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Long ago I was reading stuff from this agricultural chemist turned biochemist about the food we eat. Now, as advance warning, this guy was -- and sort of hilariously, too -- a bit of a wingnut. He was a preacher who got asked to leave by more than one church for being too metaphysical. He ended up working with human health and, lacking the proper terminology for about a zillion things, simply used terms the way he wanted them, which of course made anybody traditionally educated and looking into his stuff either think he was a lunatic or just lose their minds trying to wrap around it. As if all this wasn't bad enough, he was constantly under attack from official medical groups who back then were not at all against literally killing people and massive bribes to judges, and several assassination attempts failed. (When he did finally die, he was getting older and it was believed to be from complications from shrapnel, from WWII, that could never be dug out of him.) But all that aside. He had what I felt was an utterly fascinating paradigm. He had begun an agri chem guy but said that (even then in the 40s I think it was) he had to hunt down and buy teaching from experts who knew, after schooling, because schooling was run by government and a lot of it was bunk and owned (back then in the "pwned" sense, now it's literally) by chemical companies. He didn't start getting into medical stuff until a friend/neighbor's young boy had a problem nobody could solve. Anyway, this guy is the one who actually first invented hair analysis, as ash analysis (such as being able to tell you how many people or animals, and a little detail, were killed in a fire where nothing is left but ash), oh and also the Brix Refractometer or at least I think... or maybe it was evaluation based on the underlying sugar/carb property of agri... he was a smart guy. To a great degree officially stamped out of anything 'official' you'll read though since he was completely opposed to every 'official' institution (esp. the AMA, FDA, USDA, etc. despite he worked with the latter, with great complaint, for a long time) and as his primary followers have seemed to be vocal evangelist fundamental christians, that hasn't improved anything as you might imagine. He went on and on about anions and cations. He insisted that technically we did not get our energy from nutrients from food but rather, that the anions/cations of our food "interacted with" the anions/cations of our digestive system and that this "interaction" -- the dynamic -- is what gave us "energy." He also had this whole model about how allegedly the liver actually creates every... cell, but I think it's not 100% physical like you already-see-it-under-the-scope, "out of itself" -- of what it has stored or can call in from various parts of the body -- and sends it to the part of the body that needs the new cell, which is in the process (calling for it) and then "divides" with the liver's input basically staffing this doubling in components. (I found that an interesting sync to some of the ancient legends e.g. of the guy getting a piece of his liver eaten every day, but it was 'for' the world.) He had a ton of knowledge "in his head" and not shared with others, which formed a lot of his ability for amazing diagnostics. I didn't know until I read some of his stuff that there were so many different kinds of calcium, and that each kind has different effects, and that you can actually have too much of one kind and be stockpiling it painfully in joints (well esp. if deficient in the nutrients that better direct it) while suffering from lack of calcium in other ways for not having other forms of it. I may be remembering wrong as my familiarity was in passing years ago and it turns out my body wasn't getting very much oxygen or nutrients from my blood for many years, so I am suspicious of my memory of everything. I do have some write-up notes I posted eons ago for some friends here for anybody interested. http://www.palyne.com/carey-reams-rbti/carey-reams-rtbi-pjnotes1.html Anyway, Reams was all about the interplay of anions/cations as it applied to nutrition which I thought was novel. I find the concept of this interesting because in my meditation work (sort of jungian-ish active imaginational-ish -- more an individual process led by identities on my inside, than anything I've learned from the outside), there are a couple of basics... one is that you "seduce it, don't force it," because everything is about 'the relationship of geometries' as I feel it in my gut. The other is that there's no such thing as me-here and that-there because all I ever can perceive is the dynamic interplay between what-I-think-is-me and what-I-think-is-other. So if I see a table, or John, what I'm really seeing is the ever-happening-"event" of the interplay between the energy of me and the energy of the table or john. Obviously if I change me, the dynamic event, the relationship, changes, hence one's ability to change reality intentionally. In accordance with Will as some would say... if you can "bother getting around to it" as I would say, once the psychology realizes the power we have to do so. But so... maybe it is ever thus. That our nutrients and our breath (Reams believed we got a good chunk of energy just from breathing, which is progressive when you consider he was not eastern in approach) and our spirit and other relationships are not about the creative hermitcrab-shells we see as the physical mass part, but the dance of the ions underneath. *** Separate: Don't worry about liability in this case, but thank you. I've been to the doc very recently. My heart problem was fixed (replaced a wrongly-shaped major valve I was born with) so although I'll be in healing mode esp. for the next year that's ok. The other issue is a sort of dysplasia of adipose there is no known solution to (affects over 10% of women to varying degrees but rather extremely in mine. Genetically associated). My kidney tests just taken come out fine. In fact the heart surgeon said that aside from the valve he was replacing, which was a birth issue, and aside from the 'lipedema' which nobody's expected to fix, that I was really healthy. Which is funny because you don't hear of large older women in a cardiac ward being 'really healthy' very often I'll bet. The only problem, aside from side-effects of lipedema of course, is that due to a few years of undiagnosed heart-valve massive leakage, and open heart surgery where they pour a ton more fluids into you, and it takes some time for the body to adapt to the heart's power so solution isn't instant... I have liquid edema too now. Docs say it should go away gradually, but they expected sooner it's obvious. There's a LOT of it, and combined with the lipedema it literally makes it very difficult to stand, and walk, let alone exercise for real. And I NEED to exercise for the sake of my new heart valve, never mind the edema, so basically the problem is preventing me getting to the solution that would solve it, a horrid catch 22. It's imprisoning mobility-wise which is a nightmare, and a long-term one for me, so I'm sure this is some major energetic thing I need to work on spiritually too of course, but probably being so big and in my face, it's completely invisible to me... My body did give me SOME info, which I am implementing now (I was too trashed to do much besides keep breathing, barely, and work via laptop for a living, barely, till I had the surgery recently). One was nutrients: Sulfur and Quercetin. My inner-identities worked very hard to get me this message, the first in a deep male voice, and the second with my Aeons holding up three cards with letters on them, spelling que-rce-tin, that was funny. I happened to put them in search related to cell membrane, after a vision suggested this was the underlying problem of lipedema to me, and turns out they both have research suggesting they're a big deal for that. Who knew! Well I am only just beginning that now. The second was frequency: long ago I had put together something we called a 'Carmi blanket' on the FreX yahoo list (basically this is where you set a frequency generator, and it puts forth to a radio receiver [probably modern iphone could do this now], which puts out to the power cord of an electric heating pad. So instead of plugging the heating pad into the wall (Note: it does not heat, obviously, this way) you're plugging it into whatever 'frequency' you're running. (Being a good documentarian, I did write down what I was doing at the time, found at http://diy-em.blogspot.com/2013/09/carmi-blanket-em-tech.html for anyone interested.) Anyway I was thinking about it one night driving home, and my Aeons pushed into my dream and showed me a new one that was all about 'the legs' (what I was focused on) (this for adipose-edema from Lipedema, not liquid heart-edema mind you), and gave me the specific frequencies: 22Hz mostly; with some 23-25Hz also, and some 262Hz 'for protection.' Now I have no idea what really works in that category for any given thing, but if your subconscious is interrupting your dreams to give you answers that specific I figure they're worth paying attention to. So as soon as I find the bloody thing (my house looks like a hoarder lives here as I have not been mobile to care for it beyond hiring someone to clean for a couple years) I will do that too. My new hobby for the next year is called "getting rid of all the stuff in my house." Here's hoping it's a feng shui analogue to getting rid of all the stuff I don't want in my body, too. :-) RC

@Dawei: Thank you so much! This is very cool! @ Exorcist: Glad to talk with you again too! Yes, that would be awesome. I used to make technical translations for a living, and I would always sit down with an engineer to have the stuff I was to translate explained to me, pick his or her brain regarding the terminology used, and have the thing or process described by the term elucidated. One can't be a specialist in everything-that-is, but knowing a language and teaming up with a specialist who knows the subject wins that battle. OK, let me fess up. My teacher once compared taiji skill of a master to one of those three-legged ding cauldrons -- the three legs being the form, the tuishou, and the weapon. Ding was in use from the Bronze Age and still is today, because it is a kind of thing that is complete and perfect for its purpose -- nothing is excessive and nothing is missing. If any one of its three legs is missing, however, the ding can't stand on its own -- or to get back from the metaphor, the skill is not complete and therefore can't be perfect. But even if all three legs are there yet one or two are shorter, it's shaky and unstable. So, I need to lengthen two of the legs, because my form "leg" is way longer (by years). I don't really need to draw the jian from the back, all I need is practice, there's plenty to work on without getting into any uncharted territory, and yet-- and yet I have a vision-memory-dream, not sure what else to call it, it's not a daydream and not in my head, it's something my body is trying to remember... it's like forgetting how to ride a bicycle and yet knowing what riding a bicycle feels like... so this drawing from the back move is something along these lines, as though something in me knows how to do it but I can't get to it. Weird, huh? Past life? Kung fu movies? Who knows... It itches between my shoulder blades, this unobtainium...

alright then, i guess it is cleared up (like the dissipated exhaled smoke of my morning bowl--which resembles your randian utopian pipe dream) go ahead and implement it. i am ready to see this one true reality.

No, it wouldn't be a random pipe dream, it's common sense. It's simple to put the philosophy behind it, but for most people, well, they get it. Few of us like violence, we get no pleasure from theft or cheating. What you had was in the past. There will always be bad actors that's why we need laws and justice. We have to grow forward. We make mistakes, it's human, but we learn, we adapt, we learn ,we integrate an move on. Your country and mine eventually concluded slavery wasn't moral. Objectivism would have confirmed that truth even before there was slavery. Don't hurt people or steal their stuff.

While we are often diametrically opposed in our views, it's seldom more clear than in this instance mate. Your perception that organisms are individuals striving alone with self generated action, while not surprising or new to me, is still strikingly strange compared to my experience of reality. But such is the limitless nature of perception and expression of tao. There is room for everything. To me... Life is an implicitly and utterly interconnected web of nigh on indistinguishable co-arising conditions which constantly and fluidly combine in the persistent co-creation of what we reduce with language into the word reality. Life and existence, indeed all phenomena are inexorably linked to me via the foundation from which they arise... awareness. Life and death is one fluid process and expression, not opposites, but varied extremes of one unified field of energy which is constantly arising from the foundation of awareness. The lower condensation of vibration is our experience of physical reality, yet it is a mere pinprick of experience when viewed within its woven place among all manner of subsequent variations, vibrations and frequencies on the overall scale. Further, even within our next small sphere of perception, our consciousness is divided into myriad frequencies in a web of interconnected experience on the subtle. The problem solving waking state, appears to dominate, yet is always floating softly on the top of the ocean of our underlying consciousness and awareness. The many states of dream, the variety of meditative states, the trance states and all of those varied again within the context of fluid motion and/or stillness. The shear engine of the unconscious which fuels all the biological processes, oh which many derive the majority of our underlying emotional and hence subsequent types of conscious thought forms. All interconnected. Patterns within patterns, fractal re-expression... as within, without. We are fluid expressions. All of us, including the stones now standing at the beach which will someday be sand and another day be 'living beings'. And while I can point to the spot just beyond the tip of my finger and say 'this is where my body ends' there is no escape from the awareness that the elemental expression of my body, is a flow of constant food, oxygen, sunlight and water from my body to every continent on our planet, my breath is recycled from the dawn of our atmosphere... as are all of my conscious states... there is an unending flow into and out of every aspect of our minds and bodies in the present moment and while our perception seems to compel some to identify as somehow independent, I cannot escape the awareness that while I am composed of many small things, I am one small aspect of that which seems infinitely greater...

I doubt everyone can personally relate to your situation, profounded - but some of us here can. I am one of them. I know what it is like to be predisposed to intensity, thrills, extreme emotions and sensations and so forth. Along with this is usually something described as an "addictive personality", because obsessiveness is also a key facet of this mindset. There is a much stronger element of fixation involved in such people, because that is simply required to hold on or continue with such "extreme" activities, which are disruptive by their very nature. When you mix in codependency, its a superbad combo - incredibly volatile. People like us gravitate to each other because we know that our combined forces will further amplify the whole situation in an exponential way - as in, the sum is greater than the parts. It all fits together like that. I know a handful of guys that always attract "crazy" girls, much like myself, and being able to observe them has given me the space to see things I would have liked to avoid seeing in myself. Eventually I came to realize all sorts of things about myself and my situation, and by then I had created enough objectivity in my personal situation that I could step out of myself to a certain degree and move on with life by choice, as opposed to by impulse (or reflex... in other words, automatically). This is may help you proceed as well. Perhaps we should go back a bit and relive some of the madness... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Cn1Y_XF4E4 I don't think I am what I was before I never watched anyone die before I wish I'd never left home I wish I'd left it alone Temptation is a disease You can never do as you please Your body takes over and your mind don't care Never think twice what might happen... out there Go straight in for the ultimate sin nobody else ever seems to care So I took what I thought was mine And I waited for a very long time And I thought I knew what happened to you you told me exactly what to do I did it right, stayed up all night I Felt like killing myself for you I don't think I think like I did before I never watched anyone die before I felt like I died as well The look the words the smell The way you looked at me As if I'd never be free I remember the words like a favorite song 'cause I cant forget the way things went wrong Faked a picture of perfect health Then I realized I was killing myself I don't think I am what I was before I never watched anyone die before I dream in slow motion and I wake up screaming

In a dream I was told I had to remove my hijackers before I could cross the bridge, and this meant actively working on emotions that overtake my mind such as fear, shame, sadness etc. I have made a practice of looking for and wrestling with these hijackers and removing them one by one, and I have found the results of this to be quite rewarding in the long run as my True Self is slowly revealed, if I had my life to live over again I wouldn't choose any other path

Sounds like you had a dream that crystallized a specific insight for you.. those are pretty special

I've had many flying dreams (lucid as well as non-lucid) but this was different. Flying dreams are when I take-off from a dead stop and and whizzing around at high speeds. Sometimes in the middle of the flight I used to get scared and start free-falling until I was able to muster up enough presence of mind to resume my flight again. Those are as you described. This one is weird because it reminds me of something my first teacher would tell us about Prof Cheng Man Ching having said. First we fight with gravity to stay upright and move. Then with time taiji feels like swimming in water. Eventually it feels like swimming in air... Half lion half wolf? Chimera? Wow...wish there was an easy way for us to tap into and understand what the dream states actually mean...though I know it's moot in many cases. Like Taomeow said...with me too, some have been just dreams, some lucid (where I was in control but unable to break out of the dream matrix) and in others some teachers would visit and their teachings made lasting effect in my life...

Plenty of times, in various forms. Ive found it sometimes very easy and serene flying through the air, sometimes quite wild and crazy like a jet plane or something, also times where its the rising up into the air with a more "liquid" feeling - like it seems you are describing. I had a lucid dream once where I became lucid as I was flying way high up, above clouds and so forth so I was looking down on the tiny houses below and all that - I was thinking to myself, "wow Im flying - thats pretty odd, I dont think that is normal" and BOOM, then Im lucid in the dream and (as usual in a lucid dream) it all becomes much more real seeming, basically as real as the "normal world", then I got really freaked out because of how high I was off the ground, just flying there. I got a bit startled, thinking "whoa!!!" and due to this I started to drift back down, not fast but not too slow. I immediately realized this as a mistake and was calming my emotions and so forth, and that seemed to correspond with the descent back to the ground getting slower and more gentle. I touched down to the ground softly as if stepping down from a stair, and by then I was fully back into a very calm state, and feeling like I was rising again, which I did - but not before I came face to face with some kind of creature that is extremely hard to describe. It looked like a giant cat (lion or jungle cat sized) but it was also very wolf or dog-like as well - it was a strange looking animal for sure. Except it also had these very large, extremely intelligent seeming eyes - kinda like when you look into another persons eyes and how different that is from looking into a frogs eyes. However as it looked at me I got the impression it was even way more intelligent than that - much more intelligent than people, and me as well. We had a brief and mutually curious non-verbal greeting before I floated back up into the sky. It was a super weird dream.

Definitely has something to do with the light jin in my case. I never had any flying dreams before -- just this one, recently, when I was specifically spending some time on the Double Jump Kick in Chen laojia (in my waking life) trying to get to that suspended/levitating state that requires stepping on air as though it's a staircase. The dream was brief. I found myself jumping so high that I could see the curvature of the round sky, and looking at a mountaintop from above. I saw the figures of two walking humans who had just made it to the summit. I couldn't see who they were but had a sense they were a man and a woman. The mountain was covered with snow, and the sky curving all around it was a milky wintery blue. A voice inside my mind's ear said loud and clear, "On top of the world." That was it. I think I mentioned before, in some dream thread or other, that I have three kinds of dreams: the no-dream dark dream that feels nurturing and recharging and produces no images -- these are my default dreams, but it's not a "no dreams" state (I remember the difference), I do dream that I'm in that dark recharging place, and deliberately stay there. Then there's mundane dreams -- I get them very rarely. And dream-visions -- these are the rarest (a few years apart) and have a real-life-event impact, they change my perceptions, they are like an education to get, what you do with your education is an unknown but you've graduated from some program or other and know what the program was... then you either apply what you've learned, or not. So, this one was one of the dream-visions.

I had a strange dream a couple nights back. I was walking normally and then my steps started getting lighter like I was floating. And soon I was swimming in the air. It felt like how the floating Jin feels... Anyone had similar experiences/dreams?

Where am I ? How do I know it ? What should I do ? Is this what you are asking ? You want to be in bliss, but then I don't. I don't subscribe to it, don't look for it or want it. It looks awfully like the somatic lifestyle from Aldous Huxley, the hippy dream. Turn on, tune in, drop out. For a long while I wanted that, but it looks like evasion now. I wouldn't want it even if I could have it.

Its rather long. Also the pictures are missing but the picture titles remain , there were a heap of explanatory diagrams and pics. Also, I would like to again take the opportunity to thank Michael Sternbach , I lost my article and only had one copy that I had sent Michael via PM, he was able to get it back to me so now I have it back . It would probably be lost for ever otherwise . I dont have the time to go through it now and correct all the pasting changes ... like better spacing and stuff . Here is a rough version . SYSTEMS AND MAPS OF NUMBER In some traditions numbers are not just symbols that tell us how many of a particular thing there are but can be seen as divine emanations. In simpler form it goes something like this; 1. The original primal unity. Some call it God - at the stage of God before creation. Others call it pure Self or pure Being. In cosmology it represents the singularity before the ‘Big Bang’. In geometry, it is represented by the ‘point’. (In the Thelemic system {which uses Ancient Egyptian Gods and symbols as metaphors} this is symbolised by the point or disc i.e. the Sun or Hadit.) 2. There doesn’t seem to be much of a definition so far, as definition has not come into being. Concepts like self or even God require some level of awareness of the self or being, that is, it is postulated that being or self will have self-awareness. This concept or awareness of the self or being is a little different from the idea of self on its own. The idea of self, on its own, ‘implies’ awareness of self, one has within it the potential for two, duality, i.e. the self itself and the contemplation of or awareness of self. Now we have two concepts; the self and the self’s idea of itself. Subjective and (to an extent) objective. To contemplate the self requires one to ‘step outside’ of the self and ‘look back’ at the self. In geometry this is symbolised by ‘the line’. [This ‘dimension’ is perhaps the basis of the components of matter and energy; In the 1980s, a new mathematical model of theoretical physics called string theory emerged. It showed how all the particles, and all of the forms of energy in the universe, could be constructed by hypothetical one-dimensional "strings", infinitesimal building-blocks that have only the dimension of length, but not height nor width. (In the Thelemic system this process is seen as a moving point, and symbolised by the winged disc) 1. As one implies two, two implies three. Via the process in 2 a new view is formed, a ‘new’ view of the self as gained by contemplation or awareness of the self. [Or the vibration of the ‘string’ forms a ‘particle’ or ‘energy field’.] Something has been gained, even if it is ‘just’ internal experience. In geometry this is symbolised by the concept of ‘surface’. It is also represented by the triangle. The triangle represents structure, order and form, definition and rigidity. It represents either; Singularity further explained by its polarities or a mediating ‘middle path’ between two polarities. With 3 ‘space’ has been created; up/down, left/right, forwards/backwards. Now we begin to see how maps of 3 can be useful; The three Gunas – rajas, satvas and tamas, the three alchemical principles – sulphur, salt and mercury, The Holy Trinity – Father, Son, Holy Spirit, the three primary colours – red blue yellow and many other things like; Yin, Yang, Tao, even in electricity – positive, negative and current or temperature, moisture, light or Mother Father Child (to cut through all the mythic terminology). (In Thelema the ‘product’ of Hadit and Nuit {who represents zero or the circle – whose radius is infinate as Hadit represents the point or centre of the circle, which is located everywhere} is Ra Hoor Khuit; motion or ‘force’. Ra Hoor Khuit But with three we are still in the realm of idea, or the ideal world. It is a little beyond our normal comprehension and experience (which is why people have always used symbols, like maps or hieroglyphs or gods). On the Tree of Life of the Qabbalah this ‘Supernal Triad’ lies above the ‘Abyss’. Energies ‘travelling’ into manifestation pass through the third Sphere, Binah and become formulated, solidified, restricted and directed to become further manifest in the fourth realm. Alternatively, energies travelling ‘up’ the Tree, towards duality, unity and beyond, become liberated from form and restriction and Binah becomes a realm of liberation. [in the realm of physics this is the 3-D world of matter.] 1. As two implied three, three implies four. The energies manifesting in four take on the ‘principles of four’ and are able to operate in a word of ‘double duality’ (2 x 2). Although many systems use the map of 4 it has its roots in 3 and extensions to 5. In four we have the map of the 4 elements; fire, water, air, earth, the four suits of the Tarot, the four worlds of the Qabbalah and many more which we will look at below. Four brings the concept of space from the 3 (up-down, left-right, forwards-backwards) which define space. The 4 is the result, ‘space’ itself. In physics it represents the concept of time. 2. Five moves more into the world of action. One analogy is the pyramid; the four sides can be extended up into the point. We can get the idea of motion and action. It can also relate to the pentagram; the four elements and spirit. Some traditions have 5 elements, either including ‘spirit’ as an element or adding an element such as wood or metal. In physics this is the idea of motion.] 3. Six solidifies the manifestation of the second triangle. It can be represented as the hexagram; two superimposed triangles, one pointing up, the other down. It can represent the four elements and spirit, with spirit in its duality of active and passive, or the four elements, their origin in spirit and their connection to ‘earth’. [ “Height, width, and length constitute three-dimensional space, and time gives a total of four observable dimensions; however, string theories initially supported the possibility of ten dimensions – the remaining six of which we cannot detect directly. This was later increased to 11 dimensions based on various interpretations of the ten dimensional theory that led to five partial theories ... Super-gravity theory also played a significant part in establishing the necessity of the 11th dimension.” (Wikipeadia). The relationship of this model to the Qabbalistic model of 10 spheres of Creation (with an 11th and ‘hidden’ sphere – Daath, situated in the ‘Abyss’) and its manifestation through the 5 elements is an interesting correlation but beyond the scope of this article at present.] Since this article relates mostly to the map of four I won’t go further with the numbers. One thing to point out is, so far, I have been quiet lineal. There are concepts that relate to reflection (or refraction), that is, the Supernal Triad on the Tree of Life reflects through (or on the waters of) the Abyss and makes another downward pointing triangle (the first triangle implies a second, as 1 implies 2) and of course this requires a third triangle, and all three come together in the manifest realm, to make the 10th sphere of the Tree of Life. But there is also the idea (of lineal manifestation) within this system of the Lightning Flash, where the energy travels from 1 – 10. This might seem all good so far but what about zero? The above system seems to be rather ‘patriarchal' and relating to cultures who have a singularity genesis. We adopted the concept of zero mathematically from the Islamic world but it can also be seen in Qabbalah in the worlds of pre-existence; Ain, Ain Soph and Ain Soph Ur (and again we can see how the Supernal Triad is a reflection from the triad of ‘negative existence’). Adding the concept of zero we can see how that implies the number one. I am sure physicists can explain how the ‘Big Bang’ came from nothing better than I can, but a simple mathematical equation will suffice here; if we consider the manifest world is duality and things appear in polarities, opposite pairs, we have + ‘side’ of one thing and – ‘side’ of another, if they are equal values , ‘n’, then we have +n + -n = 0 , therefore, 0 = -n + +n. [ “String theory’s concept of supersymmetry is a fancy way of saying that each particle has a related particle called a superpartner. Keeping track of the names of these superpartners can be tricky, so here are the rules in a nutshell. • The superpartner of a fermion begins with an “s,” so the superpartner of an “electron” is the “selectron” and the superpartner of the “quark” is the “squark.” • The superpartner of a boson ends in “–ino,” so the superpartner of a “photon” is the “photino” and of the “graviton” is the “gravitino.” Use the following table to see some examples of the superpartner names. Some Superpartner Names Standard Particle Superpartner Higgs boson Higgsino Neutrino Sneutrino Lepton Slepton Z boson Zino W boson Wino Gluon Gluino Muon Smuon Top quark Stop squark.” – Wikipedia article on String Theory.] Now, looking at any ‘n’, + or –, we can understand it further by converting it to the world of duality that we operate in. So we have + and – of +n and + and – of –n. In the elemental world this is shown as a division into active and passive. Active elements are Fire and Air; passive elements are Water and Earth. So, looking at maps of four the obvious place to start seems to be the four elements. But why do we need maps anyway? For the Hermeticist all things are interrelated but some vibrate within specific energy fields. It can be handy for comprehension of interrelationships to draw the line somewhere, so we develop maps of 1 - singularity, 2 - duality, 3 - trinities (as mentioned above), 4 - Elements, 7 - planets, 10 – spheres (Qabbalah), 12 – signs (astrology), 22 paths (Qabbalah), 64 Hexagrams (I Ching). The Principles The DEACON: “Mysterious Energy, triform , mysterious Matter, in fourfold and sevenfold division, the interplay of which things weave the dance of the Veil of Life upon the Face of the Spirit.” [From ‘The Collects’; The Mass of the Gnostic Catholic Church.] The important concept is the connection and interrelationship between things and not viewing things as separate from each other or ourselves as separate from the things around us. One versed in this philosophy will not just see a ‘thing’ but all things related to it will come to mind so one can understand the ‘one thing’ more holistically and how it relates to the self and the self relates to many things, the things within or outside of a ’field’ or relationship. It is a way of increasing our knowledge and understanding of ourselves, others and environment, that hopefully leads to wisdom in our actions. (See above article on Hermetics.) This is probably easiest understood by the relationship to the four elements and the psyche and it is my view that for correct operation they should be in a particular order of manifestation. The four elements are Fire, Water, Air and Earth. They respond to; fire, the Self - inspiration, intuition, individuality and connection to spirit, the True Will; water, the emotional body - the unconscious, the dream world, feelings, empathy, understanding, etc.; air, the intellectual and rational body, logic, thought, ‘mind’, etc. and lastly, earth, the physical body. The balance is important, consider this; we have a ‘Eureka’ moment (Some say great writing, music, creation, performance by a ‘Master’ comes from the otherworld. In moments like these we can become aware that it is more than ourselves creating, sometimes it is as though ‘we’ have little to do with the process, we are just a ‘channel’), we are ‘inspired’ with an ‘idea’, we make it our ‘own’ and begin to go about bringing it into manifestation. The fire is then tempered by water; next we should see how we feel about it, does it sit right, do we have emotive issues to sort out about it? Some say, “sleep on it first”, what is that but ‘putting it through the unconscious’? Next, with air, we should analyse it, see if it is possible, the how and where and why, think it through and make a logical plan. Lastly earth; we need to DO something about it - put the plan into action and bring it to manifestation, otherwise we are uninspired or unoriginal, we are doing something we don’t feel right about, or we haven’t used our intellect and logic, leading to inspirational ideas that can make one feel good but can leave one sitting out in a field for days waiting for aliens to come and dissolve all of our difficulties. And lastly, what is the use of any of it unless we DO something about it and ‘earth’ the current – we would be caught up in a ‘pipe-dream’. The order of manifestation and hierarchy in the psyche is as important as balance. The difficulty with the standard modern mind set is that many of us don’t really understand our individuality, individuation, ‘True Will’ or spirit. Mostly our emotions are confused and run rampant. So what is left but mind, supposedly third place in the hierarchy, to fill the gap? Mind - this is one of our major problems, as well as a major asset. How can we not deny mind yet use it as an asset while moderate its difficult nature? We need to get mind in its place, it should be third in the hierarchy. One cannot force it, it will rebel. Here is a story to explain. One day, a factory worker (‘mind’) went to work, when he got there he found management had not arrived. Not even the foreman was present. He became concerned and started racing around, giving orders, taking orders on the phone, directing other workers and at the same time trying to take his place to do his normal job on the production line. Of course, chaos ensued, he did a bad job of everything and the things produced were faulty or imperfect, and at times the whole production line came to a grinding halt. Someone tried to tell him that he was in the wrong place, “Get out of the office. Stop telling everyone what to do! Just do your own job.” But of course he could not and would not. Some tried to pull him away but he fought back. He was concerned that production would cease and there was no one to reasonably convince him otherwise. Eventually the owner and the foreman arrived and said, “Thank you for working so hard, here are the others, they are competent and will go back to their job and do it properly, but we can’t do it without the valuable work you do in your department, so now you can go back to that and do your job even better.” And that was the only thing that convinced him to get out of the office, stop telling everyone else what to do, and do his job efficiently – with appreciation for his role. As I go on looking at many maps of four, I will list them in this above order so we can see their relationship to other maps and themselves within this idea of a hierarchical order. Colour There are 3 ‘primary’ colours; red, blue, yellow. There are 4 ‘natural’ colours; red, blue, yellow green : fire, water, air, earth. We have 3 sets of colour receptors; black and white, blue and yellow and red and green. These three combine to give hundreds of possible hues like purple and magenta. Within the eye the retina has two types of light sensitive cells called rods and cones. Cones absorb red blue and yellow but do not work well in detecting colour in low light. Rods have ‘sacrificed’ colour reception to work as ‘night vision’ and detect black and white. Signals travel from the retina along the optic nerves to the visual cortex for sorting and sending to the three relevant parts of the brain to analyse the signals in respect to three qualities; movement, colour, distance. These three parts of the brain send their processed information back to the visual cortex where it integrates the information. Light – singularity, passes through two types of receptors to make three dimensions of colour, in a duality (or polarity) black / white, blue / yellow, red green, to process through the visual cortex to three parts of the brain and back again to make it possible to observe the four ‘natural colours’ and their combinations. The four psychological truths. 1. Stick to reality – Review the internal map. We all make our own internal map of how we make sense of the external environment. The external environment can change, sometimes greatly or very fast. We need to review our maps to make sure they serve us with the outside reality or we follow an old or irrelevant system to what we need to know, do or should be learning. (Fire. This is a form of projection as in extend Ki {see below}, but one has to make sure their projected reality, or understanding of reality is in tune with outward reality.) 2. Delay gratification. Sublimation of desire (water - feelings). Hold off a bit, instant gratification sets up an unhealthy programme that can lead to addictive behaviours. In experiments children were given a choice; have all the sweets on that plate soon or have the one sweet on that other plate now. The children that could not wait exhibited more psychological dysfunction than the others. 3. Withholding truth. (Air, mind, communication.) Modification of our own truth in communication to the level that the other is able to handle. Not to do this can cause trouble with the self and socially. (E.g. It might not be appropriate, YET, to tell little Johnny that there is no Santa, even though it is a ‘truth’.) 4. Combine and balance the above. The 3 Gunas. This Vedic principle is an example of the primary triangle. In Samkhya philosophy, there are three major Gunas that serve as the fundamental operating principles or 'tendencies' of prakṛti (universal nature) which are called: sattva guṇa, rajas guṇa, and tamas guṇa. The three primary Gunas are generally accepted to be associated with creation (rajas), preservation (sattva), and destruction (tamas). Beyond these forces or their influence or balanced within them lies a ‘supernal consciousness, depending on the tradition; Brahma, Krishna, etc. “The World deluded by these Three Gunas does not know Me: Who is beyond these Gunas and imperishable.” Who is this ‘Me’? Here we have another three implying a fourth, this time , ‘above’ (as opposed to ‘below’, a pendant or result, i.e. 4, balance all three above or bring into manifestation, bring together back to a unity that has grown from the process of splitting the one into two / three). A good example is the dialogue from the first part of The Rite of Jupiter (a series of planetary / mythic dramatic rituals). There are three central characters representing the Gunas and a central character; Centrum in Centri Trigono (C.I.C.T.) – the one in the centre of the triangle. “The Temple represents the Wheel of Fortune of the Tarot. At its axle is the Altar on which sits C.I.C.T. On the rim, S. at East spoke, H. at North-West, T. at South-West.” Here are the three principles. The Gunas with the “me who is beyond these Gunas” in the middle, on the Great Wheel. At one stage the ‘self beyond the Gunas’ addresses the ‘others’; C.I.C.T. “Feeling, and thought, and ecstasy Are but the cerements of Me. Thrown off like planets from the Sun Ye are but satellites of the One. But should your revolution stop Ye would inevitably drop Headlong within the central Soul, And all the parts become the Whole. Sloth and activity and peace,” (as the three ‘gunas are referred to here) “When will ye learn that ye must cease? TYPHON. How should I cease from lethargy? HERMANUBIS. How should I quench activity? SPHINX. How should I give up ecstasy? C.I.C.T. What shines upon your foreheads? S.H.T. (together). The Eye within the Triangle. C.I.C.T. What burns upon your breasts? S.H.T. (together). The Rosy Cross. C.I.C.T. Brethren of the Rosy Cross! Aspirants to the Silver Star! Not until these are ended can ye come to the centre of the wheel.” Later, the ‘Gunas’ argue, C.I.C.T. admonished them; C.I.C.T. “Irreconcilable, my children, how shall ye partake of the Banquet of Jupiter, or come to the centre of the wheel? For this is the secret of Jupiter, that He who created you is in each of you, yet apart from all; before Him ye are equal, revolving in Time and in Space; but he is unmoved and within.” Although it appears as a map of three it is describing a process of four (or 3 ‘implies’ 4 – as in the example above). One example is a three sided pyramid that creates an apex or a three sided pyramid and its base. Models of three often include a fourth principle (originating) above or within the triangle (the eye within the triangle symbol) or extending ‘below’ to show an ‘outcome’, e.g. all three elements combine to make earth. The 4 worlds of Qabbalah. In Qabbalah (a form of Jewish mysticism) the Tree of Life has four divisions; Atziluth, Archetypal World – Fire. The term Atzilut is usually translated as "Emanation" - the first emanation out of God's unique and pure Essence, and is therefore the "World" closest to Divinity. This Substance corresponds to Philosophic Fire, ‘living light’. This is the primal spiritual Substance from which all other matter evolves. Briah, Creative World – Water. Briah translates as "Creation". The function of Briah is to define specific Form and function which begin to occur at this stage. Yetrizah, Formative World – Air. This is the stage where analysis is applied to matter, and where these qualities are synthesised and formed into archetypal compositions with a view towards various specific applications. Assiah, Material World – Earth. Assiah is the actual physical universe in which all things live and carry out their functions. Divisions for the Soul. The Hermetic Qabbalah also has similar divisions for the soul; the four parts of the soul; 1. Yecidah ("single one") relates to the ultimate unity of the soul in God, as manifest by pure faith, absolute devotion and the continuous readiness to sacrifice one's life for God. 2. Ruach ("spirit") relates to the emotions. 3. Neschamah ("inner soul") relates to the mind and intelligence. 4. Nephesch (Animal soul – ‘creature’ -- the lower soul) relates to behaviour and action. The 4 DNA letters GACT. The genome of an organism is inscribed in DNA, or, in the case of some viruses, RNA. The portion of the genome that codes for a protein or an RNA is called a gene. Those genes that code for proteins are composed of tri-nucleotide units called codons, each coding for a single amino acid. Each nucleotide sub-unit consists of a phosphate, a deoxyribose sugar, and one of the four nitrogenous nucleobases; the purine bases adenine (A) and guanine (G), the pyrimidine bases cytosine © and thymine (T). Four Systems in the Body. FIRE WATER AIR EARTH If we add a ‘fifth element’ – spirit we can include ‘mind’. The Four principles of Divine Living (from Buddhism). Loving kindness, Compassion, Equanimity (balanced mind) and Appreciative Joy (or Sympathetic Joy). The 4 principles of Aikido. Briefly, Aikido is known as a non-violent/confrontational martial art that generally uses gentle and fluid movements to contain or control energies that come into one’s sphere of operation. It can work on any level, spiritual, emotional, intellectual or physical. The four principles of Aikido are; 1, project Ki. 2, concentrate on your one point. 3, ‘empty’ your mind. 4, keep weight underside. 1. Project Ki. Ki or Chi is the visualisation of life force coming out from you, through the hands mostly (e.g., someone grabs your wrist, first response should be, project Ki out through your fingers) but also other parts of the body, including the eyes (one can notice a distinct ‘sparkle’ in the eyes when another does this), this is the internal life force and fire. This is generated by absorbing the Ki from the ‘infinite’ (or time and space being curved it may be ‘one’s’ own Ki returning?) into the Hara (the centre just below the navel). 2. Keeping the one point; visualise the universal Ki concentrating and flowing into the Hara, visualise your Hara as black hole at the centre of the universe. This is absorption and relates to water. 3. No mind. Have ‘no mind’, just don’t think about it, keep the mind blank, and calm, like a clear blue sky - air. If you can’t, only think about the things that directly relate to what you are doing. 4. Keep weight underside. Earth - body and balance is held by keeping weight underside, i.e. visualise one’s weight as concentrating on any part of the body that is underside, bottom edge of arms (when extended) bottom of feet, inside of thighs (if feet apart) even under the chin, nose, brows and ear lobes. Of course, it all changes as one moves. I know from personal experience if one can master all these and bring them together one can achieve seemingly abnormal feats (throwing three attackers at once with little effort, not being able to be lifted off the ground, not being overcome by three gripping a staff you grip with one hand, not being able to have your arm bent, and even, as personally demonstrated to me by a teacher, not being able to be pushed over by 20 people all behind each other, all pushing, while the other squats on the balls of the feet, etc.) The 4 Male Archetypes. In ‘King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine’ by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette an extensive use of the 3 / 4 model is utilised. They divide the male psyche into four components; King, Warrior, Magician and Lover. [by now you should be able to match each to its element.] Each of these is explained with a triangle model and shown in duality. In the ‘mature psyche’ the warrior triangle has warrior at top and sadist and masochist either side of the base; the king has tyrant and weakling; the lover has addict and impotent and the magician has detached manipulator and denying ‘innocent one’. Within each triangle is another showing the immature self. Unsuccessful development shows attachment to either polarity of the underlying principles. Within the warrior triangle is another with hero at its apex with bully and coward underneath. Within the king the divine child is at the apex with the high chair tyrant and the weakling prince. Within the lover the apex is the oedipal child with the mamma’s boy and the dreamer. Within the magician the apex is the precocious child with the know-it-all trickster and the dummy. We develop according to four factors; what we ‘bring’ with us in this incarnation, genetic material from parents and ancestors, environmental and social influences and individual choices we make (for whatever reasons). This system also uses another astrological division of 4; the ascendant, the mid-heaven, the descendant and the I.C. (midnight position). Four inner ‘planets’ make up the nature of our selves (considered to be the earth and Moon); Mars, Sun, Mercury and Venus and four outer planets represent processes that affect us; Uranus, Jupiter, Neptune and Saturn. [And now Pluto has been ‘conveniently’ removed from the planetary list.] The 8 Circuits of Exo-psychology. (Four for the left brain and four for the right brain.) (Left Brain) 1. The oral bio survival circuit. This circuit is concerned with nourishment, physical safety, comfort and survival, suckling, cuddling etc. (Earth) 2. The emotional–territorial circuit. This circuit is imprinted in the toddler stage. It is concerned with domination and submission, territoriality, etc. (Water) 3. The symbolic or neurosemantic–dexterity circuit. This circuit is imprinted by human symbol systems. It is concerned with language, handling the environment, invention, calculation, prediction, building a mental "map" of the universe, physical dexterity, etc. (Air). 4. The domestic or socio-sexual circuit. This fourth circuit is imprinted by the first orgasm-mating experiences and tribal "morals". It is concerned with sexual pleasure. (Fire) (Right Brain) And their ‘higher octaves’; 5 - the neurosomatic circuit (water), 6 - the neuroelectric or metaprogramming circuit (fire), 7 - the neurogenetic or morphogenetic circuit (earth) and 8, the psychoatomic or quantum non-local circuit – ‘Overmind’ (air). The 3 Emergency Drives of Psychology. Fear, anger and excitement (The 4th being the actual responses to the drives.) Anger – fire; flushed, muscle tensing, feeling like one wants to explode, let off steam, heated in an argument, hot under the collar, boil with rage, etc. Fear – water; cold, trembling, frozen with fear, etc. Excitement – air (and its opposite; sleep - earth). The Three Psychic Divisions of Freud and the Four of Jung. Id, ego and super-ego are the three parts of the psychic apparatus defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche; they are the three theoretical constructs in terms of whose activity and interaction mental life is described. According to this model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends; the ego is the organized, realistic part; and the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role. Jung's concepts of the unconscious differed. Jung saw Freud's theory of the unconscious as incomplete and unnecessarily negative. According to Jung, Freud conceived the unconscious solely as a repository of repressed emotions and desires. Jung agreed with Freud's model of the unconscious, what Jung called the "personal unconscious", but he also proposed the existence of a second, far deeper form of the unconscious underlying the personal one. This was the collective unconscious, where the archetypes themselves resided, represented in mythology by a lake or other body of water, and in some cases a jug or other container. [Jung's work on himself and his patients convinced him that life has a spiritual purpose beyond material goals. Our main task, he believed, is to discover and fulfil our deep innate potential. Based on his study of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Gnosticism, Taoism, and other traditions, Jung believed that this journey of transformation, which he called individuation, is at the mystical heart of all religions. It is a journey to meet the self and at the same time to meet the Divine. Unlike Sigmund Freud, Jung thought spiritual experience was essential to our well-being.] Jung identified four major archetypes, but also believed that there was no limit to the number that may exist. The self is an archetype that represents the unification of the unconsciousness and consciousness of an individual. The creation of the self occurs through a process known as individuation, in which the various aspects of personality are integrated. The shadow is an archetype that consists of the sex and life instincts. The shadow exists as part of the unconscious mind and is composed of repressed ideas, weaknesses, desires, instincts and shortcomings. This archetype is often described as the darker side of the psyche, representing wildness, chaos and the unknown. Jung suggested that the shadow can appear in dreams or visions and may take a variety of forms. It might appear as a snake, a monster, a demon, a dragon or some other dark, wild or exotic figure. The Anima or Animus. The anima is a feminine image in the male psyche and the animus is a male image in the female psyche. The anima/animus represents the "true self" rather than the image we present to others and serves as the primary source of communication with the collective unconscious. The combination of the anima and animus is known as the syzygy, or the divine couple. The syzygy represents completion, unification and wholeness. The Persona is how we present ourselves to the world. The persona represents all of the different social masks that we wear among different groups and situations. It acts to shield the ego from negative images. According to Jung, the persona may appear in dreams and take a number of different forms. Vegetative life. A plant needs four elements plus the ‘fifth element’ to grow; ‘Spirit’– light. Fire – temperature. Water – moisture. Air – CO2 and O2. Earth – ‘growing medium’. Most consist of 5 basic components; seed, fruit (or seed container), flowers (or their equivalent), leaves and stems and roots. Primary nutrients for good plant growth; N, P & K. Further to this we can construct another triangle of nutrients with N, P & K at one point, secondary nutrients at another ( Ca, S & Mg) and micro-nutrients ( B, Cl, Mn, Fe, Zn, Cu, Mo & Se) at the third. Four principles for agricultural consideration; cosmic forces, earthly forces, location and type of plant. In Astrology. These four elements are often applied to personality to describe temperament. ‘Fire people’ are often spontaneous and impulsive. The Fire signs: (a map of three) Aries, Leo and Sagittarius. ‘Water People’ with are often feeling types and are very sensitive with deep imaginative and emotional traits. Water signs: Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces. ‘Air people’ are often quick and animated. They tend to intellectualize. The Air signs: Libra, Aquarius, Gemini. ‘Earth people’ can be quiet and slow but they apply themselves with endurance. The Earth signs: Capricorn, Taurus, Virgo The map of 3 is also described in another way in astrology. Each of the four elements occurs in three states or qualities, respectively named the cardinal, fixed and mutable. Water is a good example (the substance, not the element), when it is a liquid this would be the cardinal state, when ice, fixed and as a gas, mutable. The placement of planets in cardinal, fixed or mutable signs also reveals basic traits of the personality. People with an emphasis on cardinal signs can be leaders and initiators. Cardinal signs: Aries, Libra, Cancer, Capricorn People with an emphasis on the fixed signs can organise pre-established things for efficiency. They tend to work within the system and are preservers. Fixed signs: Leo, Aquarius, Scorpio, Taurus People with an emphasis on the mutable signs like to seek change and renewal. They like to find new systems. Mutable signs: Sagittarius, Gemini, Pisces, Virgo. The Four Forces in Physics. 1. The Strong Force - This force binds neutrons and protons together in the cores of atoms. Fire. 2. Weak Force – Radio-active decay. This causes the conversion of a neutron to a proton, an electron and an antineutrino (and other particles). Water – a medium for dissolution and coagulation. 3. Electromagnetic - This acts between electrically charged particles. Electricity, magnetism, and light are all produced by this force and it also has infinite range. Air, particularly its astrological rulership of Mercury which in turn rules things such as electricity and light. 4. Gravity - This force acts between all mass in the universe and it has infinite range. Earth - ‘substance’, mass. Modern physics attempts to explain every observed physical phenomenon by these fundamental interactions. Perhaps this gives us some understandings of the interaction within the world of the first three elements and as we see the fourth, Earth, is apart or a pendant to the others? Also considering that gravitation is the only interaction that acts on all particles having mass; has an infinite range, like electromagnetism but unlike strong and weak interaction; cannot be absorbed, transformed, or shielded against; always attracts and never repels. [The modern quantum mechanical view of the fundamental forces other than gravity ( 4. and Earth) is that particles of matter do not directly interact with each other, but rather carry a charge, and exchange virtual particles (or information) which are the interaction carriers or force mediators. This reminds me of the subtleties of the transference of coded DNA information (via the RNA) into the arrangements of enzymes (so their natural ‘tendencies’ fold and form into the required structure of the ‘building block’ required to make cellular components … which in turn build ‘cellular micro-machines’ to carry out functions within the cell). Some theories beyond the Standard Model include a hypothetical fifth force, and the search for such a force is an ongoing line of experimental research in physics. Another reason to look for new forces is the recent discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, giving rise to a need to explain phenomena such as dark matter. Some have called this Quintessence. In physics, quintessence has been proposed by some physicists to be a fifth fundamental force. Quintessence differs in that it is a dynamic equation that changes over time, unlike the cosmological constant which always stays constant throughout time. It is suggested that quintessence can be either attractive or repulsive, it is thought that quintessence became repulsive about 10 billion years ago (the universe is approximately 14 billion years old). Some special cases of quintessence are phantom energy, which has a non-standard form of kinetic energy. From Wikipedia; “Quintessence is dynamic, and generally has a density and equation of state that varies with time. By contrast, a Cosmological Constant is static, with a fixed energy density …” We could postulate this fifth state is the relation of the ‘element’ spirit and its relationship to the four elements. This is shown in Western Hermetics as the attribution of the FIVE elements to the pentagram, with spirit being the top point. In this system ‘spirit’ is seen as active or passive; that force that creates the elemental differentiation or that force that maintains elemental essence and identity – the spirit of the element itself. In 2004, when scientists fit the evolution of dark energy with the cosmological data, they found that the equation of state had possibly crossed the cosmological constant boundary from above to below. Also we see that a form of the pentagram is shown as ‘averse’ or upside down. Now ‘spirit’ is ‘below’. To have it all together we approach the hexagram, that which is above and that which is below. This is the basic premise of Hermetics and its basic document; The Emerald Tablet. Quintessence (from Wikipedia): “The name comes from the classical elements of the ancient Greeks. The aether, a pure "fifth element" (quinta essentia in Latin), was thought to fill the Universe beyond Earth. This seemed fitting to modern scientists, since quintessence was the fifth known contribution to the overall mass-energy content of the Universe.” This has been a basic introduction to some of the concepts behind ‘psychological maps’ or ‘models of realities’ using number. We can see how the natural world uses divisions of four (which is generated, by esoteric number theory from triplicity, which in turn is generated from duality, unity and originally, no-thing). The reason we study such maps or schema is, not to confuse the map with the territory but a way of helping to understand and hence, in some cases, predict the territory. A person exploring their own psyche without a map is as lost as an explorer in a strange country. He will eventually be able to make up a map from his experience but most of his time will be used up in that. The idea of spiritual, religious, psychological or cosmological maps is that they show us forces inherent in nature and allow us to figure out territory we may be unfamiliar with by applying natural principles or laws. Any laws, principles, ‘discoveries’ or systems we follow that are not based on or attuned with a process in nature come from an unrealistic human ‘head trip’ that has not been balanced by the other four ‘worlds’. A prominent Paracelsian physician, astrologer, mathematician, cosmologist and Qabalist, Robert Fludd was the first person to discuss the circulation of the blood and also produced the influential diagram used in the study of perception, consciousness and psychology in his Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris (1619). Rosicrucian Schema. The true symbol of the Rose and Cross - the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

