Pietro

points taken. But Bai Shi is not given to anyone. It is VERY hard to be accepted. And the money is the least. Plus , when did you consider the economic difference? I mean 10.000$ for a Chinese can be much more than for an American. So it seems that David is offering something which is less than Bai Shi, for anybody who has the money, and for an amount of money which is relatively speaking less.

Ok, now let's calm down everybody. First of all, please send my congratulations to David for having completed his PhD. Second, Gamuret, you shouldn't leave, since you started this whole thread of looking for credentials. I am not surprised that Sean refused to provide information if you kept your veil of anonymity. DO you remember how I too refused to answer questions, if you kept yourself anonymous. But I have no such veil, and I am dying of curiosity to know more about David's work. Now please understand that for what I know PhD's are always public. In the sense that the thesis is a public document. That can be read by anyone, cited by anyone, and that will remain in the archives in secula seculorum. So maybe David has been involved in some secret, close door research, but if this is so, it really shouldn't be used in advertisment. At least to avoid things like this to happen. And for sure it's result cannot be part of the PhD,... because PhD are public documents. But really Sean, please understand the whole thing is not disrespectful in any way. I mean, I have a PhD. I am VERY happy when people ask for it, because maybe they will read it and will bring on my work. And generally the more people work on your track, the more your sphere of interest gets fundings, gets interest, and so on. The more the world will be interested in my work, and the more I get to investigate my natural sphere of interest, as opposed to working on some other's projects. Sean, people are just showing interest for your teacher, and they are going to a great length to look what is publicly available on him. Not only is this not a disrespectful request by any standard, not only it is standard guideline, but also there is no privacy protecting this information. A PhD is a public document. In some countries the defence (the final exam) is private. But the actual PhD. The actual thesis, that is public. Like an article in a peer reviewed news paper. In german universities, to get the final result, you need to give them 50 copies so that they can send them to all the German universities. I understand this might be seen as very archaic, but I am sure you understand the point.

It is actually very funny. The interesting thing is that the first meditation I did with David, in the first workshop I did with him, he had us just laughing like this. He started, and soon some of us joined in, and since when you see everybody laughing you tend to start laugh yourself, soon we were all laughing. I think I haven't heard someone laughing that hard from the moment when I heard this recording. As a tentative thing (you know, a reminescence of the inner smile), why not just hear the record, concentrate on the LTT, and just laugh with Jan. At the least is going to be a good belly massage from the inside.

QUOTE This is interesting, and it makes a lot of sense. I have been wandering what was the use of that DHT, that gets produced in the prostate. And now I see how doing celibacy practice while being a big-ass-internet-surfer-fat-cow can't work. My only question is why all this does not get mention in a site like bodybuilding.com where they should know very well those kind of things. Article: "The Facts and Myths about: DHT"

indeed we do have a natural advantage.

He did not say he was a disciple, he said he studied with him. Here: http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?s=&amp...ost&p=52158 But you are right, this does not mean to be a disciple. wow, you should post the mp3 of it. Now that would be funny!

Cam, you said something really wise here. (in bold) Way to go! Pietro "Gamuret", I think your question has been answered: David's website has taken off the Dr. title. Isn't this enough of an answer? Maybe you should re-address the question according to what is being stated now, not according to what was being stated, or implied, before (incidentally by his students, since I do not believe that David wrote the website himself). Keep on hitting the fog, and eventually you'll find where the meat is. Pietro

Well, we surely have the freedom to suggest any book we want, but for me I will generally suggest, vote and read only taoist books. I might make exceptions, but I don't see this happening at the moment. LOL That cuts the problem of the decision rule at the root! One thing I haven't understood? Are we going each to read and re-read the whole book or can we discuss chapter by chapter. Because I think that most of the juice will flow if we discuss it WHILE we are reading it. This will also push us to read it. (I need to get the chapter by ... or I will just be a witness and taomeaw will bully me all the way, hey wait she will do it anyway, so it doesn't matter ). Would you be willing to give us some end of chapters dates? Pietro Which explains how a book like the i-ching could ever be written.

Hey! What's wrong with having a degree in Maths! Shrink!! And "Hern Heng", it is Verdesi, with only one s. Pietro

Procurator, please, try to be a bit more helpful. If you know how to help do it. Just to tell a person that he has to stop all sexual activity, while not explaining how to do it, is just a way to make people feel unworthy and guilty.

