How many people practice Taoism to gain supernatural powers?

[Marblehead]

Maybe Ive just been reading some posts by Et

Stosh

Yeah, doing that would take you there too. Hehehe.

[Marblehead]

There is no such thing as supernatural powers. There is only awakening to and enhancement of natural being & natural talents, which is what Taoism does. Humanity's majority have forgotten. If one wants supernatural they could go live in the comic books.

That's one of the things I like about you. You never forget that your roots are in Philosophical Taoism.

[Harmonious Emptiness]

What is natural? What is normal? Is super-normal supernatural? What about anger? Fear? Desire for status and prestige?

 

 

What is the nothingness of nothing..?(.. joke...)

[Marblehead]

What is natural? What is normal? Is super-normal supernatural? What about anger? Fear? Desire for status and prestige?

 

 

What is the nothingness of nothing..?(.. joke...)

Too many questions for so early in the morning.

 

Everything that was possible and has happened happened naturally even though it may have seemed unnatural to an observer. Normal is subjective - that will vary amongst ofservers.

 

Are there super anythings? This too would be a subjective observation too, wouldn't it?

 

Fear? Both an instinct and an emotion.

 

Anger? Just an emotion, I think.

 

Desires? Ego milk.

 

Nothingness? Well, you know.

[Thunder_Gooch]

A choice between pre-existent destinies sounds more like Calivinistic predestination no matter how many potential destinies there are to choose between in that you only get one that was already 'there' amongst the rest.

Not free will at all looked at that way.

Stuff just happens and there are consequences. I'm not sure the Tao actually gives a sh*t. How could I be?

 

 

Think of it less like predestination, and more like a choose your own adventure story book.

 

 

 

 

 

Wikipedia article on the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics

 

 

 

 

 

http://science.slash...iverse-question

 

The Oxford team, led by Dr. David Deutsch, showed mathematically that the bush-like branching structure created by the universe splitting into parallel versions of itself can explain the probabilistic nature of quantum outcomes."

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.newscient...ntum-sense.html

 

 

David Deutsch at the University of Oxford and colleagues have shown that key equations of quantum mechanics arise from the mathematics of parallel universes. "This work will go down as one of the most important developments in the history of science," says Andy Albrecht, a physicist at the University of California at Davis.

Edited October 26, 2012 by More_Pie_Guy

[Ya Mu]

That's one of the things I like about you. You never forget that your roots are in Philosophical Taoism.

[JohnC]

There is no such thing as supernatural powers. There is only awakening to and enhancement of natural being & natural talents, which is what Taoism does. Humanity's majority have forgotten. If one wants supernatural they could go live in the comic books.

Bump to that.

 

Only 'supernatural' because we have forgotten and our frame of context is small.

[GrandmasterP]

Nope YM, it's supernatural all the way up, down and round. As magic as Schroedinger's magic cat.

And if you think we're weird you should meet some of the guys in David Deutsch's team up at Oxford.

String theorists are the new balladeers, it's all saga and myth, they've even had to invent a new language cos the normal one ,even using symbolic logic as a booster ; simply can't explain their dreams.

[Marblehead]

... simply can't explain their dreams.

You got that right. Mostly just dreams or smoking too much grass.

[GrandmasterP]

Nope I don't think so. Something about pure math that attracts deeply weird people.

Andrew Wiles who cracked Fermat didn't come out of his room for two years. they pushed his dinner under a gap in the door.

Those guys are pretty odd.

Good singers though.

[Marblehead]

Yeah, but I still see many things wrong with trying to reduce the life of the universe to mathematical equations. There really is more to life than just math.

[GrandmasterP]

I'm no expert on this stuff but know of some people who make a living from it and the fascinating thing about the further reaches of string and membrane theory is that they don't use traditional symbolic logic or formulae to attempt to communicate it they use very strange Imagery and narrative stories.

The jury is out as to whether or not they are onto something or just barking mad.