I am a trained hypnotist and have been hypnotised many times from light to deep trance. DM (as practiced by AYP) is identical to a deep trance state, but only up until the point where consciousness is lost-and it is lost, despite what AYP says about it. This is very different from high awareness styles of meditation-here I have no experience of taught methods of specific styles as I created my own when I became disillusioned with the sleep state style of AYP DM. AYP does say to specifically ignore the scenery from DM, but never the less, flying, clairvoyance, visions, demons, Angels and crytal cities are all typical of hypnotic hallucinatory states. It's even possible to embed an exact practice time without reference to an external timer. To get someone into a relaxed trance state only requires a repetition of what the subject is feeling without adding specifics. The effect is to reinforce trust in the hypnotist and create a self reinforcing feedback loop. It's like all hynotism, or persuasion, in that it is a pace/lead/pace communication technique. The subject is doing the work themselves with a little help and reassurance and then accept the suggestion -worked out in advance with specific knowledge of what they want to achieve. Repeating a mantra is very similar particularly as-in AYP-the auto suggestion of 'letting it go-easily come back to it" (easily, safely, gently are all examples of hypnotic trigger words). Self hypnosis is easiest if you buy one of the CDs, the other method is binaural beats which are very effective, but, you need a script if you are trying to change something, it's not so easy to do that unless trained to do so. If you are interested I suggest Milton Ericksons -my voice will go with you. It's also possible, to create a mild trance state through hypnotic writing, but it requires some co-operation from the reader as they must use the pace/lead method. To some extent this is how all good fiction works, although authors are unaware of it, but the writer needs to pick up every day things that the reader is familiar with and then gradually take them deeper into the imagining state, which is almost a dream state. Anyone who has watched a good film, or read an absorbing book will know how it feels impossible not to keep watching, or turning the pages and that feeling, very similar to waking up, when reaching the end-watch people yawning and stretching at the cinema :-)

