Daois as an offshot of Early Buddhism

[Aithrobates]

Taoism was already very old even before lust enter the heart of Laotze father and the gleam started in the eyes of Laotze mother.  Taoism is as likely  the offshoot of Buddhism as I am likely to be borned before my great great great great great grandfather was delivered from the womb of his mother.

 

Saying that a whole spiritual tradition appeared out of the blue under proto-Buddhism influence is one thing... like there was nothing in China before, no cosmology, no shamanism, etc... It would be stupid to affirm that, and I think this is not what Beckwith says.

 

Saying that out of its already very old traditions China produced its very own version of what was happening in NE India and Central Asia, and that it happened to be formally known as Dao ( = /darma/ ? ) since is another thing.... I think that is the question this hypothesis ask.

 

Saying that "Daoism" is older than what have been formally called Daoism makes a lot of sense, as we can see the continuity with older practices, and that adding a new name did not change much. I totally agree with that.

 

But from a purely historical point of view when was the term coined ?

 

When did this tradition became refered as "Daoism", Dao Jiao ? Do we know that ?

 

If we have a trace of this name (or another expression containing "Dao") being applied to the teaching before the 4th century, with our without etymology the discussion is closed.

Edited July 16, 2015 by Aithrobates

[Zhongyongdaoist]

Someone on thetaobums asked the seemingly innocent question about the connection between Taoism and NeoPlatonism

 

Yes, I watched that otherwise interesting discussion completely disintegrate under your constant spamming of cherry picked quotes from secondary sources, without any reference to what Plato actually wrote.

 

You provide a typical example here:

 

 

Francesco Pelosi, Plato on Music, Soul and Body (Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 118

 

Having discarded music and gymnastics, Socrates proposes considering the

science of “number and calculation” (522C6-7)…. The link between the correct

use of mathematics and the capacity of this discipline to lead to an extrasensible

dimension recalls the link between the correct use of the science of harmony (of

music in general) and the potential of this art to establish a contact with the soul

and supersensible harmony.  (I had to recreate the fonts in the original, but added the bolding of the reference to Plato, ZYD)

 

First of all this "(522C6-7)" is a garbled reference is to the discussion in Plato's Republic starting at 522c.

 

This discussion occurs after "The Allegory of the Cave" and the discussion is how to educate people to have the experience of leaving the "cave" of ordinary experience and sensory "reality" and be lead to apprehend True Being.

 

[521c]

 

“Would you, then, have us proceed to consider how such men may be produced in a state and how they may be led upward to the light even as some are fabled to have ascended from Hades to the gods?” “Of course I would.” “So this, it seems, would not be the whirling of the shell in the children's game, but a conversion and turning about of the soul from a day whose light is darkness to the veritable day—that ascension to reality of our parable which we will affirm to be true philosophy.” “By all means.” “Must we not, then, consider what studies have [521d] the power to effect this?” “Of course.” “What, then, Glaucon, would be the study that would draw the soul away from the world of becoming to the world of being?

 

. . .

 

[521e] “But in our previous account they were educated in gymnastics and music.” “They were, he said. “And gymnastics, I take it, is devoted to that which grows and perishes; for it presides over the growth and decay of the body.” “Obviously.” “Then this cannot be the study [522a] that we seek.” “No.” “Is it, then, music, so far as we have already described it?” “Nay, that,” he said, “was the counterpart of gymnastics, if you remember. It educated the guardians through habits, imparting by the melody a certain harmony of spirit that is not science, and by the rhythm measure and grace, and also qualities akin to these in the words of tales that are fables and those that are more nearly true.

 

But it included no study that tended to any such good as [522b] you are now seeking.” “Your recollection is most exact,” I said; “for in fact it had nothing of the kind. But in heaven's name, Glaucon, what study could there be of that kind? For all the arts were in our opinion base and mechanical.” “Surely; and yet what other study is left apart from music, gymnastics and the arts?” “Come,” said I, “if we are unable to discover anything outside of these, let us take [522c] something that applies to all alike.” “What?” “Why, for example, this common thing that all arts and forms of thought and all sciences employ, and which is among the first things that everybody must learn.” “What?” he said. “This trifling matter,” I said, “of distinguishing one and two and three. I mean, in sum, number and calculation. Is it not true of them that every art and science must necessarily partake of them?” “Indeed it is,” he said.

 

. . .

 

[522e]

. . . the ability to reckon and number?” . . . “It seems likely [523a] that it is one of those studies which we are seeking that naturally conduce to the awakening of thought, but that no one makes the right use of it, though it really does tend to draw the mind to essence and reality.” “What do you mean?”

 

. . .

 

“It seems likely [523a] that it is one of those studies which we are seeking that naturally conduce to the awakening of thought, but that no one makes the right use of it, though it really does tend to draw the mind to essence and reality.” For, if unity is adequately seen by itself [524e] or apprehended by some other sensation, it would not tend to draw the mind to the apprehension of essence, as we were explaining in the case of the finger. But if some contradiction is always seen coincidentally with it, so that it no more appears to be one than the opposite, there would forthwith be need of something to judge between them, and it would compel the soul to be at a loss and to inquire, by arousing thought in itself, and to ask, [525a] whatever then is the one as such, and thus the study of unity will be one of the studies that guide and convert the soul to the contemplation of true being.” “But surely,” he said, “the visual perception of it does especially involve this. For we see the same thing at once as one and as an indefinite plurality.” “Then if this is true of the one,” I said, “the same holds of all number, does it not?” “Of course.” “But, further, reckoning and the science of arithmetic are wholly concerned with number.” (Perseus Digital Library, Plato, Republic 521c to 525a, Emphasis mine, ZYD)

 

Let's look more deeply at this section:

 

[521e] “But in our previous account they were educated in gymnastics and music.” “They were, he said. “And gymnastics, I take it, is devoted to that which grows and perishes; for it presides over the growth and decay of the body.” “Obviously.” “Then this cannot be the study [522a] that we seek.” “No.” “Is it, then, music, so far as we have already described it?” “Nay, that,” he said, “was the counterpart of gymnastics, if you remember. It educated the guardians through habits, imparting by the melody a certain harmony of spirit that is not science, and by the rhythm measure and grace, and also qualities akin to these in the words of tales that are fables and those that are more nearly true.

 

But it included no study that tended to any such good as [522b] you are now seeking.” “Your recollection is most exact,” I said; “for in fact it had nothing of the kind. But in heaven's name, Glaucon, what study could there be of that kind? For all the arts were in our opinion base and mechanical.” “Surely; and yet what other study is left apart from music, gymnastics and the arts?” “Come,” said I, “if we are unable to discover anything outside of these, let us take [522c] something that applies to all alike.” “What?” “Why, for example, this common thing that all arts and forms of thought and all sciences employ, and which is among the first things that everybody must learn.” “What?” he said. “This trifling matter,” I said, “of distinguishing one and two and three. I mean, in sum, number and calculation. Is it not true of them that every art and science must necessarily partake of them?” “Indeed it is,” he said.

 

Are music and Gymnastics ever just explicitly "discarded", particularly in the sense implied by Innersound's extreme emphasis?  No, it is simply proposed that they are not the study which leads to "the world of being".  Instead something is proposed which "applies to all alike", which of course includes music and gymnastic, and it further proposed that this is mathematics.

 

First of all anyone comparing Innersound's quote, highly biased by its emphasis, to Plato's writing may start to wonder how it relates to what Plato actually says, and does it represent a misunderstanding of what Plato says on the part of Pelosi, or a quotation taken out of context to support Innersound's position.  Personally I think it was taken out of context, and because it is Innersound who has introduced it, I think if it is Innersound's responsibility to produce the context in which it appears, and to justify its use in this context, rather than for me to have to track it down, and I think this holds for any other secondary sources that Innersound may chose to quote.

 

Now, I can quote plenty of Plato to show that he always considers "music and gymnastic" fundamental to education.  I can show that Plato develops the short reference to "the study of the unity" into a whole "metaphysics" of the One in his dialog Parmenides, that serves as part of his "guide and convert the soul to the contemplation of true being", and I can also show that Plato is concerned about the experience of the "true being", not mere talk about it, and how it leads to immortality, but I am not sure that there is any point to it if Innersound is allowed to spam my responses with quotes from secondary sources neatly trimmed of their context as he has already done above, and which unfortunately is typical of his style.

 

As a side note, the above can be considered part of an answer to this:

 

It could be so;) but it is the destination. What is the road leading there? (Emphasis mine, ZYD)

[Apech]

A thousand thanks Donald I was hoping you would respond to that nonsense.

[shanlung]

 

This discussion occurs after "The Allegory of the Cave" and the discussion is how to educate people to have the experience of leaving the "cave" of ordinary experience and sensory "reality" and be lead to apprehend True Being.

 

 

That is only talking the talk.

 

Kogis, a very ancient people in Columbia and still walking on the path just like their forefathers walk the walk as far as the CAVE and more.  Their spiritual leaders are known as the MAMAs.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kogi_people

 

Training of MAMAs

 

From birth the Kogi attune their priests, called Mamas (which means sun in Kogi), for guidance, healing, and leadership. The Mamas are not to be confused with shamans or curers but to be regarded as tribal priests who hold highly respected roles in Kogi society. Mamas undergo strict training to assume this role. Selected male children are taken from birth and put in a dark^{[citation needed]} cave for the first nine years of their lives to begin this training. In the cave, elder Mamas and the child's mother care for, feed, train, and teach the child to attune to "Aluna" before the boy enters the outside world. Through deep concentration, symbolic offerings, and divination, the Mamas believe they support the balance of harmony and creativity in the world. It is also in this realm that the essence of agriculture is nurtured: seeds are blessed in Aluna before being planted, to ensure they grow successfully; marriage is blessed to ensure fertility; and ceremonies are offered to the different spirits of the natural world before performing tasks such as harvest and building of new huts.

 

Idiotic Taoist trying to see the reality that underlay the illusion of shadows that all believed to be the real world

[voidisyinyang]

O.K. so the claim that Platonic philosophy has any kind of relation to Taoism is totally crazy.

 

Plato practice gay sex and he preached irrational magnitude mathematics - neither has nothing to do with Taoism. Plato was all about sucking off the energy of younger males. He was misogynist.

 

You quote Plato and Socrates saying number and calculation are the most important connection to philosophy - how does that contradict the "secondary quote" I posted?  It doesn't at all - and you ignored what kind of number and calculation.

 

Irrational magnitude is how Plato defined the Emptiness - that is the antithesis of Taoism. Irrational magnitude was the foundation of Plato's philosophy - he got it from Archytas.

 

Carl A. Huffman, Archytas of Tartenum: Pythagorean, Philosopher and Mathematician King (Cambridge
University Press, 2005). Huffman argues that Plato and Archytas were host-friends and competitive colleagues --
with Archytas stressing the practical side of Pythagorean harmonics while Plato emphasized the pure philosophy of
Pythagorean Number. Both Plato and Archytas were relying on Philolaus and therefore were not “orthodox”
Pythagoreans.

 

Cherry-picking Plato? You've missed his whole secret!

 

Not just the content but the form of Plato’s writings were also secretly Pythagorean: “The twelve-part structure
of the dialogues detected above together with the prominence of the number twelve in Greek music theory suggests
that the stichometric structure of the dialogue is a musical scale. Plato used this musical scale as an outline, pegging
key concepts and turns in the argument to steps in the scale.” John B. Kennedy, “Plato’s Forms, Pythagorean
Mathematics, and Stichometry,” Apeiron: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science, 2010, p. 17.

 

So yeah I know there's a lot of New Age promotion of Plato but it's all b.s.

 

You're just mind-controlled by that stuff.

 

 

We can still trace out how, well over two thousand years ago, the schools of Plato and
Aristotle put the seal on what was to become the most enduring Athenian contribution
to intellectual history in the West:  instead of the love of wisdom, philosophy turned
into the love of talking and arguing about the love of wisdom. Since then the talking
and arguing have pushed everything else out of the picture-until now we no longer
know of anything else or can even imagine that there could be. (DPW 31-32)

The oldest descriptions of Parmenides are strange ones. . .
Plato wrote a dialogue about him. It’s called Parmenides. . .
The whole of the Parmenides is a deliberate fiction. It has Parmenides debate abstract
Platonic theories in a way he never could have or would have. . .
From beginning to end the setting of the Parmenides is skilfully designed with one purpose
in mind. That’s to present Socrates and Plato — not Zeno or anyone else — as the
legitimate heirs to Parmenides’ teaching. (DPW 39–40)

 

O.K. I'm quoting academics who published academic books on Platonic research.

 

 

That's Peter Kingsley - his Ph.D. was published by Oxford - but guess what - the academics rejected Kingsley because he is exposing the truth about Plato.

 

So go ahead suck up to the Plato promoters and join the mainstream maelstrom of lies.

 

 

The necessity of tempering pure intervals, defined by the ratio of integers, is one
of the great themes of Plato’s Republic. In his allegorical form, “citizens”
modeled on the tones of the scale must not demand “exactly what they are owed”
but must keep in mind “what is best for the city.”

 

Yeah that's right - it takes big size and bold to get people to stop lying about Plato.

 

Ernest McClain, The Myth of Invariance: The origins of the Gods, Mathematics and Music, from the
Rg Veda to Plato (Nicholas-Hays, 1976), p. 11.

 

See also

 

Scott Makeig, “Means, Meaning, and Music: Pythagoras, Archytas, and Plato,” Ex Tempore: A Journal of
Compositional and Theoretical Research in Music, 1981.

 

Professor Michael Hudson concurs: “The worst problem
in tuning occurs in the interval of three whole tones, e.g., between C and F#/Gb in the “natural”
untempered methods of tuning. If the ratio of the octave is 2:1, then the ratio of C to F# represents the
square root of two — an irrational number. (Burkert [1972:441] notes that the harmonic mean discovered in
the context of Pythagorean music theory has a major use precisely in approximating the square root.)”
Michael Hudson’s essay, “Music as an Analogy for Economic Order in Classical Antiquity” in Jürgen
Backhaus (ed.), Karl Bücher. Theory, History, Anthropology, Non-Market Economies (Marburg:Metropolis
Verlag, 2000): pp. 113-35 citing Burkert, Walter (1972), Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism
(Harvard University Press, 1972).

 

 

So for Plato each citizen was according the value of 9/8 and had to be "tempered" - into irrational magnitude music tuning - was a contained materialist Emptiness (Apeiron) as Freemasonic geometry.