Hello Lin, brother. You seem to imply that if he left the Mantra in he would not have had cancer. Do I read you right? If this is so, could you please explain this ignorant daoist what crushed him. Was it internal obligations or external paranormal forces? Or am I totally off track. Pietro

Hey, who many gf have you got? How many guys does she has. That's the way to go! Free love, and sex for all.

Yeah. The fact is that having studied math, and having had some interest in politics, I then went to see why is it that all the times it seemed that everybody wanted something, but the result of the elections brought a different results. From here I realised how the "normal" voting way where you just give one vote is essentially broken. And can easily be hacked by having a small(er) number of people vote all in the same way. Interesting historically all this was well known, and came out as part of some studies after the french revolution by the Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794). The whole Condorcet method has never (to my knowledge) been implemented for a country. Mostly because it requires computers to calculate the results (again, for a country). But there are simpler systems, which give the Condorcet winner nearly all the times. They generally work by letting a person either chose all the 'acceptable' results, or let a person rank all the candidates in order of preference. The last one is quite hard on the voters, especially if you have many candidates. But even if you have 300 candidates, and people are allowed to list all the ones that they are happy with you get a result that mathemathically is sound. So you can imagine my frustration in seeing those wonderful systems having been developed and studied, and being always relegated in journal papers. Not allowed to see the light of day for fear that they might end up actually bring up the desires of the people to the power that be. So if at the end of this, at least one of you have gone to read about different voting systems, and how it is possible to control a country, just by setting up a voting procedure instead of another, I will feel satisfied. Interestings when we had TB, and we needed to chose the name, I implemented a Condorcet voting between us, after having taken the whole list of all the possibilities. Ron was so impressed that for a moment he actually slept out of his role, saying how if we had that system in place in the US, Bush would not be in power. Which means that you are willing to read any book that we chose? Wow! Let's get something looong and boring, and then ask Craig to tell us what is it about

Hello "Gamuret", please read this whole thread: http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?showtopic=3121&hl= and pay very much attention to when has each post been re-edited. Up to the point of writing on a piece of paper the order of the dates in which they had been posted, comparing it to the dates when they had been re-edited. Understand that on the side of this there was a huge exchange of PM going on, as well as emails and phone calls to and from David with his student(s). After all this I was not allowed to join. Pietro

I don't know about the people banned, but I wasn't permitted to join. Does this makes 3?

Hi Harry, you are right about carrying the degree. Regards the title I am not sure. And in any case I see the title as a shortcut to let people know what studies you have done. Since people in different countries would assume something wrong, it does not work that well. So yes, legally I might be entitled to use them. But ethically I don't feel like. And being in Academia the titles are quite important (beside I now do have a PHD ). Some years ago I was advertising some chi nei chang practise, and I signed Dr. (I had just got my Laurea). My father looked at the ads and commented: is nearly a scam. Meaning that people would expect me to be a medical doctor, not to have a basic degree in maths. Totally unrelated to the massage practice.

Ok, so I suppose I need to add something. And I better do it asap, before having to read the whole divine commedy of all the posts pro and against David. I have't got a clue. He was't at the university yet. I think at the time he didn't even had a high school diploma. But I heard from a common friend that he ended high school without telling anyone about those studies. I have no problems believing this story. I don't generally ask my friends a formal CV. I was never told, nor I cared enough to ask. It looks like someone made an error, and when you started investigating they wanted to correct it. I would exclude David from all this since my understanding is that David is the ultimate non geek type. He has students who are more than willing to set up a forum for him, and take care of the day to day situation. I guess that... oh no, you said just facts. I have no problems with you trying to understand the facts. I told you about a common friend? Well, he was also in Castaneda stuff, and he evntually found who was the supervisor of Carlos, when he did his thesis. He then went to read the books of Carlos' supervisor, and he found there all (or most) of the ideas that were being presented as Don Juan personal teachings. They were just written in a very hard to digest form. I haven't got a clue. But a few things I can tell: I exlude categorically that they had anything to do with the italian government. The italian government have hardly the money to pay for the toilet paper in its universities, it surely isn't sponsoring secret studies on chi. Gamuret also asked me some question through PM. I told him that I was not prepared to answer personal questions on David, especially since he insisited on keeping his anonymity. But a few of the least personal I can try to answer. I don't know enough of David to answer all those questions, but a few things I can say. When I first met him he was in a martial art school. I was there as well, but we were in different years, and we both left pretty soon. I don't know of any Taiwan master, but soon he was under the protection of Chia, learning more than the rest of us, and being sent by Chia to meet other teachers. He would then come back and report. This is how Chia got some of his practices. David always put his practice before everything else, up to the point to be willing to jump in the dark, if he felt it was the right thing to do. An example? he would order a plane ticket for a place he had the feeling he had to see, even though he did not had the money at the time to buy the ticket. All because he felt that the money would just arrive at the right time. And inevitably the money would arrive. He also fucked up things royally when a friend asked him to organise her workshop, and he esentially didn't do anything. In a sense it was inevitable, he never had to do anything to organise his workshops. Somehow they got organised for him. Either by the universe, or by one of his students. But he never had to sweat to get students. When he tried to apply the same procedure on his friends it didn't work. He then retracted behind a: "it means that it didn't had to happen". His friend wasn't happy. I haven't got a clue, again. IF he did it in Rome, you would have to check with the Universities in ROme. There are 3 of them (La Sapienze, Tor Vergata, Roma 3). You would need to speak italian (no I am not available to do it) and ask at the antropology department. Some departments put on internet some of the people who got their Laurea. I tried to make a search for Davide Verdesi antropologia but nothing of interest came out. As I said Italy is much behind in how much information is on the internet, so this hardly means anything. EDITED: Adding the colors, since the quote do not appear