These are good questions, and no definitive answer, primarily because people do not agree on what is the meaning of hypnosis, and also "meditation." There are large areas of overlap obviously. But here are my answers: I think that deep meditation differs from deep trance hypnosis in that the general intent of meditation is to keep a single-pointed focus, whether it be repetitive mantra, noting, or breath etc. This tends to "clear the slate" of the mind until it becomes automatic, and when a person goes deeper into subconscious mind, towards alaya (deeper level) mind, this automatic slate clearing programming continues as a sort of auto-pilot. At certain points a person can experience special spiritual altered states, such as velvet blackness, blue, some kind of samadhi state, etc, and maintain a fairly good degree of consciousness, so you can experience these states as if you were there in an alternate world. In summary, the key to meditation is that ongoing repetition (of noting, breath, etc.) and intent to continue that meditation even as you start to move to the edge of your consciousness. Because normally, when we move to the edge of consciousness, a kind of babbling dreamscape comes along: words, pictures, (known as vritti) scenarios drag us into dream or unconsciousness. Only by relaxing, surrendering and a thin mental tenaciousness, letting go, but still holding onto the meditation can you proceed deeper. In contrast, hypnosis does not emphasize being conscious. Hypnosis is a quicker access to deep states because your intent is to allow yourself to let go and go deeply as possible, you don't have to maintain any one-pointed focus as you arrive at the gates of subconscious and dreaming. But you do have to have an external voice guiding you, and they must know what will work. In ultra depth, or even in a fairly good state of hypnosis, you can just zonk out, and will not have recollection of any deep states that you experienced, similar to not remembering what went on in dreams or other states of sleep. I hope you do find some more references and people working with deep states of hypnosis. I took the ultradepth course with James Ramey (RIP), but I haven't checked lately to see if anyone has been working on this.