 

Plato is the antithesis of Taoism.

 

 

even octaves (powers of 2),
and odd fifths (powers of 3), or of divergent members of a res publica – must be
coordinated as an alternative to chaos. What the demiourgos has shown to be
possible in the heavens, what the musicians have shown to be possible with tones,
the philosopher should learn to make possible in the life political. Limitation,
preferable self-limitation, is one of Plato's foremost concerns.

 

Ernest McClain, The Pythagorean Plato: Prelude to the Song Itself (Nicolas-Hays, Inc., 1978), p. 14.

 

And again how was the limitation defined?

 

Quote

"Magnitudes have all the characteristics Plato attributes to Apeiron."

 
p. 394

Socratic, Platonic and Aristotelian Studies: Essays in Honor of Gerasimos Santas 2011 And so then you have Proclus directly stating if there were no Apeiron there would be no irrational magnitudes.  From this googlebook review link

citing Vassliis Karasmanis, "Continunity and Irrationality in Ancient Greek Philosophy and Mathematics."

 

that's the antithesis to Taoism.

 

Sorry to burst your mind-controlled bubble.

[Taoist Texts]

 

 

 

When did this tradition became refered as "Daoism", Dao Jiao ? Do we know that ?

 

To answer that one has to define this tradition first, because that term was in use as early as

 

《墨子 - Mozi》

[spring and Autumn - Warring States] 490 BC-221 BC English translation: W. P. Mei ^[?]

 

有強執有命以說議曰：「壽夭貧富，安危治亂，固有天命，不可損益。窮達賞罰幸否有極，人之知力，不能為焉。」群吏信之，則怠於分職；庶人信之，則怠於從事。

 

吏¹不治則亂，農事緩則貧，貧且亂政之本，而儒者以為道教，是賊天下之人者也。  

 

Further, he holds tenaciously to the dogma of fate and argues: "Old age or early death, poverty or wealth, safety or danger, order or chaos are destined by the fate of Heaven and cannot be modified. Failure or success, reward or punishment, luck or adversity, are all settled; the wisdom and power of man can do nothing." When the different officers believe this they will neglect their several duties. When the common people believe this they will neglect their work. Lax government will lead to disorder; inefficient agriculture will lead to poverty. And poverty is the root of disorder and insurrections. Yet the Confucianists take this teaching about fate to be the Dao and the principle of life.(Daojiao) This is to destroy the people of the empire.

 

 

Also

 

 

http://www.goldenelixir.com/publications/eot_daojiao.html

 

 

Edited July 16, 2015 by Taoist Texts

[voidisyinyang]

Since the Han dynasty,

the rationalist and moralistic world view of Confucianism has dominated the

Chinese intellectual, social and political tradition in much the same way

Platonism came to represent the Greek world view. And Confucianism, like

Platonism, carries its own metaphysical assumptions about wisdom and

knowledge.

 

Lisa Ann Raphals, Knowing words: wisdom and cunning in the classical traditions of China and

Greece (Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 18.

 

O.K. so just as with Plato changing the meaning of Pythagorean philosophy, we see the same

solar-patriarchal transformation in China through the philosopher Dong Zongshu in the 2nd

Century B.C. Philosophy professor David L. Hall documents that Zongshu changed the meaning

of yin-yang from being a fluid process of resonance with equal but complementary gender

relations to being a static hierarchical axiom based on left-brained patriarchal logic. The book

The Tao and the Logos : literary hermeneutics, East and West by Chang, Lung-hsi (1992)

documents that it was Dong Zongshu who was the most important philosopher to make

patriarchal Confucionism the dominant ideology of China.

[Aithrobates]

I have to agree. Platonism represented a shift from Pyrhagorism, in the intellectual direction.

 

The equation [ Pythagorism : Platonism :: Daoism : Confucianism ] is interesting. I don't know if it has an historical value, but it illustrates the fact in both civilisation a more intellectual current coexisted with a more mystical one. The difference being that platonism was born as a very divergent school of pythagorism, the same can't be said of confucianism and daoism.

 

But this apply only to platonism proper, as scholars make the distinctions beetwin original, sometimes middle, and neo platonism. All modern labels that the ancient never used. They see the so called neo-plantonists  as diverging from the true tradition, while all they did was using both Plato and older traditions, that anyway where the very traditions he claimed and changed.

 

In the end, the last of them both Platonicians and Pythagoreans saw the books of Plato as some kind of introductions to the real deal, that was in the Chaldean Oracles ...

 

What you say about scholars rejecting Kingsley because they worship Plato is mostly true. Still I've read some good books where the authors took his work honnestly into account.

 

One last thing. Why is "solar" related to patriarchy ? Is it and idosyncratic concept of yours ? Or is it an old good à la Robert Graves and the like theory, where Lunar religions are in equalitarian, even matriarchal, Goddess based cultures, while Solar cults denote patriarchy ?

[voidisyinyang]

One last thing. Why is "solar" related to patriarchy ? Is it and idosyncratic concept of yours ? Or is it an old good à la Robert Graves and the like theory, where Lunar religions are in equalitarian, even matriarchal, Goddess based cultures, while Solar cults denote patriarchy ?

 

Scholars might use Kingsley but I haven't seen any who actually accept his views outright - please give some names.

 

Solar patriarchy is based on plowing the earth as a male task whereas previously horticulture was female based - and with cow-based plowing the religion was to contain infinity or Nature using geometric-based mathematics - and the solar calendar to guide the farming.

 

So then a good comparative study is Suns of God.

 

 

But this patriarchy is built in the mathematics - and as a mass sacrifice ritual it is based on a "divide and average" convergence to a geometric materialist limit as infinity - and so God is from Gott as Bull just as Brahman means Bull - and this is from the male plow farming.

 

My book gives more details.

 

Here's a Marvin Harris

essay, “The evolution of human gender hierarchies,” from the book Sex and Gender Hierarchies

(Cambridge U Press, 1993):

 

 

These questions cannot be answered without considering the different

implications of hoes and plows for the sexual division of labor as related to male

and female anatomy and physiology in cultural evolutionary perspective. Where

hoe agriculture prevails, women tend to be as productive as men in agricultural

operations. This is what keeps their labor force in high demand and makes them

independent of men. In contrast, where plow agriculture prevails, plowing

constitutes a critical task (an 'energy gap') which men perform (or operate) more

efficiently than women. And this is what underlies the Eurasian pattern of female

dependency and subordination.

 

and

 

 

Deborah Fahy Bryceson , Women Wielding the Hoe: Lessons from Rural Africa for Feminist Theory and

Development Practice (Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Women), (Berg Publishers, 1995).

 

http://www.lulu.com/shop/drew-hempel/the-natural-resonance-revolution/paperback/product-6224705.html

 

My earlier book shud have more details.

 

“The sun is sick” is a phrase taken from the Turkana, a Nilotic East African tribe who

practice an early form of animal domestication. The undigested food from the animal entrails

must be sprinkled on newly killed goats whenever there is a lunar eclipse of the sun. This ritual

sacrifice is called “atona” and maybe one of the earliest forms of organized religion. The

shamanic music of the Turkana is similar to the Khoisan San healing, with the men stomping

around in a circle and the women in a circle surrounding the men. The Khoisan culture, going

back 100,000 years, has been traced to have close genetic connections with the Ethiopians as

well.