The biggest game in town round Oxford Math Inst is something called P-Membrane theory or 'PBrane' for short.

I have not the first idea, but they were all very excited about it last term.

Or as excited as pure mathematicians ever get.

[Marblehead]

 

Or as excited as pure mathematicians ever get.

I heard one use the word "Wow!" once.

[GrandmasterP]

Ah those whacky funsters.

:-)

[Birch]

K,

 

I am not sure what the opposite of a consciousness that emerged from lower levels of complexity would be, perhaps if we created an AI it would be a non emergent intelligence, maybe sort of kinda.

 

Free will, well that's a very tricky question.

 

You don't actually exist to choose anything, and the world you live in is a virtual reality anyway.

 

You are democracy of cells, and what you experience as the world around you, and personality, memory, sensation, etc. all of that is just you cells chatting away on their electrochemical internet, and you have no existence as a consciousness independent of that. You are just the voices of trillions of beings together as one consciousness.

 

But, you can still choose to do any possible thing within your power moment to moment.

 

In 2005 I had an experience of being a disembodied wave of energy/consciousness flowing through time.

 

Time was a solid object, my body when I was born, and my body when I died were all apart of the same solid object, and I was merely flowing through it, my location determined the time and date.

 

Both past and future have already occurred.

 

Any book you could possibly write, or thought you could possibly think has already happened.

 

That isn't to say that free will does not exist however.

 

There are infinite pasts, presents and futures.

 

Every possible future exists, as does every possible past, for any possible observer.

 

Moment to moment whenever you make a choice you are navigating through infinite potential future realities, but these realities existed prior to you observing them, so nothing is ever truly created or unique to you as a person.

 

You have freewill to choose from infinite preexisting realities, but that is all. It is not possible to ever create something new or unique, including your own personality, or ego.

 

Interesting post Mr Pie. I found it 'funny' (not 'haha') that my question implied a hierarchy of emergence of consciousness when I'm actually more convinced of consciousness as the 'thing' (well, not a 'thing' but you hopefully catch my drift) that we are in and of. So why on earth (or anywhere else) would I rot on about hierarchy?

 

Second, "But, you can still choose to do any possible thing within your power moment to moment." I don't understand Mr Pie. I don't have any 'power', as far as I can tell. All I have is consciousness, more or less of it. More or less local.

 

Nice post anyway:-)

[Birch]

A choice between pre-existent destinies sounds more like Calivinistic predestination no matter how many potential destinies there are to choose between in that you only get one that was already 'there' amongst the rest.

Not free will at all looked at that way.

Stuff just happens and there are consequences. I'm not sure the Tao actually gives a sh*t. How could I be?

 

Well that was sort of what I was rambling on about. I guess I could write a book about it, but that's already been done;-)

[Birch]

I'm no expert on this stuff but know of some people who make a living from it and the fascinating thing about the further reaches of string and membrane theory is that they don't use traditional symbolic logic or formulae to attempt to communicate it they use very strange Imagery and narrative stories.

The jury is out as to whether or not they are onto something or just barking mad.

The biggest game in town round Oxford Math Inst is something called P-Membrane theory or 'PBrane' for short.

I have not the first idea, but they were all very excited about it last term.

Or as excited as pure mathematicians ever get.

 

Are they doing this work on 'Reality' or are they 'just' working with their subjective interpretations of it? Seems we've come to accept the idea of 'consensual reality' already (although I often prefer to opt-out in many cases because I think a lot of it is very silly dangerous)

 

So are the very enthusiastic Math dudes (mostly men in Math BTW, not sure why, guy at Harvard said something about that) working on the 'consensual' version of it? I can't talk about it because I only recently realized the words 'time' and 'space' ought not to be two words at all and using the term 'time-space' is sort of a cop out.

[GrandmasterP]

It all happens inside their skulls and north of the neck. They have no kit at all apart from the usual modelling stuff we can all get at here

 

It makes very pretty pictures too. Will see if I can find one and post it.

