Zhongyongdaoist

I would like to post two quotes, both about the difficulty of interpreting Plato. Now this difficulty doesn't come from Plato's writing style like Kant or Hegel, though some of his dialogues are densely written, many are fresh and open and filled with realistic characters, for centuries they have be considered masterpieces of literature as well as philosophy, but rather from the seeming contradictions that appear from dialogue to dialogue. And then there is the dialogue method of exposition, in some cases a recounted exchange, in others almost like a script to a play. Who in these speaks for Plato? Some want to say Socrates, but that doesn't always make sense. Well, I will have more to say on this in my next post, but for now here are the quotes: and The first of these I picked up at the library two weeks ago because it had a cute title and was a new book. The Author is good and as a beginning book might be worth a read, but for me it was a little boring and several more hundred pages than I wanted to read at this time. The second book on the other hand was very influential in my final interpretation of Plato, my working model you might say, I liked the approach which I have emphasized above and I think that the book succeeded well in its stated goals. For the first few posts I just want to lay some ground work and those who have paid attention to the links in the first may have already found some interesting food for thought in them. With this I want to point out that there are people who will say this about Plato, and that about Plato and for everyone who will assert one thing, there is usually another who will say the opposite. I will examine some of the reasons for why I think this is the case in my next post. Thanks everyone for your interest and comments. Bridge over Garbled Waters Edit: Added link "Bridge over Garble Waters" to my next post the purpose of which is explained in that post.

Since you bring it up: now seems as good a time as any to take a closer look at what “understanding harmonics” means to you. We also know that this insight probably occurred when you were about fifteen, if not earlier: In this thread I implicitly asked Innersound (then pythagoreanfulllotus), to explain the above here: It might be easier to understand him. and now I finally know. At the time I was frankly puzzled as to how someone claiming to be in an “enriched” geometry class could get such an irrational fear of irrational numbers. Quotes such as this and this: Luigi Borzacchini, THE SOPHIST. GENESIS OF FORMAL THINKING IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND MATHEMATICS. (Dipartimento di Matematica, Università di Bari). Only added to my dismay at the time. For example, while is marked in its basic principles with a preestablished disharmony is repeated by Innersound all over the place, the context of the full quote, especially its emphasis on “ set-theoretical paradoxes” and Gödel, would seem to make any connection with the square root of two quite a jump. I left the matter there, because at the time I was very busy working a seven day a week schedule, which hardly gave me anytime to post here, much less conduct a serious analysis of the matter. That situation had changed by the time that the Daoism and neoplatonism thread appeared and I thought I might post at that time, but when I went to sources such as the “THE SOPHIST. GENESIS OF FORMAL THINKING IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND MATHEMATICS.”, cited above, I was further dismayed by the fact that the discussion is solely on the historical development of logic, i.e., “ FORMAL THINKING” and makes NO mention whatsoever of the square root of two at all, much less as the origin of “the square root of two is a "pre-established deep disharmony.”, perhaps he says this directly and explicitly somewhere else, but I came more and more to the conclusion that, the connection between the square root of two and this “preestablished disharmony”, was more like a flying leap then a jump. As I pursued other cited sources, similar disconnects seemed evident, and in many cases they emphasized the square root of two and the "Devil's Chord". Last week I discovered the second quote above and now, at last, I understand why, because of Innersound's early "harmonic" training created a lifelong obsession with the "Devil's Chord" and a conspiracy theory to support it, in which, like all conspiracy theories, everything will be distorted to fit into the confines of the overriding obsession. I look at Innersounds last post as an attempt to change the subject since nothing in it is an attempt to: Providing the whole book is useful, but I can see nothing in it that justifies your use of the quote as you have used it. I am of course thinking in that I might call "fair use", one criterion of which is that the quote is not used in a way that the author might object to, should they become aware of its citation. Now you have another quote to justify and that is: Edit: Edit: Added link to THE SOPHIST. GENESIS OF FORMAL THINKING IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND MATHEMATICS, above.

You quote the text I referenced in two places, in both with Having discarded music and gymnastics, strongly emphasized as you did in the quote I was addressing, as follows: So the NeoPlatonics - and Plato also - had already lost the actual shamanic training of Pythagorean philosophy - like Taoism - which is a practice of yoga as body-mind harmonization for the creation of yang qi energy. and John Curtis Franklin, “Harmony in Greek and Indo-Iranian Cosmology,” The Journal of Indo-European Studies, Volume 30, No. 1 and 2., 2002, p. 13. So this harmonization issue of mind-body transformation was attacked by Plato. which you refer to here: Both to the effect that, the emphasis you provided was to indicate, that Socrates had summarily tossed out "music and gymnastic", and replaced study with the study of “number and calculation", while completely neglecting mind/body harmony. Now you are trying to deny that this was your intent? Is there anyone who has read the original post who didn't think that Innersound intended it to emphasize the “discarded” by putting the whole thing in 24 point? Did any think my response was not apt to that intent? And as for quoting source material, how is anyone to respond to the myriad secondary sources which you often cite in a single post? Am I supposed to track down your every reference? I will repeat what I said before: So far you have not done so. Gosh, I wonder why? Since you have not taken any responsibility for your quote, I have done the best that I can with this book: Plato On Music, Soul and Body on Google Books Chapter 2, “Moving to music: a therapy for the rational soul” Begins with an interesting discussion. Chapter 3, “Musical education of rationality” Begins on page 114 and continues the discussion through page 117, but pages 118 and 119 are not available. Until you do justify your use of the quote as implying that Socrates completely “Discarded music and gymnastics”, replacing them with “number and calculation", preferable by reproducing pages 118 & 119, we have nothing else to discuss, and I will return to my posts on Confucianism. Oh, one final note, the book seems so interesting I have decided to read it myself, I will probably use inter-library loan and have it within a few weeks. Edit: Corrected books to book in last paragraph.

For those who are puzzled by Innersound's linking Plato to Confucianism here: Lisa Ann Raphals, Knowing words: wisdom and cunning in the classical traditions of China and Greece (Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 18. O.K. so just as with Plato changing the meaning of Pythagorean philosophy, we see the same solar-patriarchal transformation in China through the philosopher Dong Zongshu in the 2nd Century B.C. Philosophy professor David L. Hall documents that Zongshu changed the meaning of yin-yang from being a fluid process of resonance with equal but complementary gender relations to being a static hierarchical axiom based on left-brained patriarchal logic. The book The Tao and the Logos : literary hermeneutics, East and West by Chang, Lung-hsi (1992) documents that it was Dong Zongshu who was the most important philosopher to make patriarchal Confucionism the dominant ideology of China. it goes back to an earlier discussion with Innersound here: Lisa Ann Raphals, Knowing words: wisdom and cunning in the classical traditions of China and Greece (Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 20. O.K. so just as with Plato changing the meaning of Pythagorean philosophy, we see the same solar-patriarchal transformation in China through the philosopher Dong Zongshu in the 2nd Century B.C. Philosophy professor David L. Hall documents that Zongshu changed the meaning of yin-yang from being a fluid process of resonance with equal but complementary gender relations to being a static hierarchical axiom based on left-brained patriarchal logic. The book The Tao and the Logos : literary hermeneutics, East and West by Chang, Lung-hsi (1992) documents that it was Dong Zongshu who was the most important philosopher to make patriarchal Confucionism the dominant ideology of China. Where Innersound chose to upbraid me for daring to use an "evil" Confucian work, the Zhongyong, as a name on Dao Bums. I had very good reasons for choosing it, as will become clear later. This shows among other things, that Innersound doesn't have much of a repertoire of secondary sources for spamming purposes on this subject. It also shows that he knows next to nothing about Confucianism. I, on the other hand do, and am just as ready to quote primary sources for Confucian views as I am those of Plato, but first we need to do a quick review of Confucian history. Historically there are two main schools of Confucian thought, those that follow Mencius and those that follow Xunzi. Dong Zongshu, or more exactly Dong Zhongshu, is a Han dynasty figure who is "innocently" described on Wikipedia as: What this leaves out, is that he favored Xunzi and Xunzi's program of social control, and marginalized and suppressed the study of Mencius, who favored a program of self-cultivation that has many common points with the Neiye, and is better described as a program of self-realizaton, I quote Mencius' informal outline description here: To discover that Mencius viewed the end of Confucian self-cultivation as becoming a 'shen' or 'god' was quit a revelation, but this passage in Mencius is only part of the picture. How it relates to the teachings of the Zhongyong on chéng (诚) will be the subject of future posts. For now, I think I have given everyone plenty to think about. This post is probably long enough for now, but it it should be obvious that Mencian Confucianism is not "a static hierarchical axiom based on left-brained patriarchal logic." I will follow up with more shortly. In the meantime people interested in Confucian Self-Cultivation and more quotes like the above, may wish to check out my posts in Confucian Qi Gong. I will continue the historical outline, which will become important and even interesting, as I go along. Edit: Italicized Neiye above.

This is why I said: The Beginning of the Nineteenth Century turns out to be an important divide, because it was here that the very real campaign of aggressive materialists managed to redefine "reason" and "rationality" in terms of a materialistic "reductionism", which resulted in the Romanticist revolt against "reason", which was not really "reason" as it had been conceived of for over 2000 year, but rather a reductionist imitation based on the revival of Epicureanism beginning circa 1600 and harnessing the "Mechanical Philosophy" of the Seventeenth Century as its attack dog. I could go into considerable detail about this and its deleterious intellectual effects, but the result is the type of anti-rational thinking that is characteristic both of the revivals of Western Magic and Alchemy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries and of the exodus from the stifling materialism that became Western thought, to Eastern traditions, such as we see here on the Dao Bums. In a sense the Dao Bums is a refugee camp for people fleeing this Western reductionism, which they mistake for reason, which is why "reason" and "rationality" and "intellect" are all pejorative terms around here, even though if seen in their original senses, not their post 1800 senses, they would not be. All of this needs to be born in mind when reading older Western works and also for understanding modern works attempting to discuss older works, whether of East or West.

Yes, I watched that otherwise interesting discussion completely disintegrate under your constant spamming of cherry picked quotes from secondary sources, without any reference to what Plato actually wrote. You provide a typical example here: First of all this "(522C6-7)" is a garbled reference is to the discussion in Plato's Republic starting at 522c. This discussion occurs after "The Allegory of the Cave" and the discussion is how to educate people to have the experience of leaving the "cave" of ordinary experience and sensory "reality" and be lead to apprehend True Being. Let's look more deeply at this section: Are music and Gymnastics ever just explicitly "discarded", particularly in the sense implied by Innersound's extreme emphasis? No, it is simply proposed that they are not the study which leads to "the world of being". Instead something is proposed which "applies to all alike", which of course includes music and gymnastic, and it further proposed that this is mathematics. First of all anyone comparing Innersound's quote, highly biased by its emphasis, to Plato's writing may start to wonder how it relates to what Plato actually says, and does it represent a misunderstanding of what Plato says on the part of Pelosi, or a quotation taken out of context to support Innersound's position. Personally I think it was taken out of context, and because it is Innersound who has introduced it, I think if it is Innersound's responsibility to produce the context in which it appears, and to justify its use in this context, rather than for me to have to track it down, and I think this holds for any other secondary sources that Innersound may chose to quote. Now, I can quote plenty of Plato to show that he always considers "music and gymnastic" fundamental to education. I can show that Plato develops the short reference to "the study of the unity" into a whole "metaphysics" of the One in his dialog Parmenides, that serves as part of his "guide and convert the soul to the contemplation of true being", and I can also show that Plato is concerned about the experience of the "true being", not mere talk about it, and how it leads to immortality, but I am not sure that there is any point to it if Innersound is allowed to spam my responses with quotes from secondary sources neatly trimmed of their context as he has already done above, and which unfortunately is typical of his style. As a side note, the above can be considered part of an answer to this:

If one actually reads Plato's dialogs with a knowledge of esoteric or spiritual practice, it is amazing what one can find: During his lifetime and for over 2,000 years thereafter, Plato was never read or understood the way he has been read and understood beginning circa 1800 to the present. I don't have time right now to go into all that one can find in the dialogs, but I was continually amazed at how relevant portions of them are to spiritual practice. I will try to expand on this if I have time.

The Wikipedia article on Beckwith, is short on details, but ends with these three review references: All of them expressing reservations about various aspects of Beckwith's books, here is an example related to the Indo-European/Chinese connection: Apparently his attitudes about Chinese are very idiosyncratic. All of the reviews note an idiosyncratic tendency in his thinking and discussion. I don't know why there are only these reviews, which are anything but hardy endorsements. If someone can find some more positive ones, it would be helpful. Though I suppose that not finding any positive reviews would be helpful also, but in a different way. To my mind the biggest problem with Bechwith's suggestion are the long standing uses of Dao as road or path, including the "path" of a stream or river, and also as method or technique. It is these usages which i understand go back to Old Chinese and continue in modern Chinese, which make an Indo-European loan word problematic, but a metaphoric extension of "way" to "the way the world works" combined with "method" as the "method for 'success' in the world" makes sense to me.

I downloaded the first Chapter of the book, which is available on the page cited in the first link: Greek Buddha in the Princeton University Press Online Catalog First Chapter PDF As a piece of Rhetoric this is great. As Scholarship it disintegrates under the weight of its own footnote: Basically meaning that we have no way of knowing whether Buddha really said this or not. I am also at a loss as to know what exactly about Pyrrho's "Three Part Statement" is unprecedented and unparalleled in Greek thought. Since "doubt" about "conventional" beliefs were the chief characteristics of the Pre-Socratics, from Heraclitus to Parmenides to Democritus, of whom it is well known that Phyrrho was a follower, before his trip to India with Alexander, and who was accompanied on the trip by another well known Democritan Atomist, Anaxarchus: Of course all of this is left out of Beckwith's discussion, which by the way is a really good analysis, but it exists within a rhetorical framework which not merely completely neglects the Greek background, but denies its existence, and not a scholarly framework, which might ask how one would get from what is know about the "doubt" of the atomist school and how it might lead to such a concise statement and then examine both the reasons for attributing these statements to the earliest strata of Buddhism, and examine the possibility that it may have been the Greeks who introduced this to the Buddhists, especially bearing in mind that these "doubting Democritans" were in India more than 350 years before the founding of the Kushan Empire, according to the footnote, the earliest possible reliable dating of this material, giving plenty of time for people to fool with texts. and given this: I have to ask, are you particularly influenced by Peter Kingsley? So, you wanted to talk about the book, I have pointed out a problem with it. I hope that meets your needs.

Thanks exorcist_1699, I am glad to see that the vastness of your Rén (仁) still includes us poor stragglers/strugglers here on the Dao Bums.

Yes, I know, both plant "florescences", i.e., flowers, and metallic ones, but I thought it better not to add potentially confusing detail until the distinction was clear. As it is, some of them even "phosphoresce": A curious intersection of the history of alchemy and chemistry. Joseph Needham has a very interesting discussion of these "urine" products in Science and Civilization in China. It turns out that they are full of all sorts of interesting complex organic chemicals that have powerful effects on bodily health, among other things forms of important hormones which are also in urine and could have provided an early form of hormone therapy. it was unnecessary to allow the urine to rot: Only if all you want is chemical phosphorus. What is referred to as "rot" is really ferment. Sugars in urine will allow it to ferment and yield alcohol, which was then the "spirit of urine" and was supposed to have alchemical uses that were important for alchemy, which, while it has overlapping phenomena with chemistry, evaluates things and follows up on them in a different way.

First a little clarification: This text could have just as easily been translated as "The Secret of the Golden Florescence", but the German version by Wilhelm uses "blumen", the German for flower. Flower, however, was also used in Western Alchemy and Early chemistry, and survived even into Nineteenth Century medicine and chemistry in Flowers of Antimony. Metals and their crystals were considered very important in both the East and West in Alchemy, vitriol for example was very common in Western Alchemy: Note Both "Oil of Vitriol" and "Sweet Oil of Vitriol", powerful inorganic and organic solvents. Solvents like these, and others like "Spirit of Wine", i.e. distilled alcohol, were considered important because, they were considered to extract the "essence" from metals or plants. The key to this both in the theory of internal and external alchemy is that in neither Eastern or Western alchemy is there any hard and fast distinction between "organic" and "inorganic", and even the the West it is a purely modern distinction because of the revival of Epicureanism in the Seventeenth Century which became "Grandfathered' into the modern Western Worldview because its popularity among the movers and shakers of the "Scientific Revolution". Rather, there was a systematic metaphorical extension of "life processes" to the "generation" of metals and minerals in "the Bowels of the Earth". Crystalline metallic minerals, such as Azurite, were found with metallic ores and crystals were observed as the result of "chemical" manipulations of solvents, fire, calcination, etc. and all of these were used to demonstrate the "aliveness" of metals and crystals and the validity of the underlying metaphor. Thus the imagery of "flowers" or "florescences" of metals. At the root of both Eastern and Western alchemy, and esotericism in general, is the Microcosm/Macrocosm analogy, that in the words of Mencius ". . . all the 10,000 things are there within me . . .", so that the use of terminology drawn from "chemistry", is as much used to explain internal alchemy, as terminology derived from living systems is used to describe external alchemy. That's it in a nutshell of sorts, I hope that this is helpful about green florescence, now about that immortal . . .? I thought Ormus discussion extremely interesting: and if I can find some more time, may have some interesting things to say about that, as well as the fabled "Azure Lad", the Eastern counterpart of Xiwangmu, the Queen Mother of the West. Edit: Added link for Xiwangmu, since many people may not know her as well as I do.

I studied both the Dao De Jing and Qabalah in several of its aspects from the late Sixties on. This included books of the Work of the Chariot which Michael Sernbach references here: Their work was important in helping to revive Judaic Qabalism, especially in the US, but is not without its controversial aspects, not the least of which, even among its fellow Qabalists, is its syncretism. The conclusion to which I came in the late Seventies, was that both Daoism and Qabalah could be integrated into a fundamental Platonic worldview, particularly as Platonism was developed by the so-called Neo-Platonists such as Plotinus and Proclus. I agree that curing the gap between Science and Religion is important, but it cannot and will not come from Qabalism or Hinduism, both of which will argue for the primacy of their own religious sources, but rather from the revival of a revelation independent, which includes the revelations of "mystical seers" as well as "religious prophets", Rational Mysticism as represented by the Platonic tradition. If I have time I will post more on this here, but I have already written a fair amount about this in various of my posts on the Dao Bums.

Thread reads nicely now and I don't think anything important of mine has been hidden. I also think that it is important to note that he cites Michael Lafarge: Michael LaFargue, “Tao and Method”, 1994 Full Title: Tao and Method: A Reasoned Approach to the Tao Te Ching Description: I like LaFarge myself, but I don't think he is to everyone's taste.

Florescence is not fluorescence, but a translation of 华, huá, magnificent / splendid / flowery, which shows up a lot in Daoist texts, Immortals and Gods appear under huá canopies, in alchemy it has a technical meaning, the most common example of which would be rust or patina on bronze or brass, an "essence" that appears out of some metal. There is of course much more than this and if I have time I will return to comment more.

Well there you go, if one is open-minded and pays attention, one can learn something new everyday. I have downloaded and will read Simonis' paper. It seems interesting and bearing in mind what I posted about his possible background, may say something useful about where Linnell is coming from.

An interesting text, thanks for posting it. The link in the PDF to the translation by Robert Eno doesn't work, this corrects it: Neiye translated by Robert Eno Robert Eno teaches at Indiana University Bloomington Robert Eno has some interesting downloads related to his "Course Early Chinese Thought" here The cited paper by Fabien Simonis can be Downloaded Here: “A Chinese Model of Cognition: the Neiye” I checked this out because it seemed odd, the other works cited were standard works, but this was a very curious take, even though supervised by Robin D. S. Yates, and I thought it might give a clue to who Bruce R. Linnell, PhD, might be. My best guess based on some searching is that he may be an Astrophysicist who works at NASA with an interest in Artificial Intelligence and judging by this and another work at Project Gutenberg, possibly an interest in Chinese Texts on consciousness. Of course this is just a guess.

While researching something else, I stumbled across this interesting article from the "Journal of Chinese Philosophy": A Qigong Interpretation of Confucianism by Peimin Ni Volume 23:1 (1996.3), p. 79-97 This is not a good version of the paper, but the academia.edu version is no longer available for reading online and can only be downloaded by members. Other interesting looking papers can be found here: Peimin Ni's profile at academia.edu

A good one is Five Elments and Ten Stems by Kiiko Matsumoto and Stephen Birch, which is distributed by Redwing Book Company: Five Elments and Ten Stems at Redwing Book Company This is mostly an acupuncture text, but is very comprehensive and has some notes on cultivation theory. It is essential background. There may be more recent books that are of value, but most of my early study in this was some time ago, so book wise, I am a little out date, but the information is not. Redwing Book Company is a great source for books on Eastern Energetic therapy and cultivation, just looking at their site is educational and if one finds something there, it can possibly be ordered elsewhere if someone is outside of the U. S., also in this case, an eBook is available.

Here is an example of what forestofemptiness is talking about from Mencius, which I posted in the thread on Confucian Qi gong: One of the reason's why I try to avoid participating in discussions like this is because they are filled with people who are trying to de-invent the wheel. Everything that they say about moral relativism, etc. has already been said, considered, and refuted in books such as I refer to in my post nine above and I don't have the time to spend recounting those discussions in detail, also even some of the discussion in my commentary calls into question the anti-moral arguments that have been put forward here, as even the title of the book list "Core books for an Ethics of Self-Realization", points beyond many of the objections that have been raised here.

In my writing that I quoted above, I referenced Confucianism and Aetherous position is very Confucian. To a Confucian constructive engagement with the world is not merely a spiritual duty, it is part of ones self-realization. Because of this, Confucian's faced quandaries like this on a daily basis: with possible consequences that would make simply not getting a job seem like a blessing. Dealing with situations like this involve creativity and a certain type of verbal self-defense, for which Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), is a great preparation. Here is one way to handle challenges like this: “Well, lower level HR person, I am going to take your suggestion as a positive sign that you wish to hire me, and I would very much like to be hired and work for a company like this, where I think I could make a real contribution, but now I am wondering, by suggesting this are you testing my integrity, which I can completely understand, but I can't lie about this, much less ask a friend to do so, instead I would like to suggest some ways that we can work around this, and you and I and the company will all win. First of all, isn't the purpose of this requirement, to insure that required skills are fresh and available for use on the job? Well, here are six reasons why my experience in the past three years will actually help me to work better, . . . (insert six good reasons here) . . ., now if bearing this in mind you still think I would make a good fit in this company, and you would to hire me, but are concerned about making the choice yourself, is it possible to kick this upstairs, and maybe win the gratitude of your supervisors?” First of all your six, or however many reasons, should be good ones which you believe, and convincing ones also, which will impress the HR person. If nothing else, demonstrating creativity and adaptability will impress the interviewer, and make you seem more valuable. I think the general idea is clear enough. In this way one maintains ones personal integrity and invites the other person to help solve a problem that will benefit both of them and the company. With a little thought it becomes possible to “reframe” the situation in ways that maintain integrity and further oneself and others too. On the other hand if the HR person, said, “Well, no, we actually expect you to lie for us and I am testing to see if you will”, then I think you would be better off refusing the job anyway. Edit: I realized that I hadn't emphasized the part about the HR person suggesting the lying, so I did so.

Some time ago as part of my teaching efforts I put together some annotated reading lists, this one titled, "Core Books for an Ethics of Self-Realization", summarizes the importance of ethics very nicely. In the West we are so used to thinking of Ethics as "self-denial" and "submission" to some outside authority, i.e. "God" or whatever, that the notion of Ethics as self-realization comes as a surprise, so for what its worth here is a short argument for ethical action, complete with recommended reading:

the children who excelled at perceiving auras and different types of energy, were those who practiced chi kung from a young age.: The reason why they excel is not just because they have practiced since they were children, but because they started as children they take the experiences for granted and are not afraid that they are "hallucinating" and seeing something that is not real. during that qigong session was the first time I ever saw a human aura - hers. It was golden/yellow in color, like a halo around her whole body: If you saw an aura at this stage, then you have a natural aptitude and will develop quickly, once you are comfortable with your skill. perhaps was even frightened by it . . . I essentially denied myself that progress, for reasons unknown.: You say it all here, let go of your fear and own your ability. one that seems excellent (the type is Flying Phoenix Chi Kung): If you didn't know it already, Sifu Terry Dunn of Flying Phoenix posts here regularly under the name zen-bear and will answer questions on this thread: Flying Phoenix Chi Kung There are several people on the Dao Bums who have worked his system for years who can help you with it. Another system with strong orientation to Psychic development, Qi Healing and Daoist Magic, is that of Professor Jerry Alan Johnson. You can read about him here: International Institute of Medical Qigong There are too many types of qigong, many of which will help develop psychic abilities and there are several good ones that have people here on the Dao Bums who can help you understand and find resources for studying them. Welcome to the Dao Bums, and Good luck.

Taomeow has probably posted more on this subject then anyone else here, this being a sample: at the same time working on neigong techniques of transforming these substances into extra pure qi: This of course is the catch, if you don't know these techniques you will just kill yourself to no possible good, and the preparation for these techniques is a lot of hard preliminary work in self-cultivation. I hope Taomeow will comment on this topic.

Thank you for your response: You're certainly welcome, especially since it looks like you will take my advice seriously. Especially seeing as how I have raw fruits/vegetables for breakfast every day and oftentimes I blend them with a little ice, and though I only eat about two meals a day, lentils/raw vegetables-fruits make up the larger part of my diet.: A lot of what is taken for granted as "healthy" these days, is from the TCM perspective nonsense and harmful nonsense to boot. As far as the use of the ice goes, this is one of the most harmful things Westerners, especially Americans do to themselves. Interestingly, even the title of your thread "Snowglobe", was an indication to me of part of your problem. You come across as learned in this area/facet of internal cultivation: This is an important aspect of self-cultivation and really one that cannot be neglected, since both modern Western medicine and diet are so unhealthy, especially the so called health foods! If you would like to learn more about these things, this book: Between Heaven and Earth Harriet Beinfield and Efrem Korngold is an excellent place to start. Its self-evaluation questionnaire is worth the price of the book, and it is a good introduction to all aspects of traditional Chinese medicine, including Chinese style health food cooking. Again, Good luck.