 

The play on words and meaning by the Turkana is that when there is an eclipse of the sun

by the moon then a goat must be sacrificed in order to protect the son from the all encompassing

power of Nature – making Nature therefore “evil” as in the eves or eve – the literally

containment or squaring of Nature. As was explained in the last chapter on science as

Freemasonic mass ritual sacrifice – religion came before agriculture – the concept of rectlinear

sacred geometry was an attempt to “contain” the formless infinity of Nature – power that linked

the electrochemical energy of the female lunar cycle with the formless awareness

Edited July 17, 2015 by Innersoundqigong

[Aithrobates]

Scholars might use Kingsley but I haven't seen any who actually accept his views outright - please give some names.

 

People sharing his views, like Uzdavinys.

Ustinova in "Caves and the Ancient Greek Mind" works with his view that Parmenides had underworld practices, with Apollo not as the beautifull sun god, but as an underworld denizen, etc...

[Taoist Texts]

I wouldn't say this is necessarily the case. The Neoplatonists had exercises, primarily of an apophatic or emptying nature, and later Neoplatonic theurgy and ancient Greek alchemists had exercises of one might call a 'yogic' type, or at least esoteric/occult.

 

Thank you. Being ignorant of any sources to that effect i have to subscribe to the theory of  radical differences between the oriental and the western psyche, the latter evolving from an ancient one that made yoga unnecessary or impossible, to the modern one that while craving the oriental fads is unable to digest them.

[Kongming]

Thank you. Being ignorant of any sources to that effect i have to subscribe to the theory of  radical differences between the oriental and the western psyche, the latter evolving from an ancient one that made yoga unnecessary or impossible, to the modern one that while craving the oriental fads is unable to digest them.

 

I'd say the perceived difference between Western and Eastern psyche isn't so much geographical, racial, or cultural so much as a difference between a modern and traditional psyche. The origins of the divergence can be traced in various lines to various points in history, but until the High Middle Ages the Western and Eastern psyches weren't so different. It was through the trajectory of the rise of nominalism, the rise of secular humanism, the Renaissance, the Protestant revolution, and thereafter the scientific revolution, the so-called 'Enlightenment era', the industrial revolution, and thereafter the rise of Marxism, Darwinism, Freudianism, relativism, and materialistic atheism that the Western and Eastern minds diverged, the latter remaining rooted in ancient, spiritual, and sacred conceptualizations with the former transforming from the same mindset to the modern one. In other words, this was a process of centuries involving many factors and spiritual and intellectual movements. While the divergence begins in the Middle Ages, from my perspective the 18th century and onward the divergence becomes especially pronounced and accelerates.

 

I (and others, like Rene Guenon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, etc.) attribute this trajectory not to something inherent within Western culture or people or mindset so much as the progress of spiritual forces at work in history, namely the so-called Kali Yuga/Dharma-Ending Age/Iron Age of Hesiod, etc. This is why these trends have ceased to be a merely Western phenomena and have spread across the globe with such ease.

 

So, as noted at the start of my post, the difference isn't East vs West so much as traditional vs modern. It is interesting that what took the West centuries has happened in the East at a much faster during the past century or two, which shows that the same roots or spiritual decline that took place in the West were also present in the East, albeit to a lesser degree, probably due to the East focusing on the production of sages whereas Christianity only reserved this area for a small elite of mystics (often treated with suspicion) and with the increasing anti-Hermetic/alchemic/occult stance of the Catholic Church after the Renaissance, forcing those Western sages underground.

Edited July 17, 2015 by Kongming

[Michael Sternbach]

I'd say the perceived difference between Western and Eastern psyche isn't so much geographical, racial, or cultural so much as a difference between a modern and traditional psyche. The origins of the divergence can be traced in various lines to various points in history, but until the High Middle Ages the Western and Eastern psyches weren't so different. It was through the trajectory of the rise of nominalism, the rise of secular humanism, the Renaissance, the Protestant revolution, and thereafter the scientific revolution, the so-called 'Enlightenment era', the industrial revolution, and thereafter the rise of Marxism, Darwinism, Freudianism, relativism, and materialistic atheism that the Western and Eastern minds diverged, the latter remaining rooted in ancient, spiritual, and sacred conceptualizations with the former transforming from the same mindset to the modern one. In other words, this was a process of centuries involving many factors and spiritual and intellectual movements. While the divergence begins in the Middle Ages, from my perspective the 18th century and onward the divergence becomes especially pronounced and accelerates.

 

I (and others, like Rene Guenon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, etc.) attribute this trajectory not to something inherent within Western culture or people or mindset so much as the progress of spiritual forces at work in history, namely the so-called Kali Yuga/Dharma-Ending Age/Iron Age of Hesiod, etc. This is why these trends have ceased to be a merely Western phenomena and have spread across the globe with such ease.

 

So, as noted at the start of my post, the difference isn't East vs West so much as traditional vs modern. It is interesting that what took the West centuries has happened in the East at a much faster during the past century or two, which shows that the same roots or spiritual decline that took place in the West were also present in the East, albeit to a lesser degree, probably due to the East focusing on the production of sages whereas Christianity only reserved this area for a small elite of mystics (often treated with suspicion) and with the increasing anti-Hermetic/alchemic/occult stance of the Catholic Church after the Renaissance, forcing those Western sages underground.

 

I can't follow you here. If the East was so steadfast in its spiritual/traditional world view, why was it swayed by Western innovation at a much faster pace eventually?

 

Also, the Catholic Church lost some of its fierceness in its fight against occult tradition after the Renaissance, with the awakening of modern science which is the child of Hermeticism (although a "rebellious" one).

Edited July 17, 2015 by Michael Sternbach

[Zhongyongdaoist]

. . .  from my perspective the 18th century and onward the divergence becomes especially pronounced and accelerates.

 

 This is why I said:

 

During his lifetime and for over 2,000 years thereafter, Plato was never read or understood the way he has been read and understood beginning circa 1800 to the present.

 

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

 

All of this needs to be born in mind when reading older Western works and also for understanding modern works attempting to discuss older works, whether of East or West.

[Kongming]

I can't follow you here. If the East was so steadfast in its spiritual/traditional world view, why was it swayed by Western innovation at a much faster pace eventually?

 

Also, the Catholic Church lost some of its fierceness in its fight against occult tradition after the Renaissance, with the awakening of modern science which is the child of Hermeticism (although a "rebellious" one).

 

When I said the East was steadfast, I wouldn't imply that the traditional or sacred mode of perception was completely intact, just much better than in the West where over the past few centuries a complete loss of the sense of the sacred has taken place. In other words, the concept of the sage (rather than mere saint) wasn't completely lost like in the West outside some esoteric orders. Liu Yiming and other Daoists, as well as various Chan Buddhists, were known to complain about the perceived degeneration of their respective spiritual traditions when compared to the heights of the Tang (for Chan) or early Song (for neidan.) In other words, the same roots were in place both East and West, but the West was first to manifest the outward symptoms over a longer period whereas in the East they lay dormant.