 

They do have a 3d gizmo that is a bit spooky, makes holographic constructs but only of what they tell it to do.

 

Not solid although it can do, just holographic stuff, all very Star Trekky for me.

 

They made me a model of a three way chamber manifold a while ago (I like manifolds). It comes out in a sort of a plasticy waxy stuff, nothing you could use apart from looking at, it isn't durable, the material is made to be sculpted by lasers.

[GrandmasterP]

x3

 

x1

 

f

 

 

(x1, xˆ2, x3, x4, xˆ5) = v1

 

f

 

 

( x1, xˆ 2, xˆ3, xˆ 4, xˆ5)

 

x1

 

x1

 

x2

 

x3 x4

 

x5

 

a

 

x2

 

x1

 

( ) 3

 

( ) 2

 

( 1, 2, ˆ3, ˆ4, ˆ5) 1

 

f v

 

f v

 

f x x x x x v

 

=

 

=

 

=

 

 

x1

 

x2

 

x3 x4

 

x5

 

b

 

x1

 

x2

 

x4

 

x5

 

c

 

x1

 

x2

 

x3 x4

 

x5

 

d

 

x1

 

x2

 

x3 x4

 

x5

[GrandmasterP]

Grrr. It only comes out as its logic working.

No piccy.

Sorry.

It looks like a pair of pants made from an almost infinite very very wobbly, intersecting; doughnuts.

The interesting bit to me, not that i undersatnd the math, is how they represent their ideas on paper. This logic working is set out in a classic pentacle form. Each statement pole sits at one of the five points and the logic is then worked across, between and contra. Spookily similar and as per ChiDragon's post on something completely different elsewhere to do with the relationship of the five elements to 5 major organs. See that graphic of his and you have seen the same logic frame for P-Brane.

[GrandmasterP]

Time and Space are very relative concepts indeed.

It all depends on when you are and where you make any claim.

In dimenion 1/10 on Tuesday week, cheese could well be a floral.

It might not be, but you never know until you take a peep and the instant you do, no more cheese. (Or is there/).

Yes they are all men and all deeply odd.

Far too many T shirst with Orcs and dragons on across beer bellies and below beards are worn for them to be anything but deeply deeply suspect.

Also many of them twitch a lot.

[GrandmasterP]

Here is an example of their humour.....

 

Pure mathematicians Kit

 

1. Paper

 

2. Pencil

 

3. Wastepaper Bin for rubbish working.

 

Philosophers Kit...

 

1. Paper

 

2. Pencil

 

My how those long winter evenings must just fly past over there at the Math Inst.

 

 

[idiot_stimpy]

Time and Space are very relative concepts indeed.

 

I like that it can be identified that time and space are concepts.

[Birch]

It all happens inside their skulls and north of the neck. They have no kit at all apart from the usual modelling stuff we can all get at here

 

It makes very pretty pictures too. Will see if I can find one and post it.

 

They do have a 3d gizmo that is a bit spooky, makes holographic constructs but only of what they tell it to do.

 

Not solid although it can do, just holographic stuff, all very Star Trekky for me.

 

They made me a model of a three way chamber manifold a while ago (I like manifolds). It comes out in a sort of a plasticy waxy stuff, nothing you could use apart from looking at, it isn't durable, the material is made to be sculpted by lasers.

 

"but only of what they tell it to do."

 

I guess that's a problem right there.

[Birch]

Well that's all right for you (and whoever else is making a living off it) I suppose but I'm a bit disappointed in it as a term. I'd rather have an entirely new one that doesn't rest on the previous concepts. New shiny thing please:-)

Somewhat seriously, by continuing to use that term we're just harking back the previous concepts, which turned out to be not quite useless in their application but definitely useless as descriptors of reality. Why burden ourselves with it?

I've just ordered this fun-looking book http://www.amazon.com/The-Half-life-Facts-Everything-Expiration/dp/159184472X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1351878526&sr=8-1&keywords=half+life+of+facts