Tao

And the simplest piece of information is the bit, this or that, which is what? Duality or unity, uniduality, unity as duality, relationship.

Well, that sounds awfully like the Tao to me, if you know Taoism.

Yin and yang.

People have got it tattooed on their arms.

Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish, i.e. do not overdo it.

If the empire is governed according to Tao, evil spirits will not be worshipped as good ones.

If evil spirits are not worshipped as good ones, good ones will do no injury.

Neither will the sages injure the people.

THERE IS THE MIGHTY AXIS OF EARTH, THE NEVER-RESTING POLE OF HEAVEN.

LET US GRASP THEIR CLUE, AND WITH THEM BE BLENDED IN ONE, BEYOND THE BOUNDS OF THOUGHT, CIRCLING FOREVER IN THE GREAT VOID, AN ORBIT OF A THOUSAND YEARS.

YES, THIS IS THE KEY TO MY THEME." This view naturally suggested the prolongation of earthly life by artificial means, hence the search for an elixir carried on through many centuries by degenerate disciples of Taoism.

But here we must pass on to consider some of the speculations on God, life, death, and immortality indulged in by Taoist philosophers and others who were not fettered, as the Confucianists were, by traditional reticence on the subject of spirits and an unseen universe.

And I think that Eastern philosophy, they really had a lot of these concepts nailed.

I think they call it like the Tao.

The Tao is like the way.

It's like the flow of life.

And a lot of the goal of some of these Eastern philosophies is to kind of relax into the way, to flow with life, which means...

And your question about like defining God, it's nearly impossible to.

The closest I've gotten to it is there's a quote from the Tao Te Ching, and it talks about how the Tao that can be named is not the Tao.

And if you translate it, it means like the God that can be named is not God.

So whatever people are pointing to saying, this is that, this is that, like, no, it's everything.

So how can a mantra physically loosen a tooth? Is it a miracle, or is this dentist on the outskirts of Beijing working with a technology that has been obscured in most of the modern world? To understand this, we need to look at Qi Gong, an ancient system of Chinese healing and spiritual practice, and Qi Gong sits at the heart of many branches of traditional Chinese medicine.

And it's deeply connected to Daoism, an Eastern belief system that sees the Dao as the underlying life force that moves through everything.

In these traditions, a Qigong healer is trained to align with that universal energy through breath and focus and intention, the healer actually becomes a conduit for Qi, this natural force or energy that brings the body into balance.

And from that perspective, a focused mantra isn't magic, it's a way of directing Qi toward an area that is blocked or out of harmony, perhaps even towards a stubborn wisdom tooth.

One of the questions I've been asking myself with the interstitium work is should we have known this was there? Should we have known we should be looking for something?

News of the interstitium went viral worldwide, but many healers and scientists working in other traditions did not agree that this was a new discovery.

[laughs] Whenever I speak to someone about the interstitium from another culture of healing or health, shamanic healers, energy practitioners, Daoist healers, acupuncture, Ayurvedic medicine, they all see this structure and go, "That's what we've been talking about." There was a senior person at the Chinese version of NIH for traditional Chinese medicine, and he laughed, and he said, "Yes, and we've been speaking about it for 4,000 years." [laughs]

So how were healers able to access and influence this system before technology made it seeable? How did they know it was real and communicate with it to promote healing? And in order to answer that, Neil suggests that we zoom out beyond the body into the very fabric of reality itself.

But no, it turns out there's something like it in every religion.

Even the Tao opens up with a statement that is very similar to that.

In the beginning was something undifferentiated.

I do not know its name.

I call it the Tao.

You know, it didn't even know the name of it, but it's the way, right?

Yes.

Examination for the Post of Guardian Angel.

My eldest sister's husband's grandfather, named Song Tao, was a graduate.

One day, while lying down from indisposition, an official messenger arrived, bringing the usual notification in his hand and leading a horse with a white forehead to summon him to the examination for his master's degree.

Mr.

This is only an outline of the story.

Footnotes Number one, guardian angel, the tutelar deity of every Chinese city.

Two, Sung Tao was a graduate.

That is, he had taken the first or bachelor's degree.