet it can, like SM, be accumulated anywhere, which is pretty strong evidence that the SM system isn't necessarily deluded, making it up, using a different energy, etc.

Apparently we have to do an intro, so here I am Uhm, I'm 24, live in Australia, my background is mostly in hermetics and western esotericism, but over the last year or so I've developed a real interest in Taoism after picking up and reading a copy of the Tao Te Ching. Obviously I'm still very new to it, I tried learning qi gong out of it a book to supplement my hermetic practices, but had to put it down for the time being due to an energy blockage in my legs which was causing trouble - seem to be making progress in clearing that up though, so hopefully I'll be able to resume practice sometime soon. I'm doing my best to learn more about it, and about Taoism in general, which can be hard relying on books, but from what I have picked up it seems an awesome philosophy, especially with the huge number of parralels which exist with hermeticism, the two worldviews really supplement eachother. Anyway, that's me, hi.