 

Reading Guenon or the other Traditionalists would give one a much better insight into these matters than I can provide. Specifically this book may be of interest:

 

http://www.amazon.com/East-West-Rene-Guenon/dp/0900588349

 

 

In a sense the Dao Bums is a refugee camp for people fleeing this Western reductionism, which they mistake for reason, which is why "reason" and "rationality" and "intellect" are all pejorative terms around here, even though if seen in their original senses, not their post 1800 senses, they would not be.

 

Interesting you say this, especially regarding the intellect. Frithjof Schuon mentions some interesting insights on the intellect (and metaphysics vs philosophy) in this short citation:

 

 

In order to define clearly the difference between the two modes in question, it may be said that philosophy proceeds from reason (which is a purely individual faculty), whereas metaphysic proceeds exclusively from the Intellect.

 

The latter faculty has been defined by Meister Eckhardt—who fully understood the import of his words—as follows: ‘There is something in the soul which is uncreated and uncreatable; if the whole soul were this it would be uncreated and uncreatable; and this is the Intellect.’

 

An analogous definition, which is still more concise and even richer in symbolic value, is to be found in Moslem esotericism: ‘The Sufi (that is to say man identified with the Intellect) is uncreated.’ Since purely intellectual knowledge is by definition beyond the reach of the individual, being in its essence supra-individual, universal or divine, and since it proceeds from pure Intelligence, which is direct and not discursive, it follows that this knowledge not only goes infinitely farther than reasoning, but even goes farther than faith in the ordinary sense of this term.

 

In other words, intellectual knowledge also transcends the specifically religious point of view, which is itself incomparably superior to the philosophic point of view, since, like metaphysical knowledge, it emanates from God and not from man; but whereas metaphysic proceeds wholly from intellectual intuition, religion proceeds from revelation.

 

The latter is the Word of God spoken to His creatures, whereas intellectual intuition is a direct and active participation in divine Knowledge and not an indirect and passive participation, as is faith. In other words, in the case of intellectual intuition, knowledge is not possessed by the individual in so far as he is an individual, but in so far as in his innermost essence he is not distinct from his divine Principle.

 

 

 

http://www.sophia-perennis.com/philosophy/meta_philo.htm

[Zhongyongdaoist]

For those who are puzzled by Innersound's linking Plato to Confucianism here:

 

 

Since the Han dynasty,
the rationalist and moralistic world view of Confucianism has dominated the
Chinese intellectual, social and political tradition in much the same way
Platonism came to represent the Greek world view. And Confucianism, like
Platonism, carries its own metaphysical assumptions about wisdom and
knowledge.

Lisa Ann Raphals, Knowing words: wisdom and cunning in the classical traditions of China and
Greece (Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 18.

O.K. so just as with Plato changing the meaning of Pythagorean philosophy, we see the same
solar-patriarchal transformation in China through the philosopher Dong Zongshu in the 2nd
Century B.C. Philosophy professor David L. Hall documents that Zongshu changed the meaning
of yin-yang from being a fluid process of resonance with equal but complementary gender
relations to being a static hierarchical axiom based on left-brained patriarchal logic. The book
The Tao and the Logos : literary hermeneutics, East and West by Chang, Lung-hsi (1992)
documents that it was Dong Zongshu who was the most important philosopher to make
patriarchal Confucionism the dominant ideology of China.

it goes back to an earlier discussion with Innersound here:

 

 

Wow - no wonder you follow Plato as being brainwashed - your tag is for a Confucian text (emphasis mine, ZYD)- which is the same brainwashed Platonic philosophy. I document this in my book.

Knowing words: wisdom and cunning in the classical traditions of China
and Greece by Lisa Ann Raphals compares metis to a traditional Chinese context:

 

Here the individual of zhi frequently appears as a sage-general, whose mastery of
the art of deception allows him to prevail over an opponent of stronger physical
force, a mode of operation of those strongly reminiscent of that associated with
the individual possessing mētis. Taoist texts, on the other hand, deride “small
knowledge” (Zhuangzi), or even all knowledge (Laozi)…. Since the Han dynasty,
the rationalist and moralistic world view of Confucianism has dominated the
Chinese intellectual, social and political tradition in much the same way
Platonism came to represent the Greek world view. And Confucianism, like
Platonism, carries its own metaphysical assumptions about wisdom and
knowledge.

Lisa Ann Raphals, Knowing words: wisdom and cunning in the classical traditions of China and
Greece (Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 20.

O.K. so just as with Plato changing the meaning of Pythagorean philosophy, we see the same
solar-patriarchal transformation in China through the philosopher Dong Zongshu in the 2nd
Century B.C. Philosophy professor David L. Hall documents that Zongshu changed the meaning
of yin-yang from being a fluid process of resonance with equal but complementary gender
relations to being a static hierarchical axiom based on left-brained patriarchal logic. The book
The Tao and the Logos : literary hermeneutics, East and West by Chang, Lung-hsi (1992)
documents that it was Dong Zongshu who was the most important philosopher to make
patriarchal Confucionism the dominant ideology of China.

Where Innersound chose to upbraid me for daring to use an "evil" Confucian work, the Zhongyong, as a name on Dao Bums. I had very good reasons for choosing it, as will become clear later.

This shows among other things, that Innersound doesn't have much of a repertoire of secondary sources for spamming purposes on this subject. It also shows that he knows next to nothing about Confucianism. I, on the other hand do, and am just as ready to quote primary sources for Confucian views as I am those of Plato, but first we need to do a quick review of Confucian history.

Historically there are two main schools of Confucian thought, those that follow Mencius and those that follow Xunzi. Dong Zongshu, or more exactly Dong Zhongshu, is a Han dynasty figure who is "innocently" described on Wikipedia as:

 

. . . associated with the promotion of Confucianism as the official ideology of the Chinese imperial state.

What this leaves out, is that he favored Xunzi and Xunzi's program of social control, and marginalized and suppressed the study of Mencius, who favored a program of self-cultivation that has many common points with the Neiye, and is better described as a program of self-realizaton, I quote Mencius' informal outline description here:

 

 

To draw this to a close, I will post the other quote from Mencius, which was also a great surprise to me:

 

7B:25
浩生不害問曰、樂正子、何人也。孟子曰、善人也、信人也。何謂善、何謂信。曰、可欲之謂善。有諸己之謂信。充實之爲美。充實而光輝之謂大。大而化之之謂聖。聖而不可知之之謂神。樂正子、二之中、四之下也。
Haoshang Buhai asked, “What kind of man is Yo Zheng Zi?”
Mencius said, “He is good, and he is trustworthy.”
“What do you mean by ‘good,’ and what do you mean by ‘trustworthy’?”
“A man that people like to be with is good.
A man who keeps this goodness in himself is trustworthy.
One who fully develops his goodness is called ‘excellent.’
One whose full development of goodness shines forth is called ‘great.’
One whose greatness transforms others is called a sage.
A sage who is unfathomable is called ‘transcendent.’ (神, Shén )
Yo Zheng fits in the first two levels, but is not up to the last four.”
(http://www.acmuller.net/con-dao/mencius.html#div-11, I have kept Muller's translation in this case, emphasis mine and added (神, Shén ) for clarity, ZYD)

To discover that Mencius viewed the end of Confucian self-cultivation as becoming a 'shen' or 'god' was quit a revelation, but this passage in Mencius is only part of the picture. How it relates to the teachings of the Zhongyong on chéng (诚) will be the subject of future posts. For now, I think I have given everyone plenty to think about.

This post is probably long enough for now, but it it should be obvious that Mencian Confucianism is not "a static hierarchical axiom based on left-brained patriarchal logic." I will follow up with more shortly. In the meantime people interested in Confucian Self-Cultivation and more quotes like the above, may wish to check out my posts in Confucian Qi Gong.  I will continue the historical outline, which will become important and even interesting, as I go along.

 

 

 

 

Edit: Italicized Neiye above.

Edited July 17, 2015 by Zhongyongdaoist

[voidisyinyang]

Referring to me in third person is rude. Am i ur secondary source? Haha also saying someone is a great military leader is also a great moral leader is pretty funny. Finally the original source shud not be a written text. That's silly. U quote plato as if that means u can decide the meaning urself whereas i quote half a dozen different experts all agreeing what plato says. Sure slavery was moral in the u.s. by people quoting king james bible as an original text. To be against slavery meant to rely on secondary sources. It's the same issue with plato. Robert schmidt documented that plato's greek is multiphase so an exact translation is not possible. But the music ratios and math that i cite from plato are not only clear but the secret core of his philosophy. The 1-4-5 music ratios are the real morals of what unites humanity its oral language that is right brain dominant so directly translates subconscious emotions.

 

Trance spirituality of modern humans goes back to 125,000 years ago but you need some original text for the truth. Hilarious. Written language is what shuts off the brain from uniting with the heart thru trance. The slow music of china is like baroque here for mozart effect, alpha brain wave heart activation thru right brain serotonin dominance and visualization. U want left brain meditation. That is o.k. but has to rely on internal listening still. Not on some written text. Left brain logic is circular without syncopated rhythm like heart beat. So changes in frequency are not harmonized by a written text. The energy is the subconscious intent behind words.

 

Chariot warfare is not morality but the male is controlled by repressed desire and ejaculation. It's a physiological problem and music is then language of emotional morality. words are inherently hypocritical. Then ten based nbr system in china and india with chariots does show that in the bronze age and early iron and mixing, certainly the red haired skeletons show this incursion. Patriarchal culture spread into china but it definitely wasnt the source of taoism. written language is inherently patriarchal due to the left brain right hand dominance.

[Zhongyongdaoist]

You quote Plato and Socrates saying number and calculation are the most important connection to philosophy - how does that contradict the "secondary quote" I posted? It doesn't at all - and you ignored what kind of number and calculation.

 

You quote the text I referenced in two places, in both with Having discarded music and gymnastics, strongly emphasized as you did in the quote I was addressing, as follows:

 

 

Having discarded music and gymnastics, Socrates proposes considering the

science of “number and calculation” (522C6-7)…. The link between the correct

use of mathematics and the capacity of this discipline to lead to an extrasensible

dimension recalls the link between the correct use of the science of harmony (of

music in general) and the potential of this art to establish a contact with the soul

and supersensible harmony.

Francesco Pelosi, Plato on Music, Soul and Body (Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 118

So the NeoPlatonics - and Plato also - had already lost the actual shamanic training of Pythagorean philosophy - like Taoism - which is a practice of yoga as body-mind harmonization for the creation of yang qi energy.

 

and

 

 

The yogic goal of bodily and spiritual balance is consonant with the Indo-

European notion of ‘measure’ which surfaces as a cardinal attribute of the cognate

‘medical’..., and which is the essence of ‘meditation.’ In Greece we find ideas of

harmony applied extensively to the body, often (but not exclusively) in

Pythagoreanizing sources as a concomitant to the belief that the mind or soul is

simply the ‘attunement’ of the body – the Harmony which supervenes on its

harmonized components….

John Curtis Franklin, “Harmony in Greek and Indo-Iranian Cosmology,” The Journal of Indo-European

Studies, Volume 30, No. 1 and 2., 2002, p. 13.

 

So this harmonization issue of mind-body transformation was attacked by Plato.

 

which you refer to here:

 

O.K. so now the FAKE PYthagorean philosophy - remember I quoted John Curtis Franklin on the Pythagorean harmonics of the body-mind? Well guess what - no longer!!

 

Having discarded music and gymnastics, Socrates proposes considering the

science of “number and calculation” (522C6-7)…. The link between the correct

use of mathematics and the capacity of this discipline to lead to an extrasensible

dimension recalls the link between the correct use of the science of harmony (of

music in general) and the potential of this art to establish a contact with the soul

and supersensible harmony.

 

Both to the effect that, the emphasis you provided was to indicate, that Socrates had summarily tossed out "music and gymnastic", and replaced study with the study of “number and calculation", while completely neglecting mind/body harmony.

 

Now you are trying to deny that this was your intent?

 

Is there anyone who has read the original post who didn't think that Innersound intended it to emphasize the “discarded” by putting the whole thing in 24 point? Did any think my response was not apt to that intent? And as for quoting source material, how is anyone to respond to the myriad secondary sources which you often cite in a single post? Am I supposed to track down your every reference? I will repeat what I said before:

 

I think if it is Innersound's responsibility to produce the context in which it appears, and to justify its use in this context, rather than for me to have to track it down, and I think this holds for any other secondary sources that Innersound may chose to quote.

 

So far you have not done so. Gosh, I wonder why?

 

Since you have not taken any responsibility for your quote, I have done the best that I can with this book:

 

Plato On Music, Soul and Body on Google Books

 

Chapter 2, “Moving to music: a therapy for the rational soul”

 

Begins with an interesting discussion.

 

Chapter 3, “Musical education of rationality”

 

Begins on page 114 and continues the discussion through page 117, but pages 118 and 119 are not available.

 

Until you do justify your use of the quote as implying that Socrates completely “Discarded music and gymnastics”, replacing them with “number and calculation", preferable by reproducing pages 118 & 119, we have nothing else to discuss, and I will return to my posts on Confucianism.

 

Oh, one final note, the book seems so interesting I have decided to read it myself, I will probably use inter-library loan and have it within a few weeks.

 

 

 

 

 

Edit: Corrected books to book in last paragraph.

Edited July 21, 2015 by Zhongyongdaoist

[Wu Ming Jen]

World view, how you see your relationship with the universe hence philosophy. Western philosophy has Gods or now a single God as the source of all things that is also not part of nature and lives in a higher world and is responsible and in charge.This impacts all systems of knowledge of the civilization.

 

Buddhist have ultimate reality but no ultimate source so west can easily adopt the teachings.

 

.Taoist are unique, ultimate source and ultimate reality are the same coin,  Tao is a name given to what is great, real and true. Humans in this system are divine from this source and are responsible for all things. Corruption of this divine spirit like materialism, greed and so on are considered qualities that makes one no longer human.

 

Polar complete reality is the Tai Chi or Yin Yang symbol.

 

Western symbol would be two boxes one black and one white that are not related to each other it is called absolute fragment philosophy. if you look at one side of a coin and say the other side is god that is a fragment of reality not looking at the whole picture. If all things are not related then it is called absolute.

 

I join the discussion not to discount any system because what is real and true is found everywhere throughout all time so beginnings and ends are a waste of time.

Edited July 21, 2015 by Wu Ming Jen

[voidisyinyang]

 

You quote the text I referenced in two places, in both with Having discarded music and gymnastics, strongly emphasized as you did in the quote I was addressing, as follows:

 

 

and

 

 

which you refer to here:

 

 

Both to the effect that, the emphasis you provided was to indicate, that Socrates had summarily tossed out "music and gymnastic", and replaced study with the study of “number and calculation", while completely neglecting mind/body harmony.

 

Now you are trying to deny that this was your intent?

 

Is there anyone who has read the original post who didn't think that Innersound intended it to emphasize the “discarded” by putting the whole thing in 24 point? Did any think my response was not apt to that intent? And as for quoting source material, how is anyone to respond to the myriad secondary sources which you often cite in a single post? Am I supposed to track down your every reference? I will repeat what I said before:

 

 

So far you have not done so. Gosh, I wonder why?

 

Since you have not taken any responsibility for your quote, I have done the best that I can with this book:

 

Plato On Music, Soul and Body on Google Books

 

Chapter 2, “Moving to music: a therapy for the rational soul”

 

Begins with an interesting discussion.

 

Chapter 3, “Musical education of rationality”

 

Begins on page 114 and continues the discussion through page 117, but pages 118 and 119 are not available.

 

Until you do justify your use of the quote as implying that Socrates completely “Discarded music and gymnastics”, replacing them with “number and calculation", preferable by reproducing pages 118 & 119, we have nothing else to discuss, and I will return to my posts on Confucianism.

 

Oh, one final note, the book seems so interesting I have decided to read it myself, I will probably use inter-library loan and have it within a few weeks.

 

 

 

 

 

Edit: Corrected books to book in last paragraph.

 

You ask me - if you're supposed to "track down" my every reference - well I give the references so it's not so much a matter of tracking them down - I mean you're talking about accessibility which is slightly different.

 

The book you ordered ILL is actually online as a free pdf - all I did was search the quote that you want to know the context of. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CEIQFjAFahUKEwiYs7C4r-vGAhULMIgKHfqLAYc&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.angelino.com%2Fregenciaorquestral%2FBiblioteca%2FPlato%2520on%2520Music%2C%2520Soul%2520and%2520Body.pdf&ei=ZcitVdjsE4vgoAT6l4a4CA&usg=AFQjCNFDn1p-2iiHQscg4stOiCh3mNlJxQ&sig2=D1zGimOW0mGWuWHQM69bqg&bvm=bv.98476267,d.cGU

 

pdf link

 

Search the quote and you get the book online.

 

So then I read the book more for context and I pulled more quotes - but the power went out here. Anyway - the book makes the exact point I made - that Plato relies on Archytas for Plato's view of music - and not just music but Plato's philosophy of his World Soul - he get's it from Archytas' harmonics.

 

So you say - do you have to track down my references? well in a sense - if you want to understand Plato then you do need to understand Archytas harmonics.

 

I guess I got lucky since I approached Plato already understanding harmonics.

 

But anyway so what the book says actually just corroborates my masters thesis - but my masters thesis was not radical enough.

 

See - you really do need to "unlearn" a lot here - it takes time to unlearn.

 

So first of all - the actual book - that you want more context of.

 

So I'll word search it Archytas - since like I said I had already pulled a bunch of quotes.

 

 

Furthermore,

the construction of the World Soul in the Timaeus – an example of the

application of the theory of means and proportions elaborated by Archytas,

but at the same time also a demonstration of the ideal harmonics in Resp.

vii – precisely shows the debt that Plato owes to Archytas’ harmonic

investigation.

 

p. 147 of that book which is online.

 

o.k. so let's go through my references.

 

So you dug up my John Franklin Curtis quote - I have others - but I also corresponded with him regarding Ernest McClain's research. So he is referencing - Curtis Franklin is it? The older Western Asian traditions - and so also older Greek traditions.

 

So is Peter Kingsley. My masters thesis also free online:

 

 

 

 

As Kingsley points out, "On these principles...the notion of sympathies and antipathies [the law of Pythagoras] in Greek magic and alchemy and the analogies to both in China, see Needham [science and Civilization in China]."322

 

Kingsley:

 

 

 

...since the publication of Cherniss's work on Aristotle and the Presocratics in 1935 there has been a deeper awareness not only of the fact that Aristotle and his school were frequently capable of misunderstanding the Presocratics at a very fundamental level, but also of the fact that he and his followers systematically used deliberate misunderstanding and 'shameless' misrepresentation as a way of silencing their predecessors.292... We have already seen evidence of the role played by Archytas' school in reinterpreting - often quite radically - Pythagorean mythological ideas which were current in the generation of Philolaus

 

and

 

 

 

Music theorist Jamie James points out that not only, as is well known, did Plato have a disdain for music and its uncontrollable social power, but he was hostile "towards mousike (which it ought to be born in mind, meant any human activity governed by the Muses)." James cites researcher Cornford, who remarks how in Timaeus Plato defines the concept of the World Soul by the Pythagorean ratios but he stops at the end of the fifth octave overtone, where the overshooting comma of Pythagoras occurs.

 

According to Cornford Plato's choice of the Pythagorean Limited over the Unlimited (the prime dialectic of Pythagoras) was a reflection of Plato's perception of a closed system reality.294 This example further demonstrates the direct connection between the reified repressed ratios of music and the repressed logos and language of the western knowledge system. As Jeans states, in contrast to Plato, "[Pythagoras] did not think of his series of notes as forming a closed circle."295

 

and Kingsley on Plato:

 

 

 

 

It is quite possible that the idea of the centre of a circle, or sphere, as its most 'honourable' place [in the reinterpretation] is related to Archytas' exaltation of the geometric properties of the circle and sphere.293

 

and then in my footnotes:

 

 

 

 

Scholar Antonio T. de Nicolas also describes the Pythagorean musical foundation for Plato: "The model of musical operations performed in Books Eight, Nine and Ten of the Republic, through the marriage myth, the myth of the Tyrant, the myth of Er, and equally in the circulation of souls in the Phaedrus, the myth of archaic times in the Statesman, or the World-Soul in the Timaeus, is the internal circulation of selection itself in the total narrative of foundation according to which selectivity may be applied. The mythical grounds the philosophical;..." Antonio T. de Nicolas, "The First Metaphysics: Revisioning Plato," in Robert C. Neville, ed., New Essays in Metaphysics (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1987), p. 173.

 

O.K. so I have cited numerous scholars documenting Plato relying on Archytas - and Archytas redefining Pythagorean philosophy as a closed system of "preestablished deep disharmony" to quote math professor Luigi Borzacchini.

 

Yeah I got about a dozen references on this math-music secret of Plato teaching Archtyas' harmonics as the World Soul and also the eugenics that goes with it and also the economic system that goes with it.

 

In other words Plato is the secret source of the trajectory of Western Civilization - that is well known - but what is the real power of Plato - it is this origin of the Greek Miracle from music theory!!

 

My blog post on the Devil's Interval gives more details.

 

Do you want to engage with my references? It's up to you. The information is radical.

 

Most people "plug" Plato - but that is because they don't really understand Pythagorean philosophy from an Orthodox perspective - which is also Taoist philosophy.

 

Kingsley again:

 

Kingsley notes,

 

"In terms not only of formal and structural analogies but also of historical contacts, there can be no separating the Thracian Orpheus [of Pythagorean equivalence] from central-Asiatic shamanic tradition."

 

This connection with Taoism is also made explicit by the motif of the Pythagorean master Empedocles who,

Edited July 21, 2015 by Innersoundqigong

[voidisyinyang]

"dies a miraculous death by vanishing into thin air but who leaves a tell-tale item.... A more classic Taoist concept is that of achieving the divine state either by fashioning a spirit-body...thoughtfully leaving a pile of discarded garments...."

[Zhongyongdaoist]

Since you bring it up:

 

I guess I got lucky since I approached Plato already understanding harmonics.

now seems as good a time as any to take a closer look at what “understanding harmonics” means to you.

 

The Devil's Chord: The conspiracy to open the portal of consciousness and mystery of the octave

 

This is the ultimate conspiracy, imo, something I've devoted my life to since I first discovered it during my private music lession with a former University music professor -- a lesson I had when I was a teenager. The secret I discovered is called the 'comma of Pythagoras' in music theory but it contains a much more profound meaning -- one dealing with noncommutative mathematics and consciousness, something rediscovered in quantum physics as nonlocal entanglement. So normally the Perfect Fifth in music theory is measured as a closed circle but this is based on false mathematics -- logarithmic geometry in an attempt to contain infinity! The real harmonics are not logarithmic but instead are complementary opposites or asymmetric -- infinite resonate. This is called the "spiral of fifths."

 

O.K. so actually the "Devil's Chord" which is the tritone interval is literally the square root of two. Or to put it the other way around -- the square root of two, called the Power Axiom Set in mathematics, is literally derived from the Devil's Chord. Western mathematics is a conspiracy arising from the wrong harmonics of music, a materialist Freemasonic attempt to "contain" infinity using logarithmic geometry. I actually wrote a masters thesis on this topic but even that did not get into the core truth. Then I discovered the Actual Matrix Plan conspiracy based on the same conspiracy -- corroborating my discovery -- only supporting it. (Except for title, emphasis mine, ZYD)

We also know that this insight probably occurred when you were about fifteen, if not earlier:

 

O.K. so first of all when we all learn the square root of two Pythagorean theorem in school - that is NOT from Pythagoras! It is from Archytas. When I was in 10th grade in my "enriched geometry" class I never accepted the Pythagorean theorem as true because I knew the true music Pythagorean origins for it. So this is from the major 2nd music ratio as 9/8 which is cubed to the square root of two. Now by me explaining this I have already "stepped in the doodie" as I stated before. I good brainwashed Westerner will say that 9/8 cubed is "not" the square root of two. But I am talking about the secret Pythagorean music origins. The same can be said of the cube root of two which is derived from the ratio 5/4 which is actually the major third music interval based on 10/8 or two major 2nd music intervals. So if you know a bit of math you can see where this is going - it is a conversion of the music intervals to the 12 tone equal-tempered music scale. This is what Archytas was beginning to do and he did it by using fake Pythagorean teachings - so he got them from a man who left the Pythagorean school and so he was not truly initiated. (emphasis mine, ZYD)

In this thread I implicitly asked Innersound (then pythagoreanfulllotus), to explain the above here:

 

 

Perhaps if pythagoreanfulllotus could give us more information on what exactly lead hm to this conclusion:

 

 

When I was in 10th grade in my "enriched geometry" class I never accepted the Pythagorean theorem as true because I knew the true music Pythagorean origins for it.

It might be easier to understand him.

 

 

 

and now I finally know.

 

At the time I was frankly puzzled as to how someone claiming to be in an “enriched” geometry class could get such an irrational fear of irrational numbers. Quotes such as this

 

I had stated that Math professor Luigi Borzacchini recognizes this secret music origin of Western math and states the square root of two is a "pre-established deep disharmony." (Emphasis mine, ZYD)

and this:

 

 

 

Hence Arithmetic is the source of that preestablished harmony between reality

and language that we can not not believe after almost four centuries of astonishing

achievements, but we must even say that, neither tendentially, syntactic

representation can thoroughly mirror reality, become someway iconic. And this

because it is marked in its basic principles with a preestablished disharmony, that

is even its hidden evolutive principle.

It plays the role of source of never ending paradoxes well recognizable ever since

the beginning of formal thinking. Negation, truth and being ground an

antinomical argument, from the “negative judgement paradox” (impossibility of

asserting falsity), through the “liar paradox” (contradictory nature of self-asserting

falsity), to set-theoretical paradoxes and to Gödel's and Tarski's limitative

theorems. (Emphasis in the original, ZYD)

Luigi Borzacchini, THE SOPHIST. GENESIS OF FORMAL THINKING IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND

MATHEMATICS. (Dipartimento di Matematica, Università di Bari).

 

 

 

Only added to my dismay at the time. For example, while is marked in its basic principles with a preestablished disharmony is repeated by Innersound all over the place, the context of the full quote, especially its emphasis on “ set-theoretical paradoxes” and Gödel, would seem to make any connection with the square root of two quite a jump.

 

I left the matter there, because at the time I was very busy working a seven day a week schedule, which hardly gave me anytime to post here, much less conduct a serious analysis of the matter.

 

That situation had changed by the time that the Daoism and neoplatonism thread appeared and I thought I might post at that time, but when I went to sources such as the “THE SOPHIST. GENESIS OF FORMAL THINKING IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND MATHEMATICS.”, cited above, I was further dismayed by the fact that the discussion is solely on the historical development of logic, i.e., “ FORMAL THINKING” and makes NO mention whatsoever of the square root of two at all, much less as the origin of “the square root of two is a "pre-established deep disharmony.”, perhaps he says this directly and explicitly somewhere else, but I came more and more to the conclusion that, the connection between the square root of two and this “preestablished disharmony”, was more like a flying leap then a jump.

 

As I pursued other cited sources, similar disconnects seemed evident, and in many cases they emphasized the square root of two and the "Devil's Chord".

 

Last week I discovered the second quote above and now, at last, I understand why, because of Innersound's early "harmonic" training created a lifelong obsession with the "Devil's Chord" and a conspiracy theory to support it, in which, like all conspiracy theories, everything will be distorted to fit into the confines of the overriding obsession.

 

I look at Innersounds last post as an attempt to change the subject since nothing in it is an attempt to:

 

. . . justify your use of the quote as implying that Socrates completely “Discarded music and gymnastics”, replacing them with “number and calculation", preferable by reproducing pages 118 & 119

 

Providing the whole book is useful, but I can see nothing in it that justifies your use of the quote as you have used it.  I am of course thinking in that I might call "fair use", one criterion of which is that the quote is not used in a way that the author might object to, should they become aware of its citation.

 

Now you have another quote to justify and that is:

 

I had stated that Math professor Luigi Borzacchini recognizes this secret music origin of Western math and states the square root of two is a "pre-established deep disharmony." (Emphasis mine, ZYD)

 

 

 

 

 

Edit: Edit: Added link to THE SOPHIST. GENESIS OF FORMAL THINKING IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND MATHEMATICS, above.

Edited July 24, 2015 by Zhongyongdaoist

[voidisyinyang]

Ive corresponded with borzacchini several times. Power set axiom as incommensurabilty from music origin of square root of 2 is his focus i cite. Keep reading my quotes of him from more sources.

[voidisyinyang]

Ur attempts at ad hominems are hilarious. Just finish reading my blog article.

[voidisyinyang]

Saying i had an irrational fear at age 15 is not only a lie but an ad hominem.