I don't know the official rules of whatever religious discipline is in focus. So I can't speak to that. But as a casual self-motivated western mystic of sorts, I can give my perspective on the question. This is just from a "practical" plus experience (both good and bad) angle, not because anybody is telling me so or it's written somewhere, as I don't follow any specific path. (I use a variety of models as tools, off and on, when I feel like it, but that's all.) * Energy has no boundaries, and even speaking or writing it for others exposes and complicates it: the moment anybody else is part of something, you now have your own stuff plus theirs too, intertwined with it. I find often it's best to keep things "close to the vest" as they say and let it be something between you and the divine and the reality you project/interact with. I think this is especially important if whatever you are working on has certain goals, whether they are goals that make a change in you or your habits, or goals such as in business for example where 'success' is a measuring factor. Basically all change is resisted. It's enough work dealing with our own resistance. You don't need to energetically deal with others' too. * Information has different 'time' to development inside us. Let us say you have an experience one evening. Maybe it is something a sensei said, or maybe it is a dream or a meditative experience you had. You will absorb that, unfurl a lot more of it, integrate it, at varying speeds. Just because you understand the topography of it the next morning doesn't mean that the whole thing has worked itself out with you yet. So what you share fairly soon is inherently going to make it something it's not, as if forcing this into verbal communication is actually going to force you to take all that energy, whatever incomplete degree of development it might be, and toss it into cement as fast as you can, into a fixed this-means-that form of logical words. I feel this can interfere with the development within you, and with your own understanding, which may "attempt to come to conclusions and resolution" before things are ready. * Energy is a resource and if you talk out something you may be releasing some of it in that way, rather than keeping it for concrete action or intent. So 1) I don't entangle other peoples' energy, intent or resistance with mine; 2) I give the experiences time to develop and integrate within me, before articulating them, and 3) I focus the energy for effort-X into X and not into talking-about-X. But on the other hand.... Once you have something worked out somewhat in your head, it can be good to talk with someone about your ideas, since articulating them may actually cause you to bring the energy into focus, into shape, and that can be good. They may actually contribute to, not harm or merely 'complicate', your energetic direction and path of success. Bringing your emotion into your intent can make a powerful difference, and often it's sharing with someone that brings forth more of that emotion, and enthusiasm, and so on. Not to mention... Nearly every opportunity I have had manifest in my life came through other people. If I had never talked to them about things I was doing, or interested in doing, I would have had no close relationships about topics that really touched me, and I would not have ended up with the many generous gifts -- of time, self, love and sometimes money or other material assistance, that such interactions brought. Also: There is a thing... I don't know a name for it. But basically it happens when you articulate something to someone else and they hear you; and you know they hear you; it's like a... like a circuit connecting. Win Wenger talks about this but others have as well. It makes a difference in the brain. Most people have to actually talk to a person to do this. Some people, say some inner advisors to me once, can do it in writing if they have a very high awareness of and connection to people in the future reading it, as they do so. I think sometimes that can be a good thing -- perhaps it depends on the situation. Lastly, there are other reasons for recording your experience, which you may or may not choose to share with others, at least at that time. For example, when I'm working on stuff that is new to me, I have severe memory problems. I don't just mean that I can do a meditation, write it down in detail, and then forget I did it. I reread what I wrote and it's still new. I reread what I wrote for the 8th time eventually, knowing that I not only had the experience, and wrote it down, and read it 7 times before, and it is still totally new to me. And then finally I break through whatever kind of memory or denial issues are going on and I start remembering, a little better all the time, until eventually I remember all those experiences, and I remember the new ones also, and it's ok. But if I didn't record them and constantly re-expose myself to them they would be gone to me. And as a secondary but related thing to the above, for me, documenting my inner life is a great deal of how I validate my experiences, which I'm otherwise prone to forget in denial or dismiss in invalidation if it's not logical. I often intellectually see that I am avoiding a certain topic or energy by the fact that I'm not getting around to recording it. But usually if I record it, I need to share it with at least one person, it forces me to own up to it in a way. These elements are really a completely different consideration than just the "keep the energy close" for so many good reasons that I was talking about at the top. I have meditations where I'm told not to record certain parts or that afternoon, it's simply not appropriate to share (and these are not anything offbeat, they seem like just another meditation as far as their content, context or experience goes) so I don't, but I assume there is some decent reason my innerself-aspects are telling me that. As far as sharing certain goal-oriented things in particular, all I can say is that I prefer to share things with people who already have the energy in place for what I am doing or feeling. For example if I am working on something for business I would prefer to talk to someone who is successful in business and who expects and welcomes me to be, prior to me talking to anybody about it who may be much closer to me, but who is not evidencing that kind of energy, since I feel the first person might be energetically helpful to me even if nearly a stranger, while the second person might complicate or burden my chance at success no matter how much we love each other. If the topic is more like spiritual development, it's the same theory for me, I would ideally only talk with people who already accept the paradigms I'm working on learning to accept, who already embody the energy I'm working on integrating and embodying. Otherwise I feel like a marathon runner and that person I love but who isn't really there with me spiritually just took off their heavy yoke of doubt and confusion and resistance and dropped it around my neck, and now I have to get down the path for me AND them, because I involved them in it. So... who I share with is selective and what I share -- and when -- is selective. But unless I have a driving need for the documentation, I think it's best to err on the side of quiet. :-) RC

I read A Course in Miracles a long time ago. I nearly didn't because it's a channeled work allegedly and I had a really powerful bias about all things in that category. Jane Roberts singlehandedly redeemed that entire topic for me. Not, unfortunately, most of its authors. :-) But "intuitive writing" on its own (around since the dawn of time) is ok -- a blend of the source the communicator though. So obviously its value depends a lot on the person writing, too. ACiM is not a bad thing at all. It's just one specific way of presenting a rather fundamental paradigm-set which anybody especially in the Western world tends to have trouble wrapping their head around. No worries. You'll just be a mystic with ACiM, not a Moonie. :-) OK now to your point. You have a tomato. You give it to Jack. Now Jack has a tomato and you don't have a tomato. I'll not argue the potential quantum-physics trivia about how technically nobody has a tomato so all you really traded was an idea attached to some emergent-property-as-energy-particles because hey, in the experiential "focus-reality" world, Jack has your tomato and no amount of philosophy is going to change that. :-) But things which work in the "logical" world of mind are often non-sequiturs internally and vice-versa. There are plenty of things which I am capable of comprehending when I am in a sufficiently altered focus but in full beta my brain really just can't wrap around it. This goes not just for ideas, but even for sense experiences. Sometimes you have to learn to work with information in the state of mind for which it was intended. You are not going to be able to use logic to understand mysticism. You are trying to intellectually suss it out and it just doesn't work that way. With mysticism you have to go through, not around. And the problem is, to get it to you, someone has to put it into words verbal or written. Words have definitions. There is no way to "correctly" convey much of anything in words short of VCR instructions. There is always a degree of reading between the lines and intuitively allowing things to mean what they need to mean, not just their dictionary definition. Logically, having and giving cannot be the same thing because the definition of these words is different. But mystically, they probably can. This is one reason why traditionally the path of 'teaching' is not to convey the answer, but to provide a question or an experience or a practice which, when the person goes through that, will then result in them coming -- on their own natively -- to an understanding. Because most understandings can't be conveyed in words, even if you can put them in words. (For example you can tell someone about 'intimacy.' It's just a word. Not until someone experiences it, will they understand it. And they will experience and understand it regardless of, and apart from, the word. Once they have that in place, then you can use the word, and it works for them and they may gain understanding of some other things by employing their existing experience and understanding. But at that point the word is merely a pointer, a label, a map -- it's not the territory of what is real, it's only the letters on the nametag. The "logical" part that was "information" was never "experience" and getting 'through' it requires experience. Eastern philosophies have as much armchair-intellectualism as Western sorts do and it's easy to get trapped in that, especially on the internet, because discussion is verbal, so its hitting the logical mind. Intellectualism is not invalid, it's simply only energy at a certain level. The center is the sun, though, so in the end if you want something that genuinely evolves you, you're going to have to include energetic interaction at your heart level, one way or another. You can 'think about' things forever... interesting... but it doesn't get you there. So when you approach a 'fundamental belief system set' like ACiM, see if you can do it with slightly less 'logic' and slightly more 'prayer for assistance with understanding' and see what comes of it. Much of this can come through as "intuitive insights" if you let it. ACiM can get you thinking about the world we live in. It's all a dream, it's all symbology, it's all energy, and we have the ability to interact with and hence influence and design the energy within and around us. Walk around and look at everything from that perspective. Consider how long it took culture to get the tech just to make a modern stop sign, or the implied meaning in a 'sliding glass door.' Think about how sidewalks surround and enclose us: a safe path 'between' the individual and the masses, but also a pre-made path for conformity. Everything is a dream symbol. It is energy, but it is poured into a certain form, function, with which we can experientially interact. But the energy of your arm is just energy, like the energy of your armchair and the tree outside. Fundamentally the energy does not differ; the density, intensity, and creative expression of the energy differs by 'instance' but it's all energy. Physics says we 'trade atoms' with everything around us, which is why the sages have said we should love everything around us. Because if we don't it's not a good result for obvious reasons. Energy doesn't have hard boundaries, we just think it does. It's moving all over all the time. Things are moving through us all the time. (Which is a useful visualization: to imagine negative stuff just 'blowing through you' so you are not setting up resistance, and are letting it go.) Once I was talking to an aspect of self and my cat jumped up on me and for a moment I perceived her like he/she/it/they did. It was rather like a bundle of energy and what I found so fascinating was that their perception of her was that the "cat" part was a "property." By that I mean, the fact that she was female, or she was striped, are just 'properties' -- they don't define her as a being. Well neither did being a cat, it turns out. She was just "a being." The fact that being also happened to be "a cat" was as arbitrary a property as the fact that she was striped. That amazed me for some reason, but later, when I integrated it better, I realized the underlying element is that we are all just 'awareness' at root. An emergent property (a few levels up) is the 'energy' our science can measure. With sufficient density-of-energy there is the emergent property from awareness of 'identity' (self-aware) and this grows by degrees, through duality, and gradually into actual "autonomy." Which we have some of. Not as much as we think. :-) But to get back to topic, the awareness underlying the energy that "composes" your elbows, is just like the energy that composes everything else including your sofa and your tomato. I guess you might say that in a way it means everything is "fundamentally equal." We learn to let go of attachment to things, people and events not because they cannot have meaning to us, but because everything has meaning. We might prefer to hang out with that meaning more than we prefer to hang out with other meanings. That's ok. But it is no more valuable inherently than other meanings. The baseline for existence is equal. Alan Watts (who wrote on Zen) spent effort trying to get readers to understand that what is outside us is just as much 'us' as what is inside us. I never got it. I read his stuff circa age 20 and I really tried. Seth (Jane Roberts) did more for me in one book (The Nature of Personal Reality) than many years of reading on Buddhism ever got me for some reason. But maybe it loosened the lid, so to speak. ;-) Or maybe being of Western culture I just relate a bit more to that communication style. So you go through learning that everything is really just vibrating energy. And then learning that you are really just vibrating energy also. Because EVERY-thing is. Which is to say there is no such thing as things. Only the translated symbolic appearance of an energy which for biological (time and space-based) convenience we consider an object. And learning that your intent, emotion, etc. can actually influence energy. Whether and how it manifests or doesn't for example. And learning that our labels like "car" and "skyscraper" and "tomato" are in fact just labels. The map, not the territory. The things they point to are vibrating energy which being energetic creatures ourselves, we have a relationship with. We perceive not that-thing-there but rather, the "energetic, dynamic interface between" that-thing-there and "us" (I'll leave out the 2-million volume version of what-is-us for now, ha). That means everything we perceive is actually the metabolism or chemistry between, or to be more basic, half-that and half-us, you could say... sort of. As an analogy, we're green, it's blue, we perceive teal. We can never perceive blue because our perception abilities have to go through green. And we can never perceive green because it is not projected outside of us to be an 'other'. So whatever it is we perceive, "we" are part of what we perceive. And we can change ourselves! Which is changing everything else we perceive, too. Because if our magnet suddenly shifts direction for example, it would push some things away, pull some things closer. If our green suddenly got lighter, darker, it would change the teal result in what we experienced. That is to say that reality is essentially 'us' -- -- the dynamic interaction point that is the marriage of what we perceive as self, and what we perceive as other, meeting in the middle. You contain the fundamental, the energy, of everything. But it is your interaction with reality as a 'canvas' -- with energy that is projected as "the-other" (not self) -- that lets you create whatever you like. (The crown chakra is a great deal of this. Well all chakras are of course. But especially Crown, as it showed me.) So the 'source' of the very existence of your tomato is you. Sure, give Jack the individualized-instance of that energy-perceived-as-form for the sake of experience. But the tomato was created from you, of you, and in YOUR experience (not Jack's) is utterly dependent on the existence of you. You cannot know Jack's unique instance of perception of that tomato -- because for Jack, its existence in his reality, let alone its squishy detail, is half HIM. And that works because really, you and Jack are one. But at a fundamental level (way below conscious or even subconscious mind) he's only paying attention to being Jack, and you're only paying attention to being you, and the tomato is only paying attention to being a tomato, so you're all in the place you should be. :-) So you are never without a tomato because you were really never with one. There is no tomato. There is only energy. A quality, which filtered and translated we call a tomato. And you can hold or release, pull or push, change or maintain, energy however you like. You can be physically with or without something, but with the proper (there's the rub...) application of intent to the energy of self, you can simply arrange to have all the tomatoes you want. Or not. As long as you're thinking of yourself as 'without' a certain thing you're essentially telling yourself, a sort of constant self hypnosis, that this energy is missing from your basket, which only attaches to that being-so, and your experience says, ok, if you say so, whatever you say goes, see the basket's still empty, no tomatoes here! If you think of yourself as inherently having everything, because you do, and hey maybe you'd like a tomato soon ok, then relax and let it flow through you, and soon enough you'll have a tomato (or many) move into your reality. It requires some suspension of disbelief, some acting as if, all the time but especially initially, which is tough for logical folks who don't want to be suckers or moon-eyed woo sorts, I know what that's like. It's very difficult to get out of thinking about something instead of just being it. I worked with these ideas 'walking in' to metaphysics when I was a very logical sort, and I had a lot of success with it eventually, in spots. I say it with those caveats because I am not a billionaire sunning with my cabana boys at the moment so probably I did something wrong at some point or maybe I would be. ;-) Teasing. Well, mostly. I don't know if any of that helped at all. Because it's all just words. Aurghck! RC

Actually, the same question raised to my spiritual master will get a reply that "Avoid result orientation". Nobody can define the state of Self realization since it is not an experience that can be defined, but a transcendence to a different state of consciousness beyond the normal three states of Waking, Dream and deep sleep that the individual Jeeva goes through. In Self Realization, Jeeva recognizes its unity with the Paramathma and merges one with Paramathma, leaving its identity with the material aspects of body, mind, intellect and ego fully.

Hi Earl Grey, Thanks for sharing your training experience at the 40 day mark and its effect on your dreams. Excellent that you're aiming to 100 or 108 days of FP Qigong. A lively dream life is a common side-effect of FP Qigong practice. If you've read the entire thread, you will have come across a series of postings when I described how Grandmaster Doo Wai in 1992 set up an evening of psychic exercises for all of us FPCK practitioners that resulted in most profound lucid dreaming capability for two of us. A. Continue with your FP Qigong practice and regard your dreaming as by-product. B. If you are actually going into the dreamstate while you are practicing FP Meditaiton, that is OK, but you should quickly bone up on methods of developing lucid dreaming--if you don't have that capability already, which is being aware that you are dreaming while you are having a dream, and most importantly having active control of yourself as the participant in the dream. C. Knowing that you woke up from a dream with the lucidity and connectedness of having practiced FP Qigong is an excellent by-product of FP Qigong practice. Don't consider it as having done your daily FP Qigong practice. Continue to do your daily FP practice. D. Practicing FP Qigong in your dreams--by programming yourself before you go to sleep to practice FP Qigong--is an advanced practice that you can try since you say you woke up feeling as if you had practiced a session of FP in your sleep. However, the superb feat to be achieved is to dream lucidly that you are practicing Flying Phoenix Qigong and actively choosing every FP exercise that you are practicing. Let us know if you're able to do that. Enjoy your practice and all its benefits. Sifu Terry Dunn www.taichimania.com/chikung_catalog.html

Hey y'all, I have joined this forum because I'm curious to learn about qigong and other forms that promote health and longevity. I need a physical practice that's both simple, holistic and that can compliment or possibly replace my other practices. Also keeping an eye open for any method that compliments my aims. I suppose my ultimate aims would be immortality and enlightenment. For now I will settle for less bodily discomfort, any physical means to cultivate physical, emotional and mental balance along with greater energy. Unusual abilities and psychic faculties are something that I have an interest in developing. In my view, the development of supramundane ability is something which would come with being highly realized in terms of balanced enlightenment. From what little I know about Daoist immortals, they are said to have various beyond-common abilities too. I'm not terribly attached to the outcomes. Been through the power-seeking rigmarole when I was a youngster. Blocked up my throat that way, doing western esoteric stuff. Went pretty looney. Spent more than 6 years sorting it out. If I do become wiser and can maintain some degree of health as I age, I will be very happy. I haven't really investigated Taoism. I have spent a multiple year measure of time investigating and learning Buddhist practices. Prior to that I was involved in what might be considered western esoteric thought and practices, along with investigating yoga and tantrism. I'm male, and almost 28, if I recall correctly. Maybe that matters to someone. Maybe it's relevant to what I practice. I don't know much at this stage. I'm also left handed, and that seems to be a factor with some of the energy practices I've been investigating and practicing. What brought me here (mostly) was my investigation of Falun Gong. See a few months back I was looking for some way to help alleviate some of the problems I've had with my spine and internal energy system that new age yoga teachers haven't been able to help with. Instead they were like "you were injured because the universe is trying to tell you to practice yoga." Which I find absurd, since I was practicing yoga prior to having a serious accident and injury.... I digress. I have to say, I firmly believe accidents happen. Anyways, having tried the five exercises of falun gong, I said "wow this stuff is doing something profound, I can really feel something happening." So I started to read the literature. I read The Falun Gong book, I listened to the 9 lectures a whole bunch of times. I ordered the Zhuan Falun book. Much to my chagrin, I found Mr. Li Hongzhi says a whole bunch of things which don't fit with Buddhist doctrine. I hesitate to investigate how Taoist his ideas are. He makes a bunch of baseless statements which I could neither verify nor ascribe credulity to. But at the same time, I did get a falun implanted before he mentioned it being a thing, and when he mentioned falun, mine was really energized. He has some powers, or is linked into a power system of some kind. It's exact nature I can't discern. But he's no Buddhist, as he doesn't seem to know what nibbana is or what it means to be an arahant. He does seem to think he's an enlightened being of some variety or another. But at one point or another he claims an arahant can regress to become an ordinary being, unintentionally! He says in more than one place that infinite planes are limited. he claims to explain higher dimensions and then utterly fails to. He says he will make remarks about going beyond the five elements and three spheres, and fails to clarify anything. Also he makes statements about the space in Amida Buddha and other pureland paradises being limited to a certain umber of individuals (in the hundred thousands.) Part of Amida Buddha's vow is that his paradise would accommodate countless beings. Not to mention the whole apocalyptic aliens and technology conspiracy ideas... which appear to be in the process of being sanitized. Also the way he makes certain statements, sounding uncertain and then clears his throat. If he was a westerner I would be absolutely sure he was knowingly full of shit. But I find I don't well grok people from asian cultures. At least not quite as well as I grok people from the culture into which I was born. So maybe I'm way off about the tone of voice and body language. I won't mention that I'm attached to sutras, tantrism, and practice mantra recitation. So giving that up to practice his looney religion simply won't happen. He says you can't accomplish anything by doing his exercises and practicing anything else. Apparently it's too delicate for the separate Taos and Buddhas to sort out. He says Buddhas are separate from each other! I do like how Falun Gong is given away freely. That really appeals to the Buddhist values I have bought into. I also like it's simplicity. It's quite effective at energizing the body. I like to drink and curse and smoke though. Plus the whole "give up cultivating Buddhism and follow only Dafa or fail at both" ultimatum. I'd like to continue to practice Falun Gong. But I'm concerned with the fact of the leader being not what he says he is. I mean, I could throw away the books, and just do the exercise. But the fact is that practicing the forms seems (to my mind) to imply being influenced on an emotional and mental level by the mental and astral gestalt of Falun Dafa. Not to mention the implant! I feel this might impede my progress, and moreover, limit my future possibilities. Heck, it might cause me to descend. I wonder if anyone can point me in the right direction...! I need a simple exercise regime that will gel with my hermetic Buddhist view and practice. I'd like to continue with Falun Gong. But the matter of it being tied to a group whose ideas I reject seems to pose a few problems to which I haven't a sure remedy (aside from emptiness.) I'm very open to doing Daoist exercises, as I've done Hindu ones before. The Buddhist exercise systems I'm aware of are relatively inaccessible to me, and seem at least as complicated as their Hindu counterparts. I'm looking for simplicity with efficacy. Also if anyone has a simple method for immortality or extreme longevity.... ping me a few times, and I'll make myself as receptive as I can to dream and trance transmissions. Holy wall of text! How often do I repeat myself? Enough blather I suppose. With sincerity, Mud

Here is a Western interpretation of a key difference between classical Daoism as per the Zhuangzi and Buddhism from philosopher John Gray. I've quoted it before but I'll add it again here because I like its simplicity, and it's not too far off topic in that it references the butterfly dream passage that's at the end of this chapter we're discussing (Mair 2:14)….. Chuang-Tzu is as much a sceptic as a mystic. The sharp dichotomy between appearance and reality that is central in Buddhism is absent, and so is the attempt to transcend the illusions of everyday existence. Chuang-Tzu sees human life as a dream, but he does not seek to awaken from it. In a famous passage he writes of dreaming he was a butterfly, and not knowing on awakening whether he is a human being who has dreamt of being a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he is a human being. Unlike the Buddha, A.C. Graham explains, Chuang-Tzu did not seek to awaken from the dream. He dreamt of dreaming more lucidly: 'Buddhists awaken out of dreaming; ChuangTzu wakes up to dreaming.' Awakening to the truth that life is a dream need not mean turning away from it. It may mean embracing it: If 'Life is a dream' implies that no achievement is lasting, it also implies that life can be charged with the wonder of dreams, that we drift spontaneously through events that follow a logic different from that of everyday intelligence, that fears and regrets are as unreal as hopes and desires. Chuang-Tzu admits no idea of salvation. There is no self and no awakening from the dream of self: When we dream we do not know we are dreaming, and in the middle of a dream we interpret a dream within it; not until we wake do we know that we were dreaming. Only at the ultimate awakening shall we know that this is the ultimate dream. We cannot be rid of illusions. Illusion is our natural condition. Why not accept it?

I´m not sure where should I post this comment. In Chaoism and Thelema there are practices to change mental patterns, like metamorphosis (changing habits) in Liber MMM, or paradigm shifting in Chaoism (changing your worldview), or a practice that Crowley did to have one personality when he was wearing a ring in one hand, and another personality when he was wearing it in another. There are also Buddhist and Bon practices that can be used this way, such as Tibetan dream yoga and Chöd. Do Taoists use these practices? What practices do they use?

I don't remember how long I lasted as mod here... It wasn't terribly pleasant or interesting most of the time but it was useful to help me grow. Thanks for your service, Michael. I know nothing of the issues under discussion but it's always good to move on when the time is right. Peace PS - edited at mod's request... Everybody needs to lighten up... it's all a dream

Hi Marblehead, Just a quick one, i'll be back later.... when you say sub conscious mind, how do you see this, apart from being outside of our awareness? is it like a bank of automations, or is it more like the dream world, where we become aware in our dreams, the flip side of everyday waking awareness? If it's the flip side, where is it? does it reside in the brain tissue as a function, or is it another plane of awareness? If another plane of awareness, where is this plane? Are you this plane, or are you in this plane? Like i said just a quick one, i'll check back later... of course i'm guessing your answers on each question... so will be intersting to see what you say.. peace