That is great Sean, thank you. I have already used it 3 times!

Hello Steve. Sorry, I went too fast. I feel like I might have usurped your position for a second. Please, forgive me. May I just suggest that instead of a poll, where you could very easily have fake results (you know situation where 5 people want Luk and would not read any other, 6 would read either Wang or Robinet (but would not read Luk), and the result is: Luk 5, Wang 3, Robinet 3), can you please just ask people to write all the books that they are willing to read. It is not more complicated, and it would make sure that the result reflects the book that would have the biggest number of people reading it. To do this you can just ask people to make a post in the new thread (you need to make a new thread in any case if you want to make a poll) and write all the books they are willing to read. In any order. Cheers, Pietro

I think if we are starting to vote we should clarify the possible positions. Just voting for something or for something else is a bit too simplistic (when I am around to suggested more complicated ways ). Essentially because it does not differentiate between if you might not prefer something, but you would still read it, or you would not prefer something, and you would NOT read it, if it gets chosen. So here is a simple way of voting that actually takes care of all this: 1) list ALL the books that you are willing to read this coming month (not eventually, not yesterday, just now at the next time) 2) order that list from the one you prefer to the one you least prefer. END. Nothing more, it is that easy. If you don't write a book we assume you WILL NOT read it this month. If you don't vote we don't consider you. If you vote we assume that you will read and take part in the subsequent discussion. How then the vote could be counted. First count for each book how many people are willing to read them. Pick the highest one. In the unlike, but not impossible case that there is a parity then we start consider the preferences. There are many ways to do this, but the fairest, mathemarthically is to use a condercet voting scheme. The idea of voting for multiple possibilities is a very good one, and it is used in many systems. One of the systems where it is used is to chose the Secretary of the UN. It tend to give a more fair result that just picking up the highest. This because when you pick up the highest all sort of "democratic games" can be done (think about a modern democracy as an example, where you often have 45% on the right, 55% on the left. But the left is further splitted into 35% and 20% and the result is that the right gets the office much more often). So to condense all in one phrase: Forget who you vote for: Can you tell us ALL the books that you would read? For me of the books we spoke so far: 1. Livia Kohn: Daoism and Chinese Culture 2. Eva Wong: The Shambala Guide to Taoism 3. Isabelle Robinet: Taoism: Growth of a Religion And if any of the other get chosen, I'll wait for next month.

My understanding is that aligned has different applications, respect to what context we are talking about. If we are speaking about the body, then you need to keep your body so that the energy flows freely through it. So that the push, from the hand goes to the wrist. From the wrist, goes to the elbow, from the elbow goes to the shoulder. And then down to the earth. Then of course there is being aligned to the earth, so the energy flows down all the way to the earth. But this is just the most basic form of being aligned. You can also being aligned at the emotional level, mental level, between the levels. And between your body and outside (respect to the earth, or respect to heaven, for example). Once you are aligned (not just physically) then yes, syncronicity might start to happen. But is that important? It looks more like the a fruit, not the root of the practice. Pietro

I volunteer to read it to her.

Sean Sean, quick, delete it. Or Brian will ban you ;-)