So, I was studying both World Religion/Philosophy and Astroscience at the same time in college as part of my gen ed electives. 

It was a weird synchronicity - because in one class we're talking about the philosophy of The Way - and how the Tao teaches that the negative is as important to the balance of the universe as the positive. At the same time, I'm studying anti-matter and negative energy and how the mass of the universe we can't see is possibly larger than the mass of the universe that is visible. 

Or, in other terms - the bowl is just a block of wood until you hollow it out. It is the empty and unseen that gives form and purpose to all reality. This is the *basic* thesis of the Tao - and they've been telling us these things for 5000 years, and Western Science has been dismissing it as Eastern Metaphysical bullshit. They literally described the string and quantum theories of anti-matter 5000 years before us, we scoffed at their description and made fun of their examples. 

Then we "discovered" it ourselves, and went, "aren't we BRILLIANT?!?" 

I'm sure when we started figuring out anti-matter and its importance to the very form of the universe, most Taoists went, "well, at least they *finally* caught up." 

Agreed. It isn't that we discover things - it is that we realize what we've been being told all along - and think it is a discover. ;) 

Kind of like when you make a suggestion in a corporate boardroom... and then 20 minutes later, your boss "independently" comes up with the same idea. 

"Hey, I know... why don't we just..." 

:) 

Tue May 04 2021 00:10:41 MST from ASCII Express

I know! It blows my mind!
"Being and non-being mutually produce each other." It says it right there.
"Knowing the white and keeping to the black is to be the model of the world." There again!
My teacher's teacher, master T.T. Liang, said that when the west discovers Qi that it will be like when we discovered electricity. As a ham I find that especially profound, because discovering electricity soon led us to build the telegraph and them radio, sending information at light speed.

I think it is human nature - just like when I "discovered" this - I was amazed that no one had thought of it before... :D 

But... people tend to experience the world from their perspective, and assume the experience is universal. My wife has a variation of this, where she asks, "what if the orange I perceive is actually the blue you perceive, and we just all agree to call the object ORANGE, when it is a different perception to every person." 

Wed May 05 2021 21:17:55 MST from ASCII Express

You know, my teacher said something similar when I brought up simulation theory. They have to act like they discovered it. I think Douglas Adams also makes that joke about Rob McKenna, the rain god. They have to call it something totally new.

Sat Apr 24 2021 21:01:41 MST from ASCII Express

Yeah I can see that. Taoism started as a philosophy, the religion came later. My teacher said exactly that in a recent discussion about Taoist alchemy. The original scientists. They started with metalergical processes, then used them as metaphors for an internal process.

I have a mormon friend who is into Alchemy for exactly that reason.  It's uncanny how effective a metaphor it is.

I need to look into this. My theory that the Tao was actually a devolution from higher understanding to lesser understanding would probably work with this - 

Imagine a modern post-apocalyptic scenario, where bands of people were struggling to hang on to the knowledge lost in whatever cataclysm humanity experienced. 

As those skills got handed down - almost certainly by "trade experience" at some point, rather than book-taught and learned - eventually people generations down the road would make logical expository conclusions on the world in general from their observations in the sacred arcane trades they were being taught in by their "orders". 

This isn't wholly my own idea - the foundation of this thought was put into my head by reading A Canticle for Leibowitz.  But I'm sure the author of that book had the idea inspired from some observation, as well. 

Sun May 09 2021 20:04:02 MST from TheDave

 

Sat Apr 24 2021 21:01:41 MST from ASCII Express

Yeah I can see that. Taoism started as a philosophy, the religion came later. My teacher said exactly that in a recent discussion about Taoist alchemy. The original scientists. They started with metalergical processes, then used them as metaphors for an internal process.

I have a mormon friend who is into Alchemy for exactly that reason.  It's uncanny how effective a metaphor it is.

And I believe it is. 

I think that our modern accepted timeline doesn't make sense. That Babylonia, then Egypt, then Rome - were actually civilization in DECLINE - that the Egyptians did things in early dynasties that they couldn't recreate in later ones is documented. 

The question is - why... why were these civilizations more advanced EARLY in their timeframes and less advanced later? 

And why is each subsequent civilization inferior to the one before it? 

To me - it looks like humanity struggling to maintain an advanced civilization after an apocalypse. 

Which - it seems pretty clear by the ubiquitous nature of the story - had something to do with a great flood and maybe an axis shift. 

Wed May 12 2021 19:42:55 MST from ASCII Express

They considered it ancient when Lao Zi wrote the Tao De Jing 2500 years ago.

Wed May 12 2021 22:46:17 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>

And I believe it is. 

I think that our modern accepted timeline doesn't make sense. That Babylonia, then Egypt, then Rome - were actually civilization in DECLINE - that the Egyptians did things in early dynasties that they couldn't recreate in later ones is documented. 

The question is - why... why were these civilizations more advanced EARLY in their timeframes and less advanced later? 

And why is each subsequent civilization inferior to the one before it? 

To me - it looks like humanity struggling to maintain an advanced civilization after an apocalypse. 

Which - it seems pretty clear by the ubiquitous nature of the story - had something to do with a great flood and maybe an axis shift. 

 

Wed May 12 2021 19:42:55 MST from ASCII Express

They considered it ancient when Lao Zi wrote the Tao De Jing 2500 years ago.

 

Yeah, I'm 100% on board with this.  The generally accepted timeline is bullshit, and I can't understand not believing in the Great Flood.  Every culture knows that story.  Bushmen in the desert that have never seen a lake know the Great Flood.  Civilizations to tend toward decay over time.  I feel like the Foundation series covered the reasons pretty damn well.

The thing that I find amazing are the South American ruins attributed to basically a neolithic people. The H blocks and the stones at Machu Picchu that look *cast*, not carved, and fit into one another like legos. 

And they're at tens of thousands of feet in Peruvian mountains and miles away through treacherous primitive mountain paths - by a people that had no formal language or alphabet and who never invented the wheel. 

Among a region where it is not uncommon for the peoples to believe that insectoid-like "Star People" helped them at various times in their histories.

But mainstream academia science is always like... 


 

Sat May 15 2021 19:50:32 MST from ASCII Express

I have touched Egyptian artifacts. The carving and pollishing of the stone feels like a product of a more advanced civilization.

My opinion of course, not academia's.

Cultures that created artwork like this: 

And these fucking things: